We talk to US-headquartered Eton Solutions, a technology business that is changing the ways that family offices, both domestically and around the world, handle chores such as payments and reporting.

Integrating AI with a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for family offices promises to create a potent recipe, helping holders of family wealth cope with a torrent of data and free up valuable time.

As family offices, along with other financial players such as private equity firms’ general partners (GPs) and limited partners (LPs), try to keep on top of their information chores, AI appears to be a vital cog in the machine.

That is the hope of those working to bring 21st century tech to family offices. Step forward, Eton Solutions. (The firm is a sponsor for Family Wealth Report's Fintech Forum in New York, to be held on April 24.)

As reported early last September, Eton Solutions, which provides cloud-based services for family offices, launched EtonGPT™, which it says is the world’s first generative AI module for family offices globally.

EtonGPT™ integrates the transactional capabilities of Eton Solution's ERP [enterprise resource planning] platform, called AtlasFive®. Eton Solutions was created by Eton Advisors, a multi-family office, about a decade ago.

And to convey the scale of what AI can do, when allied with a modern platform, Murali Nadarajah (pictured below), who is chief information officer at Eton Solutions, told this publication that his firm has identified no fewer than 260 processes, such as data management, reporting and payments, that can be automated. Nadarajah and Rob Mallernee (main picture), Eton Solutions’ CEO, recently talked to Family Wealth Report about the rollout of its AI system and how it sits alongside other offerings.

Murali Nadarajah

“Those 260 processes, that we mapped 10 years ago, we are working really hard to take AI and automate as much of them as possible,” Mallernee said. 

Mallernee said that to get the best use of AI, it must be nested correctly within a system. “You cannot just bolt AI on to what you are doing…it needs context, and it needs to `know’ that it is operating within a family office world,” he said. 

A benefit of the AtlasFive® SaaS platform is that it is so well integrated that if, at any stage of a process, the AI doesn’t “know” what to do, data can be manually inserted and be viewed by someone, Mallernee said.

AI cannot be an entirely “end-to-end” phenomenon: it requires the context that a platform gives, showing changes across time. “AI is only moving stuff from one place to another, but there has to be a place for that stuff to live,” Mallernee said. “Marrying AI and an SaaS platform is super-powerful.”

Potential
The potential for unlocking more efficiency is considerable. Currently, Eton Solutions looks after about 750 families through 80 client relationships, and that covers about $1 trillion in assets. The business processed $65 billion in payments during 2024; it has invested more than $40 million in developing its platform.

In May last year, Eton Solutions launched what it said was an industry-first Administrative Family Office (AFO)™. This is for ultra-high net worth families, starting from $25 million in assets, offering the same capabilities as large SFOs. In September 2023, Eton Solutions opened an office in the United Arab Emirates; it also established an international headquarters in Singapore. The pace of growth has been hot.

Convergence
Mallernee said his firm has won business from general partners at private equity firms who see value in what Eton Solutions provides. 

“We look at all that needs to be done in the family office world and the GP/LP world and then we look to automate those,” he said. “There are very similar problems in the PE world to those in the family office world.”

Such clients are part of Eton Solutions’ growth trajectory, Mallernee said. 

“At this point we are really focused on taking our product to new markets, so we are expanding our presence in London, we are expanding our presence internationally and we are going really deeply into this GP and LP [limited partner] market,” he said. Mallernee said that LPs and GPs approached Eton Solutions, not the other way around. 

“It was kind of interesting that people in the GP market were looking at what we were doing...in a lot of cases we were talking to a founder of a PE firm about their family office and in a lot of cases they said we could use this [platform],” he said.

His observation was in response to Family Wealth Report’s point of how the private market investment and family office worlds appear to be converging in certain ways.