Wall Street is racing to manage your wealth. That is a good thing

livemint.com:

wealth management, which helps clients allocate assets, minimise tax bills and plan for retirement—typically for an annual fee of 1% of invested assets. Firms are piling into the business, spurred by the prospect of profits that will only become juicier as the world gets richer. Could it be good for clients, too? The wealth industry has long been highly fragmented.

The über-rich often sought advice from the big banks, typically the Swiss ones—UBS claims to bank every second billionaire—or the elite American firms, like JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. In America and Europe many of the comfortably well-off long relied on defined-benefit pension funds. Others were often served by retail outfits that sold them expensive mutual funds on commission or picked stocks through brokerage accounts.

Across Asia and Latin America, domestic banks often managed local millionaires’ wealth. Several of these firms are now being knitted together. That is in large part because the prize has become more tantalising.

For the past 20 years global wealth has grown faster than economic output. Much of that has been fuelled by younger customers and those in Asia. According to a survey by UBS, there were 849,000 dollar millionaires in India last year, for instance, nearly 23 times as many as in 2000.

The number of millionaires in Africa has risen more than tenfold. Worldwide, the amount of liquid assets for advisers to salivate over is expected to rise to $230trn by 2030, from $130trn today. The emergence of slick platforms for managing wealth and the automation of basic advice have also expanded the pool of potential clients.