A continuous pattern emerged from our research this year and once you notice it, it gives some clarity on how the use of managed accounts has grown from adoption to advantage across the industry.
Two in three Australian advice practices now use managed accounts and among those users, 77% report a positive impact on their ability to take on more clients. And 69.9% report a positive impact on business growth and revenue.
75.3% of advisers rate retirees and pre-retirees as very or extremely important to their growth strategy, while only 30.9% of managed account users run a distinct managed account strategy for clients in decumulation.
56.8% rate the intergenerational wealth transfer as very or extremely important to growth, yet only 25.8% have a strategy for engaging the next generation.
In each case, advisers have identified the opportunity clearly and correctly. In each case, there is a gap between intent and infrastructure. This is the most useful finding in From Adoption to Advantage in 2026 report, which surveyed 430 Australian financial advisers, of which 282 use managed accounts, alongside four in-depth interviews with practice principals. From these responses we’ve collated some great findings about managed account growth, where the opportunities lie, and why the distinction matters if you’re weighing up how deeply to commit across your range of clients.
Adoption is settled, so the question has changed
Managed accounts are used by 66% of advice practices, up from 58% in 2025 and beyond that, adoption rises consistently with team size, from 61.8% among practices with one to five advisers, to 78% among those with 11 or more. And the market has moved with them - managed account assets reached $292.9bn as at December 2025, a 25.8% increase in a single year, and are projected to exceed $470bn by 2030 according to the Institute of Managed Account Professionals and Milliman.
At that scale, the decision to adopt stops being a differentiator, what varies now is depth. Only 16% of managed account users hold more than three-quarters of client funds under management in managed accounts, and almost a third hold a quarter or less. That variation matters, because the reported benefits are not flat across our report sample. Practices with greater managed account allocations report stronger outcomes across several measures, and they report fewer gaps in what their provider delivers. We’ll come back to how much weight that pattern can carry.
Managed accounts buy capacity, and the evidence is consistent
On capacity, the research is clear - 77% of managed account users report a positive impact on their ability to take on more clients, with 29.4% describing that impact as significant. The open-ended responses provided explain why. Advisers describe the change as operational rather than investment related.
"The biggest change has been scalability. Managed accounts have significantly reduced the time spent on portfolio administration, rebalancing and implementing investment changes across clients."
"We can service more clients in less time."
One principal adviser interviewed for the research runs a single-adviser practice with around 210 ongoing clients, onboarding 40 to 50 new clients a year, with his entire client book in managed accounts. His account of the change is specific.
"Could you imagine, with a 200-client book that we have at the moment, with three staff, how do you reckon we go doing ROAs and trades? We just don't need that noise in our life. We just want to keep things simple. Because of the way that we structure portfolios and because of our processes with good support, I could see another 100 clients. Not too many issues, I don't think."
A second principal, part of a larger multi-practice brand, described the same shift in terms of time recovered.
"I don't build portfolios, so I'm able to service clients a lot quicker. Do my review meeting, do my ROA and make any changes if needed. But unless there's a significant change, I'm able to do the service and move on."
The ability to increase client capacity is clear, what happens next is not.
Capacity is not the same as growth
Business growth and revenue is the second weakest of the five commercial impact measures in the study, at 69.9% positive. It was only 'competitive differentiation’ that scored lower, at 59.9%, followed by 37.2% of users reporting managed accounts provide no impact on how they compete.
Read together, those two numbers describe a market where efficiency has become the baseline rather than the edge. When two in three practices have access to the same operational advantage, the advantage stops distinguishing anyone. The practices that appear to convert capacity into commercial results describe deliberate decisions rather than automatic ones. The clearest theme being a change in what the practice sells.
"It has helped us focus on our value proposition, being advice rather than investment capability, and has introduced high levels of efficiencies and reduced implementation errors."
"Managed accounts have shifted our competitive advantage from portfolio management to client experience."
For some practices, that decision has an explicit cost. The principal running his practice’s entire client book through managed accounts was direct about it.
"Your value proposition shouldn't be around your investing ability. Over the last three to five years, I don't have any bespoke portfolios anymore. I'm 100% SMAs. And if a client wants a bespoke portfolio, then I'm not the adviser for them."
Turning away prospective clients is a growth decision most practices would hesitate over. It’s also a reminder that the use of managed accounts didn’t produce this capacity on its own. The adviser changed what the practice offered, and he changed who it was for. The second principal quoted above appointed a practice manager in the year before his growth accelerated.
The decision around managed account usage creates the room, filling it is a management decision.
The next growth opportunity is taking shape
Two growth signals dominate how advisers describe their next few years and both are recognised almost universally, yet opportunity is still rife, for both practices and providers.
1. Retirement is the growth story almost every practice is telling
Three in four advisers (75.3%) rate the growing pool of retirees and pre-retirees as very or extremely important to their growth strategy over the next two to five years, with 27.4% going as far as extremely important. Capability though has not kept pace - 90% of practices have decumulation clients, yet only 30.9% of managed account users run a distinct managed account strategy for clients in the decumulation phase. Close to 60% apply the same approach to clients drawing down as to those still accumulating. Boutique practices are furthest behind at 25.7%, which is unsurprising given the capacity required to stand up a second investment program.
Advisers also highlighted that managed account providers have a lot of room for growth. More than half report at least a minor shortfall on all four retirement income needs measured. Sequencing risk management is the clearest weakness, with a combined shortfall of 56% and the highest moderate and significant gap responses of any need. That is a finding about the provider market more broadly, and it also comes with an important qualification: the shortfalls shrink sharply with managed account allocation depth. For those with the shallowest allocation (up to 25% of client FUM in managed accounts), 69.7% reported a gap in relation to sequencing risk, in comparison to 37.8% of users who have the greatest allocation to managed accounts. On tax-efficient drawdown planning it falls from 66.3% for the shallow allocators to 26.7% for those with large allocations.
2. The wealth handover is recognised, and most practices are still preparing
A clear majority of advisers (56.8%) rate the intergenerational wealth transfer as very or extremely important to their growth strategy, with only 3% dismissing it entirely. Conviction is strongest among large practices at 64.1% and among the deepest managed account allocators at 77.8%.
Only 25.8% of practices have a specific strategy for engaging the next generation of clients inheriting from their existing base. A further 52.8% intend to develop one, which leaves most practices aware of the opportunity but still at the starting line. The remaining 21.4% have no plans, which in most cases reflects competing priorities rather than disengagement.
The practices furthest ahead are building relationships before the money moves. Family-inclusive meetings are the most common approach, with estate planning conversations providing a natural reason to bring generations into the same room. Some are going further and redesigning the offer itself, using shorter, lower-cost entry points for clients who are not yet suited to a full ongoing service arrangement.
On the portfolio itself, advisers point to specific gaps rather than a broad failure. Digital engagement and reporting are the most commonly flagged shortfalls for younger investors at 57.8%, followed by responsible investment options at 55%. The fundamentals hold up better, with 60.6% seeing no shortfall at all in transparency of holdings. The same depth pattern appears here too - the digital engagement gap nearly halves between the shallowest and deepest allocators, from 69.7% to 40%.
What advisers are asking of providers now
When asked how advisers would structure their investment and advice operations if setting up today, 47.2% of managed account users would choose a single company across research, asset allocation, portfolio construction, compliance support and reporting, against the 40.8% who currently operate that way.
That shift comes almost entirely from practices running everything in house, a group that falls from 17.4% today to 11.7% by preference. The practices most likely to say they would do it differently are the ones who built their own investment function and lived with it.
Provider expectations have sharpened alongside that. Half of managed account users have refined their due diligence process as their use of managed accounts has matured, and the criteria have broadened well beyond performance. As one respondent described it, managed accounts are now treated as "both an investment solution and a business infrastructure decision".
Andrew Heaven, Practice Principal at Wealth Partners, ran a formal request for proposal process before appointing a provider, and his advice to other practices is about process discipline rather than product choice.
"Be very clear on what you're looking for and what the objectives are. Make sure that whoever is tendering for your work is actually answering the questions or the problems that you're looking to solve, and that it's absolutely anchored in your investment philosophy rather than fashions and trends."
Where this leaves you
Four key learnings are worth taking from this year's research.
Managed accounts will give your practice capacity, and the evidence for that is strong and consistent across 282 users. But what you do with that additional capacity is where the opportunity lies. The practices reporting the strongest commercial results made deliberate choices about what they sell, who they serve and how the practice is staffed.
Efficiency alone is no longer a point of difference. With two in three practices now using managed accounts and only 59.9% reporting any impact on how they compete, the open opportunity sits in what a practice is doing differently with the efficiency gains.
Retirement and the wealth transfer are the clearest opportunities for growth. Both are recognised by a large majority of advisers, and both are backed by strategy in only a quarter to a third of practices. Whichever way a practice chooses to respond, the gap between recognising the opportunity and executing the strategy is the work I’m sure we’ll be seeing over the next few years.
Managed account allocation changes what advisers see. Across meeting retirement income needs, younger investor preferences and meeting due diligence requirements, practices with deeper managed account allocations report fewer gaps consistently. Some of that is genuine capability and some is familiarity. Either way, the practices getting the most from managed accounts are the ones that stopped treating them as one option in the mix.
If you're weighing up how deeply to commit to managed accounts within your practice, or reassessing a provider relationship, contact the Zenith team for a no-obligation conversation.
