It is widely accepted that wealth managers are well-trusted by their clients and are “extremely resilient” to a whole hostof market conditions and challenges. Firms are able to deliver reliable and stable revenues and often boast an averageclient tenure of multiple decades. In some cases, firms have been advising a family for more than three generations.

As such, the industry has substantial potential to grow and become more profitable if the issues surrounding scale areresolved.

The good news is Mr Khan is confident the issue is now being addressed and is witnessing the effort and investment going in to creating scale at wealth management firms. “There is an enormous amount of endeavour” going into this, he noted.

Providing this level of investment continues, we will “definitely see scale” appear within the industry in the next 12 to 24 months.

One firm looking to capitalise on this and become more scalable is Standard Bank.

The international bank and wealth manager is seeking to streamline its end-to-end investment process, encompassing the client lifecycle from onboarding to investment management servicing and overall client experience.

By doing this in a scalable manner, the firm hopes to reach more clients and be able to offer services to mass affluent clients for the first time, thus expanding its potential client base.

The aim is to use “technology to scale distribution” to allow the firm to target these new client segments, said Charles Harper, head of offshore investments at Standard Bank.

However, he explained that this process does not come without challenges.

“We are very good at understanding our client base and solutions,” he acknowledged, but stressed the importance of support from third party service providers to ensure the right technology and processes are in place to serve clients as well as possible.

Third party service providers appear to be playing a greater role in the firms that are actively looking to achieve scale, although there is arguably a split in how they are viewed among wealth managers. In the 2025 PAM Digital Report, 21.4 percent of respondents cited third party vendors as the greatest risk to their businesses.

This does not appear to be the case at Standard Bank, with Mr Harper stating the bank will “lean heavily” on partners like Objectway to create a digital roadmap to achieve its aims.

There are many things third party providers can do to become an asset rather than a risk to the firms they support.

For Mr Khan, the key is to “integrate technology in a smart way” that works for a firm’s unique circumstances. Objectway does this by utilising all of its market knowledge and experience and taking lessons from other clients rather than viewing each one in isolation.

It is easy to see if the approach taken is successful too.

“The ultimate test of partnering with clients is seeing the change and subsequent improvements take place,” Mr Khan said.

A key part of the process for all firms is change management and implementation. This is something Mr Harper is aware of at Standard Bank, particularly as the firm has a “long tenure of investment managers” who are used to doing things a certain way.

The hope is that once the investment managers see the benefits of embracing technology, they will come round quickly.

“How we use technology and integrate it into our processes is crucial,” so it cannot be ignored by employees, Mr Haper stressed.

While some firms are well on their way to implementing technology to help achieve scalability, others are lagging behind.

When asked what encourages firms to look to improve their technology and invest more heavily in it, Mr Khan stressed the importance of a “trigger event”. This could come in the form of a merger or acquisition, a desire to introduce a new service line, or a clear need due to legacy systems becoming unreliable or a business risk.

Appetite from wealth managers is further “amplified by what peers are doing in the market”, Mr Khan explained. As more firms invest significantly in technology, the pressure on those that have not yet done so is likely to only intensify.