Back in April 2018, Michael Kitces published the first “Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map” in its current form. That infamous map is of great help to firms and advisors reflecting on their tech stacks and is often referenced in our industry’s ongoing debate around the role of technology. To this day, it is updated every month with help from leading tech consultant Craig Iskowitz, and it is a silent but powerful witness to the evolution of wealth management.
At its debut, the map featured 189 fintech companies across 29 categories. Seven years later, as of April 2025, it had grown to include 551 companies across 36 categories. Yes, the map has almost tripled in size, and it keeps on growing.
The Map Today – Investments and Operations Are at its Core
In its current incarnation, the map is organized into five “buckets,” which cover the key technology needs of both firms and advisors. These span financial planning, investment management, client engagement, business development and operations. In turn, these five advisor technology service areas are broken down further into 36 distinct categories. For example, the investment management bucket includes categories such as portfolio management, risk tolerance and custodial platforms, while the operations bucket, as you would expect, covers key middle- and back-office systems such as client relationship management systems, e-Signature and document management.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the two largest buckets on the map, measured by the number of solutions listed, are investment management with 164 firms, followed by operations with 120 solutions. This is a testament to how the complex processes of investment management and operations benefit from automation and robust tech solutions. However, the sheer number of choices within those core categories may be surprising:
How many different portfolio management systems do we seem to need today? 33, according to the map.
How many different CRM systems is there space in the fintech marketplace for today? 26.
How many different investment data/analytics providers serve our industry? 54.
Growing and Brand-New Categories
While there certainly has been some growth in these core categories over the years (for example, CRMs doubled from 13 in April 2018 to 26 today), the real growth driver has been the exponential increase in certain existing categories and the emergence of entire new solution sets.
Existing categories that experienced massive growth include client-facing solutions such as specialized financial planning (think estate, tax or education planning), which grew from 21 solutions in 2018 to 84 today, or digital marketing, which grew from four to a whopping 35 today.
Kitces himself observed one of the key underlying drivers in a January 2022 blog, which is a shift in “the financial advisor value proposition itself—from the sale of financial services products to the sale of financial advice—which in turn is slowly but steadily reshaping the entire advisor technology stack.” He acknowledges the growing popularity of ‘advice-support’ tools, which brings us to another key growth drive for the map: brand-new categories.
Driven by ever-increasing client expectations with respect to service quantity and quality and in support of the general shift in firm and advisor value propositions that Kitces noted, several brand-new categories have emerged, and they continue to flourish and grow. These new categories include, for example:
Advice Engagement – Engaging clients and prospects remains at the heart of wealth management, and more and more firms are looking for ways to scale their client engagement, which in turn drives client satisfaction and new business generation. It is no surprise then that this new category first appeared on the map in February 2022 with five firms and now encompasses 10 different technology and content solutions, such as Bento Engine and Asset Map.
Prospecting and Advisor Lead Gen – Another notable area of solution expansions has been the business development bucket. In addition to the massive growth of digital marketing solutions, entirely new categories, such as prospecting (nine solutions) and advisor lead gen (21), have emerged. This is a testament to the historical pain points many advisors face with respect to new business development and the value tech-based solutions can add at the front of the marketing funnel (think, for example, of how new solutions such as Wealthfeed can help identify and prioritize prospects based on propensity to buy).
Also of note, other brand-new categories on the map are fueled by rapid advancements in underlying technologies. For example, the AI assistant and client meeting support categories are full of highly innovative companies such as Zeplyn and Jump that use cutting-edge and fast-evolving artificial intelligence capabilities unthinkable a few short quarters ago.
The Kitces Map has witnessed and documented our industry’s ongoing evolution. While investment and operations remain core areas of tech use for understandable reasons, the overall shift of value propositions away from merely managing money and toward leading with advice drives the continued growth and innovation of the map. Given the power of technology to scale and improve both the client and advisor experiences, brand-new categories will keep on emerging, particularly as regulators, firms, advisors and clients become more comfortable with newly emerging capabilities. New categories and solutions, particularly in the areas of client engagement, financial planning and business development, will benefit everyone involved.