Wealth technology has quickly evolved into a confusing market with hundreds of software solutions.

Data aggregation. Alts data aggregation. Reporting. Portfolio management. Accounting. Governance. And then comprehensive wealth management platforms that do or claim to do all that and more.

Meanwhile, family offices are still mostly under-resourced and technologically conservative.

Would you rather undertake an overwhelming new tech project with a lengthy onboarding process nobody in your team is qualified to manage? Or just hire another admin person to deal with the growing data management needs?

There’s a reason spreadsheet use persists, despite security and data accuracy risks.

Artificial Intelligence is set to drastically change how new software is set up and operated, but for now implementation is time consuming, and usually painful.

The reality is, family offices don’t want a technology solution, they want a solution.

Enter Ethan Bonar and his company, CFO Family.

After two decades working with ultra-high-net-worth families, he realized there was a gap for a complete back-office family reporting and services company.  

“I've witnessed countless shifts in how wealthy families manage their assets, and I built my career on the core principles of transparency and independence in wealth management. This experience gave me a firsthand view of the limitations of the traditional family office model.”

He launched CFO Family in 2021 with a mission to bring transparency and efficiency to complex family wealth structures.

They do this by offering independent, consolidated, and tech-forward financial reporting and back-office services.

“We aim to replace the antiquated and siloed approaches of the past with an agile, integrated, and trustworthy system that serves modern families across generations.”

Typical clients are wealthy families or Single Family Offices managing complex global wealth, usually highly diversified geographically and across asset classes.

“The family often has multiple entities, advisors, and custodians, which creates a huge challenge in getting a single, unified, and accurate view of their total net worth.”

Bonar mentions how in a traditional setup, data is scattered across numerous platforms: custodians, fund administrators, property managers.

“The biggest pain point we are best positioned to solve is the lack of a single source of truth in consolidated financial reporting, which leads to fragmented data, no standardization and often delayed, inaccurate reporting.”

CFO Family provides an independent platform and team to automate the aggregation and reporting of this complex data, and ensure the family has timely, transparent, and actionable insight into their entire portfolio.

“We’ll onboard and implement a client’s chosen software platform, train their team to operate it, and then step back,” says Bonar, though they can also support beyond that. “If the family prefers, we can run the system ongoing as a fully outsourced reporting partner. We’re flexible and do both setups.”

Since CFO Family provides a full-service solution, Bonar is adamant they’re technology agnostic. But he notes that of the unified reporting platforms they’ve worked with, Addepar, Masttro and Asora stand out.

He also emphasized that clients should own their data independent of platform, and they work with data warehouses like Point, Pretim and Collation AI to enable this.

Challenges, mistakes and learnings

“The biggest challenge is not the technology itself, but achieving true data integration across disparate, often legacy, systems and breaking down informational silos.”

Bonar says that because many family offices have been slow to adopt modern, integrated technology, the difficulty lies in consolidating varied, entrenched systems, some of which are custom-built systems or very large spreadsheets.  

“This requires overcoming technical hurdles and, more importantly, navigating the reluctance to change, to achieve cooperation across a family's existing network of advisors and custodians.”

A common, avoidable mistake he sees wealthy families make is simple: recycling of passwords and not taking sufficient cybersecurity precautions.

And something crucial he’s learned is how technology and data solutions aren’t really what families want: they want context, understanding, and an independent partner they can trust to synthesize that data.

“I didn't entirely expect that despite all our digital advances, there is a growing appetite for genuine, transparent, and human partnerships with technology simply serving as the enabler.”

“While I founded CFO Family with a focus on solving the technology and data problem, I’ve found that the ultimate deliverable is trust.”

Predictably, Bonar sees AI having the biggest effect on the wealthtech industry in the next few years, especially around personalization.

“GenAI will move beyond simple chat-bots to become the back-office engine for sophisticated, real-time scenario planning and ultra-personalized investment recommendations.”

He also sees the ecosystem shifting to a structure where specialized, best-in-class tools seamlessly integrate with each other, and cybersecurity becomes fundamental to every element.

As for CFO Family, he foresees opportunities to offer more services built around predictive and contextual insights using AI, to expand back-office systems and to increase their capability to work across global jurisdictions.

At the end of the day, technology is not the solution, rather just part of it.

“Technology is the tool that facilitates efficiency and independence, but the human relationship, built on transparency and fiduciary care, is what ultimately determines success.”