Financial Planning at Scale: Meeting Rising Client Expectations

As client expectations shift to total wealth management, advisors must scale comprehensive planning with technology to serve more clients profitably.

Financial Planning at Scale: Meeting Rising Client Expectations

One of the best parts of my job is being at the intersection of two industries: financial services and technology. In financial planning, one obvious theme has been its deepening, or increase in complexity. What gets slightly less airtime is the direction: planning is also broadening, reaching more people with higher expectations. That combination is straining the way many advisory practices are set.

Financial planning has been getting more complex, in part due to advisors’ increasing focus on the high net worth community. According to an IG Wealth Management survey, 52% of advisors identify HNW clients as a significant area of growth. Many HNW clients have wealth tied to business ownership, which is closely associated with higher net worth and greater financial complexity. As a result, serving these clients well requires deep domain expertise in corporate, estate, business succession, and insurance planning. This is a demanding skillset, and delivering high quality plans for this demographic is time consuming, detail heavy work.

At the same time, financial planning is also broadening. Across the board, clients’ expectations are shifting to “total wealth management”. A McKinsey & Company report suggests that over this decade advisors are gradually moving beyond investment management toward a more integrated life and wealth coaching role covering investments, banking, protection, taxes, estate, and financial wellbeing.

This is corroborated by data showing a 59% increase in client preference for a single primary advisor since 2018. This breadth is not a HNW phenomenon. A recent KPMG study notes that mass affluent clients with $100k+ are also seeking the same level of service as HNW, and are demanding personalized, high-level plans that include more than just a portfolio. In other words, the need for comprehensive financial planning exists across the broader market, yet much of the industry’s planning capacity remains concentrated on a relatively small number of HNW clients.

Bridging the Execution Gap with Scalable Solutions

The heart of the problem is the ability of existing advisors to serve the broader market. Research from Advisor.ca showed that although 61% of Canadians reported having a financial plan, most plans were heavily focused exclusively on investments. This points to a persistent execution gap that many advisors seem to continue struggling with today. While some advisors may view this increase in demand as scope creep, the reality is that client expectations have increasingly shifted toward planning, whether advisors actively embrace it or not.

Solving this challenge is a matter of scale. Is the capacity to do good financial planning limited to a few HNW clients, or are there capabilities to offer scalable advice to more Canadians? Technology can help financial advisors meet the needs of a changing market, provide meaningful value by improving client outcomes, and grow their businesses.

By removing friction from antiquated processes and reducing cognitive loads per plan, advisors can serve more clients faster. In practical terms, this means focusing on high impact areas such as cash flow projections, retirement income optimization, risk management analysis, and stress testing, without getting lost in analysis paralysis for every plan. Tools should not replace expertise and experience but augment it by delivering a repeatable process consistently.

Financial Planning as the Core of Advisory Services

The reality is that advisors who do not prioritize financial planning are already working against the current. As planning becomes both broader and deeper, advisors must decide how they want to respond. The tools they choose matter, but the bigger shift is conceptual: financial planning is no longer a secondary activity layered on to an advisory practice. It is increasingly the core of the advisory experience.