What Wealth Firms Learned in 2025 and How It’s Shaping 2026

How scalable workflows, embedded compliance, and efficiency separate leading firms

2025 drew a line between firms that built scalable operations and those relying on manual, stitched-together workflows. As the pressure to onboard faster grew, compliance expectations rose, and data flow became harder to manage; that difference became clearer.

WealthStack puts numbers behind that in their annual study. Firms self-identifying as “Laggards,” those who didn’t prioritize or leverage tech, rose from 10% to 17%, while on the other hand, those that did, the “Innovators,”; 81% said technology was either critical or very important for growth.

What does that gap mean in reality? Investing in the right tech and automation led to a better client-advisor experience with faster onboarding, smoother data flow, and fewer errors.

Let’s take a deeper look at what worked, what didn’t, and the operational lessons wealth firms should carry into 2026.

The Firms That Won in 2025 Built for Scale

Good news first.

There were firms this year that didn’t just keep up, they pulled ahead, moving faster, onboarding more easily, and handling volume spikes without stressing internal processes. They all had something in common: using tech to create scalable infrastructure instead of trying to duct tape together legacy workflows.

And the place where the most duct tape is typically used? Forms.

Generally an afterthought, trying to manage forms at scale without a system is a recipe for ballooning bottlenecks and, perhaps even worse, introducing early strain in client relationships.

A few standout examples from our customers highlight what tech should be doing:

• A large enterprise broker-dealer had to move the accounts of more than 5,000 financial professionals during an acquisition. Because their Quik! + Salesforce setup kept data flowing cleanly into forms, the transition happened without any operational disruption. Their VP of Advisor-Facing Solutions put it plainly:

  
  

  “We rely upon Quik! to enable our process of opening over 5,000 accounts per day and cannot endure any downtime.”

  
  

• A top-10 RIA reached full adoption across all 500+ advisors and now processes over 120,000 forms each year through a paperless workflow. Their CIO added:

  
  

  “The custom solution we’ve built through Quik!’s APIs has not only made our new account opening process paperless but also remarkably efficient. We’ve gained a significant competitive advantage…”

  
  

• A mid-size broker-dealer supporting 1,800 financial professionals eliminated a 12-month backlog, hit its annual profit target in just five months, and finally caught up with demand after modernizing its onboarding platform. They now generate more than a million forms per year.

These aren’t “nice efficiency gains.”

They’re competitive advantages that give advisors the time to not only give current clients more attention but also the bandwidth to attract more.

Why These Firms Pulled Ahead

Zooming out, similar themes showed up:

• Scale without strain: Firms designed systems that absorb onboarding volume instead of creating hurdles or stumbling on existing ones. Integrating Quik!, with its 1.2 million+ unique fields, for example, meant more data could flow straight into forms – automatically.

• Compliance built in, not bolted on: Automated rules reduced errors before documents ever reached or required a reviewer.

• Better advisor experience: Tech removed friction rather than adding steps, allowing advisors to spend more time with clients; something advisors themselves have been blunt about, with WealthStack finding that 42% of advisors saying they wanted to deepen relationships with existing clients as a key 2025 objective.

Michael Jeanfreau, Director of Advisor Enablement at Mariner Wealth Advisors, put a button on it:

“My role is to help the advisors' lives be easier so that they have more time and more capacity to help their clients.”

The firms that prioritized time with clients instead of sinking that time into troubleshooting back-of-house ops and forms issues are the ones that thrived.

Where Firms Stumbled in 2025

Of course, that’s only half the story; difficulties were part of everyone’s journey. Our own findings, alongside WealthStack’s, highlighted these friction points, the Big Three being:

• Data flow and integration problems: 64% cited real-time data access as a major strain.

• Workflow complexity: User training, adoption, and keeping on top of tech changes/managing tech stack remained among the biggest challenges.

• Internal misalignment: Many firms stalled modernization efforts over debates around CRM ownership and process governance.

What 2025 Revealed About Operations

There was a clear shift in how operations work in 2025, defining what’s no longer optional.

Compliance Moved From Manual Review to Automated Accuracy

The firms that managed 2025’s complexity best were those that built compliance into their workflow. Instead of reviewing documents at the end of the process, they validated data as it was captured.

A turnkey asset management program (TAMP) customer reduced form errors by 95% using more than 3,000 field rules; the kind of accuracy no manual workflow can replicate.

“…the effectiveness of Quik!’s APIs has allowed us to set a new standard in client onboarding within the TAMP space," added their Director of Operations.

As Quik!’s own CEO, Richard Walker, said, “FormXtract delivers 99.9% accuracy. For most clients, it only flags 1 in every 1,000 forms for manual review.”

That precision reduces risk, bottlenecks, exceptions, and back-office drag. Things we’d all like to leave in the past.

Advisor Experience Turned into a Revenue Driver

Operational friction and headaches aren’t just inconveniences; they directly impact onboarding time, preparedness, and client satisfaction.

As Jeanfreau explained:

“In a lot of cases, it's handwritten notes, and the customer service associate is following up with the advisor, or in some cases the client, and asking for information that they didn't have yet. That has to change.”

Advisors want more time with clients, not more tools to troubleshoot. AI put a spotlight on inefficiencies, helping firms connect the dots:

Good workflows → faster advisors → faster onboarding → stronger revenue

As Richard Walker also said in a thoughtful conversation with Joshua D. Rogers, CEO of Arete Wealth:

“I really want AI or other technologies to empower people to do their best work by eliminating the work they don’t have to do.”

The firms that embraced that mindset widened their lead in 2025.

Efficiency Became a Reliable Growth Strategy

WealthStack reinforced what we heard across firms: efficiency now drives growth, not just cost savings.

Fewer bottlenecks → faster onboarding

Cleaner data → fewer errors and NIGOs

Less friction → more advisor capacity for client work

The thing is, 38% of firms report no dedicated tech staff and 61% expect no headcount increase in 2026…while 88% plan to adopt new tech anyhow…

That means the only scalable path forward is smarter workflow automations with the people you already have in-house. Teams that adopted more efficient ways to work early gained capacity exactly when they needed it.

And it’s not too late to start!

What This Means for 2026

If 2025 exposed operational fragility, 2026 is the time to respond. The direction is clear:

●      Advisor experience becomes a bigger selling point

●      Compliance lives inside workflows, not at the end

●      Automation becomes infrastructure, not a plugin

●      Efficiency becomes a competitive advantage

●      Unrestricted data flow becomes imperative

Companies that act on these lessons won’t just keep up next year – they’ll accelerate.

Better, Tech-Enabled Workflows Win

2025 clarified one thing: wealth firms with scalable workflows created capacity and firms without them hit their limits.

It showed which had the operational depth to scale and which were relying on Frankenstein processes that only work in ideal conditions, highlighting how quickly advisor experience turns into a performance metric. And it proved that efficiency and well-implemented workflow solutions – not headcount – are among the clearest growth levers firms have.

The ones that thrive next year will be those who treat operational excellence as strategy, not support.

Because workflows either move your firm forward or hold it back.

Quik! is your go-to for conquering forms, with automated accuracy, improved compliance, and seamless data flow.

Your operations are ready for their next stage, starting with taking the work out of paperwork – let’s build it together.