Aug 11, 2025 - Last Updated: Aug 11, 2025
You don’t have to sit back and watch while tech-forward competitors eat your lunch, snatching up your potential clients with the promise of more cookie-cutter advice.
Instead, choose to get the upper hand with a suite of tools and automations designed to let you offer personalized advice at scale. It’s called Augmented Advice, and it’s built to be a more cost-effective business model that can make serving the mass affluent a reality. You can read more about it here.
Let’s dive into the 10 most common questions about this technology-powered approach.
1. What is Augmented Advice or “digital hybrid advice”?
Augmented Advice is a comprehensive business model that uses technology to reduce the time and expense of servicing clients, enabling advisors to maintain their personal touch. It’s a ready-made combination of digital solutions to automate routine tasks while freeing up your team to focus on high-value, relationship-building work. And do all of this earlier in investors’ wealth-accumulation journeys, so they’re already engaged with you when they achieve a higher net worth.
- Often called “hybrid digital advice” or “online advice,” this approach relies on our cloud-native infrastructure to provide:
- Real-time intraday (not overnight) data that supports real-time processing
- Streamlined advisory workflows, including automations (like a rebalancer, model marketplace, and direct indexing) and third-party integrations
- Embeddable investing experiences, including pre-built UIs and apps, alternatives marketplace, and automated portfolio mapping
- A unified workstation to minimize tab-hopping between tools
2. Why should I consider Augmented Advice?
The numbers tell a compelling story. According to recent Tiburon data, hybrid digital advice providers represent only about 2% of all fee-based financial advisors but attract a whopping 32% of net new flows. Within that, hybrid models specifically capture 24% of net new flows, compared to just 8% for pure robo-advisors.1
3. Can Augmented Advice help me reach younger investors?
Younger generations, also called next-gen investors, have distinct preferences that Augmented Advice is designed to address:
- 3 out of 4 Millennial and Gen Z investors surveyed believe it’s “not possible to achieve above-average returns solely on traditional stocks and bonds,”2 leading to interest in alternative investments and more sophisticated strategies like tax-loss harvesting, a previously cumbersome process.
- Gen Zers who are 21 and older and Millennials hold just a quarter of their portfolio in stocks, compared with over half (55%) of portfolios of older investors.3 Seize the opportunity to introduce these up-and-coming investors to a range of asset classes with Augmented Advice.
- 90% of Gen Z and Millennials consider company sustainability policies when selecting investments, compared to 44% of investors over 43 years old, who are largely Gen X and Baby Boomers.4 Use tools like Apex Rebalancer, which includes ESG/SRI (Environmental, Social, and Governance/Socially Responsible Investing) portfolio customization.
4. Who could benefit the most from Augmented Advice?
Firms facing any declining growth scenario — think Great Wealth Transfer, aging client base, or Baby Boomer decumulation — could benefit most from Augmented Advice, including:
- Growth-focused firms looking to expand beyond referral-based acquisition strategies
- Forward-thinking advisors wanting to capture next-gen clients before they accumulate significant wealth
- Established practices aiming to improve efficiency and scale their client capacity with more modern embedded investing technology
- RIAs and broker-dealers seeking to serve the mass affluent market in a cost-effective manner
5. Is it hard to add Augmented Advice to my existing tech stack?
Not at all. Modern Augmented Advice solutions are designed to integrate with your existing systems rather than replace them entirely. Furthermore, Apex’s cloud-native solution provides a modern developer experience, including flexible APIs, SDKs, a sandbox environment, and more. All designed to help you integrate more quickly.
6. Do I have to custody with Apex to use Augmented Advice?
No. While Apex offers a comprehensive solution that combines modern custody with Augmented Advice capabilities, the platform is designed to work with various custodial relationships.
Our approach is custodian-agnostic, meaning you can implement Augmented Advice however you want while maintaining your existing custody relationships. This flexibility allows you to transform your business model without disrupting your established operational workflows — and still unlock the advantages of automated rebalancing, direct indexing, goals-based investing, and the convenience of our Model Marketplace and Apex Alts Marketplace.
7. How do I know Augmented Advice works?
According to Tiburon research and detailed in question 2 above, hybrid digital advice providers are capturing a disproportionate share of industry growth despite representing only a small percentage of firms.
Some of our own clients have successfully used Augmented Advice to reimagine who they serve and how they serve them.
- First Affirmative reimagined their business model with Augmented Advice and was able to lower their account minimums to $25,000. This unlocked a stream of new clients and continues to support sustained organic growth.
- Facet Wealth focused on minimizing non-value-driving advisor activities and implemented technology to optimize operational efficiencies. They now serve approximately 14,000 clients—80% of whom had never worked with a financial advisor before—with one advisor handling up to 200 clients. Read the whole Facet case study for more details.
8. What should I look for in an Augmented Advice solution?
As more hybrid digital advice models are introduced to our industry, look for real-time solutions built on cloud-native infrastructure. Why? Because they allow you to provide the digital experiences your next-gen investors expect and the tools your advisory team has been clamoring for:
- Unified advisor UI to minimize inefficiencies from switching between siloed workflows
- Mirrored advisor and client portal views (plus a mobile app) help keep both parties on the same page
- Fully digital account opening and funding so clients can set up accounts within seconds 5
- Self-service client solutions that empower investors to make routine updates independently
- Personalization at scale to help engage next-gen investors with smart tools that include Apex Rebalancer, Model Marketplace, direct indexing, tax-loss harvesting capabilities, and Apex Alts Marketplace
- Built-in business intelligence tools to create sharable data visualizations
9. What’s the ROI on implementing Augmented Advice?
Although highly dependent upon your current structure and client base, Augmented Advice is designed to manifest ROI in several ways:
- Expanded addressable market. Serve clients who were previously below your minimums
- Improved advisor efficiency. Enable each advisor to manage more relationships
- Reduced operational costs. Automate routine tasks that previously required manual intervention
- Increased wallet share. Help attract more AUM from existing investors with a broader array of offerings, including Apex Alts. Plus, provide the personal service that can create word-of-mouth referrals
- Enhanced competitive positioning. Leverage real-time technology to stand out in a crowded market with a modern service model
- More advisor capacity. Serve significantly more clients without proportionally increasing staffing costs
10. Why should I get Augmented Advice right now?
The wealth management industry is at a turning point. According to PwC, “one in six (16%) asset and wealth managers globally are expected to be swallowed up or fall by the wayside by 2027, twice the historical rate of turnover.6
With net new assets at their lowest rate in a decade (2.2% in 2024), the time to reimagine your business model is now — before market forces make it more difficult to adapt.
We believe the future of financial advice isn’t purely human or purely digital. It’s augmented — combining the best of both to create something greater than either could be alone. Will you be at the forefront of this transformation, or will you be catching up?
1 Tiburon Strategic Advisors. Robo Advisors & Hybrid Digital Advice Providers. May 31, 2023.
2 Bank of America Private Bank. 2022 Bank of America Private Bank Study of Wealthy Americans. https://mlaem.fs.ml.com/content/dam/ust/articles/pdf/2022-BofaA- Private-Bank-Study-of-Wealthy-Americans.pdf
3 Bank of America Private Bank. 2022 Bank of America Private Bank Study of Wealthy Americans. https://mlaem.fs.ml.com/content/dam/ust/articles/pdf/2022-BofaA- Private-Bank-Study-of-Wealthy-Americans.pdf
4 Bank of America Private Bank. 2022 Bank of America Private Bank Study of Wealthy Americans. https://mlaem.fs.ml.com/content/dam/ust/articles/pdf/2022-BofaA- Private-Bank-Study-of-Wealthy-Americans.pdf
5 Most securities accounts can be opened in seconds and funded moments later, enabling trading thereafter.
6 PWC. One in six asset and wealth management companies will be swallowed up or fall by the wayside in the next five years: PwC Global Asset & Wealth Management Survey. July 10, 2023. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/press-releases/2023/pwc-2023-global-asset-and-wealth-management-survey.html