Essay · Agentic wealth
The layers between a family and its assets
Most firms still have around nine layers between a family and its assets. With agents, a firm can build with four today. Taken to its end, two are left.
Yesterday: nine layers
A family that hires a wealth team pays for more than the team. Between the household and the custodian that holds its assets, most firms have around nine layers.
The experts sit closest to the family: planning, investing, tax and estate, often with one lead advisor. Behind them are a service team and an operations team. Then outsourced providers for compliance, investments, IT and marketing. A home office for affiliation and supervision. Firm technology: the CRM, planning software, rebalancing, reporting, billing, a portal and an archive. The data and connectivity that move facts between those systems and often times people to manage these systems. Investment platforms that package the portfolio. And the product manufacturers whose funds end up in the account.
Each layer is paid for somewhere in the client’s fee. Licenses, platform basis points, revenue shares, retainers, expense ratios, cash spreads. Most families never see the list.
Each layer also keeps its own version of the household. A fact the family mentions in an email has to reach every system that needs it, and someone on the team has to carry it there. Often that someone is one of the experts, who ends up managing systems, people as well as clients.
Why the layers are there
Every one of these layers solved a real problem. Software was expensive to build, so firms bought it from specialists. The specialists’ systems didn’t talk to each other, so a data layer grew up to connect them. Portfolios were hard to run well at small scale, so platforms took that on. Supervision required more than most firms could build alone, so home offices provided it.
The result works. It is also slow, expensive and hard to keep accurate, and the cost lands on the time the experts have to identify actionable planning items and deliver true judgement based value.
Today: from nine to four layers
Agents change what is worth buying separately. A firm can build now, without waiting for incumbents to change, one integrated agentic layer built for workflows of a specific type of wealth team. Optimally reimagined by an expert, many layers consolidate into that layer, including firm technology, data and connectivity, investment platforms and product assembly. Agents keep one household record current and do the work the operations team and outside providers did by hand.
The experts, the service team and the home office stay. Their work runs on the same record through integrated agentic workflows. Custody stays where it is.
This is the version I think is buildable now, and it is what we are building at WilliamFrank: an AI harness designed specifically for expert wealth managers.
Four layers is still a lot. It reflects where the industry is today. Regulatory requirements are complex and in motion so a home office affiliation has value, and custodians move at their own pace.
Where it ought to go: two layers
Take the same logic to its end and two layers are left.
The experts. Every household can reach planning, investing, tax and estate experts, whichever firm employs them.
And one provider underneath them for service, the home office and custody. The people who serve the family, the agents doing the work, supervision, and the assets and ledger, in one place.
Agents do this work in connection with each expert and their team. They carry out transfers, trades and account changes once the experts approve. The family pays a fee for expertise and the work done.
This is the altruistic end of the picture, and few firms are positioned to build it today. Incumbents earn revenue from several of the layers it removes, so it is hard to see them leading it. If the pace of innovation keeps accelerating, it could arrive sooner than most expect. Parts of it may also be directionally wrong.
Who each layer works for
Each layer is paid by someone, and its economics tend to point toward whoever pays it. A revenue share pays the platform that places the fund. A cash sweep spread pays the custodian holding the cash. Many advisors serve families well inside that structure. It still means the family’s interests share the room with several others before the work gets done.
Removing a layer doesn’t remove incentive. It changes whose incentive is in the room. In the two-layer picture, the experts and the one provider underneath them are both paid by the family, for expertise and the work done. Agents make that structure affordable, because the service work the layers used to sell can be done inside it. More on this in The conflicted intermediary.
What it changes for the family
Fewer layers mean fewer places for a fact to go stale, fewer handoffs before something gets done, fewer costs folded into the fee, and fewer parties paid from the family’s assets. The experts spend more of their time on the family, and walk into every meeting with the household’s facts.
If you were starting a wealth firm today, which of these layers would you keep?