NEW Natalie Wolfsen
Orion CEO Natalie Wolfsen kicked off the firm's Ascent 2026 conference Wednesday in San Diego, highlighting the results of the firm's fourth annual Advisor Wealthtech Survey.
"We really understand and appreciate the great work that our clients do every single day, and we were not surprised to see that our advisors are growing faster than non-Orion advisors," she said in an interview.
The firm's recent survey of roughly 600 financial advisors found that Orion clients grew organic assets at a rate that was about 40% higher than that of non-Orion clients, Wolfsen said.
Also, Orion clients use 10% more of their tech stack than their peers, she added.
"They leverage our insights and wealth solutions so they can spend their time doing what they do really well, which is serving their clients," the CEO explained.
In terms of inorganic growth, "if you look at Fidelity data, our clients participate in 75% of industry mergers and acquisitions," Wolfsen said. "So whether it's organic or inorganic growth, [this data] reflects the strength and success of these businesses — and Orion's ability to help them achieve their goals."
Survey Results
Other key findings from the survey are that 87% of Orion clients find purpose and meaning in their work, while 84% say that helping clients reach financial goals brings them genuine happiness.
In terms of using artificial intelligence, 73% of advisory firms are leveraging this technology in some capacity, but only 6% use agentic workflows and just 5% have implemented cross-system AI integration.
At the same time, though, 55% say AI and automation will have the greatest impact on firm success in 2026 and beyond. The biggest hurdles to expanding AI use, they say, are concerns about accuracy and client trust, 49%; uncertainty about compliance/regulation, 42%; and limited internal expertise or training, 37%.
The survey results show "just how early we are in the adoption cycle," Chris Shutler, Orion's head of strategy, told ThinkAdvisor, "and a high number [of advisors] aren't using AI at all. This is going to have to change — given how important they recognize AI is going to be to their businesses."
Funding could help. Orion's survey found that half of advisors expect their firms to increase their technology budgets, by an average of 19%, in 2026. At the same time, 67% say that streamlining operations and reducing manual work will supercharge effectiveness, and 44% expect technology to free up more time for clients.
Only 3% of advisors say they have fully unified, free-flowing data across their tech systems. Some 60% say it's "mostly unified" but still requires manual steps. This year, 61% are prioritizing better tech integration and data use.
Today, 7 in 10 advisors use third-party tax optimization services, while 52% plan to adopt or expand such usage over the next five years. In addition, advisors plan to adopt or expand their use of direct indexing (46%), unified managed household capabilities (42%), SMAs (38%) and UMAs (36%).
Orion worked with $5.8 trillion in assets under administration and $133 billion of wealth management platform assets, supporting over 8 million technology accounts and thousands of independent advisory firms, as of Dec. 31.
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