Platform complexity: what still earns its place for wealth managers?

Growing pains

Few established wealth investment propositions were created in one sitting. Strategies and fund managers are selected to fulfil the portfolio roles that were needed at the time. More vehicles are introduced for different client groups or as the investment landscape evolves. The firm may grow substantially, including through acquisitions that bring together investment ranges developed independently, while its client mix – and what existing clients want – may shift.

The result can be immense complexity. In our own work, for example, we have reviewed discretionary platforms with well over 1,000 line items and aggregator platforms containing more than 5,000 funds. On one platform, more than 70 funds sat within a single sub-asset class cluster; in another, the same fund was held through seven separate vehicles and share classes. Some of this variety served clients; some represented unnecessary inefficiency.

Importantly, inefficiencies cannot be inferred from a fund or vehicle list alone. Two firms may each have hundreds of approved investment options but have very different underlying architectures: one may concentrate most assets in a deliberate core, with a limited number of specialist or legacy exceptions; another may have material assets dispersed across multiple overlapping strategies, vehicles and historic arrangements. The implications are unlikely to be the same. Moreover, there is an obvious risk that scrutiny of complexity becomes a search for a smaller fund list – a mission that would miss much of what wealth managers are trying to achieve.

So why does complexity become difficult to challenge?

Obstacle 1: lack of ‘whole-view’ ownership

The relevant decisions tend to sit in various places within a wealth organisation. Investment teams understand manager quality and portfolio roles. Product specialists know why particular wrappers and structures are necessary. Commercial teams have visibility over aggregate manager economics, while advisers see which elements of the proposition are actually being used and where clients value additional choice. Operations may have the clearest view of the costs and risks attached to changing anything.

Yet who owns the whole view? A platform seen through only one of those lenses can look quite different from the same platform viewed in its entirety. A relatively expensive manager may be entirely justified because its strategy is differentiated and heavily used. A seemingly duplicative vehicle may serve an important client cohort. At the other end of the spectrum, a lightly used strategy may continue to consume investment, operational and adviser resources despite having lost much of the distinct role for which it was originally selected.

Obstacle 2: breadth brings benefits

Breadth can, of course, be hugely advantageous. It allows wealth managers to service clients with differing needs and risk tolerances across a wide variety of jurisdictions and tax environments.

In recent years, additional breadth has been particularly relevant in providing non-traditional investment opportunities. EY’s 2025 Global Wealth Research Report found that 30% of investors plan to increase their allocations to alternatives. The rapid growth in the availability of semi-liquid private market vehicles in the 2020s has also supported the shift: among the 151 semi-liquid private market funds recently analysed by bfinance for wealth manager clients, the median launch date was 2023 (see Navigating semi-liquid private markets in a world of closed-end data). Another aspect of breadth is the desire to provide greater packaging flexibility to meet the demands of different client types.

Australia’s North platform provides an interesting example here, illustrated in the March 2026 press release from its owner AMP: Private markets ‘the next frontier’ for managed portfolios. In 2025, it launched ‘Grow’ – a streamlined menu of portfolios for clients with simpler needs – alongside its broader ‘Select’ and ‘Choice’ menus. In the previous year, AMP had added 192 investments to the line-up while terminating 25. AMP now publicly describes North as committed to a ‘right-sized’ investment menu in which options must keep justifying their place through ongoing governance.

Obstacle 3: retention is an easy ‘default’

While new investments normally need a strong positive case, retaining an investment may require meeting a comparatively low bar. Fund review processes are often designed to verify that a manager remains capable, well-resourced and suitable for its mandate, rather than to establish whether the mandate remains necessary or whether another approved strategy now serves the same role more effectively. The expense and disruption associated with change can also tend to favour keeping existing arrangements in place: moving clients can create tax consequences, dealing costs and operational work; particular vehicles may exist for specific client circumstances; consent may be required; capacity elsewhere may be constrained.

A manager can therefore remain in place for what appear to be very good reasons, even where it might not win a fresh selection exercise today. However, over time, this creates scope for path dependency and sub-optimal outcomes. Established asset classes can accumulate several options while newer capabilities remain thinly represented. Continuity can become a default that no one has actively chosen: the ‘new’ earns its place, the ‘old’ remains by default and the whole grows unwieldy.

We do see cases where wealth managers have taken a more explicit (and public) approach to rationalisation. For example, in February 2026, Canada’s IG Wealth Management proposed a series of fund mergers and one fund termination to simplify its range and reduce duplication. Steps such as these are unlikely to come out of a standard process of individual fund reviews because manager oversight and proposition-level oversight answer different questions.

Obstacle 4: relationships are not systematically re-evaluated

Failure to re-evaluate relationships with external fund managers can be costly. In our experience, a good place for a wealth management firm to start looking for savings is scrutinising relationships that span multiple funds and even asset classes, whether those were built up organically or inherited through M&A. Because terms have often been set vehicle by vehicle over time, the current aggregate relationship may not be reflected in what clients pay. In other words, the attractiveness of the funds themselves need not have changed for the relationship to warrant a fresh look.

A mature wealth proposition should contain history. Different cohorts of clients, periods of market development, acquisitions and investment innovation will inevitably leave their mark, and removing those differences for the sake of consistency can be as misguided as allowing them to accumulate without scrutiny.

The more useful discipline is to validate each material piece of complexity that exists today. An investment platform does not need to resemble one designed on a blank sheet of paper. Yet the gap between the real and the ‘ideal’ can reveal where past decisions deserve a fresh look.