"Customer experience is chief among the areas where traditional financial institutions have fallen short. Not long ago, wealth management was considered a service almost exclusively confined to the affluent. With their millions at the ready, wealthy investors could use wealth managers to provide a range of tailored investment-related services, and those services would normally come at a high price. But these days, such a perception of wealth management is becoming old, or simply not accurate. Innovation broke down those barriers of exclusivity, enabling services that were previously only accessible to the privileged few to be in the hands of the masses of ordinary investors. Wealthtech falls under fintech as a segment which specifically focuses on technology that aims to transform wealth management and retail investment. It involves the application of digital solutions to wealth management, ultimately providing new channels to deliver more efficient, cost-effective and efficient ...

There are over 1 billion people currently in retirement. New types of financial institutions are evolving to satisfy the needs of the aging population. Investment banks, pension funds, and insurance companies are developing new business models, and are using AI to improve the quality of the analytics used to formulate them. In the near future, the synergy between innovative AI and wealth management will lead to the creation of a new financial institutions optimized for the aging population and age-friendly Longevity banks will make banking easier and safer for seniors. Over 150 financial companies are already developing innovative WealthTech and AgeTech products and services and AI is central to the process.

"Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale." As we approach the end of the second decade of the 21st century, software and the technology it weaves together is well on the way to transforming virtually every aspect of financial services – from the products and tools we use to pay, save and invest, to the underlying business models of the financial system, and even to the very concept of money itself. A new terminology has arisen to capture the technological disruption that is underway in finance. A prime example is the term Fintech which, along with related neologisms such as Wealthtech, Insurtech, Paytech and Regtech, have emerged to represent not only the online discussion of disruptions and innovations in financial services, but also the new businesses embodying this digital transformation and the ecosystem/community in which they operate. While one can find references to Fintech dating back to 1972, common use and awareness of the term, measured by the volume of Google searches, began to take off around 2015.

Wealth management industry is swiftly changing with the emergence of new business models and modern technology. Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and big data are spearheading this dynamic evolution and fostering the growth of wealthtech. More and more players are employing these tools in order to simplify business processes and help clients reach sound financial decisions through personalized advice. Indeed, this practice is linked to incredible benefits: it saves humans a wealth of time and ultimately, improves the investment outcomes. We live in the age of big data and information transparency, where cutting-edge tech tools can be applied to the entirety of the management value chain.

Evolving consumer expectations, the rapid adoption of technology and new competitors entering the markets are placing new demands on today's wealth management firms. These trends are re-shaping the look and feel of the industry, and the change is happening across all aspects of the value chain, from client acquisition to advice to ongoing portfolio monitoring and decision-making. According to Ketan Samani, chief digital officer for APAC at UBS Wealth Management, the industry is just at the start of its digital journey. "Wealth management is taking the lead from the retail banks, which experienced high disruption by start-ups in payments, lending and other products," he said. "It is just waking up to the fact that the robo-advisers will do the same. There is a way to go, but the journey has begun."

Much has changed in the wealth management industry since robo-advisors first made their appearance a decade ago. Talk of disrupting the advisor-client relationship has given way to a new generation of innovative technology solutions that enhance and augment the fundamental ways that investors invest and advisors advise. Today, robo-advisors can be seen as part of a broader movement to digitize wealth management, embodied in the term: WealthTech. Technology derived from wealth management firms, research tools that generate investment solutions, and platforms to support financial advisors -- all fall under WealthTech. Finance is becoming a technology play.