In the United States, the largest wealth managers, including JPM, UBS, and Merrill Lynch, are adding resources to strengthen and expand their hybrid advice offering. The same trend is happening elsewhere, particularly in Asia.

The gravitational pull to the hybrid advice market is twofold: 1) wealth managers are seeing increasing demand from their customers for a hybrid human-digital advice solution, and 2) the hybrid model is generating substantial profits for wirehouses, who are able to scale their business while paying financial advisors less.

The hybrid advice market is not only for the mass afluent, those with assets of $250,000 or less. HNWIs and UNWIs with established relationships are also interested in a hybrid offering, bolstering wealth managers' decisions to add resources to their hybrid advice solution and delivery model.

This begs the question, “What types of tools will the representatives or financial advisors need to deliver this hybrid advice?”