North America's best bank for wealth management 2018: Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley was an early adopter in using technology to better serve its wealth management clients – and to improve revenues. The bank’s wealth management unit notched a record $1.16 billion in profits during the first three months of this year, up 1% from the fourth quarter and up 19% from a year earlier. Client assets grew 8% from a year earlier to $2.4 trillion, earning it the award for North America’s best bank for wealth management.

What the bank has done better than its peers is to bring the benefits of technology to its advisers. That has improved revenues per adviser – annualized, it was 8% higher than a year earlier in the first quarter.

“We’ve always thought the debate about whether technology would replace the human adviser was misguided. It is the technology-enabled financial adviser, the combination of the two, which will lead the industry,” says Andy Saperstein, co-head of Morgan Stanley wealth management.

That technology toolkit for its advisers is hard to compete against.