A future-ready family office is small, highly sophisticated and tech-enabled. It sets its purpose before it buys anything, chooses technology against clear requirements, uses AI to take process-heavy work off its people, and makes deliberate decisions about where its data goes.
Those are my outtakes from a conversation with Christian Lindvall, global commercial director at Performativ, on their Wealth Insider podcast. Watch the full interview on YouTube: How AI and Technology Are Rewiring Family Offices.
Why does the family office market need ecosystem building?
When I started Simple in 2016, it quickly became clear that this market is hyper-fragmented. There was no real best practice and no ready-to-use technology, so we started publishing open guides and resources and mapping the solution providers as we went.
Ecosystem building is close to a textbook answer to fragmentation. In practice, it means bringing together the players who are supposed to work together: service providers, knowledge providers and advisors. It means mapping who's who, what they can and can't do, and highlighting the good work already happening. Once that map exists, an industry grows and matures faster.
Part of the fragmentation is that providers often don't sit on the same side of the table as the families. Talent also moves back and forth: bankers get hired into family offices, and family office staff get hired back into banks. It's a bit like the agency world, where a client poaches you in-house and later you end up back at an agency.
What do new family offices overlook when they set up?
When people think about setting up a family office, they think about investments. But the investment side is usually well supported. What gets overlooked is the first step: setting the purpose and direction of the office.
Why does the office exist? What will it provide, and who will it serve? The strongest offices we've seen have a clear vision that the family members, the principals and the key employees agree on. That vision also tells you what the office is not.
The other gap is talent. Many first hires come from banking, finance or consulting, but the people-focused skills an office needs are often missing. There is a lot of demand for new offices and not much talent coming into the space, along with too little upskilling and too few courses, largely because best practice has been scarce.
Why is technology adoption in family offices still slow?
Interest is clearly rising. One signal we track is search interest in the term “family office software”, which barely existed when Simple started. Adoption is increasing too, but from a very low baseline.
Buying cycles are long and slow, largely because of a lack of professionalisation on the office side. Offices often don't know what their requirements are or what solutions exist, and finding a solution may not feel pressing.
Setup is also rarely digital. Founders coming from banking, law, accounting or investing bring their own tools, which usually means Word documents, emails and long back-and-forth threads. Consultants map out strategy in PowerPoint templates. Banks' family office services teams don't use any real technology for the setup itself.
Everyone thinks first of a portfolio management or accounting system, but a lot of operational work gets overlooked. A new office needs the basics: a workplace suite such as Google or Microsoft, plus task, project and document management.
The drivers are both push and pull. On the push side there are next-generation owners used to app-based digital hygiene, new ways of investing that require technology, more complex global families and new wealth coming online. On the pull side there is the promise of AI, which has made a lot of people curious about what technology can do for them.
Where does technology already improve family office decisions?
It starts with the basics. If your governance documents are kept in a living format, they can be referenced when you make investment decisions, for example to check that a decision is in line with your investment policy statement.
We've also seen tools uncover mistakes and find cost savings. This industry is opaque, and what something costs can be hidden on page 79 of an investment report. Technology is far more effective at surfacing those inefficiencies than people reading documents by hand.
How should a family office think about AI?
AI is different from earlier technology shifts because it touches every part of the organisation. Change programmes since the 1960s have used the people, process and technology framework, and AI affects all three at once. People are not replaced but supported and augmented by agents. Processes become workflows. And on the technology side, AI is becoming the infrastructure itself.
“We as people, we're not meant to file emails and folders, right? So why have we been doing this for many years?”
The promise of AI is that it takes care of the heavy lifting behind the scenes, such as process-heavy, task-heavy work and automations. That leaves people free for the conversations and time together that client-focused roles are really about.
We are still very early. Most family offices we see are curious and eager to understand what AI means, and some are running small experiments, but this isn't full-scale adoption yet. We need to be careful about how we go into this transition.
What are the data and privacy risks of AI for family offices?
Since ChatGPT launched, the thing I keep coming back to is data. We don't really know what happens when we put our data into a tool like ChatGPT. You can read the terms of use and privacy policies, but who actually has access when you drop all your Excel files in?
There are two sides to this. Powerful open-source models can now run on your own infrastructure, so in theory you can process your own data without handing it to someone else. At the same time, Google and Microsoft have already gone AI-first in their workplace tools, which already have access to your email and documents. Our thinking on how to adopt AI without giving up control is in The Simple View on Trusted AI for Family Offices.
“Is privacy still a luxury that can be bought or is privacy dead?”
I don't know the answer yet. But every office needs to make a conscious decision about it.
How should a new family office choose its technology?
We treat new family offices almost like startups. Most come to us looking for technology, but there is pre-work to do first: why are we here, what are we trying to solve, what services do we provide, and who are we going to hire? Is the setup being driven by the principal or by key hires? All of that has to be translated into the eventual technology choices.
“I think the biggest mistake is not starting with a clear set of requirements.”
Too many offices start with referrals from friends, which turn into demos, without having set their requirements. Clear requirements narrow the set of providers worth considering and make the whole buying process easier. Our guide on how to evaluate family office software, the Family Office Software & Technology Report, and the Simple directory are good starting points once you know what you need.
There's a saying I really hate: “if you've seen one family office, you've seen one family office.” There is plenty of best practice out there. Don't reinvent the wheel and don't over-customise. Find comparable offices that operate and provide services the way you'd like to, take inspiration from them, and build from there.
Offices are often guarded because they are constantly being sold to. But in the right context, with a targeted conversation, they are usually open to sharing. Talking to offices outside your close-knit group is a good idea.
How are families redefining success?
Success is no longer purely financial. Protecting and growing wealth is still key, but if an office is operational in nature, it can also be measured on whether it runs effectively, whether it is cost-effective, whether it delivers the right services, and even whether it gives the principal ease of life. Impact and values alignment matter too, with knock-on effects for how key staff are compensated.
Whether you call it ESG or impact investing, I think of it as values-aligned investing: asking what you value and supporting your investment decisions through those values. Some frameworks have what I'd call a branding issue, but the shift is global, much like people asking where their food and clothes come from. I don't think it's going away.
It's also not only a generational story. Next-generation owners drive some of it, but so does new wealth. More wealth is being created than ever, and entrepreneurs from the startup world are used to setting a purpose, a direction and values, and they bring that into their offices.
What will a family office look like in five to ten years?
Probably small, highly sophisticated and tech-enabled. It will be intentional and impactful with its investment decisions, investing towards the world its family wants to live in. Underneath sits an AI-enabled layer of technology infrastructure that powers the hard work and lets a small team stay agile and do its best work.
What's next for Simple?
“Simple is really focused on supporting family offices with the agentic transition.”
It's a natural evolution of our technology work. One role that has been overlooked is the family office CEO. Accounting and investment platforms serve the CFO and the CIO, but CEOs haven't had a platform that helps them see around corners and connect with other offices. That's where we're focusing: the right technology, ecosystem connectivity and tools for the CEO.
Watch my full conversation with Christian on Wealth Insider.
