A consensus forecast shows 2025 is about geopolitics, inflation, relatively buoyant markets – and AI robots. We look at the implications for wealth management.

It is easy to make a prediction early after the Lunar New Year and let it slip by, unnoticed and completely unforgotten, by the time the first unwelcome black swan prompts everyone to forget what you were even on about.

This year, a Visual Capitalist graphic elegantly sidesteps the haphazard nature of the individualized forecast by coming up with a chart full of pastel-colored dots showing the collective predictions of more than 300 experts from articles, whitepapers, podcasts, and interviews.

Wealth Management Filter  

We decided to go one step beyond that and use the chart to decipher what 2025 has in store for the wealth management industry, its executives, bankers, and employees.

Right now, the biggest worry out there is geopolitics, with Trump 2.0’s first few weeks in office managing to keep the US-China relationship teetering on the edge with the yes-no-maybe nature of his tariffs announcements, and off-the-cuff remarks about everything from Canada to Greenland to Gaza.

Much Handholding

Part of that is likely mood-swinging swagger intent on keeping everyone on their toes and uncertain about the next steps. For the industry, it means a great deal of handholding for private bankers, particularly as the US market has been experiencing profound DeepSeek jitters. 

Most portfolios have a measure of American equities in them, and the handholding hasn’t been easy as the market has underperformed the rest of the world in the year-to-date, even though many experts remain sanguine that the S&P 500 will return 10-15 percent this year as the three-year-old rally broadens in depth beyond the Magnificent 7. 

Europe’s Return

Still, it is going to be a big ask for some private bankers to get their clients to hold on. Pleasingly, a somewhat unexpected cavalry is on the way as a surprising number of experts expect European equity returns to improve.

That may be a good lead-in for some bankers as a diversifier, particularly if there is a house view that the years of US exceptionalism are subsiding – given it practically made the rest of the world look almost uninvestable in recent years.

Inflation and Rates

On the macro front, banks should be confronted by an easier inflationary environment, although Trump’s tariffs could put the wrench in the works there. Beyond that, further interest rate cuts appear to be in store by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, with Japan being the sole outlier.

That means that the industry has likely reached peak fixed income and that most banks can return to focus on fee-generating businesses, which in the past tended to have larger margins. Another thing that fits the bill for private bankers is the widespread expectation that gold prices will continue their surge, which is always an easily explainable hedge for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients. 

Crypto is Back - Again

The crypto winter is also becoming an increasingly dim memory, with there even talk out there of a possible pardon request for Sam Bankman-Fried (collated Google search) in the works. In any case, most experts are taking positive cues from Trump’s pro-crypto policies and the likelihood of more structured regulatory frameworks for digital assets.

That could herald more widespread adoption of related products and services within the industry, and it is also another easily explained portfolio diversifier that does not have the confusing ins and outs, and qualifiers, of alternative investments and typical gated hedge fund withdrawal restrictions. 

Year of the Robot

On a completely different front, 2025 could also turn out to be the year of the robot, albeit many oracles have been promising that since the Jetsons («Smithsonian») ran in the early 1960s.

Since then, the future has turned out to be much grittier and unexpected than the cartoon’s smoothly tech-perfected Southern Californian suburbia, no thanks to Zuckerberg, Musk, and social media.

A Humanoid Apple

So what is different this year? The consensus shows many expect robotaxis available in more major cities, with humanoid robots entering the workforce. There are even glimmerings of a lifelike Apple robot on the horizon, according to «MacRumors», something that could prove to be a consumer watershed for adoption.

Changing Job Nature

But what are wealth managers to make of that? As finews.asia commented in January, the current situation is probably akin to the early 2000s when a certain Dr. Google started to make its mark.

Less than ten years later, it had changed the relationship between doctors and their patients so much so that the former had to spend much of their days comforting waiting room denizens that not every symptom was something undoubtedly terminal.

Better Preparation

The average high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth banker’s job is changing similarly. Clients are going to show up with wads of GenAI prompts, which is generally a much more clued-in researcher than Google search ever was. 

They are going to have to be just as prepared, and open-minded, as a doctor in a general practice is - or be left looking like the apocryphal deer caught in the headlights. 

Another Employee

It might even end up rekindling the importance of having a humanities or liberal arts degree to the industry, something that Apple has generally been wise to.

That still seems an unlikely stretch but they should think about that while reading a recent «Futurism» article on how a Goldman Sachs GS AI assistant already sounds and talks like just another bank employee.