So, really, let’s start with where we are, where there’s sort of this big portion of family offices that have not digitised yet, whether that’s just the sort of struggling to resist sticking to Excel spreadsheets and Word documents. Why is this? Francois?

Francois Botha: Kyle. Yeah, it’s great to kick this off today. We’ve been running this technology review piece for over five years. When we started this, we started from the base that it’s difficult to find a good fit between a technology vendor and a family office, partly due to the many different types of family offices out there. There’s a fragmented industry and a lot of opacity in the industry as well. And that hasn’t become much easier over the last couple of years.

A lot of times, it’s because family office professionals need to select these solutions; it’s really difficult for them to find the right solution because they’ve never had to do this before. So that’s one of the reasons it’s becoming easier. We’re not the only ones that track the space in terms of digitisation. There are also players like Campden Wealth, a large research firm that has done this for many years, and they’re estimating that the digitalisation in the space is only about 25%, beyond just Excel and email. So, there’s still a big gap in terms of digitisation. I also think there’s a big question of whether everyone needs to go beyond Excel. And I think not necessarily. That’s not necessarily the case. But yeah, that’s at least from me.

Kyle McDonald: Perspective, maybe a bit of a question. Martin, are you beginning to see this change with next-gen? As you begin to see the generational shift in wealth, is there an increased appetite to adopt digital solutions?

Martin Stadler: I would say definitely. If we look at the typical patriarch, let’s say he may be going into his 70s and have another approach to dealing with his total wealth and his service provider. He may not be that much into transparency, and the PDF report one demands perfectly fulfils his need. However, if you see the family members, the young ones coming in and taking over responsibility, they’re used to having access day by day to all kinds of information. Therefore, having software in place that helps them to be better informed and make better decisions is just a natural step. But I would say it’s not only that generational shift within a family that leads here to more usage of tools; it’s also a shift in generation within the family office employees.

In most of the cases, the senior private banker, maybe close to his retirement, was there during the liquidity event. So, he became the trusted partner in building up the family office. Usually, this kind of personnel hasn’t had a high affinity to technology at that time, and maybe as well, the way they handle families’ wealth is more, okay, I’m there, I’m responsible for everything. I try to keep my position as well. And as we all know, as soon as you have software, a family is better involved. You have much more transparency about what’s going in the right direction or wrong direction. So, I would say the old generation of family officers has handled the way of aggregating and sharing data in a different way.

Let’s say a 40- to 45-year-old family officer coming in, maybe from the consultancy industry, is used to having supportive tools and using them in daily business in an intelligent way. So I think these are the two generational shifts that we will see, and I would say in the next three to five years, that’s going to be a big push in the software industry. So we will hopefully see in this pie chart how many are using Excel and shifting towards the other direction as well.

Kyle McDonald: Right. And maybe, Francois, you might actually be better placed to sort of answer this one. But do you see a big difference in the sort of professionalisation and the appetite for these digital tools with, say, single-family offices versus multifamily offices and this sort of move towards professionalisation or even by different regions?

Francois Botha: Right, sure. I think if we look at single versus multifamily offices, that’s kind of broadly putting everyone into these two buckets, but I guess the needs are very different. So, from the single-family office side, the need for technology might once again be more around reporting and managing operations. I think operating costs are increasing, especially from a people’s perspective. So, being able to gain efficiencies there is definitely helpful for a single-family office setup.

From a multifamily office perspective, it’s about scaling often. So it’s about a different set of tools that enables that and being able to provide these services more cost-effectively through the use of technology again. And I think so there are different needs and different tools to consider in those two areas.

But both sides, I think, like Martin said, is really driven about by this shift in mindset. Many entrepreneurs are coming from tech companies now seeing liquidity events. The expectations for technology is much different to the previous generation as well.

Kyle McDonald: Right. And Mark, family offices are really unique environments. Is there really a use case for introducing new tools, or is this something that vendors are just sort of, you know, pushing because it’s good, it’s shiny, and there’s a value proposition to potentially move?

Mark Tipsisch: No, I mean, it’s a real thing. I mean, you hit the nail on the head earlier where, you know, I kind of analogise a family office to an island. So you’re running 30 different businesses, accounting, budgeting and forecasting, investing, legal, tax and any number of activities that a family has going on inside the family office, and you’re doing it with eight to ten people on average. So, to be more efficient, scale and automate some of these activities, specifically around the accounting side and data aggregation, Right? So, Addapar, for instance, as well as the accounting budgeting and forecasting, can really help bring a lot of efficiency to the family office operating environment.

So you’re seeing it. I mean, it is real, but it is a slow process for a number of different reasons, mainly because you’re dealing with a ten-person firm right at the family office. And so they’re like, how is this going to disrupt me? Do we have the bandwidth to find a solution, implement it on board, and operate it, and how is that going to change us? So it’s there, it’s real, but it is, you know, you’re dealing with, for the most part, 10-person firms at, and you know, with these family offices.

Kyle McDonald: So, all right, and I guess, how does the technology work? What is the promise that it can deliver? Is it that you’re seeing these solutions really promising to move the dial quite significantly in terms of driving an increased sort of return on investment? Is it increasing sort of efficiency? What are the biggest use cases that you’re potentially seeing?

Mark Tipsisch: I think it’s all the above. So, in a family office environment, right? It’s a very complex environment, which is often the reason why a family starts a family office. There’s no; I would say a family office is the result of a market failure from external firms that can do it all under one roof for the most part. And so you’re trying to make an informed decision. And if it takes you two weeks to make that informed decision because you’re cobbling it all together on an Excel spreadsheet, right? Rather than having from like Addepar, right, Give you that holistic view with daily feeds and it can cut through, slice and dice through entities, then that’s going to be, it’s going to make your Family office platform, you know, much more efficient.

It’ll allow you as a family office executive to make more informed and better decisions for the family, which could be investment allocation, it could be budgeting and forecasting. So yeah, I mean, it is about efficiency.

Kyle McDonald: Yeah. Great. And maybe Francois, again, I have a question for you. So, suppose I’m a family office, and I’m thinking about some of the typical software and technology that I could begin to consider adopting as part of my tech stack. What are some of the typical archetype technologies that we see increasingly being adopted?
Francios Botha: Yeah, for sure, Kyle. Again, in the work we’re doing at Simple, we look at family offices as being almost like startups rather than institutional investors if we think about their needs. So, because most of the family offices that we often meet would be either at that starting point or at this inflexion point where they need to digitise or change their tech stack. So when you think about it from that perspective, it’s really kind of the basics. What technology stack should be run on, where do we store our data, how, and who do we hire? It’s the people process, technology culture piece. Right. So you’re shaping that culture, and you can start from any of these starting points. So, with that said, I think it’s the basics.

So when we look at the different technology solutions, it could be kind of, it’s normally a problem that we start this conversation with. So it could be around: we are looking at aggregating different sources, and we are actually more actively managing certain investor investments, and that’s kind of the management state; all we need to be reporting is So depending on what the primary need is, it could really span across those three sections, and it’s often kind of some considerations around data, some considerations around reporting that comes into play and the different users that would be actually using that. So whether it is mainly kind of the professional management, whether there’s kind of an owner involved, those would all influence what solutions you could be looking at.

Kyle McDonald: Right, that makes complete sense. So, I guess we have a question in the chat that may circle back to something we said earlier: Do single-family offices and multifamily offices face the same challenges and issues? Now, I can probably say that quite adamantly, yes and no. These are very different organisations. One is a lot more multi-stakeholder-driven. I’m not saying that a single-family office isn’t, but I think, you know, putting a sort of a tech and software lens. Again, is this something that you would say the use case is the same for, or are they vastly different? Maybe. Again, a question for you, Francois.

Francois Botha: I think, again, there’s an interesting shift that we’re seeing at the moment, and we’re still waiting to see how it plays out. Because of a lot of these, I think traditionally, if we think about a multifamily office, the idea is that it’s this commercial organisation and a large commercial first organisation. We’ve seen different versions of that multifamily office coming online in the last couple of years. So it could be shared services, or it could be something around a private multifamily office, just with a couple of closed groups of families sharing this multifamily office, and then single-family offices shifting to become multifamily offices as well. So that’s another interesting shift that we’re seeing. So the question, really, is if we look at all the challenges the same way, I think it depends on where they’re at in that journey.
So it could be that it’s a single family office today, but they might view different legs of the families as different families in the future. So that could bring those two need sets of a single family office versus a multifamily office closer together. But yeah, I guess they are definitely different from my perspective, different challenges. I don’t know what, maybe Martin or Mark has some other insights on that.

Martin Stadler: Yeah, the multifamily office is, let’s say, usually commercially driven, as you mentioned already. Therefore, technology is usually a big part of the value proposition. How do you want to position yourself as a multifamily office towards potential clients? If you have a sexy tool or app that you can use, of course, you can reach the younger entrepreneur as a client more easily than through traditional one-time private banking. So I think there is really a strategic decision. We need this in this service, and we want to have it in a digital way. So we search for a tech vendor who can offer us this solution.

On the single-family office side, which problem do we want to solve in the current setup? Where do we want to get better for us as a family? Then, the decision is not economically driven. So they will most of the time look to the Rolls-Royce solution, the best solution to really cope with the current situation. So, the softer project itself, if I may call it like this, is driven by different aspects, but nonetheless, it starts for both sides with a clear, I would say, having a workshop or a roadmap. What are the needs that we normally want to fulfil with the software project? You’re talking about $50,000 and above, and this is an investment which has to be really well balanced, and it’s going to succeed as well.

Kyle McDonald: Yeah, and I guess there’s that inflexion point for a lot of single-family offices that have begun to open up to multifamily. Can they use the same operating team to drive efficiencies and reach scale by adopting digital solutions to increase their ability to provide service? I guess there’s that option as well. But let’s talk a little bit about data.

So obviously, you know, we live in a data-driven world. These models that we sort of see in the sort of large language models out in the world all sort of require data. Data privacy, data security, and all sorts of key topics. What does data really mean for family offices, and why is it important? Maybe a question. I’ll start with you, Mark, and feel free.

Mark Tipsisch: Yeah, thank you, Kyle. Great question. Data for family offices specifically is not very provocative. It’s usually centred around the accounting transaction data for one. The other side of it, which is interrelated, is the investment portfolio data and allocations and the ability to cut through that complexity. So, if you know, I don’t want to use the word typical family office, but a lot of family offices will have, you know, dozens of trusts, and they’ll combine those to achieve scale. Right. And invest as a single partnership. So the issue becomes cutting through the transparency of those and understanding what’s being held right where. So, are we holding Apple in this partnership? If so, what does the allocation look like for each of those underlying trusts across all partnerships?

So that becomes, you know, that’s one of those things that Addepar and systems like Addepar can solve for. And so for me, the data becomes allocation data and then on the other side is accounting data, which is cash flow, you know, budgeting and forecasting.

Kyle McDonald: Great. I guess if we think a little bit more about family offices trying to become data-driven, and this is obviously something we’ve covered in the past, Francois, but if you’re thinking about that generational shift again, how can family offices begin to aggregate that data and move towards managing and effectively trying to glean insights from that data today?

Francios Botha: Yeah, I mean, I think the data and knowledge piece goes kind of hand in hand, and I think this is where most of you are hinting at in terms of data and AI. Kyle, I think there’s an interesting part where we are thinking about how the data that Mark just explained around investment Data and accounting data. How does that mix with our knowledge within the family office and our view of the world, and how does our investment thesis come together with data about the family? That’s another aspect that could potentially play into this. And it’s the role of the people that up until now to make sense of all of this holistically almost.

And I think the promise of AI is really that agents and AI tooling would make sense of that data and knowledge and people all at once to provide insights. And I think this is kind of the question: what do we need to do today to prepare and kind of protect the data in the right way to be able to use these types of tools in the future? And I think that’s a topic that I’ve at least heard quite a bit from family office professionals just thinking about that data aspect. There are unique intricacies in terms of data security here; where do you store it, and how do you provide access to that? And I think we’re just at the beginning of understanding what that means.

And I think, you know, again, different regions have different kind of legislation around this again and different views on data. Again, I know the Swiss Martin, you guys have a very specific view on data there.

Martin Stadler: I grew up 20 years with Swiss banking secrecy. So let’s say we have a special education on that one. But in the context of wealthy families and their data, I mean, at the end of the day, their privacy and, with that, their data is the biggest asset they have. If you have 100 million in a bank account, okay, nice, but you want to protect your privacy. And with all kinds of bankable and non-bankable assets that you have or you build up, of course, you’re dealing with more and more service providers, and somehow keeping the data together and sharing the data only on a need-to-know basis is something very crucial. And besides just, let’s say, having numbers and documents, it’s also the soft data that is important for a family, especially in the transition of generations.

So, let’s say the 60-year-old wealth owner passes away tomorrow without having properly documented all of the direct investments that he has made. Or, let’s say the most obvious case is that he started with crypto, but nobody knows the password, the backup keys, etc. Therefore, this is also a trigger in discussion with families nowadays, who believe that using software to aggregate and standardise data is a very important pillar for such a decision. You can see it a little bit like investment software or family software, which is like CRM for your total wealth. So if you have made a private equity direct investment, you have all the related documents, you have the telephone number, you have all the, let’s say, in between lines, negotiated topics for the future.
And that’s super precious to know and to share and to keep in a safe place for the next generation.
Kyle McDonald: All right. And I guess thinking a little bit more about some of the other sort of key unique data pieces that a family office would want to leverage to sort of generate insight in the future. Mark, do you have anything that comes to mind? And again, I realise this is a bit of an out-of-field, left-field question, Mark.

Mark Tipsisch: Yeah, I mean, I think so. I get a lot. I’ve been getting a lot of questions from family office heads and family office executives: Hey, where’s AI for family offices at this point? They’re really looking at it for all the information I said a few minutes ago. But part of it is that they’re also looking for it to solve some pain points. And what are these pain points when it comes to family office tech? The family office tech is situated in fragmented silos. Right. So you’ve got a bunch of different systems that don’t really talk to each other and are being consulted and reporting the accounting. I think it’s getting better, but it’s not there yet. And then you’ve got all this qualitative softer data, and they’re looking for it. And I don’t know if this is answering your question.

They’re looking for AI to link all these together so they don’t have to cobble it together on an Excel spreadsheet, even if they have these systems in place. And so that’s kind of where I see where they’re looking at it, looking at AI to help solve it. I don’t think AI, in my opinion, is going to come through the wealth management channel first rather than the quasi-institutional, which is the family office. So you’ll start to see the larger kinds of tech platforms out there that not only serve wealth management but also family office adoption of AI. And so it’s going to be interesting to see how much more efficient family office will become over the next two to three to four to five years.

Kyle McDonald: Right. And maybe a bit of a follow-up question on that. So you mentioned obviously heads of family offices beginning to ask this question. You know, the market is bubbly and Exciting around this, beginning to understand, A, you know, what. What are my data challenges and opportunities? But then B, how can I begin to actually leverage that to drive efficiencies? Are you seeing a difference when it comes to the types of family offices that are asking for these things? Are these family offices quite mature in their data journey, or are they quite nascent family offices that have just sort of started the process of becoming family offices? Where are you seeing demand?

Mark Tipsisch: Yeah, it’s really the style and the preference of how they do things. Right. So, we have family offices that are pure allocators and might not necessarily care about leveraging all the data and the insights that can be gained from the data. And then where I think most of the family officers that are asking about this are coming from is that they look like hedge funds, right? They may have been a hedge fund return capital, or they may have a large liquid portfolio, and they brought in a CIO type to do a slight, you know, slightly more active trading directly. That’s where I see most family members that are asking about this. Right.

It becomes the data for them because they’re, you know, it’s them and like one or two or three analysts, and they’re focused on, you know, sourcing the best investment ideas, not necessarily trying to harvest all the data, but the data can certainly help them. So, that’s where I see it coming from. Depending on the style of preference, it’s usually the ones that have a more active public investment side of the house. And then for the. For those that are more actively engaged in privates, it becomes valuation data. Right. What are our private assets’ values, and are we making the best decision and allocating to this fund or this direct investment? Because it’s. It’s very opaque on the private side. So I see it coming from both the very public and the very liquid side. And then I come.

I see it coming from, hey, we allocate a lot to privates and like, we’re just kind of operating blindly. And certainly there’s, you know, firms like PreQuinn and stuff that they can get data from. But I think they could be doing a lot better with, you know, with AI and kind of leveraging across different platforms.

Marting Stadler: Right.
Francois Botha: And again, just to add to what Mark’s just saying. I think it’s also about understanding where we are in terms of AI. So, I think right now, we’re seeing a lot of marketing speak around AI and the promise of AI. However, if we’ve been monitoring it for a while, we’ve realised that you know, OpenAI released its five levels of generative AI. So we know, I think we’re roughly at a level three type of thing. The way I look at it is that there are two stages that we’ve been through, and we are at stage number three now. So, the first was really about being able to pull information.

So, like Mark said, it’s like answering questions like, can I pull information from the data and the knowledge that we have stored? The next stage is almost about pushing again, so pushing those insights proactively is based on the data that I provide to a model. Then, the third stage is actually the action stage. So if you’re, for example, an active trader in this case, you know, being able to either ask questions because you know what questions you need answered, or having a tool that can actually preempt what those questions would be and pushing that information to you based on what you look like and then the third stage being able to action on that as well. I think that’s where we are right now; stages one and two are pretty well operating.

But stage three is this agentic promise, and I think that’s where a lot of very interesting things start to happen. But we’re very early with that as well. So I think it comes back down to, I guess, how you structure and store that data and do it the right way. A lot of people who have played with kind of generative AI tools use tools like ChatGPT, not knowing where you send that kind of data. Right. So there’s no kind of constraints there. But what we’ve seen over the last years would be, or at least the last couple of months, that models, open source models like llamas models that can be hosted, open source models that can be hosted on their own servers might be able to perform at a similar level to kind of the GPT model.

So there’s an interesting shift that’s taking place that would, I think, enable a lot more family offices to safely and securely use these tools without, you know, risking where you are not knowing which black box you send your data to.

Kyle McDonald: So I was trying to hear from you.

Martin Stadler: My side, the well done or the family office view. And if I, let’s say, see my day-to-day contacts with this group of people, I have to say as well, we are not there yet. Yes, it’s the flavour of the day, and we read about what happens in the newspaper daily. But if you really talk about the family office or wealth owners. They have not yet started really using applications, let’s say not more than 10% of it. Therefore, if I were in the shoes of a family officer, I would start first with education, educating family members and educating employees about what it is and how to use it securely. If we have these public language models, what kind of data are we sharing there? So I think it’s a very important one. The second topic is investment.

So put it on the to-do list for your next investment committee because the grandchildren of the family will not like it. In 30 years, if you have missed the train of being invested in AI in general and then only in the third one, thinking again, how can we use it in the daily business and simple use cases like if you have tomorrow with your bank or a meeting about a specific investment topic. I remember my time as a private banker. I always had much more information than the client, and this asymmetry has shifted now. So you can prepare for any meeting in a few seconds in a way that makes you really at the same level as your providers of investment content.

And I think everybody should use it as much as possible now. It’s definitely easy to use, and only then can it start using it operationally. There, I have to admit I’m a bit disappointed by the software industry. Francois has said it, and many of them have already said it in their marketing pitch. But if you talk about real AI, I don’t see yet solutions out there that really deal in an interactive way with data to make the family office life or the investing process life a better way. So, I think there is still a long way to go. In other words, there’s a huge opportunity out there for the tech industry in the wealth management space to use that technology intelligently and securely.

Kyle McDonald: Yeah, I had been trying to resist the AI topic a little bit and push that back further out of the conversation, but inevitably, it was going to bubble to the front. I think a question that we have in the chat and that is worth calling out is from Agron. So, our family office is interested in utilising AI for information management, such as information classification, CIA triad, and preventative security. Is it more for investment purposes? So perhaps one for you, Francois, you know, is there a bit more of a demand for AI to support not just from an investment perspective but also from an information management perspective as well as a security perspective?

Francois Botha: Kyle, I think, yeah, like Martin just said, family offices wear two hats when they’re going into this topic of AI. Understanding it as an emerging area to invest in and then, of course, using the potential of using the technology in the future. So, I think that’s kind of the first two hats that we’re thinking about from the investment perspective. I guess the other way to read this question is actually, you know, to manage investments and to use AI tuning for that. And I think, as Martin said, I don’t think we’re there yet. I think there are certain tools. I know some of the large custodians in the US have been launching some AI tooling.

I don’t know, Mark. If you’ve seen from a US perspective some things happening there, that’s an interesting adoption of technology. But I guess the US is a little bit forward, more forward-thinking in terms of enabling regulatory environments and that kind of thing in this topic. So. Yeah, Mark, I don’t know, over to you.

Mark Tipsisch: Yeah, I mean I, yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s going to come through the institutions first, right? They’re going to have the scale to deploy it with all their data. Specifically to that question, you know, I mean listen, you’re dealing most of the time executives, employees are accountants, investment folks, right? Tax folks by nature, by background. So they usually look to deploy it for those needs. Right. That’s kind of their hammer and their nail. And so that is where I see the questions being asked where they’re looking to deploy it at and to a lesser extent, and I think it’ll come which is, you know, the preventative security and data classification second, at least in my opinion, so from what I see, right, and.

Kyle McDonald: Where do you think there might be a bit of white space between, you know, classic wealth management and, ultimately, family offices? Where could there be solutions that could come to market to potentially service that interface? Mark.

Mark Tipsisch: Yeah, I mean, so I mean, I’m looking, when I look at the space, you know, the kind of, the wealth tech in general that’s kind of deployed deploying AI, they’re looking to often solve like a very specific issue or problem. So it’s very narrow, right? It’s narrow and deep. So, for instance, and this is where we’ll differ with family office deployment is so on the RA side, which you know, we could call MFO here in the States, Registered Investment Advisor, you know, they’re going out and trying to do some workflow stuff meaning like automate, make workflow more efficient. So think subscription documents where they’re trying to get 150 clients within a week or two on, you know, onboarded onto a certain, you know, alternative investment platform.

Whereas the family office, that’s not going to matter because they might only be signing the sub docs once or twice. Right. Because they’re deploying, they’re entering that alternative investment with, you know, an investment partnership which may have 50 partners or members in it. So I see it. I’m starting to see it on the alt side. But the MFO RA, more commercially minded, is like trying to solve one specific issue, narrow and deep, to just get that off of the RA, the analyst plate. And the family office is looking at it more broadly speaking, I think, which is like, we’ve got all this data, and we’re ten people and like, how do we leverage all this for the family office to make just better, more informed decisions? That’s kind of. That’s where I see it. That’s where I see the distinction at this point.

Kyle McDonald: Right. I’m going to pedal back a bit from AI. I know it’s tempting. I know it’s the new shiny thing in the room, but let’s face it again and speak a little bit about selecting technology. So, today, it’s still surprisingly difficult for family offices to select the right type of technology. How are CIOs and CEOs beginning to navigate the selection process? And what should the sort of selection process and criteria be? Maybe one for you, Francois?
Francois Botha: I’ll kick it off with something that I heard recently from a particular software vendor who said that their sales cycle, their longest sales cycle, was 23 years with bringing a client on board. So, if we’re talking about long sales cycles, that’s probably the longest I’ve heard of. But I guess the question is why? So there was a family office. There was somebody in the office who was handling the portfolio, and that person had to retire first before they were open to new solutions. And I think this is kind of one type of family office where you’re actually going through an older organisation that’s digitising and then having to bring on a new solution. Often, they don’t know where to start, like you say. So, what does selection look like?

I guess the first step is just trying to get the requirements down. So, you want to try to narrow down your search because there are so many solutions out there. Mark mentioned a couple earlier, but I think there are big brand names, and then there are various smaller solutions. The question is, what solution is the right fit for you? So it’s really about starting with the different kinds of aspects, the different users trying to create a list of requirements. And then the process for this is really about these are our requirements, rating those requirements, how important are those requirements for different, like stakeholders in this case, and then looking at a set of solutions that could potentially match those requirements.

The best way would be to take those requirements to those solutions or to those vendors and ask them for, you know, feedback on how they really meet those requirements. Once you have that, you probably discover a couple of new requirements through the process based on those responses, taking another round before you actually go into looking into specific solutions that would make the process a lot smoother. So, for anybody who hasn’t done that before, it’s kind of an RFI RFP process, and it’s just about the request for information or a request for proposals. That’s basically the core building block of selecting technology in the most efficient way.

Kyle McDonald: Right. And not a product placement. But if you are a family office and you are trying to find out what solutions are available to you in the market, where do you go?

Francois Botha: Well, I think, yeah, you can Google it. Is it Simple?

Kyle McDonald: Is that what you’re trying to say? It’s quite simple.

Francois Botha: So a marketplace, I think, is a great space to compare different solutions. I think it is difficult to find; broadly, the term family office software could mean many different things. So you need to get a little bit more like in. Into the detail. So, what are you looking for? Are you looking for investment-focused software, reporting-focused software, or accounting products? Do you want everything in one product? Do you want separate solutions? There are lots of different approaches, so it’s not as easy. But you know, we don’t have the magic solution, unfortunately, just yet. But yeah, we are definitely one of the places where you can find a set of solutions.

Martin Stadler: If I may add on here, I mean, at the end of the day, in most of the family office cases, a person gets the responsibility to make this vendor selection process without having worked with one of these software. So for me, it’s a little bit like, okay, now I get $50,000, and I get a job building up a wine seller, but I’m not a wine specialist. I have tasted a few wines. Okay, that’s fine. But how can we make the best investment to build up this cell now? So therefore, in the same way, if you have a family office project of selecting software, I think it’s really important that you try to access knowledge. So, of course, you can Google it, and you might bump into Simple.

But I think it’s as well to share best practices with other single-family offices who are in the same position or who have done the process already as well, taking an external consultant because usually, if you do an RFP, the vendors are presenting to you, it’s all shiny, they present you the Ferrari, and it’s out of that and most of the time difficult out of the last three to say now which is the one on the top? But it’s not only having that part; it’s as well. Okay, which vendor is good at helping you implement it? What kind of servicing model do you need, let’s say, for data cleansing, etc? So the broader. You can elaborate on all aspects of the project with somebody who has seen that and done that.
And because, of course, there is a likelihood that you will succeed with the project in the respective budget that you have defined before.

Kyle McDonald: Yeah, and I think…

Francois Botha: Sorry, just to add to what Martin’s saying, I think sharing knowledge with others who have gone through it is definitely useful. And if anybody’s done an evaluation sheet or, you know, several people in your network like getting that information, I think that’s part of the data that you need. I think it’s important to also recognise where you might be different from the family office where you’ve received this information because what worked for them might not be the right solution for you. So just because, you know, you’re friendly, you might be sharing deals, you might be sharing, you know, lots of kind of strategic conversations that are relevant on kind of people or those kinds of aspects of the organisation doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the right fit in terms of technology.

And I think that’s where it becomes really nuanced to understand, you know, A, the requirements. Like Martin said, many haven’t had to do this before, so you need to kind of start from scratch, so you really need those inputs. But then B, what’s being presented against those requirements, and asking the right questions to understand what’s maybe not being shared or what that kind of one need that you’re not really that aware of. So I think it’s. There’s a big exploratory stage where pure input definitely becomes really relevant, but you know, it should be approached with caution.

Kyle McDonald: Yeah, this. And that sort of leads quite nicely onto the question, which is, you know, in this sort of selection process, before you sign on the dotted line, what are some of the sort of key risks or watch-outs to consider in that process? And I think you raised that quite nicely. You know, family offices have unique and differing needs. Going through that vendor’s due diligence process is key. But are there other things that you see, either, you know, Martin or Mark, that sort of come to mind as potential? Do you sort of watch out for things to consider in that selection process?

Mark Tipsisch: Yeah, I’ll go first. Somebody said nice shiny objects. I think that’s a good analogy because, in my role at UBS, I’ve got a lot of new and or existing tech platforms reaching out to me and saying hey, would you have a conversation with us? Do the demo? I’m like, this looks great, but I don’t know what I should be even asking because I’m not a tech person; I’m an attorney, which makes me even worse, right? Then an accountant because I don’t even deal with data. And so what I do is I say, hey, give me a couple of references. Let me talk to a few family offices that are operating it, and they’re usually pretty good about that, right?

I mean, I know they’re probably going to be self-serving references, but at least I’ve got some comparisons to talk to in the family office I’ve spoken to. So I’ve done this probably eight or nine times at this point, and the family office I speak to is usually pretty transparent. They’re like, yeah, this system works great except for X, Y and Z. And by the way, I know that any tech platform is going to have issues, right? Microsoft Word has been around for decades, and it still has issues. So I’m not worried about if it has issues. And the other way I do it is, and I have access to this. Right.
Like so there’s so… Frankly, Francois, I’ll reach out to Francois, I’ll reach out to, you know, I Capital Mirador, I’ll reach out to Aaron Hulseviate, and I’ll basically triangulate the opinions there. And so the more people you could talk to who are in this space and have better access to the information than you, the better off you’ll be. And so I think that’s part of the process, too, because, yeah, you can’t look at the platform. This is great because how does it actually work in practice? Right from service functionality, cost is pretty much all the above. So that’s how I go about it. And it’s, you know, maybe slightly unorthodox, but I think it’s an okay process.

Martin Stadler: Yeah, maybe to add one on my side as well. I mean, the wealth management industry has always been a people’s business, and many of the family officers really like to build up relations with their vendors. Now you’re selecting software which is tech only. So my advice is if you go that path, make it very personal. Try to get from your window and the owner of your onboarding project that is really day-to-day with you in contact and where you can really build up as well a social bonding, which helps a lot because at the end of the day if you select a family office software, if you do it right, you will be married for the rest of your life. It’s quite difficult to switch from one window to the next.

It might get easier in the future when data is getting more and more standardised. But at least now, what I see out there from vendor architecture is that it’s very difficult to switch. Therefore, if you want to succeed in that project, in onboarding and getting it up and running, and have all stakeholders using it in the right way, education is here, a big topic. Go and try to get your one guy at the tech vendor who is available 24/7 to help you get through all the ups and downs that you will have in the onboarding process.

Kyle McDonald: Yeah, and maybe a following question to that, which is thinking a little bit more about that implementation and sort of adoption piece. Right. So, you know, say you’ve selected the platform, and you’ve now decided to implement it. What are some of the best practices for getting everyone up to speed and getting the maximum usage out of it? Martin, you obviously mentioned some educating the family as well. Are there other things that come to mind for you?
Martin Stadler: Education is one part, but the second part is as well. If you select software, listen carefully to the vendor. In which process is it best to use the software? So, if you have an established FEMI office with established processes and you try to tweak the software somehow so that it adapts to what you have done over the last 20 years, you will definitely not get the best out of that software. But if you try to have a little bit of best practices of other clients of this tech vendor, how they are using it and maybe even adjust a little bit the organisational structure of your family office or the job profiles of different employees, using such a software is definitely generating efficiency and long term benefits. So I would say this is a very crucial point. Listen carefully and try not to reinvent the world if others have done it already and succeeded with a certain procedure.
Kyle McDonald: Yeah, great. Well, with the plethora of options out there, it’s obviously the nature of consolidation in the industry. Right. What that means is that more private equity firms are obviously moving into this space. You know, what does this mean when adopting solutions? Is this something to be concerned about? Francois, what do you think? What are your views?
Francois Botha: I guess, yeah, we’ve seen the start of it, Carl. We’ve seen more private equity firms being interested, and I think it’s just because of a lot of these firms, a lot of the vendors kind of reaching that stage of growth where they become interesting to these firms. Right. So it’s a newer kind of industry. There’s definitely a lot of legacy players. But you know, there is just that stage that we’re reaching in terms of maturity in some shape or form. I think there are a lot of smaller players that could be interesting to go into roll-ups, for example, where, you know, we are again going to what Mark said earlier, and a lot of it happens, first from the wealth management perspective. We’ve seen wealth managers being rolled up in the US. There are a lot of RIA roll-up multifamily offices.
And if we think about how private equity firms think about those strategies, this is natural, like wealth tech, which could be a natural kind of follow-on. So it’s simple. We are in conversation with many different PE firms to help them understand strategies around firms servicing wealth and wealth professionals and wealth owners. So broadly, this looks at wealth tech and multifamily offices. They’re all kind of within those buckets. So, and then I think, looking forward again, the role of technology in terms of scaling these wealth firms and scaling the kind of service offerings is definitely a big piece. So yeah, I’d say we are at the beginning of this kind of roll-up. There have been a couple of interesting and noteworthy transactions. I guess we’ll probably see a lot more coming up, but there’s definitely interest in that space.

Kyle McDonald: Yep. Great. Well, perhaps a last little question for all of you and a general question we always like to ask here at Temple, you know, what excites you the most about sort of working in this space? And maybe Mark, I’ll start with you.

Mark Tipsisch: Yeah, I, you know, I tend to focus on the people. So you know, having been in a family office for a very large family, having, you know, touching a lot of family offices today in my seat, kind of both North and South America as well as, you know, Asia, the Middle East. I like the people aspect of it. I kind of say being a family executive is like a cultural anthropologist because you’re not, you know, everybody from the ex, from outside the family office realm, always thinks it’s like this. You know, you’re working in a hedge fund or private equity fund, and everything’s focused on maximising returns to your shareholders. But guess what? Your shareholders have maximum flexibility to do what they want with the capital that they create.

So it’s always kind of been a unique environment in that regard and how families kind of make decisions and the prism and the philosophy and the values through which they do that, both on the investing, the business side as well as really how they incorporate that next-gen as well as how they advance their philanthropic initiatives. So that’s kind of what excites me about it; it is just the people’s side of things within the overall setting, like wealth creation, business, and so forth. So that’s what excites me. Thank you.

Kyle McDonald: Martin, over to you. What excites you most about working in this space?

Marting Stadler: Yeah, it goes in the same direction. I mean, at the end of the day, having a large amount of wealth is also a burden. And if you’re able with technology to make this burden a little bit easier, make life a little bit better for these kinds of setups, that’s definitely a very interesting journey. And as Mark said, it’s getting very personal as well. The longer you’re working with a family, the more you know there are challenges and problems in daily business and the more you can help them by connecting the right dots and finding the right tech support providers. It’s a super interesting journey.

On the other hand, being now in the industry since 2017 and having serviced a wealth of families for more than 25 years, I’m really excited as well to see from all the market participants about their advances. Where is this technology going? Not only AI in general, if you look at software out there 10 years ago, five years ago, and if you look at the new emerging ones coming out now as well in the aspect of democratisation of family officers services, make it this kind of technology cheaper. So you have maybe as well a client segment below 50 million who might look at such software. It’s super interesting, and we are only at the first steps in that regard.

So, user experience, leveraging data and, at the end of the day as well, providing better information and better investment decisions will definitely be an exciting story to follow in the future.

Kyle McDonald: Excellent. And Francois, what excites you most about this industry?

Francios Botha: I want to say a little bit about what Mark and Martin said in this case. But I think strategically looking at the space; it is people, process, and technology culture if we think about the broad organisational view. And I think that the opportunity with technology is really to focus more on the people aspects. So having solid technology and a place that you can use to answer questions on demand, and this area is just kind of growing at the moment and potentially doing, you know, in the future, some agentic workflow that’s just going to free up people and basically make people, provide people with access to better knowledge and insights, really. So I think that’s going to free up that space so that people can play the people game and technology can do the heavy lifting in the background.

And I think that to me is a very exciting space. Of course, the industry is growing quite fast. That’s also super interesting and exciting and it’s changing just as fast as well. So I think being on that forefront of the next generation of family offices and private wealth and helping shape that journey for me is incredibly exciting.

Kyle McDonald: We’re incredibly excited to see the next couple of chapters. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you. Mark Tipsich, Martin Stadler, and Francois Botha. Thank you for joining today’s webinar on family office software and technology. If you’d like to learn more about family office technology, you can log in or sign up for a complimentary account to access Simple’s comprehensive family office software and technology report. With your account, you can post free family office jobs. Connect with the webinar guests directly today and further explore a broad array of guides, tools, and data services across the simple platform. Thank you as always, and see you for the next session.