By Deepak Shukla, Founder & CEO, Pearl Lemon Accountants
Investing used to come with plenty of friction: paperwork, high minimums, and often a broker sitting between an ordinary saver and the market.
Now, someone can download an app, verify their identity in a few minutes, buy part of a share, or hand their portfolio to an automated adviser before their coffee gets cold. That change is significant.
But making investing easier to access and making people better investors are two very different things.
The bigger question is whether wealthtech is actually improving access, behaviour, and long-term outcomes, or simply making it easier for more people to click “buy.”
Wealthtech Has Changed Who Can Participate in Investing
Low or zero account minimums, mobile-first platforms, and automated portfolio management have removed barriers that once kept smaller savers out.
According to Reuters and SIFMA figures, retail investors’ share of US equity trading volume climbed to roughly 22% in 2025, peaking near 35% in April.
But accessibility and affordability are not quite the same thing. A cheap, easy-to-use platform does not make the investment itself suitable, and a lower barrier to entry certainly does not guarantee better returns.
Fractional Shares Make Small Amounts of Capital More Useful
Fractional investing means someone can put £50 or $50 into a high-priced stock without having to find enough money for a whole share. New York Stock Exchange figures show that just under 19% of trades reported in 2025 were single-share trades, something the exchange links to the growth of fractional trading.
Still, owning a fraction of a famous company does not suddenly make someone a better investor. You still need to understand what you own, why you own it, and where it fits into the bigger picture.
Robo-Advisors Can Make Investing Simpler, Not Necessarily Smarter
Robo-advisors are probably one of the clearest examples of wealthtech taking the hassle out of investing. You answer questions about your risk tolerance, the platform builds an allocation, and it can rebalance everything without you having to make each decision yourself.
The category is still relatively small compared with the wider market, though. Cerulli Associates figures cited by Morningstar put US digital advice assets at $634 billion to $754 billion in 2024, which was under 2% of the retail market Cerulli tracks.
Automation can lower costs. It can also make investing feel less intimidating, particularly for someone starting from scratch. But it is still a process. Automating the process does not remove the risks sitting underneath it.
Automation Removes Friction, Not Risk
A machine building the portfolio does not remove the need to understand what you own, what you are paying, or how much risk you are taking.
The better robo-advisors explain these things rather than hiding them behind a nice-looking interface. That distinction matters more than it might seem.
AI Is Taking Wealthtech Beyond Automated Portfolios
The next phase of wealthtech looks less focused on simply automating portfolios and more interested in using AI to explain financial information, support research, and handle customer questions.
In a February 2026 speech, Brian Daly, the SEC’s Director of the Division of Investment Management, described a fund-provided AI agent trained on offering documents that could answer investor questions in plain English about fees, strategy, and conflicts.
Of course, the risks grow alongside the promise. ESMA, the EU’s securities regulator, has warned that AI tools used in retail investment services can create risks including algorithmic bias, opaque decisions, and overreliance on automation.
The Danger of Treating an AI Tool Like a Financial Adviser
That does not make AI bad for investing. It just means convenience can encourage people to hand over judgement they do not fully understand.
An AI tool explaining a fund’s fees in plain English is useful. An AI tool confidently telling someone what to buy next is a different proposition altogether.
More Investors Does Not Automatically Mean Better Investors
So, has wealthtech democratised investing, or has it simply democratised participation?
More accounts and more trades do not prove that people are ending up better off.
What matters more is whether investors understand what they are buying, what it costs, what could go wrong, and whether the platform encourages sensible long-term behaviour rather than constant activity.
Regulators have been paying attention to this. The SEC has examined digital engagement practices, including gamification and behavioural prompts, because of concerns that these features can encourage retail investors to trade more often or take on more risk than they intended.
Streaks, badges and celebratory pop-ups might seem harmless. But they can make the boundary between investing and entertainment surprisingly thin.
Financial Literacy Has to Keep Pace With Financial Access
Wealthtech should not just make investing easier to start. It should help people understand what they are doing once they have started.
That means explaining fees clearly, showing investors what they actually own, and avoiding the presentation of speculative trading as a form of entertainment. The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority requires investment promotions to be fair, clear, and not misleading, with balanced risk disclosure.
Investor Protection Becomes More Important as Wealthtech Scales
Different regulators are approaching the issue from slightly different angles, but there is a common thread.
In the UK, the FCA’s clear, fair, and not misleading standard applies to investment promotions, including social media. In the EU, ESMA has linked AI use to existing MiFID II investor-protection requirements. In the US, the SEC has focused on digital engagement practices, conflicts of interest, and disclosure.
The underlying question is the same. As technology becomes more personalised and persuasive, investor protection cannot stop at asking whether a platform works as designed. It also has to consider what that platform encourages people to do.
So, Are Investors Actually Better Off?
Potentially. But accessibility works best when it comes with education, transparency, and responsible product design.
Wealthtech has clearly opened investing up to people who might previously have found it too expensive or intimidating. At the same time, it can make risky behaviour faster, easier, and, frankly, more entertaining than it used to be.
A useful wealthtech platform should be judged on more than user numbers, trading volume, or fees. It should also be judged by whether it helps people invest in line with their goals and their actual tolerance for risk.
The Next Five Years: From Investment Access to Better Decision-Making
The next phase of wealthtech will probably bring more AI-powered financial education, clearer explanations of complicated documents, and hybrid models that combine automated tools with human advice when there is a genuine reason for it.
Regulatory scrutiny of behavioural design is likely to increase too, alongside better tools for showing investors what they are paying and how much risk they are taking.
The next stage should not just be about getting more people into the markets. It should be about helping the people already there make better decisions once they arrive.
Author Information:
Deepak Shukla, founder and CEO of Pearl Lemon Accountants, works across finance and AI, finding practical ways to make accounting simpler. His focus is on using technology to solve everyday financial problems and help businesses keep up with a changing digital landscape.
