In the WealthTech Talks interview series, we interview senior executives from leading wealth management firms, solution providers, and WealthTech influencers to learn more about them, their journey, their perspectives on the market, and how they see the future of wealth management.
For this issue of WealthTech Talks, we caught up with Tom Williams, CEO and Co-founder of Point, a London-based fintech providing critical data infrastructure to investment managers looking for innovative and AI-powered solutions to scale their operations.
In this interview, Williams shared his insight into current versus future state operating models. Williams also shared his views on applying AI at an enterprise level.
Could you provide a brief introduction to your business?
Point is a specialist team of investment professionals, technologists, and data scientists. We are a team with experience managing investment portfolios, building modern investment technology, and supporting the growth of investment businesses, and that experience has directly shaped how the Point platform has been designed and delivered today.
Our Investment Data Intelligence (IDI) platform transforms investment, client, and market data into a governed, AI-ready strategic asset. From Day One, we have been focused on a simple but difficult challenge common across the industry: turning complex, siloed investment data into a governed, trustworthy asset that can power analytics, reporting, and AI.
In the wealth management sector, what types of clients do you primarily work with and target?
The Point IDI platform has been designed to provide value to wealth managers of all sizes and serving all sectors. From sophisticated single and multi-family offices to firms scaling up, as well as institutions looking to transform their businesses through the effective deployment of AI.
Because the Point platform is focused solely on providing the investment data foundation a wealth manager needs (we don’t do workflow and process!), Point can help any investment manager scale efficiently, improve data confidence, and become genuinely data-first. We work hands-on with some of the most ambitious investment managers around, with clients in the UK, Switzerland, Europe, the Middle East, and the US.
Why do your existing and target clients choose to work with you? What makes your solutions relevant and distinct from your competitors?
If you lift the lid on the operating model of almost any investment manager, you see the same thing. Multiple core systems – each with their own Books of Record and Systems of Engagement – surrounded by a constellation of spreadsheets and DIY analytical tools used to fill the gaps.
The real glue holding it all together is a set of manual, high-risk, unscalable processes. We’ve seen this repeated time and time again, from small family offices to some of the largest global institutions.
This operating model prevents scalability, slows decision making, and limits a firm’s ability to drive analytics, reporting, and operational efficiency. And now it’s preventing managers from applying AI effectively at enterprise level.
Point is the investment data orchestration layer that sits between Books of Record and Systems of Engagement, and increasingly AI orchestration.
It embeds data dexterity at the heart of an organisation and provides the AI-ready data that AI agents/orchestrators need to operate in context, as well as driving intelligence for users and efficiencies across many functional areas.
There are solutions in the market that address parts of this challenge, but unlike Point:
- they often mix data dexterity with broader ‘workflow and process’ capabilities (OMS, PMS, CRM, CLM Trade and Execution etc). Whereas we focus solely on the data.
- they require major transformation programmes that interrupt core BAU; whereas Point is designed to sit alongside and complement existing systems, allowing managers to evolve their operating model without disrupting BAU.
What's next for your business? Can you share the firm's current focus and future plans, such as product development, market expansion, and strategic goals?
We will remain focused on our core mission of turning complex investment, client, and market data into a strategic AI-ready asset. To that end, we will continue to invest in the three core elements of our platform: our independent multi-asset IBOR, extensible bi-temporal data warehouse, and powerful investment analytics engine. These, coupled with our extensive open API and MCP architecture, allow our clients to build the operating platforms they need at their stage of growth.
We will also be expanding our suite of AI-powered capabilities (Point AI) built on the Point IDI platform – from deterministic client-ready briefings to automated document ingestion and AI-ready data integrations with third party AI applications.
Based on your experience in the wealth management sector, what key opportunities and challenges do you foresee for firms today and in the next three years?
It is often (and perhaps always) said we are entering a period of unprecedented change, but I think this time around it is true. The AI revolution will change society, and our sector, in a myriad of ways over the coming years.
It also represents a unique opportunity to build wealth businesses that respond to what clients need in a highly efficient and effective way at a far lower cost base than was previously necessary; while at the same time ensuring that person to person relationships, judgement, and care remain at the centre of the manager-client relationship. Those wealth managers that can build the operating models to realise this opportunity are those that are likely to win.
The challenge is how to get from where businesses are now (siloed data and tech stacks) to where they need to be, both in terms of tech, data, process, and above all people. This is not simply about another ‘tech transformation’; this is about the adoption of a fundamentally different way of building wealth businesses focused on agility and flexibility.
To get this right you must think Data First and get your foundation right. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I?!
About Point
Point is the Investment Data Intelligence (IDI) platform used by wealth and asset managers to power analytics, reporting and AI. The cloud-native platform aggregates, reconciles and enriches investment, client and market data, providing firms with the critical data infrastructure needed to build scalable, modern, data-first operating models. Point supports clients across the UK, Switzerland, Europe, the Middle East and the US.
Find out more here.
About the WealthTech Talks Interview Series
Read the latest editions in the series below!
- Sharon Clapp, Operations Director of Investor in Customers - click here to read the interview
- Robert O’Boyle, Chief Revenue Officer of PureFacts Financial Solutions - click here to read the interview
- Rob Flatley, CEO of TS Imagine - click here to read the interview
