TL:DR

• Wealth is being rebundled – single-product fintech models aren’t enough; platforms must expand offerings to grow and retain customers.

• Content is now a core product – financial education and media build trust, confidence, and engagement across all wealth tiers.

• AI is accelerating the shift – advice and education are merging through conversational interfaces, embedding content directly into wealth experiences.

From unbundling to rebundling

We’ve had the great unbundling in wealth. Now comes the great rebundling. And content is foundational to that bundle. 

Over the last decade, we’ve seen fintechs like Nutmeg, Plum, and Freetrade unbundle traditional wealth services into single-product offerings with lower fees and better UX. 

But one product isn’t enough. Acquiring customers in this space is expensive, and these businesses have largely relied on VC money to subsidise growth. If you can’t reduce CAC, you have to increase LTV. And that means expanding your product offering. 

Retention is also a factor. By making your customers more sophisticated with one product, you create customers who want to do more. If you don’t have the product set to cater to that demand, you’ll lose them. 

Why rebundling is inevitable

Rebundling, then, is both an economic necessity and a response to increasing customer sophistication. 

Take Robinhood. It started as a commission-free trading app for a younger crowd, and it’s now a platform offering credit cards, savings vehicles, crypto, wealth management, and, most recently, tokenised stock trading and its own chain. 

This is driven by commercial necessity. There’s only so much trading Gen Z can do so, if Robinhood wants to grow, it has to monetise in other ways. And as the product set and investors become more sophisticated, so too must the content.

Financial sophistication across segments

It used to be that financial literacy scaled linearly with wealth: more capital meant more sophistication. 

That is no longer true. The average 27-year-old knows what options trading is. They understand different asset classes. They have a nuanced approach to risk. What they lack is the capital, contacts, and access to leverage that knowledge. 

So, whether you’re talking to under-affluent, emerging-affluent, mass-affluent, HNWs or UHNWs, you’re dealing with a pretty similar level of sophistication. 

The only thing that differs is the amount of capital they have and their expectations of service. You need content tailored to user sophistication across segments, not just wealth tiers. 

Content as a core product

Content – now a product – is being bundled up with the rest. 

Robinhood has already acted on this. In 2023, it created its own media company, Sherwood, building on the success of its Snacks newsletter, which had 40 million subscribers as of 2023. 

This kills two birds with one stone. It helps earn revenue from those engaging with its content and advertisers, while also building credibility with and educating existing and future customers – priming them to use more of Robinhood’s products. It monetises attention and improves acquisition and upsell. 

Finimize (who we love working with) followed a similar path. What began as a consumer financial newsletter and mobile app now realises the power of content not just in educating investors but getting them to act in more sophisticated ways. Often what their audiences lack is not knowledge, but the confidence to act on it. 

AI: Content and advice converge

And now, we have AI. Chat has made content part of the product itself. ChatGPT has not only got people asking more questions, they now expect more from the answers. Not just an answer, but an action. 

We’re entering a future where instead of learning which individual stocks to pick and trying to time the market, you simply say, “Hey, help me invest £1,000” and an AI agent will start prompting you with the sorts of questions you might be asked by a human financial adviser. The education is embedded in the interface, not delivered separately; it’s content that ties technology to advice. 

At our sister investment firm, Basis, we’re already seeing founders building like this. Rebundling is happening out of necessity. And as part of it, there’s a new proximity between content and capital. 

Those who want to own the future of wealth already know this, and we’re excited to build with them.

Ready to explore the future of wealth?

If you’re a founder, investor, or wealth manager navigating this new era of rebundling, we’d love to talk. Get in touch with HSG to explore how content can become a competitive advantage in your strategy.