A fund manager can achieve incremental annual inflows of 0.5% to 1% of assets under management by deploying artificial intelligence to support distribution.

BCG said in a report that asset managers have faced rising costs outpacing revenue for more than a decade despite heavy technology investment. Over the past 15 years, global assets under management have more than tripled and revenues have more than doubled, but margins have remained unchanged as costs have historically scaled with assets, according to the consultancy.

Assets under management  grew 11% to $147 trillion in 2025, but BCG said more than 80% of revenue growth came from market performance, while fees continue to compress at between 1% to 3% annually.

The study, The AI-First Asset Manager, said autonomous agents capable of executing complex, multi-step workflows such as reconciliation and NAV oversight offer a new way to fight this problem.

“Early evidence suggests that a traditional asset manager with a cost of 15 to 20 basis points that reshapes their organization to deploy AI at scale could reduce expenses by 3 to 6 basis points, perhaps a 25% to 30% cut,” said BCG.

The consultancy argued that AI agents decouple costs from assets under management, so  AUM per head can rise significantly with a limited increase in marginal costs.

For example, AI can increase research coverage two to five times as agents can continuously scan thousands of names and present the analyst with curated, ranked opportunities for review. Agents can also systematically stress test the investment thesis so that portfolio construction and risk analysis become real-time, quickly responding to market movements and changing correlations.

“Our modeling shows that an AI-first asset manager can, within three to five years, achieve incremental annual inflows of 0.5% to 1% of AUM just through deploying AI to support distribution,” said BCG.

For example, AI-driven efficiency helps turn more prospects and increase the addressable client base. BCG said managers who previously handled only custom mandates above $500m can now profitably offer them at significantly lower amounts.

NBIM

The consultancy gave the example of the successful use of AI by Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages the Nkr 22,683bn ($2,438bn) sovereign wealth fund.

NBIM has integrated large language models and custom machine learning tools to drive an estimated 20% boost in overall workplace efficiency.