RIA AI Adoption Hits 42% as $2 Billion Bank Spending Widens Scale Gap

3 articles · Updated · Wealth Management · Jul 15

Independent RIAs and broker-dealers reported 42% AI usage in J.D. Power’s latest survey, far behind the 73% adoption rate at wirehouses and banks despite sharp gains from 19% and 44% a year earlier.
That gap is being driven by scale: J.P. Morgan spent roughly $2 billion on AI last year, while large META-RIAs are putting eight figures annually into technology as many smaller firms remain in experimentation mode.
DeVoe’s survey of 100 RIAs with at least $100 million in assets found 59% still testing AI for tasks like marketing and notetaking, while only 20% had a firmwide strategy in active rollout and 14% were heavy users.
Large RIAs and vendors are accelerating deployment through deals and hiring, including Savant’s $50 million three-year AI buildout, Cerity Partners’ new chief innovation officer, and Mariner’s five-year Humanity Labs partnership.
Advisers say buyers are already using AI capabilities as a selling point in M&A talks, and DeVoe expects the technology to steadily push more RIAs toward selling in order to gain scale.

Sources

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Wealth Management’s AI Revolution: Unprecedented Adoption, RIA Dominance, and the Coming ROI Reckoning

Overview

Between 2023 and mid-2026, wealth management has seen a record surge in AI adoption and investment, fundamentally reshaping how financial advice is delivered and operations are managed. This transformation is especially strong among billion-dollar Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) firms, where AI adoption has accelerated and the RIA channel is rapidly growing. Although major wirehouses like Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and UBS manage over $11 trillion and have centralized technology hubs, they continue to lose market share to RIAs. Past strategic decisions have limited wirehouses’ ability to use AI to reverse these trends, while AI continues to streamline previously manual processes across the industry.

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