Kevin Mitchell, CEO, Graphene
I believe the discretionary investment management industry stands at a pivotal moment. As firms grow in scale, ambition and complexity, the question of what runs beneath the surface will increasingly decide which businesses thrive and which quietly stall. In fact, the firms entering the next decade with the strongest growth trajectories will not be those with the boldest investment propositions. They will be those whose operating foundations can flex, scale and adapt at the pace their business demands.
The reality, in my view, is that wealth management infrastructure has become a strategic question, not an operational one. For years, discretionary investment managers built around the constraints of legacy systems, fragmented custody arrangements and disconnected data. That trade-off is no longer viable. As multi proposition firms expand into private markets, tax efficient products, model portfolios and institutional mandates, the infrastructure beneath them either accelerates that growth or quietly throttles it.
The Build or Adopt Decision in Wealth Management Infrastructure
For the past decade, the prevailing instinct in wealth management was to build. Firms invested heavily in proprietary technology, custom integrations and bespoke operating models, believing differentiation would come from owning the stack. The reality is, the cost, risk and distraction of that approach have outpaced the returns. Industry research consistently shows that platform builds in financial services overrun on time, budget and scope, often by a factor of two or more.
In fact, the firms I now see pulling ahead are taking the opposite approach. They are choosing to adopt institutional grade infrastructure that already exists, already operates at scale and already absorbs the operational and regulatory burden their internal teams used to carry. Not because they lack ambition, but because they have refocused that ambition on investment outcomes, client experience and growth, rather than on becoming a technology business.
This shift mirrors what has already played out in other industries. Just as global banks moved from proprietary core systems to shared cloud infrastructure, and just as asset managers moved from in house operations to outsourced fund administration, discretionary investment managers will move from bespoke platforms to shared institutional infrastructure. The economics, the operational risk profile and the speed advantage all point the same direction.
Why Multi Proposition Firms Need a Single Operating Spine
The discretionary investment managers winning new mandates today are running multifaceted businesses. Managed portfolio services, tax efficient investments, private market exposure, institutional mandates and bespoke client portfolios all sit within the same firm. Each requires distinct servicing, distinct controls and distinct reporting. Each was historically supported by a different system, a different team and a different data source.
That model will not survive the next era. Multi proposition growth without a unified operating spine produces three predictable outcomes. Operational risk rises with every new product line. Management information fragments across siloed reporting layers. And the firm’s ability to launch quickly, transfer assets cleanly and respond to regulatory change all slow down.
The bottom line is that institutional scale will require a single platform, a single operational layer and a single source of truth. Not as a nice to have, but as the precondition for credible growth. From my experience, the firms that recognise this early will move faster, scale cleaner and price more efficiently than peers still trying to stitch together legacy environments.
“From my perspective this case captures an important truth about modern discretionary investment management. The most successful firms are not those trying to build technology. They are those who recognise when to adopt proven infrastructure that allows them to move faster with less risk.”
What Institutional Grade Infrastructure Looks Like in Practice
A recent Graphene client illustrates exactly what this looks like in practice. We were approached by a highly respected discretionary investment manager running more than one billion pounds under management. Their challenge was clear. Their investment capability was not the issue. Their operating foundations were. They needed multi asset class servicing covering listed and private assets, institutional grade controls across every proposition, and operational rigour consistent with an enterprise scale investment manager. Their legacy environment could not deliver any of those consistently.
What they did not want was to build a platform themselves. They wanted immediate access to one that already worked.
From my perspective, that distinction matters more than almost any other in this industry today. In fact, it captures one of the most important truths about the modern discretionary investment management business. The most successful firms are not those trying to build technology. They are those who recognise when to adopt proven infrastructure that lets them move faster with less risk.
The outcome we delivered was both immediate and measurable. A unified platform architecture across every proposition. Faster product launches and asset transfers, all within institutional controls. Real time management information replacing fragmented reporting. Operational risk reducing even as capacity expanded. Growth no longer meant adding complexity. It meant extending a platform already built for scale.
The Infrastructure Decision Every Discretionary Investment Manager Faces
Every discretionary investment manager will, sooner or later, face the same decision. Build, persist with legacy, or adopt. The firms that delay will not be displaced by competitors with better investment performance. They will be displaced by competitors who can launch faster, scale cleaner, service multiple propositions from a single environment and absorb regulatory change without operational drag.
In fact, I expect the gap between firms running on institutional grade infrastructure and those still operating on stitched together legacy environments to become one of the defining competitive divides in wealth management this decade. Not because technology is the product, but because technology is now what determines whether the product can scale.
The future of discretionary investment management will not belong to the firms with the most ambitious platform projects. It will belong to those who recognise when to adopt rather than build, who see infrastructure as enabling rather than defining, and who free their teams to focus on investment innovation and client outcomes while the operational complexity beneath them runs quietly, consistently, and at institutional scale.
That is the future we are building Graphene to deliver.
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