The AI-Enabled Advisor: Harnessing Tech for Wealth Management

How wealth advisors can turn information overload into clear, client-ready insights using AI-enabled workflows

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how wealth advisors manage portfolios and engage with clients as operational complexity intensifies. Traditionally, advisors relied on spreadsheets and static PDF reports to aggregate data and information across fragmented tech stacks. AI-enabled tools can help reduce the time and effort spent on this manual process.

At Future Proof Citywide in March 2026, an event for AI-native finance professionals, Ted Stratigos, Global Head of Aladdin Wealth, discussed how to integrate generative AI into advisor workflows, based on his experience deploying Aladdin Wealth’s Auto Commentary.

Auto Commentary is a GenAI-powered feature within Aladdin Wealth that brings together hundreds of data points across three inputs: the Aladdin Wealth platform’s robust data and risk analytics, an individual firm’s CIO market outlook, and detailed information about the client’s portfolio holdings and investment preferences. The feature turns complex portfolio analytics and client-level investment preferences into concise insights that advisors can take with them in conversations with clients.

We sat down with Ted Stratigos after his session at Future Proof Citywide to learn more about the deployment, adoption, and impact of this feature.

The challenge: Too much data and lack of clarity

Advisors do not lack information. There’s often an overwhelming volume of data available already: performance reports, scenario analyses, stress tests, charts, and portfolio analytics.

“What clients really need is help turning complexity into a clear, professional narrative,” said Ted Stratigos. That task has become one of the most time-consuming parts of the advisory process, he added, with advisors having to synthesize information manually, often under tight time constraints and with inconsistent results.

Indeed, EY’s 2024 EY Global Wealth Management Industry Report identifies operational complexity as one of the top 10 challenges that wealth managers must overcome.1 Legacy technology and fragmented data infrastructure further act as barriers to delivering client-centric advice consistently.

The solution: A new workflow with AI governance in place

Early attempts by Aladdin Wealth to create insights for clients relied on rule-based systems, said Stratigos. “We tried to solve this problem years earlier, before generative AI was really viable. Back then, we used rules, templates, and logic trees—basically a Mad Libs approach,” said Stratigos.

The process could involve logging into multiple systems from custodial portals, CRM tools, research platforms, and manually aggregating outputs. Forming a coherent narrative was an uphill task and heavily relied on spreadsheets and static reports. Analytics-driven tasks were manual and time-consuming, making it hard to scale.

“Technically, it worked. But in practice it was clunky, brittle, and incredibly hard to scale. Language quality suffered, edge cases multiplied, and maintenance became very difficult,” Stratigos added.

The inflection point came when generative large language models (LLM) reached a level of quality suitable for professional, client-facing communication. The focus moved to how AI could be deployed responsibly and efficiently within wealth management workflows.

AI governance was built into Aladdin Wealth’s Auto Commentary feature from the start. Rather than building an external proof-of-concept, the prototype of the feature was developed within secure production environments, using real data, real controls, and real advisor workflows.

Guardrails were put in place in collaboration with risk, legal, information security, and model governance teams so hallucination risk was reduced. In short, the feature was designed not to be predictive or to generate advice, but to deliver clear, consistent explanations—turning portfolio analytics into first drafts that advisors can review, edit, and approve.

The impact: Consistent client communication

The real impact of the Auto Commentary solution was in its adoption, which led to consistent communication flows between advisors and clients.

Ted explained: “The clients where this worked best had champions—people who believed in the product and embedded it into real workflows. Without that, even the best AI doesn’t get used.”

When the tool became part of meeting preparation and client engagement, it delivered tangible efficiencies and consistent communication.

Several lessons emerged through the deployment process. Advisors valued clarity, and not just more information. In some cases, specific features were scaled back or turned off post launch to remain within compliance boundaries and reinforce user confidence.

Ted summed up the AI integration approach for wealth management: “Most firms will compete on models. The ones that win in wealth will compete on deployment.”

Checklist for AI deployment in wealth management

  • Start with a real, high-frequency workflow problem
  • Build and prototype inside the tech production environments
  • Pilot early and remove features that do not drive adoption
  • Design for governance from day one
  • Treat adoption and cost discipline as core product requirements

References:
1 2024 EY Global Wealth Management Industry Report: https://www.ey.com/content/dam/ey-unified-site/ey-com/en-gl/insights/wealth-asset-management/documents/ey-gl-global-wealth-mgmt-industry-report-04-2024.pdf 

About Aladdin Wealth

Aladdin Wealth is BlackRock's proprietary technology platform that enables wealth managers to accelerate growth across client segments, drive advisor efficiency & scale through connected digital systems, and deepen relationships by surfacing business opportunities to personalize client portfolios. As a strategic partner to wealth managers and private banks, Aladdin Wealth combines sophisticated risk analytics with comprehensive portfolio management on a single, unified platform.