F2 Strategy: 87% of surveyed wealth firms use or pilot AI; 6% run agentic tools

F2 Strategy's Q2 2026 Trend Report found that 87% of the 40 leading RIAs, wealth management firms and broker-dealers it surveyed use or pilot AI, and that 6% run agentic tools inside workflows.

Those firms represent $8.6 trillion in combined assets, and the report found a very weak correlation between AI technology spending and measurable business value.

The two figures measure different things: using or piloting AI is the wide end of the distribution, and running agentic tools inside workflows is the narrow end. A very weak correlation between AI spending and measurable business value argues against treating a larger technology budget as evidence of better results, among the firms surveyed at least.

For an advisor reviewing a technology line item, the split suggests adoption and delegation are separate decisions. A firm can have AI in use somewhere without having handed a process over to it, and the survey's outcome measure gives no reason to assume the first produces the second on its own.

The population shapes how far the findings travel. F2 Strategy surveyed 40 firms, not the advisory industry at large, which means the 87% and the 6% are a benchmark against large peers rather than an industry average.