How Vanguard Is Mapping Out the Future of AI

If 2025 was the year AI dominated the headlines, this year it’s dominating market share. 

Across wealth management, firms are deploying the technology to streamline operations, improve client engagement and bring down costs. New AI tools have literally moved markets. Generative AI alone could add some $340 billion in annual value to the banking sector, and wealth managers are expecting productivity gains of  more than 30%, McKinsey estimates. The tools are already summarizing client meetings, drafting emails, scanning documents and helping surface planning opportunities that firms might have otherwise missed. Now, the question on everyone’s mind is: what comes next?

“What’s important is to rethink AI native processes,” said Lauren Wilkinson, Vanguard’s head of financial advisor services. “So, not just AI for assistance around the edges, but really think about how [it] can transform the business, take out the cost, but also deepen relationships and create an even better client experience.”

Triple A … I

There’s a simple framework for understanding artificial intelligence in wealth management, Wilkinson said: assist, augment, action. The first phase is already here with AI adding immediate efficiency gains, particularly in client-facing workflows. That also comes with cost savings. “AI is really offsetting some of the fee compression with advisors by reducing the cost to serve,” Wilkinson said during an interview at the Future Proof Citywide conference in Miami Beach last week. 

And, it’s not just Vanguard. According to a survey from the wealth management fintech GReminders released this week:

• More than 88% of advisors said automation directly saved them time, and over 65% of respondents increased client capacity.
• Nearly 70% of advisors reported measurable productivity gains within the first three months of launching AI tools.

Robo Sapiens. The real shift may be yet to come, Wilkinson said. The next stage moves AI closer to core investment and planning decisions. The cyborgs haven’t arrived just yet, however, the final OK must come from humans. “The advisor [is] still the one in control of the judgment,” she said. 

The last and final stage is still speculative, but potentially the most transformative. “This is where we talk about agentic AI; agents that will be able to autonomously execute tasks on behalf of advisors,” Wilkinson said. In that future, AI doesn’t just assist or inform, it carries out decisions within defined guardrails, and could reshape the world of wealth management. Until then, at least those follow-up client emails are getting sent out on time, and probably with better grammar.