BlackRock is taking another step forward in applying artificial intelligence to wealth management, unveiling a new feature designed to help financial advisors deliver more efficient and personalized client conversations. The firm’s Aladdin Wealth platform, already a backbone for risk analytics and portfolio management across the industry, is expanding with the launch of Auto Commentary—a tool aimed squarely at enhancing advisor-client interactions.
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management is the first major firm to adopt the new capability, integrating it directly into its existing portfolio risk platform later this month. The move signals how top firms are beginning to operationalize AI not as a replacement for advisors, but as a force multiplier that allows them to scale personalized advice and client engagement.
What Auto Commentary Does
At its core, Auto Commentary is a generative AI tool that translates a vast array of data inputs into clear, digestible talking points advisors can use in real-time conversations. Rather than producing scripts or canned communications, the tool creates a first-draft narrative or bulleted summaries highlighting key themes in a client’s portfolio.
According to Ted Stratigos, global head of Aladdin Wealth Tech, the value lies in creating clarity out of complexity. “Advisors spend a lot of time trying to understand the metrics and what’s happening in a client’s portfolio,” he explains. “This tool helps them quickly distill relevant information, so they can focus on the client relationship.”
Auto Commentary combines three main data streams:
-
Aladdin’s risk and analytics engine, which powers portfolio diagnostics across thousands of institutions.
-
The CIO’s market outlook from the wealth management firm, grounding recommendations in the firm’s official guidance.
-
Client-specific portfolio and investment objectives, ensuring the analysis is customized to each investor’s situation.
The output might highlight, for instance, that a client is overweight in a sector compared to both the house view and their own benchmark, or that their risk exposure is out of alignment with stated objectives. The system does not simply point out discrepancies—it contextualizes them within a broader narrative, effectively giving advisors a roadmap for where to focus discussions.
Morgan Stanley’s Early Adoption
For Morgan Stanley, the integration is part of a larger effort to streamline advisor workflows while sharpening client-facing conversations. Chris Scott-Hansen, managing director of the consulting group within Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, describes Auto Commentary as a way to condense “hundreds of analytics and firm-level market insights into a cohesive narrative.”
By automating what has traditionally been a labor-intensive process—gathering, filtering, and translating raw data into client-ready insights—the tool allows advisors to reallocate time toward higher-value activities. “Less time spent gathering data, more time delivering actionable insights to every client,” Scott-Hansen says.
Morgan Stanley plans to embed Auto Commentary into its Portfolio Risk Platform, which already blends the firm’s proprietary analytics with Aladdin’s risk models. With this integration, Morgan Stanley advisors will have access to dynamically generated talking points within the same environment they use to monitor and manage portfolios.
Competitive Context
BlackRock’s launch comes as AI-driven tools for advisors are proliferating across the wealth management industry. Just this week, Hamachi.ai, a fintech startup led by industry veterans, introduced a platform promising customized, compliance-checked communications. Earlier this year, Vanguard rolled out its own AI-enabled summary tool that helps advisors share relevant market perspectives with clients.
What distinguishes Auto Commentary is its deep integration with Aladdin, a system already relied on by some of the largest wealth managers and institutions globally. For advisors working in firms that run on Aladdin, the commentary feature is less a standalone app and more an embedded extension of their daily workflow.
Unlike some AI offerings that generate polished, client-facing reports, BlackRock’s product deliberately stops short of producing finished communications. Instead, it gives advisors a structured foundation—bullet points and narrative themes—that they can adapt based on their style and their client’s preferences. Stratigos notes the firm is exploring additional data sources, such as curated market news articles, to expand the tool’s usefulness.
Compliance and Access
One key consideration for any AI tool in wealth management is compliance. Stratigos acknowledges that some firms are still reviewing the legal implications of Auto Commentary before adopting it. For now, Morgan Stanley is the only firm publicly on board, though BlackRock expects others to follow.
Access is also tied to the broader Aladdin ecosystem. BlackRock is not offering Auto Commentary as a standalone subscription; firms must hold an enterprise license. While Stratigos confirms that discussions with large registered investment advisor (RIA) firms are underway, adoption to date has been concentrated among big banks and brokerages with enterprise-scale infrastructure.
For independent RIAs, the barrier may be both cost and complexity. Still, as client expectations for personalization grow and as firms look for ways to scale without proportionally increasing headcount, tools like Auto Commentary could become more attractive. Large RIAs competing directly with wirehouses may find value in adopting platforms that bring institutional-grade capabilities to their practices.
The Bigger Picture: AI as a Structural Force
BlackRock views AI as more than a feature—it sees it as a “structural force” reshaping wealth management. Stratigos emphasizes that in the near term, the focus is efficiency: giving advisors more bandwidth to focus on relationship-building, holistic planning, and trust.
“I don’t see that there’s going to be a shift where AI is going to be completely replacing the advisor,” he says. “The wealth management industry is based on trust, which at this point is very personal.”
That perspective resonates with industry dynamics. Even as digital-first platforms like robo-advisors have grown, high-net-worth and mass-affluent investors continue to place a premium on human advice. AI, in this context, becomes less about disintermediation and more about augmentation—making advisors more effective at delivering what clients truly value.
Implications for Advisors
For advisors, the rise of tools like Auto Commentary raises both opportunities and strategic questions:
-
Efficiency Gains: Time saved on data gathering and interpretation can be redirected toward deeper client engagement, prospecting, and planning.
-
Consistency: Aligning portfolio commentary with the firm’s CIO outlook reduces the risk of misalignment and ensures advisors are all drawing from the same playbook.
-
Scalability: Advisors with larger books of business can maintain personalized conversations across more clients without diluting quality.
-
Compliance Comfort: Having a tool that sits within the firm’s compliance framework provides reassurance, especially as regulators scrutinize advisor communications.
-
Competitive Edge: Early adopters may differentiate themselves by delivering insights more quickly and with greater personalization.
At the same time, advisors will need to strike a balance. Overreliance on AI-generated narratives risks sounding generic if not tailored thoughtfully. The advisors who benefit most will likely be those who use Auto Commentary as a foundation but then add their own voice, perspective, and empathy to connect with clients.
Looking Ahead
As the wealth management industry experiments with AI, one theme is emerging: the advisor-client relationship remains central, but the tools supporting it are evolving rapidly. BlackRock’s Auto Commentary is less about replacing the advisor’s expertise and more about empowering them to apply that expertise at scale.
For RIAs and advisors watching from the sidelines, the question may not be whether to embrace AI-driven tools, but when and how. As more firms integrate these capabilities, client expectations will adjust. A client who experiences personalized, data-driven insights at one firm may come to expect the same everywhere.
BlackRock’s bet is that AI, integrated into platforms like Aladdin, will become an invisible but indispensable part of the advisor’s toolkit—much like CRM systems, planning software, and risk models are today. Advisors who understand how to leverage these tools while maintaining the human touch will be positioned to thrive in an industry where scale, personalization, and trust are all converging.
In that sense, Auto Commentary’s launch is more than a new product release. It is a glimpse into a future where the most successful advisors are those who blend institutional-grade analytics with genuine client connection—where AI does the heavy lifting behind the scenes, and the advisor remains at the center, guiding clients through the noise of the markets with clarity, context, and confidence.
