At Objectway’s recent OWIN26 customer conference, The Wealth Mosaic’s founder Stephen Wall hosted a panel that brought together professionals from across the industry to examine a central tension facing managers of wealth organisations today – how to deliver both operational efficiency and organisational resilience in an environment defined by rising complexity, cost pressure, and accelerating technological change, as organisations seek to scale.

“There’s a tension between operational efficiency and resilience,” said conference chair Leda Glyptis as she introduced the panel. “They sometimes feel at odds, but we don’t get to choose one or the other – we have to do both at the same time.”

Exploring that theme, Wall chaired a panel including Standard Bank Group's head of offshore investments Charles Harper, Nicola Morrison, operations director at Isle of Man investment services firm Ramsey Crookall, PwC partner Mauro Panebianco, and Alberto Cuccu, COO International at Objectway.

Among the practical insights for wealth firms seeking scale and transformation:

• Start with the foundations: integrated systems and clean data are non-negotiable prerequisites for scale.
• Think in terms of operating models, not systems: wealth management technology must align with how a wealth management business actually runs.
• Leverage partners strategically: ecosystems are essential for speed and capability.
• Balance standardisation with differentiation: adopt fast, customise where it matters.
• Commit to execution: transformation requires sustained focus and organisational alignment.

Scaling the operating model

Wall opened the discussion by situating it within the broader context of transformation across the industry – highlighting “scalability, processes, technology, and infrastructure” as the underlying opportunities that can drive change in wealth management operations.

Critical to the transformation of any wealth management business is scalable technology. Harper described how Standard Bank is expanding beyond its traditional high-net-worth (HNW) focus into Africa’s growing mass-affluent segment – a shift that requires a fundamentally different operating model. As the bank seeks to grow from around 3,500 to between 50,000 and 60,000 clients, “We need a system that will allow us that scalability,” he said, as well as one that will allow the bank to launch new products quickly and cost-effectively.

Scalability is not just about adding new tools or “incrementally changing a legacy system”, Harper added. It’s also about rethinking the entire operating model, and how different service models can coexist.

Morrison reinforced this point from Ramsey Crookall’s perspective as a boutique, but globally distributed investment firm navigating growth and operational pressure. She said her firm’s journey highlighted the importance of building foundational infrastructure before pursuing expansion. Initially operating with a single system across its front and back office, Morrison said Ramsey Crookall encountered scaling constraints. As the business expanded, inefficiencies in the back office led to increasing administrative burden and increasing headcount to deal with it.

The turning point came with a shift towards a more modular, integrated infrastructure. By implementing a client portal, CRM tools, and streamlined processes, the firm achieved significant gains – including onboarding that was three times quicker than before. Those efficiencies enabled strategic reinvestment, allowing the firm to invest in more business development professionals who directly supported growth.

Morrison said the use of data and digital engagement were also transforming the way firms interacted with their clients, including by offering round-the-clock access to portfolios through client portals. She noted that enabling third-party advisers to place trades and build models can enhance a firm’s capabilities beyond its internal teams – improving efficiency and client relationships, as well as supporting resilience.

A theme of the panel was the broader shift in wealth management away from purely in-house solutions and toward ecosystem-based models where external partners contribute specialised expertise. “Collaborating with Objectway, which understands our business and has done for a decade, has been a huge success factor – because we’ve involved them so much in our operations area. It’s important that we keep evolving with them,” Morrison said.

Speaking from Objectway’s perspective, Cuccu argued that, as no two organisations are alike, the solutions they engage must be tailored accordingly. He said Objectway approached this through what he called “solution design” – first understand the client’s target operating model, then design solutions to match that objective.

“We have to meet our customers where they are,” he said. “We must understand their business and their objectives, design the solution, and use our incremental and composable approach to progressing that evolution, and then continue this evolution over time – which means new products, new services, new jurisdictions.” Although the underlying trends such as digitalisation and efficiency are consistent, their application varies depending on scale and complexity.

The wider context for wealth management transformation is the shifting competitive landscape, Panebianco observed. The European wealth industry is under pressure from multiple forces – increased competition, regulatory complexity, and consolidation. These forces are driving firms toward more scalable and efficient structures, he said. He pointed to strategic responses already underway including simplification of organisational structures, selective outsourcing to convert fixed costs into variable costs, greater use of data and AI, and platform-based operating models.

On AI specifically, which he called “an enabler, a facilitator, and a turbo, that we need to accept because it will change the way we do business,” he predicted that those who did not come around to the widespread adoption of AI tools would eventually find themselves outside of the industry.

A further issue raised during the discussion was how to balance standardisation with customisation. Cuccu said the sequencing of transformation was crucial – that firms must first establish a solid foundation through standardised capabilities before focusing on the customisations that allow them to differentiate. “It’s important to first adopt the core capabilities, rather than focusing on the final stage and missing the foundation that can support it.”

That makes it important to accelerate adoption, using configurable platforms to quickly achieve baseline functionality, while reserving time and resources for strategic differentiation. “We want to speed up the adoption, and then differentiate – if you spend years building something that works, when are you going to differentiate?” This approach allows firms to accelerate their time-to-market while still maintaining flexibility in client experience, product innovation, and service models. It also aligns with industry trends towards platform-based architectures, where standardised cores support configurable front-end differentiation.

Particularly in the European context, scale is both a necessity and a challenge, Panebiacno said. He contrasted Europe’s relatively limited investment capacity with the enormous technological spending seen in the United States and China. Europe has strengths of its own, he argued, including invention and flexibility – but there also needs to be consolidation. “Firms need to invest more, consolidate more,” he said, allowing firms to combine their resources to achieve the scale needed for meaningful and globally competitive investment and innovation.

For organisations navigating these changes, trust and communication in their partnerships is essential, Harper said, noting that Standard Bank had “gone through a few iterations” of finding the right counterpart. “Understanding and finding a partner that understands your requirements, understands your business, understands how you want to service your clients, is really important.”

“The stakes are high,” Glyptis said as she summed up the panel. “The good news is that there are partners to share the journey. You don’t need to be an expert in everything – but you do need experts to hold your hand as you go on this journey.”

Want to read more coverage of OWIN26? You can read our full event recap here.