Digital wealth management has become a priority for banks, brokers and fintech companies across many markets. Customers expect to invest through mobile apps, access a broad range of products and see their portfolios in real time. Institutions see an opportunity to deepen relationships, gather assets and build recurring revenue. The result has been a steady stream of launches: new investment apps, model portfolios, fractional share offerings and expanded product shelves.
Behind many of those launches, however, sits an uncomfortable reality. Research commissioned by Saxo found that 79% of finance firms launch digital wealth products before their systems are ready. The survey, which covered banks, brokers and fintechs across several regions, found that the average core wealth and brokerage technology stack is 6.7 years old. Respondents named legacy technology as the largest gap in their digital proposition, followed by speed to market and inefficient operating processes.
The front end of a wealth product is often the easiest part to build. An attractive app, a smooth onboarding journey and clear portfolio charts can be delivered relatively quickly. The harder work sits behind the screen: custody, settlement, reconciliation, tax reporting, corporate actions, fee calculation and regulatory reporting. These processes rarely appear in marketing materials, but they determine whether customers receive accurate statements, correct entitlements and timely access to their money.
Corporate actions are a useful example. Dividends, rights issues, stock splits, mergers and tender offers all begin as a single event at an issuer, but the processing burden falls on depositories, custodians, brokers and wealth platforms. Each must identify eligible holdings, apply elections and tax rules, calculate entitlements and communicate results before strict deadlines. Errors can lead to incorrect payments, missed elections and reconciliation breaks across many accounts.
Market infrastructures are modernizing these processes. Vermiculus has launched VeriAct as B3 prepares to replace its corporate actions module, with a design that allows event types, formulas, tax rules and workflows to be changed through configuration rather than custom development. Just as importantly, the outcome logic is explicit and auditable. An operator must be able to explain how a result was produced, not simply accept a number.
Change management is another operational challenge that grows with product breadth. Exchanges and market data vendors regularly change technical protocols, introduce products, retire services and revise fees, often through notices delivered in inconsistent formats. A missed notice can leave a data feed unavailable or trigger unexpected charges. Some providers are now using AI and human review to turn exchange notices into tasks, converting unstructured announcements into standardized summaries that can be assigned and tracked to resolution, with staff validating the output before it reaches clients.
Data quality ties these processes together. Reference data for instruments, client records, tax status and fee schedules must be accurate and consistent across every system that uses it. When a new product is added to the shelf, the data supporting it needs to be complete before the first customer invests, not cleaned up after the first statements have gone out.
These examples point to a broader principle. Digital wealth products are only as reliable as the operational processes behind them. Every new asset class, market or product feature adds to the volume of events, data and exceptions that must be handled correctly. Firms that expand their product shelves without strengthening operations risk building up hidden backlogs that eventually surface as customer complaints, regulatory findings or financial losses.
The same research showed that the industry is moving away from a simple choice between building everything internally and outsourcing everything. Sixty-five percent of respondents currently combine internal and external capabilities, and half prefer a hybrid model over the longer term. For many institutions, the goal is to own the customer-facing experience while sourcing infrastructure from specialists that can spread development and compliance costs across many clients.
That model can work well, but it requires discipline. Firms need clear ownership of each process, defined service levels with their providers, strong reconciliation between internal and external systems and the ability to explain to regulators how outsourced functions are controlled. Partnering with a provider does not transfer responsibility for customer outcomes.
For institutions planning their next digital wealth launch, a few questions are worth asking before the marketing campaign begins. Can the operations team handle a significant increase in accounts and transactions without manual workarounds? Are corporate actions, tax reporting and fee calculations automated and auditable for every product on the shelf? How will the firm learn about and respond to changes from exchanges, custodians and data vendors? And what happens when something goes wrong?
Customers judge wealth platforms by the experience they can see, but trust is built or lost through the processes they never see. A beautiful app cannot make up for a missed dividend or an incorrect tax statement. In a market where digital wealth products increasingly look alike on the surface, operational excellence may prove to be one of the most durable sources of competitive advantage.
