{"id":655179,"date":"2026-06-21T16:59:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T14:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=655179"},"modified":"2026-06-21T17:30:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T15:30:29","slug":"ai-turning-wealth-managers-into-emotional-managers-for-the-richest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/ai\/655179-ai-turning-wealth-managers-into-emotional-managers-for-the-richest.html","title":{"rendered":"AI turning wealth managers into emotional managers for the richest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Wealth managers keen to stay relevant in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) may soon find that clients with a mere $1 million in liquid assets are no longer worth spending human hours on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe mass-affluent client now gets something close to private-banking quality from AI,\u201d said Debasish Patnaik, senior partner McKinsey & Co. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That not only \u201cstrips the value from the adviser whose role was standardised advice,\u201d but it also means \u201cthe kind of person hired into wealth management changes fundamentally,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The assessment implies that individuals with liquid assets between $100,000 and $1,000,000 \u2014 broadly defined as the mass affluent within the industry \u2014 could soon be handed over to AI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, human wealth managers keen to show they can do better than AI need to focus their talents on the emotional needs of the truly rich, Patnaik\u2019s analysis implies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prediction comes as financial professionals everywhere struggle to interpret how AI will upend<\/a> their careers. Signals from the industry and those advising it, meanwhile, aren\u2019t always consistent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in wealth management, there are even signs that AI is creating hiring needs as firms seize on the promise of extra productivity to expand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Citigroup plans to recruit hundreds of humans <\/a>for its private banking and wealth management business as it deploys AI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s as chief executive officer Jane Fraser has made it an explicit goal for the bank to become a \u201cglobal leader<\/a> in wealth management.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Citi says it wants to add 400 wealth advisers across its US retail bank and another 100 staffers for its private bank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, the Wall Street bank is developing AI-backed software aimed at helping it produce near-instant reviews of portfolios at scale, down from the several hours such tasks take today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bankers will be able to \u201cpress a button\u201d in order to instantly \u201cdraft an email from the chief investment officer and distill what it means for the client,\u201d Joe Bonanno, Citi\u2019s head of wealth intelligence, said in an interview. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among products being rolled out by Citi are a conversational AI-powered avatar specifically intended to support rich clients on issues such as how to manage their child\u2019s college fund. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The upshot overall is that AI will let Citi have more contact with its customers, and \u201cengagement keeps clients happier and stickier,\u201d Bonanno said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People skills becoming more important<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Patnaik says that when it comes to handling ultra-wealthy clients, it helps if a manager has the emotional nous to deal with tense situations such as deciding which family member gets to inherit what, or being there to hold their hand through a market rout. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The adviser who successfully \u201creads the room\u201d and \u201cmanages family dynamics\u201d will have the best chance of surviving the onslaught of AI, Patnaik said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They need to be willing to \u201csit with a client through a succession or a liquidity event, and help them think clearly. AI does not touch that, so firms will weigh hiring heavily toward it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professionals in the industry, where senior managers handling ultra-high-net-worth clients can earn millions of dollars a year, are trying to figure out what exactly makes a human adviser irreplaceable by AI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s as the list of AI products continues to grow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthropic PBC\u2019s Claude, OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT and Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Gemini already offer tools that allow users to model portfolios, optimize taxation and even explore possible philanthropic ventures<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banks are also developing their own platforms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At UBS Group AG, the world\u2019s largest wealth manager, 90% of its advisory teams in the US are already using an internal AI platform to help make them more productive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

UBS private bankers and wealth managers now get personalized insights on clients courtesy of the in-house AI tool the firm uses, according to a spokesperson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Swiss bank is applying AI to improve areas like adviser productivity and operational efficiency, while at the same time prioritizing governance, transparency and trust, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, AI\u2019s arrival now appears to be creating a need for new kinds of human expertise, such as AI governance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patnaik says firms will likely increasingly need to rely on \u201cspecialists, behavioural data scientists, personalisation architects, and human-in-the-loop oversight professionals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are \u201centirely new roles\u201d that \u201cdid not exist in wealth management a few years ago,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese hybrid profiles, combining domain expertise with technical fluency, are among the fastest growing and hardest to fill anywhere in financial services.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wealth managers keen to stay relevant in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) may soon find that clients with a mere $1 million in liquid assets are no longer worth spending human hours on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":655200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92837],"tags":[93703,35793,9115,106046,106048,106045,106047,48631,106038],"class_list":["post-655179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","tag-ai-tools","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-citigroup","tag-debasish-patnaik","tag-joe-bonanno","tag-mckinsey-co","tag-ubs-group","tag-wealth-management","tag-wealth-managers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655179"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":655201,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655179\/revisions\/655201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}