I’ve been thinking about HENRYs recently. 

Not the Henry who asked me to marry him - I was 8, he was 5 - although he does cross my mind occasionally.

HENRYs, short for ‘High Earners Not Rich Yet’, was coined as a label by Shawn Tully in 2003. It’s not new. This cohort of consumers who earn substantial salaries (in the UK typically defined as over £100,000 per year, in the US between $375,000 and $750,000) but still feel financially stretched has long been a topic of curiosity within Financial Services.

On paper, it seems fairly clear cut. With chunky present day incomes and the prospect of longer term affluence, plus the increasing need for credit lines, mortgages and insurance - there’s a lot to like for Financial Service providers.

However, the reality up to this point has been a bit murkier. 

Traditional financial advice models have often seen these customers fall through the cracks. These individuals are often building increasingly complex financial lives, but have not yet built up sufficient liquid assets to tempt a conventional financial advisor.

For many, the move to digital has made the experience worse, not better. 

Many moons ago, a banker in a branch knew you through the different stages of your life, helping you spot relevant support that you otherwise might have missed. Up to this point, digital platforms have largely failed to do the same. 

The world’s leading financial institutions hold a wealth of data on our income, spending, savings and investments, but most still lack the data capabilities to track and anticipate when someone’s financial life shifts. Organisational and technical silos mean that even if the data does deliver, teams within banks haven’t always been willing or able to seamlessly shift a customer from one division to another. 

Providers are failing to create compelling end-to-end propositions that reward consolidating your financial life in one place. At the same time, signing up to new platforms has never been easier. The result is a customer who is frequently left to work it out for themselves, shaping their own financial system across a plethora of accounts and platforms.

But perhaps now things are about to change.

Market dynamics are shifting the attention back onto HENRYs. With digital challengers in multiple geographies now firmly established and consistently profitable, the emphasis is shifting to broadening their product suite, creating new revenue streams and winning new customers.

Revolut are stealing all of the headlines. Earlier this year they announced they had been granted the relevant regulatory permissions to build out “leveraged products, private wealth services and managed portfolio solutions” in the UK, with the FT reporting that their focus will be on customers with £500,000 to deposit.

On the surface, it’s not a HENRY play. But in the context of their successful rollout of subscription tiers, it’s more interesting. The existing Metal and Ultra tiers have challenged the norms around what ‘premium’ account bundles include, blending third party benefits with insurance and discounted fees across savings and investments. It’s not too big a leap to imagine what iterated tiers could look like in the future, as additional, more complex financial products get added to the roster.

The other juggernaut in this space is Nubank. As we recently covered on our live episode of our Fintech Insider podcast, they’ve just announced their launch in the US. 

The majority of their phenomenal growth in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia has come from mass market adoption and bringing people into the banking system, with a focus on removing cost and complexity from everyday banking. 

But they’re also leading the way in showing how to identify changes in customers’ circumstances and reward loyalty. Their Ultravioleta offering is an “exclusive experience for high-income clients who want the best benefits to further enhance their daily lives and travels”. Based on “credit analysis” rather than income or assets, they assess customers at the point of onboarding and also on an ongoing monthly basis to upgrade customers whose financial position has grown.

As if an increase in competition wasn’t enough to deal with, AI is also - surprise surprise - radically reshaping what a HENRY proposition could and should look like.

AI is fundamentally shaking up how financial advice services can be scaled. Anthropic recently rolled out ‘Claude for Financial Advisors’, claiming to integrate with existing tools to offer advisors “ready-made workflows for meeting prep, follow-ups, CRM updates and compliance checks”. In theory, the roll-out of AI should lower the ceiling for where financial advice becomes commercially viable to provide, and HENRYs should be the audience that most stands to benefit.

With the advice landscape in flux, NatWest Group in the UK have announced the completion of their £2.7 billion acquisition of Evelyn Partners, a move which they claim “transforms NatWest Group’s financial planning and investment management capabilities”. The spotlight will be on what happens next. AI is likely to be an essential component, with the bank having also recently launched voice-to-voice experiences which they claim will “allow customers to engage with complex information in a way that feels intuitive and interactive”.

The stakes are high for HENRYs in particular. The banking group’s private arm Coutts announced this year that the deposit customers will now need to open an account has increased, so those who don’t happen to have £3 million to hand will need to be rehomed elsewhere. 

But whilst banks are working out how to integrate AI into their offerings, HENRYs are getting  stuck in themselves and using AI directly to understand and manage their financial lives. 

In the UK, Lloyds’ Consumer Digital Index found by late 2025 that 56% of adults had already used AI to manage their money in the past 12 months, increasing to 75% amongst 25-34 year olds. It doesn’t seem too wild a prediction to assume that those numbers will have jumped again when the 2026 data is published. Those using AI clearly believe it is helping them to be more financially efficient, with perceived annual savings from following AI recommendations averaging at £399.

This, to me, is why HENRYs are such a fascinating and important group of customers right now. Will digital challengers make the product and brand permission leap from the ‘fun spending app’ of early adulthood, to the proactive partner who understands your financial trajectory and helps you accelerate it? Will established banks integrate AI fast enough to open up their existing advice and wealth capabilities to customers who really need them? And will any of it matter if AI platforms win over customers’ trust in the meantime?

These moments of significant change are precisely why 11:FS exists. We’re helping to reshape the fabric of Financial Services, working with ambitious businesses to understand customer Jobs To Be Done, craft differentiated journeys and experiences, and take the bold decisions needed to stand apart.

If you're looking to bring a wealth proposition to life, or improve upon an existing one, our award-winning experts are here to help through every phase. Get in touch today by emailing hello@11fs.com or find out more at 11fs.com/consulting