Asset management vs. wealth management: What’s the difference? (2025)

FAQs

Asset management vs. wealth management: What’s the difference? ›

Asset managers primarily work on growing their clients' assets to maximize returns. Wealth managers have a broader focus and offer a range of financial services and advice aimed at helping high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) manage their wealth and achieve their long-term financial goals.

While asset management focuses on investments, wealth management takes a much broader view. Wealth management is about looking at an individual or family's overall financial situation and taking steps to maximize their wealth and protect it down the line.

Though wealth managers only earn a slightly higher salary than asset managers, that difference may change with experience and good performance.

What is the difference between wealth and assets? Wealth is your overall financial picture that includes all your assets. An asset can be considered anything of value that can be converted into cash—it includes things like cash itself, real estate holdings, investments, and personal property.

So the main asset management vs wealth management difference is that asset management focuses specifically on the investment and growth of an individual's assets through personalised portfolio management and investment services, while wealth management includes a variety of services such as financial planning, estate ...

Any minimums in terms of investable assets, net worth or other metrics will be set by individual wealth managers and their firms. That said, a minimum of $2 million to $5 million in assets is the range where it makes sense to consider the services of a wealth management firm.

Asset management involves the balancing of costs, opportunities and risks against the desired performance of assets to achieve an organisation's objectives. Asset management also enables an organisation to examine the need for and performance of assets and asset systems at different levels.

At the Portfolio Manager level, earning potential is around $1.0 – $1.5 million per year.

By contrast, wealth management is much less competitive to get into. If you have good sales skills, you could break in with a middling GPA (3.0 – 3.5) and without a target school or great internships. Like any sales job, they hire lots of candidates because it's impossible to know in advance who will succeed.

What level of assets is considered wealthy? ›

According to Schwab's 2024 Modern Wealth Survey, Americans said that it takes an average net worth of $2.5 million to qualify a person as being wealthy, a bit of an uptick from $2.2 million in the surveys from 2022 and 2023. (Net worth is the sum of your assets minus your liabilities.)

Wealth managers at top Wall Street brokerages and wirehouses typically earn the highest salaries in the industry. Base salaries at these large national firms often start around $100,000 for junior roles and can exceed $300,000 for senior positions.

Some of the duties of a wealth manager include tax management, retirement planning (annuity plans), personal finance management, and insurance planning (term, health, endowment, unit-linked plans and more). Wealth managers are experts in specific fields of finance.

Asset management seeks to leverage an individual's investments so that the overall returns are maximized. Wealth management's focus is more holistic as it seeks to enhance and protect an individual's overall financial health over the long term.

Asset managers primarily work on growing their clients' assets to maximize returns. Wealth managers have a broader focus and offer a range of financial services and advice aimed at helping high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) manage their wealth and achieve their long-term financial goals.

In most cases, AMCs charge a fee that is calculated as a percentage of the client's total AUM. This asset management fee is a defined annual percentage that is calculated and paid monthly. For example, if an AMC charges a 1% annual fee, it would charge $100,000 in annual fees to manage a portfolio worth $10 million.

Asset management is the practice of buying, selling, and managing investments, commensurate with specific risk tolerances, to increase wealth over time. Asset management professionals perform this service for clients. They may also be called portfolio managers or financial advisors.

Wealth management (WM) or wealth management advisory (WMA) is an investment advisory service that provides financial management and wealth advisory services to a wide array of clients ranging from affluent to high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals and families.

While an asset manager allocates and actively/passively manages your investment, the financial advisor takes a more expansive outlook on one's wealth and how to ensure that you get the most out of it and not purely to earn investment returns.

What is the difference between asset and property management? Asset management involves increasing the total worth of an individual or company over time by buying, selling, and improving investments. In contrast, property management involves handling the daily operations of a property, including maintenance.