Tectonic plates are shifting for wealth management, with massive changes on the way that have the potential to fundamentally reshape the industry.
The wealth management industry is, on its face, a healthy one, delivering much-vaunted and predictable earnings. For Wall Street, these earnings are very attractive compared with the more volatile and capital-intensive income streams from trading and investment banking. And it is the reason that banks such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and UBS have been systematically remaking their businesses to favour investments in these assets-based businesses.
But strip away the stock and bond market appreciation of the past years and the organic growth story blurs. Capital markets performance was responsible for 70 per cent of industry-wide asset growth between 2012 and 2021, according to McKinsey.