As more investors turn to ‘finfluencers’ for help, advisors need to step up

Published in the Globe and Mail on October 20th, 2025

Wealth managers trying to keep up with ever-changing technology and investor behaviour should stop chasing the latest digital apps.

Instead, they should step back, take a deep breath, and focus on deeper, strategic approaches that will position their firms to stay relevant to younger investors.

There’s no doubt that many wealth managers need to make significant advancements if they hope to win the business of younger investors, who represent a growing share of household assets.

Consider two findings from Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc.’s 2025 Canadian Investor Study:

Young Canadian investors are more likely to turn to social media and financial influencers (known as “finfluencers”) than financial advisors for financial information. Among Generation Z investors, 41 per cent cite social media as their top source of financial information, 29 per cent cite finfluencers and content creators, while only 28 per cent cite financial advisors.

Younger investors seeking innovative approaches also are getting frustrated with traditional financial institutions. Roughly a third of Gen Z (32 per cent) and millennial (34 per cent) investors say they are irritated by the slow pace of institutional adoption of new investment options such as digital assets and private markets.

Incremental change, or transformation?

Although some of those data points are striking, the trend is hardly new. Many articles have been written about how the technology revolution has changed the way younger people invest and how the wealth management industry needs to evolve to win their business.

The real question is: What should we do about it? Financial technology providers are courting wealth management firms actively with new solutions designed to weave digital technology into business models and client offerings. Many of them are truly mind-blowing in terms of their ability to empower advisors beyond their own capabilities while elevating the service they deliver.

But advisors should ask themselves: What is the goal? Is it to use new technology to improve their business incrementally, or to transform the firm into a business built to compete in an age of digital native clients and artificial intelligence-powered services?

If it’s the latter, advisors and senior leadership should shift their focus to a hybrid model that leverages their internal technology architecture with the help of key partners.

Look inward at the data

Virtually all new wealth management technology, data analytic platforms, and AI models share a common trait: Data powers them all. Wealth managers who capture the business of a new generation of young, tech-savvy, and often self-directed investors will be those whose organizations are built to collect and leverage high-quality data.

That’s why wealth managers should look internally before seeking out shiny new tech solutions. At a global level, more than half (53 per cent) of financial services firms experience problems with “data silos” that hinder the movement and sharing of information within the organization and across systems, and 43 per cent report struggling with data quality issues.

Canadian wealth managers are no different. To leverage the power of AI and other new technology solutions fully, wealth managers will need to address these breakdowns in legacy systems. To do so, they will need to construct data management platforms that collect, normalize, and provide access to reliable data on client demographics, financial situation, goals, risk tolerances, investment styles, portfolio allocations and product use, among other factors.

Once wealth managers can tap into these data, they will be in a position to integrate new technological solutions in a way that can have a real impact on the business.

For example, advisors can adopt technology solutions that harness client behavioural data and intelligent automation to guide financial decision-making proactively, enabling advisors to provide more relevant and targeted advice.

That means advisors will be able to deliver advice faster, through whichever channel the client prefers, and in a format designed specifically to appeal to their individual clients.

These aren’t incremental changes. Armed with the right data, advisors can harness powerful tools to deliver deeper, more comprehensive service to every client. Meanwhile, they will spend less time on administrative and research tasks, freeing them up to devote more time to building relationships and delivering the kind of personalized planning that drives both client satisfaction and advisor success.

That would be a potent combination. According to the Broadridge’s 2025 Canadian Investor Study, almost three-quarters of investors (74 per cent) have worked with a financial advisor at some point, and just more than half (52 per cent) currently maintain that relationship. Another 41 per cent currently use self-directed or do-it-yourself platforms, with the highest adoption among millennials (48 per cent) and members of Generation X (42 per cent).

The data are clear: investors want both. They expect real-time information and the kind of access they get from digital platforms, but they also value the advice and support that only an experienced advisor can provide. That means the future of wealth management lies in hybrid models, in which a blend of human expertise is integrated seamlessly with digital empowerment.

Advisors won’t achieve that mix simply by bolting technology onto existing infrastructure and practices. Firms willing to modernize their core infrastructure and systems have an opportunity to transform into organizations with a unique appeal to investors of all ages in an increasingly digital age.