Building the Future of Financial Services: Scaling Personalization Through Strategic Partnerships

The financial services industry is at a critical juncture. As client expectations evolve, firms and institutions face a complex challenge: delivering personalized, holistic advice to an ever-growing range of clients while scaling their operations to meet rising demands.

With an array of options for planning their financial futures, more clients are seeking guidance on every facet of their financial lives — from legacy planning to insurance, education savings, and more. In fact, recent research shows that 74% of clients now expect their financial advisors to provide more personalized, seamless, and comprehensive advice across all financial matters. ¹

In response, firms — particularly those with broader business portfolios like insurance providers — must adopt new strategies to stay competitive. Strategic partnerships have emerged as a key solution, offering the operational capacity to meet client expectations while allowing advisors to focus on delivering high-touch advice.

Prudential and LPL: A Model for the Future

Our strategic partnership between Prudential Advisors, Prudential’s retail arm, and LPL Financial exemplifies how two industry leaders have come together to shape the future of financial services. Prudential, a trusted and established brand in the financial services sector, has built its wealth management business by offering clients a holistic experience that seamlessly integrates insurance, annuities, and investments. As the opportunity for Prudential Advisors to expand its market presence has grown, so has its commitment to delivering a world-class wealth management platform — one that is both structured for today and agile enough to meet the demands of tomorrow.

With nearly 150 years of earned trust, Prudential Advisors brings a legacy of experience supporting advisors and established relationships with its large client base across its businesses, while LPL provides industry-leading wealth management solutions designed to empower financial advisors with advanced technology, streamlined operations, simplified regulatory compliance, and elevated service delivery. Our collaboration reflects a broader industry trend: 65% of financial firms are now teaming up with technology companies to stay competitive and scale effectively, according to the 2023 PwC Global Fintech Report. ²

Recognizing the potential to push the envelope and offer advisors and clients a leading-edge platform, Prudential Advisors explored a range of options to scale its wealth management services. Rather than investing heavily in building a proprietary fintech infrastructure, Prudential Advisors made a strategic choice to partner with LPL, whose sole focus is wealth management. Together, we leverage LPL’s specialized platform and expertise alongside Prudential Advisors’ culture of nurturing advisors’ business, creating a scalable, innovative solution tailored to Prudential Advisors’ growth ambitions.

Delivering Scalable, Personalized Advice

Accenture's 2023 Wealth Management Survey highlighted a significant gap in the industry: only 42% of firms believe they are currently capable of offering truly personalized services at scale. ³ Prudential Advisors and LPL set out to close this gap, grounding our strategic partnership in delivering customized solutions that resonate with advisors and clients alike. Personalization at scale — achieved through a balance of efficacy and efficiency — became a shared objective central to our partnership’s success.

Through our collaboration, Prudential Advisors leverages LPL’s technology to offload mid-to-back office functions, such as compliance and tech management. This streamlined approach allows Prudential Advisors and its field leadership team to focus on helping advisors grow their practices and deliver more value to clients. By freeing up resources and reducing operational burdens, we are better positioned to create more value for advisors, strengthening our platform in ways that are attractive to a broader set of advisors across the industry.

This strategic partnership enables Prudential Advisors to bring its distinctive strengths to the forefront, amplifying what makes its offerings distinct. While Prudential Advisors has long been known for its robust value proposition, this collaboration with LPL accelerates these differentiated capabilities, elevating the entire advisor experience with a platform designed to scale and adapt to future needs.

Technology Enables More Intuitive Service, More Meaningful Human Connections

While technology is essential for scaling operations, it serves to enhance — not replace — the human touch that clients value. Today’s investors expect advisors who understand their personal goals, concerns, and unique situations. Through cutting-edge technology, our partnership promotes the value of advisors, freeing them from routine tasks and allowing them to focus on what clients care about most: “Do you know me? Do you understand what I’m worried about? Do you care about my goals?”

The right balance of human insight and tech innovation ensures clients feel truly connected to their advisor without being bogged down by outdated processes. For example, fintech advancements streamline scheduling, portfolio updates, and communication, so advisors are available when clients need them. This seamless, real-time interaction helps strengthen the advisor-client relationship and fosters trust.

In a recent CFA Institute Survey, 71% of high-net-worth individuals reported preferring human advisors over digital-only platforms, especially for complex financial decisions. ⁴ Our platform empowers advisors to deliver the personal experience clients value while using technology to simplify and enhance communication. Fintech provides the infrastructure for advisors to connect meaningfully and efficiently, creating a client experience where human and tech pair naturally to deliver a truly modern, empathetic service.

Addressing Operational and Regulatory Challenges

As firms expand, they face operational and regulatory challenges that can raise risks and hinder growth. Many companies, particularly diversified businesses, deal with legacy systems that can create inefficiencies. Strategic alliances like ours streamline operations, supporting growth without the burden of complexity. KPMG’s 2023 Global Regulatory Outlook reports that 81% of financial firms cite regulatory compliance as a major challenge. ⁵

LPL’s platform integrates back-office functions and ensures compliance with regulatory requirements, enabling Prudential Advisors to maintain operational efficiency while focusing on delivering value to clients.

Preparing for the Future: Empowering Advisors and Clients

Looking ahead, firms must prepare for the upcoming generational shift as a large portion of the advisor workforce approaches retirement. For Prudential Advisors, addressing this transition is critical to maintaining client trust and ensuring business continuity.

Cerulli Associates' 2023 U.S. Advisor Metrics Report projects that 37% of advisors are expected to retire by 2030, making it imperative for firms to invest in the next generation of advisors. ⁶

Prudential Advisors has long been focused on cultivating the next generation of advisors through robust internal programs designed to recruit, train, and support emerging talent. This commitment, paired with LPL’s investment in advanced technology to support the future advisor workforce, makes our collaboration even more impactful. Both companies have spent years addressing the challenges posed by an aging advisor population, and this shared focus on innovation and talent development is driving our collective efforts forward.

Collaboration as a Driver of Innovation and Growth

As the financial services industry continues to evolve, strategic partnerships like ours are set to play a crucial role in fostering innovation and driving growth. This collaboration goes beyond a typical vendor-client dynamic; it’s a true alliance where both firms combine their strengths to build a flexible, powerful platform for financial services.

By uniting Prudential Advisors’ expertise in financial products and distribution with LPL’s technological innovation, regulatory compliance capabilities, and advisor-supported solutions, we amplify the value Prudential Advisors brings to financial advisors. Now, Prudential Advisors’ robust value proposition and product offerings are even more impactful, presented on a streamlined, tech-enabled platform that enhances advisors’ ability to serve clients with precision and insight.

In an expanding marketplace where high-quality wealth management services and trusted, personalized relationships are paramount, partnerships with shared missions and aligned cultures create a foundation for sustainable success. Together, we share a commitment to making high-quality financial advice accessible to as many people as possible, creating that magic by blending purpose with expertise. This mission-aligned approach to partnership allows us to set a new standard for delivering exceptional service and value to clients.