Trending Themes in Asset and Wealth Management
- Retirement Anxiety Becomes a Full‑Time Job for Workplace Employees: Throws light on how retirement anxiety has become a major source of workplace stress. In response, employers and retirement providers are expanding integrated wellness programs and data-driven benefits to reduce financial stress and improve workforce engagement and retention
- Tax-Aware Alpha - The New Performance Frontier in Wealth Management: Reveals tax-aware investing is now central to wealth management, with after-tax returns as the key measure. Firms that can consistently deliver and clearly show tax savings will stand out
- Asset Managers Leveraging M&A to Reposition for the Next Cycle: Brings out how U.S. asset managers are using record‑high M&A activity to gain scale, diversify revenues, and strengthen capabilities as industry consolidation accelerates amid fee pressure, rising costs, and the need for strategic repositioning.
These interconnected trends underscore a dynamic environment where evolving client expectations, a focus on comprehensive service, and a fundamental shift in investment vehicle preferences are collectively shaping the opportunities and challenges for Asset and Wealth Management firms aiming for future growth. This collective evolution signals a profound transformation across the sector, pushing firms to rethink traditional models and embrace new approaches to remain competitive and relevant.
Retirement Anxiety Becomes a Full‑Time Job for Workplace Employees
Introduction
- Financial worry is now a defining feature of the US workplace, with retirement emerging as one of the most visible pressure points for employees
- A CAPTRUST At Work Financial Wellness Survey released in Jan'26 illustrates the scale of the issue: more than eight in 10 employees say money stress negatively affects their work focus and productivity. Nearly three quarters say that stress undermines their motivation on the job, with anxiety, sleeplessness, and declining morale emerging as common consequences (data was collected in May’25. A total of 4,307 employees from 795 organizations participated; 93% of respondents completed the entire survey)
Setting the Context: These findings reposition financial wellness from a nice‑to‑have support program to a core element of managing workforce risk
- A similar survey by Allianz (Dec’25) found that 48% of Americans feel more stressed about their finances heading into 2026 than they did a year earlier
- Confidence in retirement readiness is eroding — 27% are less confident about reaching their goals, and 21% feel further behind their retirement objectives compared with 12 months ago.
Industry Response & Adaptation: Recordkeepers (RKs) and benefits consultants are broadening workplace financial wellness programs to help employers manage workforce risk holistically
- NFP (Jan’26): NFP (an Aon company) released its annual benefits report saying employers need to balance attractive benefits that keep employees engaged with cost and legal pressures, taking a broad “total rewards” view instead of just focusing on health plans
- Bank of America (Dec’25): Launched an upgraded digital benefits platform for small and mid‑size businesses that brings together retirement plans (like 401ks and IRAs), health benefits, and financial‑wellness tools in one place
- Alight (Sep’25): Released it’s 2025 Employee Mindset Study highlighting the need for integrated financial wellbeing, guidance, and support within its Alight Worklife platform to reduce employees’ financial and emotional stress and help employers improve engagement and retention. This followed a new version of Alight Worklife with 30+ updates to improve benefits across health, wealth, leaves, and wellbeing
Evalueserve Perspective
The rise of retirement anxiety requires a reframing of workplace benefits around workforce risk, not just retirement plans
- RKs should embed financial‑stress and retirement‑readiness analytics in plan sponsor reporting highlighting segments “at risk” of low savings or high debt and tie these insights directly to employer KPIs like engagement and retention
- RKs need to promote plan designs that lower friction and cognitive load for employees – Automatic enrollment and escalation, thoughtful default investment options, auto‑rebalancing, and simplified menus aligned to different life stages of participants can ease decision-making
- Retirement providers should add features that directly target anxiety triggers: paycheck‑linked emergency savings options, in‑plan retirement‑income tools, simple projection dashboards, and communications that normalize stress but provide clear next steps
Tax-Aware Alpha: The New Performance Frontier in Wealth Management
Introduction
- Tax-aware investing is shifting from a seasonal activity to a year-round pillar of the wealth management value proposition. As affluent investors seek to mitigate their largest recurring expense, after-tax performance is becoming the primary metric of advisor success
- Think Advisor (Dec '25) identifies tax-awareness as a top trend for 2026, supported by Goldman Sachs research (Dec '25) in Tax-Aware Choices Build Greater Wealth Over Time. Their findings prove that tax-aware choices compound; small annual differences create massive dollar gaps over decades. High-tax bracket investors who prioritize after-tax returns in asset allocation and product selection can meaningfully enhance their wealth over the long term
Setting the Context: The Implementation Gap
Despite growing client demand, advisor execution lags behind-- creating a massive opportunity for firm differentiation:
- The Client Mandate: A similar survey by Allianz (Dec’25) found that 48% of Americans feel more stressed about their finances heading into 2026 than they did a year earlier
- The Execution Gap: Despite high demand, only 17% of advisors consider after-tax returns a primary driver of portfolio decisions, a finding also highlighted in the BlackRock survey. This highlights a gap between expectations and advisor workflows
- Tangible Value: Envestnet identifies tax management as the clearest opportunity for advisors to add “measurable, tangible value” noting that taxes are often the single largest expense an investor faces
Industry Response & Adaptation: Engineering “Tax Alpha”
Leading asset managers are moving beyond basic harvesting to “manufacture” tax benefits through sophisticated strategies:
- J.P. Morgan Asset Management (Dec '25): Launched the Tax-Smart Disciplined Equity Long-Short Strategy. This fund takes bullish positions while betting against certain names specifically to generate losses that offset capital gains for wealthy investors
- Two Sigma Investments (Dec '25): Debuted the Two Sigma Beacon Fund, a quantitative hedge fund engineered to capitalize on the “tax-aware boom” by delivering tax-efficient returns
Evalueserve Perspective
The shift toward tax-aware investing represents a pivot from “Pre-tax Performance” to “Net-to-Wallet Outcome.” To capture share-of-wallet, firms must address three critical gaps:
- Institutionalize Tax-Aware Reporting: Firms must institutionalize tax-aware reporting. If an advisor cannot show a client exactly how much they saved in taxes (Tax Alpha), they risk losing assets to platforms that can
- Industrialize Loss Generation: Following the J.P. Morgan model, firms should incorporate strategies like direct indexing or long-short sleeves, that treat “losses” as a valuable asset for wealth preservation
- Scale to the Mass Affluent: Tax management is no longer a UHNW luxury. Firms must utilize automated technology to bring institutional-grade tax-aware strategies to the $250k–$2M account segment
Asset Managers Leveraging M&A to Reposition for the Next Cycle
Introduction
The U.S. asset management industry reached a historic peak in M&A activity in 2025, marking the most active year ever recorded, fueled by shifting market dynamics, mounting cost pressures, and an industry-wide push for scale. For asset managers navigating an increasingly complex and competitive landscape, M&A has become one of the most powerful levers to future‑proof the business:
- According to market data provider LSEG, the sector recorded $38B in transactions in 2025, more than double the total reported in 2024, reflecting the fastest acceleration in deal spending
- The surge included a record 378 M&A transactions in 2025, the highest since 1980, highlighting the growing momentum behind industry consolidation
Setting the Context:
Margin pressures driven by fee compression and rising client expectations are driving asset managers toward M&A as a strategic necessity
- Heavy investment needs in AI and cybersecurity, combined with low interest rates, make acquisition financing more attractive
- Oliver Wyman projects a 20% decline in asset and wealth managers by 2029, underscoring consolidation’s critical role in reshaping the U.S. market
Industry Response & Adaptation:
Asset managers are responding to this trend by using M&A to fast‑track strategic growth by targeting acquisitions that can immediately strengthen their product shelf, enhance distribution reach, or add specialized investment expertise. A few examples include:
- Goldman Sachs (Dec’25): Agreed to acquire Innovator Capital Management, adding $28B in ETF assets, to broaden its expansion in active and defined‑outcome ETFs (ETFs that offer pre‑defined risk‑return outcomes), instantly delivering scale and product depth
- Nomura (Dec’25): Acquired Macquarie Group’s U.S. and European public asset management business to rapidly scale its global asset‑management footprint. The deal added approximately $166B in AUM, allowing Nomura to diversify income away from volatile trading revenue
- Janus Henderson (Dec’25): Agreed to go private under a consortium led by Trian and General Catalyst to drive long‑term growth, with increased investment in technology and AI to enhance operations and client service
Evalueserve Perspective
Asset managers can capitalize on the current M&A wave by adopting a disciplined, strategy‑led approach to portfolio reshaping and competitive positioning:
- Focus on capability‑led acquisitions: Target high‑growth, higher‑margin segments such as active and defined‑outcome ETFs, private credit, infrastructure, and alternatives to access stickier capital and counter fee pressure in traditional strategies
- Stabilize revenues through targeted M&As : Firms with greater exposure to market‑sensitive businesses can acquire multi‑asset platforms, retirement solutions, or private‑market capabilities to diversify revenues and reduce earnings volatility
- Acquire distribution, not just products: Embedded distribution across wealth, retirement, insurance, or institutional channels often delivers greater value than standalone products by boosting asset flows and enabling platform‑wide cross‑selling
- Build integration excellence: As consolidation intensifies, value creation will depend on strong execution—supported by dedicated M&A teams, disciplined integration frameworks, and strong cultural alignment
