Generative AI in Wealth and Asset Management Survey (EY)

Summary

• 95% of surveyed wealth and asset management firms are deploying at least three GenAI use cases already, while 77% have either mandated existing teams or mobilized a team solely focused on GenAI [p.6].p.6
• 99% of firms expect to implement an additional 3 or more GenAI use cases in the next ~2 years [p.6].p.6
• Only 7% of firms report currently utilizing agentic AI, but ~85% are expected to have agentic AI use cases fully built and integrated within two years [p.6].p.6
• Importance of data quality (23%) and focus on ethics and compliance (20%) were identified as top lessons learned from deploying generative AI [p.9].p.9
• While ~50% of firms allocated a budget over $11 million to GenAI in the past 1–2 years, 75% expect to make this allocation in the next 1–2 years [p.15].p.15
• Fine-tuning of third-party foundation models is utilized by 89% of firms to deploy generative AI models, followed by direct API access at 74% [p.23].p.23

Key insights

1. 66% of wealth and asset management firms stated that they would have approached planning and strategy differently when starting a new GenAI project [p.6].p.6
2. Compliance, risk, and marketing represent the functional areas experiencing the highest impact from GenAI implementations [p.6].p.6
3. 88% of wealth managers and 84% of asset managers identified regulatory and compliance hurdles as key challenges stopping or delaying production readiness [p.12].p.12
4. 46% of firms anticipate substantial or disruptive impact from GenAI over the next 1–2 years, compared to 27% reporting similar impact over the past 1–2 years [p.13].p.13
5. 41% of respondents plan to allocate 11%–15% of their firm's resources to mobilizing GenAI teams in the next 1–2 years [p.14].p.14
6. Personalized investment strategies are prioritized by 74% of wealth managers in front-office functions, whereas automated personalized outreach is prioritized by 72% of asset managers [p.17].p.17
7. Traditional AI, machine learning, or RPA currently accounts for ~70% of AI technology usage among surveyed wealth and asset managers [p.19].p.19
8. 87% of surveyed firms utilize closed-source large language models for their GenAI use cases [p.6].p.6