The global family office landscape is in a phase of transformation. Beyond the headlines of intergenerational succession and investment diversification lies a quieter revolution, one focused on infrastructure, integration, and operational rigour. At the heart of this shift is the recognition that legacy wealth structures, often cobbled together over decades, are no longer equipped to handle the scale, speed, and complexity of modern wealth management. Bryan Henning, senior vice president and head of international at Eton Solutions, sees a new operating model emerging – one focused on control, transparency, and digital-first governance. At the Wealth Planning & Structuring Forum – Dubai 2025, Henning, with over 30 years of experience working with family offices across Asia and the Middle East from his base in Singapore, shared a candid perspective on the industry’s future and why the back office is becoming the next frontier.
Key Takeaways
- Family Offices Are Outgrowing Their Infrastructure: As families evolve into general partners and global investors, legacy systems are falling short in managing complexity.
- Integration Is No Longer Optional: Governance, tax structuring, investment tracking, and reporting must be operationalised through unified platforms.
- AI Will Transform Administration, but Only for the Digitally Ready: Accurate, secure data is the foundation for any Artificial Intelligence (AI) deployment. Without this, generative tools create more risk than value.
- Technology Must Enable Privacy, Not Compromise It: Younger generations using public AI tools risk exposing confidential family data. Solutions must be secure by design.
- Eton Is Positioning for the Long Game: Henning views operational resilience, not just tech innovation, as the core value proposition for modern family office platforms.
The Governance-Execution Gap
The contemporary family office is increasingly expected to function like a well-run private equity firm, a private bank, and a philanthropic foundation, all rolled into one. But Henning argues that while families have embraced the strategic aspects of governance, developing charters, appointing independent directors, engaging legal and tax experts, many still fall short when it comes to operationalising that vision.
“There’s no shortage of expertise,” Henning said. “Across the region, from Singapore and Hong Kong to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, we see world-class legal, tax, and governance advisers. But what’s missing is the layer that pulls it all together. That’s the operational engine room.”
At Eton Solutions, this operational void is precisely what the firm was created to address. Originally built to serve the founder’s own multi-family office, Eton’s unified platform was designed to manage entity structures, capital calls, reporting, document workflows, and more, all under a single, secure system. Now independent, the company works with family offices, trust companies, and wealth service providers globally.
Complexity Is the New Constant
Henning noted that families today are navigating multiple transitions at once: from single-family to multi-family structures, from investment holding to active co-investment, and from regional to global footprints. These transitions bring with them new layers of complexity, from tax and regulatory compliance to cross-border asset tracking and multi-generational wealth transfer.
“Increasingly, families are becoming general partners or venture capital investors in their own right. They’re setting up philanthropic vehicles, co-investment platforms, and global holding structures,” Henning said. “But with that ambition comes administrative overload, unless you have the right systems.”
This growing complexity is compounded by the nature of the assets involved. A typical family office today may hold direct private equity, real estate, operating businesses, public equities, structured notes, and digital assets, spread across multiple jurisdictions and custodians. Without unified data architecture, Henning warned, even basic functions like consolidated reporting or distribution planning become prone to error.
The AI Temptation, and the Infrastructure Reality
Artificial intelligence is on everyone’s radar, and Henning acknowledged its transformative potential, but also cautioned against premature enthusiasm. “AI is the cherry on the icing on the cake,” he remarked. “But too many family offices want the cherry before they’ve baked the cake.”
In Henning’s view, the foundation for meaningful AI implementation is clean, secure, relational data, data that understands how it connects to entity structures, beneficiaries, mandates, and governance rules. “If your data isn’t consolidated, accurate, and well-classified, you’re feeding noise into the system. AI will give you answers, but they won’t be answers you can trust.”
Eton Solutions has partnered with OpenAI through Microsoft to embed generative AI tools directly into its system, providing functions such as invoice ingestion, trust document generation, and capital call processing. But Henning is clear that these tools only work once the fundamentals are in place.
He described a “pyramid of value” where the first step is simply digitising documents and standardising inputs. “Too many firms still rely on middle- and back-office teams to manually enter data, often inaccurately. The new generation of intelligent document processing tools has over 99 percent accuracy. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is obsolete.”
Data Sovereignty and Security Take Centre Stage
One of the most pressing concerns Henning sees, especially among families in the Middle East and Asia, is data security. As next-generation family members increasingly turn to public AI tools like ChatGPT to generate reports or seek investment insights, they inadvertently risk leaking sensitive data into the public domain.
“If you don’t provide a secure, private, enterprise-grade AI alternative, your team, and your family, will find workarounds. And that creates significant risk,” Henning warned.
To mitigate this, Eton’s system is built with ISO42001 accreditation, a global standard for ethical AI usage. The platform is designed so that AI operates in a “side-by-side” capacity, not replacing human decision-making, but augmenting it. “The AI must be interrogable,” Henning said. “Every output must be traceable back to its data source and its logical rationale.”
Solving the ‘Too Late’ Problem
Henning emphasised that many of the families Eton engages with only seek technological solutions after operational challenges have already escalated, missing the opportunity to design scalable, future-ready structures from the outset.
“Often, we’re brought in five years too late. The governance has been drafted, the structures are in place, but no one’s figured out how to run them day to day,” he explained. “That’s when reporting breaks down, tax filings get delayed, and key stakeholders lose confidence.”
To avoid this, Henning advocates for earlier engagement, particularly with Chief Operating Officers (COOs), Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), and even principals during the design phase. “Mapping the operational requirements alongside the legal and strategic goals is the only way to ensure long-term success.”
A Platform for the Long Run
Eton’s international strategy, led by Henning, reflects this long-term orientation. Rather than pitching standalone software modules, the firm promotes a fully integrated solution, combining entity management, document automation, capital call processing, investment tracking, and now AI, into a single secure environment.
“Families want more than dashboards,” Henning said. “They want control. They want the confidence that their operating platform won’t need to be replaced every three years.”
This stability, he argued, is critical not just for efficiency, but for building institutional memory. “As families expand, hire new talent, and onboard new advisers, they need systems that hold the history of decisions, the rationale behind structures, and the parameters of discretion. That’s not just data, it’s legacy.”
Operational Resilience as a Strategic Advantage
Ultimately, Henning believes that family offices which invest in operational resilience will enjoy a significant competitive advantage, not just in terms of efficiency, but in risk mitigation and stakeholder trust.
“The family office of the future isn’t the one with the flashiest AI,” he said. “It’s the one where data is secure, decisions are traceable, reporting is accurate, and governance is enforceable in real time.”
As families grapple with intergenerational transfer, cross-border structures, and ever-growing regulatory demands, Henning sees operational excellence as the true enabler of long-term success.
“Legacy isn’t just what you leave behind,” he concluded. “It’s how you run the enterprise today.”
