Trending Themes in Asset and Wealth Management
We are pleased to bring you the twenty-second edition of "The Monthly Market Pulse - Trending Themes in Asset and Wealth Management". This edition delves into three pivotal trends significantly shaping the asset and wealth management sector:
- When Competitors Become Partners: The New Retirement - Wealth Alliance - Retirement and wealth providers are shifting from competition to collaboration, combining recordkeeper scale with adviser-led personalization to serve participants more seamlessly across their financial journey
- Digital Assets Move into the Mainstream: A Strategic Growth Opportunity for Asset Managers - Digital assets are moving into the institutional mainstream, creating a strategic growth opportunity for asset managers to capture new assets by scaling regulated, secure investment capabilities and offerings
- Beyond the Estate Plan: Wealth Transfer Becomes a Family Communication and Governance Challenge - Wealth transfer is evolving beyond estate planning into a family preparedness challenge, requiring stronger communication, governance, and heir education to ensure successful multigenerational transitions
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
When Competitors Become Partners: The New Retirement-Wealth Alliance
Introduction
The lines between workplace retirement and wealth management are increasingly getting blurred as recordkeepers and advisers look to serve participants across a broader financial journey. Rather than competing for every client relationship, providers are increasingly exploring partnership models that combine recordkeeper scale with adviser-led personalized advice. McKinsey’s Oct’26 research shows how quickly this partnership model is taking shape:
(Sample size: 75 US retirement plan consultants across institutional consultants, RPAs, RIAs, and broker-dealers)
- Increasing collaboration: Nearly 71% of RPA/RIA consultants work with recordkeepers to provide participant wealth-management services. Among RIAs/RPAs, 59% see recordkeepers as potential partners, compared with 32% that view them as competitors
- Partnership appetite varies by channel: Only 4% of institutional consultants surveyed by McKinsey view recordkeepers as competitors in wealth management, reflecting significant scope for collaboration. Competition is higher among RIAs/RPAs and broker-dealers where wealth offerings increasingly overlap
Setting the Context
Changing participant needs and industry economics are encouraging retirement and wealth providers to rethink where they compete and where collaboration creates greater value reshaping their alliance:
- Expanding revenues lever: Wealth is becoming a larger growth opportunity. McKinsey estimates that revenues generated from DC investment products and recordkeeping increased from $28B in 2013 to $39B in 2023 while the DC ecosystem generated $45B in new retail wealth-management revenues over the same period
- Participant segmentation is emerging: Recordkeepers can use scalable solutions to serve mass and mass-affluent participants, while advisers focus on higher-net-worth participants requiring more personalized wealth support - creating clearer roles across the participant journey
Industry Response & Adaptation
Leading retirement providers are strengthening connections between workplace retirement, advice and wealth capabilities to support more seamless participant relationships:
- Empower (Sep'26): Expanded its retirement-administration capabilities through the Milliman retirement-administration business, supporting a broader platform spanning workplace retirement, advice and wealth
- Fidelity (Jul'26): Expanded institutional custom and model SMA capabilities for wealth firms, strengthening the infrastructure available to advisers serving clients with more complex investment needs relationships
- Fidelity (Apr'26): Expanded its 'Probability of Success' planning capability across workplace and retail channels, creating a more consistent planning experience as participants move between retirement and broader financial goals
Evalueserve Perspective
As retirement and wealth models converge, providers will need clear partnership structures that balance scale, personalization, and shared economics
- Define clear partnership roles: Recordkeepers and advisers should establish which participant segments each serves, supported by transparent referral, servicing and economic arrangements
- Create seamless participant handoffs: Integrated data, consent and communication frameworks can help participants transition between scaled workplace support and personalized wealth advice without disrupting the experience
- Align incentives around participant outcomes: Providers should structure partnerships so that recordkeepers and advisers have shared incentives to deepen engagement rather than compete for control of the relationship
- Measure partnership value: Providers should track engagement, advice adoption, client retention and relationship economics to identify where collaboration delivers stronger outcomes than direct competition
Digital Assets Move into the Mainstream: A Strategic Growth Opportunity for Asset Managers
Introduction
Digital assets are rapidly transitioning from an experimental investment theme to a core component of institutional investment strategies
- More than half (51%) of institutional investors now expect digital assets to become mainstream within five years, compared with just 11% in 2024, according to State Street’s 2026 Digital Assets Study
- Moreover, 63% of asset and wealth managers either already manage digital assets or have the infrastructure and provider relationships in place to support future demand, shifting the conversation from whether to participate to how to scale digital asset capabilities
For asset managers, this is more than a technology trend. It creates an opportunity to capture new assets, attract emerging investor segments, and modernize investment capabilities and operations
Setting the Context
Growing institutional confidence is being supported by several factors: clearer regulatory frameworks, improving market infrastructure, and maturing institutional-grade custody, servicing, and security capabilities
- Reflecting these priorities, 69% of asset and wealth managers identified experience operating within an appropriate regulatory framework as the most important attribute of a digital asset service provider, while 54% cited cybersecurity as a key requirement
Industry Response & Adaptation
Asset managers are accelerating digital asset adoption through new capabilities, strategic partnerships, and infrastructure investments:
- Franklin Templeton (Jun’26): Acquired 250 Digital and established Franklin Crypto, combining crypto-native investment expertise with its global distribution capabilities to expand actively managed digital asset strategies for institutional investors
- P. Morgan (May’26): Filed for a tokenized U.S. Treasury money-market fund to expand its on-chain investment offering and potentially provide stablecoin issuers with a yield-bearing reserve vehicle designed to meet GENIUS Act reserve requirements
- Morgan Stanley (Jan’26): Filed for Bitcoin and Solana ETFs to deepen its presence in digital assets and provide investors with a regulated and liquid route to crypto exposure without directly holding the underlying assets
Evalueserve Perspective
To translate digital asset momentum into sustainable growth, asset managers should:
- Identify high-potential opportunities by assessing investor demand and prioritizing digital asset products and use cases aligned with evolving client needs
- Build scalable capabilities through targeted technology investments, strategic partnerships, and selective acquisitions to strengthen digital asset expertise and infrastructure
- Differentiate in a fast-evolving market by benchmarking competitors, tracking regulatory developments, and continually refining product and distribution strategies
Beyond the Estate Plan: Wealth Transfer Becomes a Family Communication and Governance Challenge
Introduction
Effective wealth transfer goes beyond documented plans and estate structures. It requires families to build shared understanding, communication, and readiness to navigate the transition together.
- The Wells Fargo Wealth Transfer Study (Oct’26) found that 61% of Gen X and Millennial heirs experienced negative consequences from an inheritance, versus 29% of Baby Boomer parents. While 93% of parents knew how much they intended to transfer and 79% had documented it, only 54% of adult children knew what they were likely to inherit
- Only 21% of parents had detailed estate-plan discussions with their children, highlighting the need for stronger family dialogue, alignment, governance, and heir preparedness
Setting the Context
The challenge is becoming more pronounced as families prepare to transfer wealth while expectations around inheritance, transparency, and responsibility remain uneven
- Having an estate plan does not necessarily mean a family is ready for transition. Wells Fargo (Oct’26) found only 21% of parents had detailed estate-plan discussions with their children, while Capital Group (Q4’26) found 43% of inheritors faced important financial decisions within weeks of receiving an inheritance, yet only 18% felt very comfortable making them
- Wealth-transfer readiness is therefore expanding beyond financial and estate planning. UBS (May’26) found 67% of next-generation family members in North America associate wealth transfer with new responsibilities, while more than half believe transfer conversations should begin in childhood or adolescence, reinforcing the growing importance of communication, education, and next-generation preparedness
Industry Response
Leading wealth managers are beginning to expand the definition of wealth-transfer advice. Rather than focusing primarily on estate structures and asset transition, firms are increasingly incorporating family engagement, governance and rising-generation development into their multigenerational propositions
- P. Morgan Wealth Management (May’26): Expanded Family Wealth Services around family engagement and governance, spanning family dynamics, decision-making, transition planning, and rising-generation development to support holistic multigenerational wealth management
- Bank of America Private Bank (Apr’26): Advocated moving beyond financial and estate planning toward structured family governance, using regular family meetings, shared decision-making, and next-generation education to align values and prepare inheritors for responsible stewardship
- UBS (May’26): Positioned next-generation preparation around the transfer of wealth and responsibility, helping inheritors understand family legacy, develop stewardship capabilities, and prepare to assume greater responsibility for wealth
Evalueserve Perspective
The opportunity in wealth transfer is not better estate planning, but stronger family preparedness. The next differentiation phase is likely to come from a firm’s ability to combine expertise with communication, governance, and next-generation development, ensuring families are aligned before assets change hands. To capitalize on this shift, wealth managers can consider:
- Embedding family communication into the planning process: Establishing structured conversations around transfer intentions, expectations, roles, and responsibilities rather than treating communication as a one-time disclosure after decisions have been finalized
- Building family-governance frameworks: Helping families define decision rights, meeting structures, conflict-resolution mechanisms, and shared principles that can guide choices and reduce ambiguity during transition
- Preparing heirs for stewardship: Offering education, mentoring, and experiential learning that build capability, clarify responsibilities, and help inheritors connect family wealth with purpose and legacy
- Measuring readiness beyond plan completion: Assessing whether family members understand the plan, feel prepared for their roles, and can make decisions, rather than relying solely on documents and tax-efficient structures
