1. The Paradigm Shift Financial Institutions Must Embrace

For decades, financial advice operated reactively, with institutions engaging only after clients expressed a need or experienced a change (Ferreira, 2025). While this approach made sense in a traditional, product-driven world, it no longer holds in an era defined by digital acceleration, behavioral data, and rising client expectations (De Bejarry, 2025; Wavetec, 2024).

The craze around proactivity is not new and has emerged due to customer preferences constantly evolving and their demands becoming increasingly specific (Pandalai & Kirby, 2022). According to a McKinsey report, as early as 2017, it was highlighted that 35% of European bank customers preferred remote financial advice, signaling the early stages of this shift (Finextra, 2017). Since then, expectations for timely, tailored guidance have only intensified. Indeed, today, clients seek more than just responsiveness (De Bejarry, 2025). They expect institutions to grasp their needs and foresee changes, in order to offer relevant, personalized advice at the right moment, without them having to ask.

Recognizing this shift, fintechs, neobanks, and digital advisors have seized the opportunity to set new benchmarks for engagement and responsiveness (Pandalai & Kirby, 2022). Their intuitive experiences, hyper-personalized recommendations, and predictive financial tools have reshaped industry standards, exposing the limitations of legacy institutions struggling to match their agility.  Aside from affecting expectations, neobanks have also redefined how clients want to be supported in their investment journey. This shift has fueled growing interest in independent portfolio management, exemplifying the rise of "self-carisation."

Therefore, with these new entrants redefining financial engagement, traditional players such as banks and wealth managers must evolve to remain competitive (Pandalai & Kirby, 2022). Proactive advice is no longer just an aspiration—it has become a strategic necessity, essential for financial institutions to stay relevant in a world driven by immediacy and personalization (Pandalai & Kirby, 2022; Ferreira, 2025).

 

2. The Growing Limitations of Reactive Advice

The limitations of reactive advice are becoming increasingly clear — both in what clients experience and in how institutions operate.

Traditionally, financial institutions engaged only when clients initiated contact, operating under the assumption that a need must be declared before it could be addressed (Ferreira, 2025). However, this approach is no longer sufficient, as clients now expect institutions to anticipate risks, identify opportunities, and act proactively, rather than simply respond when prompted (Wavetec, 2024).

Technology has played a key role in shaping these expectations, as digital ecosystems across industries now predict user needs, offering seamless, hyper-personalized interactions before a request is even made (Wierzbinski, 2024). Indeed, companies like Apple, Amazon, and Spotify have been instrumental in redefining consumer expectations (Pandalai & Kirby, 2022). Spotify, for example, creates playlists that continuously adapt to users' listening habits, offering personalized recommendations without any explicit requests. This level of customization has set a new standard across sectors, and financial services are no exception. As a result, clients now expect intelligent financial guidance that evolves with their needs, whether for budgeting, investing, or long-term planning (SevenBridge Financial, 2023).

Moreover, traditional institutions remain constrained by fragmented data, legacy systems, and static customer segmentation, limiting their ability to deliver real-time, personalized engagement at scale (Pandalai & Kirby, 2022). Many advisory models still rely on manual workflows, making it difficult to provide timely, tailored financial insights that align with modern client expectations.

At the same time, the rise of digital banking and AI-powered financial tools has reduced the demand for in-person services, encouraging banks to close branches as client behaviors shift (Kreger, 2025). While cost-cutting is a factor, this transition indicates a broader transformation within the industry. Indeed, digital-first experiences are now essential rather than optional, necessitating that financial institutions enhance their virtual engagement (Kreger, 2025).

Beyond operational challenges, this reactive approach is also eroding trust (Kleven, 2025). When institutions fail to act proactively, they miss opportunities, make avoidable errors, and cause clients to feel overlooked. Meanwhile, alternative platforms effortlessly deliver relevant recommendations in real time, reinforcing the perception that legacy institutions are falling behind.

For all these reasons, reactivity is no longer a neutral position; it has shifted to a competitive disadvantage (Pandalai & Kirby, 2022). Therefore, to remain relevant, financial institutions must go beyond simply responding faster. They must fundamentally rethink how, when, and why advice is delivered—shifting from reactive interactions to proactive, predictive engagement that meets clients where they are.

 

3. What It Actually Means to Be Proactive — and the Value It Creates

Proactive financial advice goes beyond simply responding to client inquiries. Proactive Financial Advice goes beyond simply responding to client inquiries. It anticipates their needs, providing thoughtful, timely, and relevant guidance, consequently, empowering clients to take direct action. This approach requires a deep understanding of clients' behaviors, preferences, and financial goals. The significance of being proactive cannot be overstated, as it creates substantial value for all stakeholders involved in the advisory process, including both the clients and the financial institution.

Figure 1 : A truly Proactive Model Creates Value on Multiple Fronts

PAA 1 -EN

Proactivity is, unsurprisingly, a key driver of added value in the client experience in multiple ways:

  • The primary value-added aspect lies in delivering relevant, intuitive, and tailored guidance precisely when needed.
  • Proactivity guarantees that clients are made aware of new opportunities, enabling them to capitalize on the most advantageous options available (SevenBridge Financial, 2023). By preparing the groundwork, banks not only simplify responses and improve the comprehension of financial advice but also, consequently, empower clients to become more financially literate and recognize the true value of their decisions.
  • To maximize the effectiveness of financial advice, it should integrate seamlessly into the investment journey, helping clients make decisions effortlessly rather than feeling like an extra task (Vincent et al., 2015; Kleven, 2025). For instance, embedding well-timed, high-quality recommendations into familiar apps and platforms streamlines the experience, allowing clients to engage with insights naturally within their routines.

  • Proactive recommendations also foster confidence, empowering clients to act independently without relying on constant advisor contact. As uncertainty decreases, consultations may become less frequent, streamlining engagement and enhancing efficiency.

Regarding financial institutions, proactive approaches can significantly improve their operations.

  • By leveraging data effectively, banks can produce targeted and actionable insights that convert behavioral and financial data into specific recommendations tailored to individual client needs, thereby building trust and engagement (Wierzbinski, 2024).
  • Over time, as clients’ engagement increases, it motivates a greater number of clients to adhere to these recommendations, opting to invest or reinvest their funds instead of allowing them to remain idle (Pandalai & Kirby, 2022; Wierzbinski, 2024)
  • Automation also improves efficiency by identifying opportunities on a broad scale while still preserving a personalized approach (De Bejarry, 2025). Consequently, advisors can focus on more meaningful client interactions, further solidifying their position as reliable financial partners.
  • Proactivity allows banks to uncover needs that clients have not yet identified. By recognizing and addressing these emerging opportunities, banks position themselves as industry experts, offering valuable insights that strengthen client trust and engagement.

In an increasingly digital-driven world, this approach ensures financial guidance is not just responsive but seamlessly integrated into clients' lives, enhancing their overall experience and satisfaction. By prioritizing proactive engagement, financial institutions can strengthen trust, deepen loyalty, and build lasting relationships while delivering tangible value that clients perceive in that way as well (Wierzbinski, 2024).

Yet, despite the clear benefits of a proactive approach for both financial institutions and clients, its adoption is limited, leaving one question unanswered.

 

4. Why hasn’t it been fully implemented across the industry?

Although the significant potential to transform the industry, proactive advice is largely overlooked and does not receive the recognition it deserves. The goal is to strike the right balance between providing meaningful insights that genuinely support financial decisions and overcoming the obstacles to their implementation. These challenges stem from both strategic limitations and ingrained institutional practices in client engagement. Three key barriers to implementation are outlined below.

  1. Limited Access to Real-Time Data

    Without a comprehensive view of the client, institutions struggle to anticipate needs and deliver timely, personalized recommendations. The fragmented systems and siloed data hinder meaningful insights, restricting the ability to act proactively.

  2. Operational Rigidity

    Delivering proactive advice requires agility, such as dynamically segmenting clients, iterating quickly, and coordinating seamless communication across channels (Vincent et al., 2015; Kleven, 2025). However, legacy systems and traditional workflows limit responsiveness, keeping many institutions stuck in static, reactive engagement models.

  3. Concerns About Intrusiveness & Quality

    Some institutions may fear that proactive outreach will overwhelm or alienate clients. However, the challenge is not the frequency of communication, but its quality. Clients are more likely to disengage due to generic, irrelevant, or poorly timed messages rather than thoughtful, personalized guidance (Vincent et al., 2015).

Ultimately, the challenge is not to recognize the value of proactive advice but rather to transform the underlying mindset and operational approach. Until institutions reframe how they think about financial guidance and client engagement, they will continue to fall short of rising expectations and remain constrained by reactive service models (Ferreira, 2025).

 

5. Making Proactivity Real: The Four Pillars for Implementation According to Gambit

Successfully transitioning to a proactive advisory model requires more than ambition — it demands a structured strategic foundation (Pandalai & Kirby, 2022). During its design sprint, Gambit has identified four key pillars to help a seamless flow from theoretical vision to an operational reality. These pillars not only enable institutions to act ahead of client needs, but they also differentiate those institutions in an increasingly competitive market.

Figure 2: The Fours Pillars of Proactive Advice according to Gambit

4pillars EN

  i. Anticipation — Seeing Needs Before They Surface

Anticipation is the cornerstone of proactive financial advice, yet mastering it remains a significant challenge (Pandalai & Kirby, 2019). To be truly anticipatory, institutions must detect key life events, behavioral patterns, and financial shifts and must bring those to the clients before they have the opportunity to affect their financial well-being (Wierzbinski, 2024). However, proactive outreach requires careful preparation. Without proper validation, premature or inaccurate recommendations can erode trust, ultimately causing more harm than benefit.

Key enablers:

  • High-quality database: Continuously updating and leveraging data to ensure alignment with clients’ evolving profiles, needs, and financial goals.
  • Strengthened client-bank engagement: Building early trust to help clients understand the reasoning behind recommendations, increasing the likelihood of acting on it.

Being truly anticipatory means moving beyond basic client monitoring. It requires a dynamic approach—surfacing timely, personalized opportunities while maintaining respect for client privacy, financial journeys, and contextual relevance (Pandalai & Kirby, 2019).

  ii. Personalization at Scale — Delivering Mass Recommendations That Feel Individual

Clients increasingly expect personalized advice, seeking solutions that feel uniquely tailored to their individual situations. While SevenBridge Financial (2023) mentioned that financial strategies cannot follow a one-size-fits-all approach, addressing each person individually may not be feasible on a large scale. Hence, the challenge is to provide highly relevant recommendations to thousands of clients while creating the impression of individualized attention.

Key enablers:

  • Smart triggers: automatically identify key scenarios, such as unusual activities or a complete lack of activity on an account and react to it. For example, significant revenue inflows or prolonged account inactivity can prompt the system to trigger a tailored recommendation.
  • Dynamic segmentation: targeting the correct segment based on the trigger and with the possibility to refine it manually based on clients’ and contract preferences
  • Adaptive content: customizing the content of the recommendation by incorporating specific information such as the advisor's name, the client's name, or the risk profile, whether facilitated by AI or another source.

When clients receive advice, they can fully relate to it, as it is thoughtfully tailored to their unique circumstances. By factoring in their preferences, past experiences, and immediate needs—even when delivered at scale—this responsiveness creates an experience that feels deeply personal rather than generic or mass-produced.

  iii. The Role of the Advisor — A Strategic Support System

Advisors play a crucial role in providing personalized, high-value support to their clients. However, they often have to juggle multiple tasks while managing numerous clients at the same time (Kleven, 2025). This heavy workload can lead to missed opportunities for meaningful connections with clients when it matters most (Vincent et al., 2015). Therefore, the idea is to shift the advisor's role from being the initiator of recommendations to serving as a support for clients after the advice has been given. This change does not diminish the advisor's role; rather, it ensures that their time and expertise are used in areas where they can provide the most value (De Bejarry, 2025). To facilitate this shift, advisors need tools and systems that support their efforts while keeping them informed and empowered.

Key enablers:

  • Real-time dashboards: providing a clear overview of client activity and recommendations sent.
  • Transparent recommendation systems: highlighting why each suggestion was made, keeping advisors in the loop.

As mentioned, the goal is to augment the advisor’s capabilities, allowing them to focus on high-value, meaningful conversations, especially during important life moments or complex decisions. By reducing missed opportunities, advisors can ensure that each client feels prioritized and supported, even at scale.

  iv. Intelligent Automation — Enhancing Engagement Through Adaptive Learning 

Smart automation goes beyond just improving proactive advice; it focuses on enhancing the personalization process. In fact, rather than merely executing predefined actions, automation should continuously evolve to ensure that clients receive advice that becomes increasingly relevant over time (De Bejarry, 2025).

Key enablers:

  • AI learning: leveraging pattern recognition from client actions and discussions to continuously refine and adapt recommendations.
  • Dynamic feedback loops: capturing client interactions, whether explicitly (i.e., edits, preferences) or implicitly (i.e., ignored recommendations), to enhance future suggestions.
  • Automated reminder: for timely follow-ups and engagement opportunities, ensuring important opportunities are not missed, but still, without excessive outreach.

Automation should feel intuitive and human, not mechanical. By integrating intelligent automation, institutions can ensure that every interaction is meaningful, continuously fine-tuning future advice and creating a system that adapts to clients over time (Ferreira, 2025).

By implementing the four capabilities identified by Gambit, financial institutions can improve their time management and expand outreach opportunities. Each opportunity is strategically crafted with all relevant data, enhancing efficiency. This proactive approach allows institutions to tailor their engagements more accurately, ultimately leading to stronger client relationships, better financial decision-making, and increased profitability for banks.

Nonetheless, some may contend that proactive advice is not entirely novel, as it has been utilized in certain contexts, such as private banking. Indeed, while specific sectors have already adopted this strategy, Gambit's methodology aims to make it scalable and systematic for the retail industry, thereby creating substantial additional value.

 

6. Designing the Future of Advice

In conclusion, proactivity is not just a feature; it is the future of financial advice. Indeed, as the reactive model fades, a new standard is emerging, built on anticipation, personalization, and trust.

Being proactive means enhancing advisories with the help of integrating data, automation, and technology to deliver advice that is timely, human, and relevant (Ferreira, 2025). The goal is to design natural, intuitive experiences that reflect a deep understanding of each client’s goals, rather than relying on generic, automated interactions. Therefore, by fostering proactivity, traditional banks empower their clients to take their first steps toward financial self-care, equipping them with the confidence to manage their finances independently. This transformation not only supports client empowerment but also reinforces banks’ competitive edge, applying pressure on emerging players such as neobanks.

While institutions may require different approaches to proactivity depending on their market segment (e.g., private vs. retail banking), the key is to develop a workable, adaptable strategy refined to fit the right audience. Embracing this shift is essential—not only for improving service quality but also for strengthening client trust, brand relevance, and long-term growth. If you recognize the importance of this topic but are uncertain about the next steps, feel free to contact us, as proactivity is prominently featured in the Gambit 2025 roadmap!

 

Sources

De Bejarry, E. (2025). What is proactive wealth management ? WealthArc. Retrieved from: https://www.wealtharc.com/insights-articles/what-is-proactive-wealth-management

Ferreira, J. (2025). From reactive to Proactive Bank: 10 tips to Better serve your clients. Blog SYDLE. Retrieved from: https://www.sydle.com/blog/proactive-bank-64cbef1007bf1b42624435d0

Fietko, M. (2024). From reactive to Proactive Bank : 5 tips to Better serve your clients. Ailleron. Retrieved from: https://ailleron.com/insights/proactive-bank/

Finextra. (2017). Retail Banking : the Importance of Being Proactive : By Nikita Blinov. Finextra Research. Retrieved from: https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/14838/retail-banking-the-importance-of-being-proactive

Kleven, J. (2025). Simplifying Multitasking in Financial Advisory : Integrative Tools for Success - YCharts. YCharts. Retrieved from: https://get.ycharts.com/resources/blog/simplifying-multitasking-for-financial-advisors-with-ycharts-integrative-tools/

Kreger, A. (2025). The Rise of Global Digital Banking is Changing the Rules. Retrieved from: https://theuxda.com/blog/the-rise-of-global-digital-banking-changing-rules

Pandalai, R., & Kirby, M. (2022). Anticipatory Banking: Anticipating Customer Needs - Data & AI Trends | Publicis Sapient. Publicis Sapient. Retrieved from: https://www.publicissapient.com/insights/anticipatory-banking

SevenBridge Financial. (2023). Discover the Benefits of a Proactive Financial Strategy. Retrieved from: https://www.sevenbridgefinancial.com/resources/what-is-a-proactive-financial-strategy

Vincent G, Goldstein, J., & Cunniff, S. (2015). 10 Disruptive trends in wealth management. Retrieved from: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/strategy/us-cons-disruptors-in-wealth-mgmt-final.pdf

Wierzbinski, M. (2024). What is a proactive approach in banking? LiveBank. Retrieved from: https://livebank24.com/digital-banking/what-is-a-proactive-approach-in-banking/