For advisors, the opportunity is not necessarily about using AI to transform every aspect of their work. It may be more practical.ookawa/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
Canadian wealth management firms have had enough of playing catch-up on technology.
As more firms transition to digital platforms, wealth managers are shifting their focus from long-overdue modernization to a more consequential question: How can they leverage the technology foundation they’ve built to fuel innovation and growth?
New research from Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc.’s 2026 Digital Transformation & Next-Gen Technology Study shows the nature of wealth management technology spending is starting to change.
For the past decade, firms spent heavily to digitize operations and develop central platforms that allow them to standardize and deploy data across organizations.
Although that digital transformation is still a work in progress, many wealth management firms are now turning to the next phase: using these investments to improve advisor productivity, enhance client experiences and create new opportunities for growth.
Across Canada, wealth management firms are investing in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud platforms and unified operating models. But the next competitive advantage will come from applying these new technologies to problems that matter to advisors and their clients.
Some of these investments are already producing measurable results. Almost one-third (31 per cent) of Canadian wealth managers report financial benefits from their generative AI investments, signalling a shift from experimentation toward business value.
For advisors, the opportunity is not necessarily about using AI to transform every aspect of their work. It may be more practical: reducing the time spent gathering information, preparing for client meetings, summarizing documents or working across disconnected sources of data to drive personalized content for their clients.
Advisor teams should test AI’s ability to perform certain tasks – for example, preparing client-review materials (with an advisor overseeing the output) – and compare the preparation time, corrections and turnaround with a baseline before deciding whether to scale.
The lesson is technology creates value when it removes friction from the advisor’s workflow rather than simply adding another application.
Other investments are longer term. According to Broadridge’s North American tokenization research, about 70 per cent of Canadian wealth management executives believe tokenization will reshape financial markets within five years. Half of Canadian firms are already making moderate to large investments in tokenization and digital asset infrastructure.
The opportunity is not simply to adopt a new form of technology, but to consider how new products and asset types could change what wealth managers offer and how they deliver it. More than nine out of 10 wealth managers participating in Broadridge research expect traditional and digital assets to coexist for an extended period. For many firms, the practical question is how to support both while maintaining a consistent, controlled experience for clients and advisors.
For wealth management leaders, that raises practical questions. Can clients eventually view, transact in and manage traditional and digital holdings through a consistent experience? Can advisors understand a client’s overall portfolio, activity and risk without moving between disconnected systems? Can new capabilities work with existing workflows rather than creating another technology silo?
These are technology questions, but they’re also business questions.
Building for flexibility
As wealth managers consider generative AI, tokenization and other emerging technologies, they should avoid rebuilding the technology stack every time something new emerges.
Today’s digital platforms are increasingly modular, with a focus on interconnectivity and interoperability. That creates an opportunity to build new products and applications alongside existing infrastructure rather than replacing everything that came before.
The firms that make this transition successfully will not necessarily be the ones that chase every emerging technology. They will be the ones that create enough flexibility to adopt useful innovations when the business case is clear.
For wealth leaders, that means asking three questions:
Where is there friction today? Start with the advisor and client processes that consume time or require information to be pulled from multiple places.
Can new capabilities connect to what already exists? Flexibility and interoperability matter more than predicting which individual technology will dominate five years from now.
Are we building for what comes next? With traditional and digital assets expected to coexist, firms should consider whether their operating models can accommodate new products without creating separate experiences for advisors and clients.
Canadian wealth managers have already invested heavily in modernization. The opportunity now is to turn that foundation into something more valuable: a business that gives advisors more time to advise, gives clients a more connected experience and remains flexible enough to adapt as the future of investing takes shape.
Donna Bristow is chief product officer, North American wealth & ICS Canada, at Broadridge Financial Solutions in Toronto.