Asset Manager Margins Face Infrastructure Costs and Fee Pressure Through 2030

Asset managers face a widening gap between their technology ambitions and the infrastructure available to support them. PwC’s global study finds profit per assets under management has fallen 19% since 2018 and is projected to decline a further 9.1% by 2030. Meanwhile, firms are spending heavily to maintain existing systems, and fee pressure is restricting the money available to replace them.

The research, Asset Management Infrastructure: Rethinking the Industry's Piping, draws on a survey of 150 asset managers and 50 infrastructure providers worldwide. Its central concern is that the foundations beneath asset managers’ services are becoming a greater drag on margins as firms seek to adopt new tools and respond to changing client needs.

“The industry's profits per dollar managed have fallen by almost a fifth, and the bill for the pipes keeps rising,” said Roland Kastoun, Global Asset and Wealth Management Advisory Leader at PwC. “The managers who survive the next five years won't be the ones with the flashiest AI, but rather the ones who fixed the so-called boring stuff first.”

AI plans meet legacy constraints

The survey points to a mismatch between what firms want technology to do and where their budgets go. Only 23% of asset managers direct most of their technology spending toward building new capabilities. By contrast, 29% devote more than 70% of that spending to maintaining legacy systems. Those maintenance demands can leave less room for the data and platform work needed to put new tools into routine use.

That gap matters as interest in artificial intelligence grows. Sixty-seven percent of respondents name AI and machine learning as a top technology investment priority over the next three years. Yet 24% identify fragmented or poor-quality data as their single biggest barrier to expanding AI, while 17% point to legacy infrastructure. The findings suggest that more spending on AI alone may not resolve the obstacles firms say are holding adoption back.

A separate Mercer survey of 131 asset managers, conducted in early 2026, found that 55% of firms had integrated AI into at least one investment process. PwC’s results help explain why adoption at that level may not translate into broader use: systems and data problems can make it difficult to extend a tool across processes, even when firms have begun experimenting with it.

The tension has also surfaced in coverage of how asset managers are navigating AI adoption. Investment in new capabilities can rise while the underlying technology remains difficult to connect, maintain or update. That leaves firms facing the cost of both keeping current operations running and building what comes next.

Costs rise as fees constrain spending

Market data stands out as one of the most expensive infrastructure layers relative to the value firms believe it provides. In PwC’s survey, 58% of asset managers rank it among their most strategically expensive layers. Reporting systems were cited by 47%, and core technology platforms by 46%. The results identify several parts of the operating stack that firms may scrutinize as they weigh where to spend.

Fee pressure makes that choice harder. Sixty-seven percent of asset managers say pressure on fees limits their ability to invest in new infrastructure. The resulting bind is straightforward: firms need to update systems to improve operations and support new capabilities, but the pressure on revenue restricts the resources available to do so.

Boston Consulting Group reported in April 2026 that industry margins had remained around 30% for years, with higher technology costs and fee pressure offsetting gains from scale. PwC’s figures point to a more strained outlook, with profit per assets under management already down and projected to decline further. The measures describe different aspects of performance, but together they highlight the difficulty of relying on scale alone to counter rising costs.

These pressures reach beyond the largest managers. Independent advisors and wealth management firms depend on platforms and products supplied by asset managers and technology providers. As AI changes decision-making across wealth management, the quality and cost of those services will depend in part on whether providers can improve the systems underneath them.

Firms weigh different operating models

PwC describes four models firms are considering as they reorganize their infrastructure. Infrastructure orchestrators retain core regulated systems; specialist modular providers focus on particular areas of expertise; digital and tokenization platforms provide connectivity; and integrated asset managers sell platforms that were first developed for their own operations.

No single approach has taken the lead. Among survey respondents, 29% say they aim to compete as specialist modular providers by 2030, while 24% aspire to operate as digital and tokenization platforms. Firms’ choices will shape which capabilities they keep in-house, which they obtain from outside providers and how much control they retain over the systems that support their services.

Current sourcing preferences also point to a mix. Forty-four percent of firms favor hybrid sourcing, combining in-house, purchased and partnered capabilities. Another 21% prefer to buy, 18% prefer to partner and 13% are committed to building entirely in-house. Hybrid sourcing is the most common preference in the survey, though the results show that firms are still considering several ways to organize their operations.

Infrastructure providers expect to gain ground: 70% say they expect to take a larger share of industry revenue over the next five years. Björn Ebert, Financial Services Leader at PwC Luxembourg, said the result signals a shift in where industry influence is accumulating. “Seven in ten infrastructure providers expect to take a bigger slice of the pie, which tells you where the power in this industry is quietly shifting,” Ebert said.

Competition is also coming from large cloud providers and newer data firms. Sixty-eight percent of infrastructure providers name hyperscale cloud providers as their primary emerging competitive threat, compared with 54% who cite AI-native data platforms. That pressure could affect how traditional providers price and develop their services, as well as how asset managers decide which capabilities to source externally.

PwC frames infrastructure choices as decisions that could shape competitive positions through 2030. For managers, the evidence points to a practical test: whether planned technology spending can address the data, systems and operating costs that currently limit returns. How firms resolve that problem will matter to their margins and to the advisors and clients who rely on the platforms they provide. Recent research on changing asset manager strategies also points to pressure across distribution, products and technology.