Wealth is changing hands to a younger generation, requiring a new approach from banks. Wealth as a Service (WaaS) offers a tech-savvy approach that lets financial institutions, banks, and fintechs outsource digital wealth management (WM) platforms, portfolio management, compliance, and back-office operations. This empowers firms to provide intelligent, personalized WM solutions without building complex systems from scratch.  

This is inspired by the success of white-label banking, also known as Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS). BaaS has proven that banks can expand their reach by catering to a wider, newer customer base by integrating their APIs with non-bank services. The positive impact has been felt by both traditional and new-age banks, with BaaS’s projected market size set to reach USD 74.55 billion by 2030. 

The traditional customer profile is changing, and WM firms need to take a fresh approach. Our 2025 Wealth Management Report shows that today’s High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) demand more value from WM firms to meet their growing needs – including offshore trusts and managing digital assets as part of comprehensive wealth success planning. Traditional face-to-face engagement is a thing of the past: this segment prefers seamless, omnichannel financial interactions. The WM firms that can successfully integrate digital-first services and enhance omnichannel experiences will have the upper hand in retaining, attracting, and delighting this population.  

What makes WaaS the future of wealth management?

To meet the needs of today’s customer, banks need to be agile, efficient, and employ faster go-to-market strategies with quick, tangible results. It’s no wonder that banks have been reluctant to commit heavy IT spending to programs that aren’t just costly and complex, but also lack scalability and come with a high risk of failure. In this climate, the BaaS model has proven to be an asset to the Financial Services (FS) industry as a whole, providing modular financial solutions that deliver on-demand, API-driven services.

Now, the WM sector is becoming increasingly interested in seeing if they can take the same SaaS-driven approach. A WaaS model could help wealth managers innovate for their current clients while providing relevant, targeted services to attract new ones – offering scalable, digital WM services without spending a fortune or sacrificing valuable time on in-house infrastructure development. 

How WaaS could solve traditional challenges in wealth management 

Despite the evolution of digital finance, traditional WM firms are still facing several operational and client engagement challenges. A WaaS model could help address many of these long-standing issues by offering scalable, digital-first solutions. 

Challenge: Costly, inflexible servicing  

  • The impact: in WM, every iteration of a product or service takes a huge amount of energy across siloed applications. IT relies on legacy platforms with a frontier between the front, middle, and back offices – as well as between data and production – leading to ballooning back-office compliance and risk costs. 
  • WaaS offers: a turnkey, cloud-based, and modular technology infrastructure. 

Challenge: Limited digital maturity 

  • The impact: traditional WM solutions rely on aging platforms and fragmented digital strategies, making them complex to maintain and upgrade. Even as banks embrace digital transformation, their efforts are often either customer-centric or bank-centric – but rarely both. This leads to gaps in client experience, where self-service capabilities, hyper-personalization, and seamless availability of information aren’t properly integrated.  
  • A Capgemini research study tells the story of a Gen Z investor who was struggling to onboard with a WM firm because of its poor digital experience. The case study compares two firms: one struggling with legacy systems and manual processes, and the other leveraging AI-driven personalization and self-service tools to enhance client experience. Evidently, digital maturity in WM directly impacts client retention and satisfaction.  
  • WaaS offers: modular, cloud-based, and API-driven technology that lets firms rapidly adopt modern digital capabilities without spending their limited resources overhauling outdated systems from scratch.  

Challenge: One product, one price  

  • Impact: in WM, pricing has historically been complex, rigid, and tightly coupled to the product. Since the client base for wealth managers varies from Mass Affluent to Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWIs), firms’ pricing models should be tailored across customer segments and profiles too. The problem is, legacy systems don’t offer the deep, varied visibility into client data that could inform individualised pricing and offers.  
  • WaaS offers: highly tailored, diverse pricing structures that cater to different segments based on clients’ real-time data and behavior.  

Challenge: Scattered wealth players 

  • Impact: wealth investment is complex, which requires expertise and technology from disparate areas of a WM firm to be pooled together. Without common ground, each team is left using its own, siloed tools, which limits their ability to interact without extreme, expensive customization. 
  • WaaS offers: a centralized WM platform that integrates technology, operations, and regulatory support into a single cohesive platform.  

Key technologies powering WaaS: AI, cloud, and APIs 

WaaS platforms use AI, cloud computing, digital channels, API integrations, and tailored solutions to give wealth managers access to modern, connected, and intelligent client engagement tools. These technologies are powering a shift towards augmented advisory, where AI partners with human advisors to deliver real-time insights and automate manual tasks.  

Cloud-native wealth platforms 

Our wealth management trends report 2025 shows how digital WaaS platforms can offer automated reporting and portfolio insights. This encourages customization and transparency, helping investors manage portfolios more effectively.  

Open, embedded finance  

Embedded WM, powered by WaaS platforms, seamlessly integrates services into everyday digital experiences, tailoring offerings to individual client needs.  

Generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI 

Capgemini is actively driving the adoption of AI in the WM sector to transition from traditional, manual processes to highly personalized, efficient, and hybrid advisory models. Our recent agentic AI in wealth research shows that 75% of WM executives expect AI to significantly impact their business in the next two years.  

Key features of an ideal WaaS offering  

So, how can WM firms implement WaaS? As with any other SaaS model, an ideal WaaS offering should: 

  • Leverage new technological paradigms to make sure the solution is modular.  
  • Be able to adapt to what customers want and need. 
  • Be offered either as a turnkey solution on a shared platform with low customization, or as a personalized platform that’s custom-made for advanced client needs with extended bank capabilities.  
  • Range from a full WaaS on a shared platform, to a hybrid WaaS that can be deployed modularly, to a private WaaS on a personalized platform.  

However it’s constructed, WaaS must be able to merge with the capabilities of an FS provider. That means it should be: 

  • Open: so omni-channels can easily be plugged into third-party APIs.  
  • Modular: it should be built on new architectures that offer a modular approach. 
  • Multi-tenant: that means serving multiple entities in a mix of geographical, legal, and financial combinations.  
  • Cloud-native: it should be designed to reside in the cloud, across any cloud service provider, and offer the benefits of microservices and auto scaling. 
  • Pay-as-you-use model: pricing models should be agile – think usage based, packages, and subscriptions – to be able to serve the needs of every client firm. 
  • Ever-enriching: to stay competitive, the WaaS ecosystem should be continuously refining its service catalogue with best-of-breed solutions​.

The WaaS market landscape: Who’s leading the charge?  

BaaS was made possible by technology. Today, WealthTechs perform that role in WaaS, providing services across the value chain of WM.  

As many providers of WaaS models emerge in the market, banks have already started to join the trend and grab the early mover’s advantage. Firms like Temenos and InvestCloud already offer platforms that can be modularly deployed across the entire WM value chain. These extended bank services help firm and third parties collaborate better to add value for end clients.  

When it comes to using technology to connect to a diverse client base in a targeted way, WaaS isn’t alone. The move towards tech-enabled specificity in WM mirrors broader industry trends – including delivering hyper-personalized, client-centric experiences and expanding into alternative investments to drive growth.  

There’s no doubt that the next generation of HNWIs will keep seeking firms that offer individualized, intelligent, and seamless WM services.  

Make sure you’re ready for the shift. Discover how Capgemini’s digital wealth solutions are reshaping the WM industry in our latest Wealth-as-a-Service report.  

FAQs 

Wealth as a Service offers a technology-driven, “turnkey” outsourcing model that integrates operations, compliance, and investment tools. This lets wealth managers provide broader, more data-driven, and lower-cost client services compared to the high-touch, in-person approach of traditional advisors.  

Banks and WM firms are increasingly adopting WaaS to modernize outdated legacy systems, reduce high operational costs, and meet rising client demands for personalized, digital-first investment tools. 

AI systems can be designed to make autonomous decisions, specialize in specific tasks, and take action. These agents learn from past behavioral data, including client interactions and transactions, to deliver personalized, automated services. They help advisors maintain trust through genuine human-to-human connection and enable proactive, intelligent actions that improve client outcomes.  

Time is a scarce resource for advisors and it takes immense effort to personalize each report, manage client asks, and consolidate their inputs to persuade clients in a timely, effective way. While new, less experienced advisors find it particularly difficult to cope with multiple client requests, specialized bots can offer support with real-time operations, dialogue, and research.