Blueprint CEO Co-Authors White Paper: AI’s Impact on Wealth Advisors

Jon Robinson, CEO and Co-Founder of Blueprint Investment Partners, an asset manager and pioneer in the creation of systematic, process-driven, and transparent investment strategies for financial advisors, has collaborated with Mike Garrison, a business coach and best-selling author, to co-author a new white paper about artificial intelligence’s impact on wealth advisors. “The Fee Opacity Thesis” outlines how the advisory industry isn’t facing generic disruption. Instead, it is splitting in in two:

1. Scale Practices (tech-forward firms serving hundreds of households efficiently with transparent, lower-margin pricing)
2. Complexity Practices (relationship-first advisors tackling the high-stakes, multi-generational problems that AI can’t solve)

The paper outlines how both practice models are real and achievable, and it offers ideas to help financial advisors decide which practice model makes sense for them and take steps toward operating as one.

“Most independent advisors arrived at their current model by accumulating responsibilities over time,” says Robinson. “The path to Scale Practice or Complexity Practice economics runs directly through that tension. The advisors who have successfully made this transition share a common trait: they made a deliberate decision about what they would stop doing themselves. For most practices, investment management is the highest-leverage function to outsource. Instead of building an internal investment committee, continuously monitoring positions, and handling rebalances, financial advisors can plug into an institutional asset manager like Blueprint Investment Partners to handle services such as portfolio implementation and ongoing risk management.”

Roughly 78% of advisor practices are still building or managing portfolios primarily in-house, according to Cerulli Associates’ 2024 research. That figure represents an enormous amount of advisor time being spent on a function that a specialized asset manager could handle.

Additionally, many advisors currently sit in what the white paper describes as a dangerous middle ground between the Scale Practice and Complexity Practice by charging premium fees for services that technology and scale players are making cheaper and clearer by the day.

“The inherent tensions wrapped up in the AUM model are nothing new, but AI has accelerated the stressors to a breaking point,” says Garrison. “The idea for this paper was born from a desire to say the quiet part out loud in terms of how AI will disrupt advisory practices. In my view, the best advisors are looking for ways to create a moat against the fee compression that comes from AI, and we hope this white paper will help more advisors make critical decisions about the future of their economic model.”