3 Stories That Explain Why Complex Private Wealth Management Needs Blockchain
The wealth management industry has grappled with issues like limited access to information, communication breakdowns, and inadequate records, especially in complex private wealth management scenarios involving various professionals and roles.
iPaladin, a knowledge blockchain platform, addresses these challenges by enabling efficient and definitive collaboration among diverse professionals from a single source of truth record. Three real client cases illustrate the platform's effectiveness.
Over the past 20 years, I’ve served in various roles within the wealth management industry. In that time, I’ve seen that the most prevalent problems in the industry are lack of access to information followed by breakdowns in communication and inadequate records to calm heightened levels of concern.
Complex private wealth management requires the services of many people with different roles: family members, lawyers, tax consultants, administrative staff, trustees, consultants, and more. Each different role adds a layer of communication and complicated records. Each constituent has a role-based partial record: the lawyer, the CPA, the trustees, the specialty asset managers, and the investment advisor. It can all be a mess, resulting in an ineffective set of fragmented records, business discontinuity, and unending confusion for the person whose wealth is supposedly being managed in the first place.
This is why I developed iPaladin, a knowledge blockchain platform that allows all these separate professionals to communicate and work together more efficiently and definitively from a distributed single source of truth records.
Our platform fixes many problems, but they’re always rooted in these same issues. Here are three examples of real clients, their problems, and how we’re helping them simplify their complex financial lives with secure, convenient access to comprehensive records.
Client #1: The CEO of a publicly traded global corporation.
His problem:
He needed more visibility into how his personal wealth was being managed.
This client is an experienced, hands-on executive at a major corporation. When he entered the boardroom for a meeting, he—and everyone else in the room—knew precisely who was handling what. Everyone in the company was made aware of project statuses, and consolidated financial reports ensured decision-makers were kept up-to-date and well-informed.
This clarity in his work life made him realize what he lacked in the management of his personal wealth, which was afflicted by the typical complications. He wanted to see who was doing what, when they were doing it, and how they were doing it. He turned to iPaladin.
Our platform gave him better control and oversight of his complex wealth's diverse assets, trusts, real estate holdings, investments, and other aspects. Now, he more clearly understands what is happening to his personal assets. Each financial transaction and exchange of documentation is securely documented and made visible to him within our system.
Client #2: An entrepreneur, two years post-exit.
His problem:
He wanted to grow his wealth but quickly lost visibility with numerous complex private investments.
This client had acquired a significant level of wealth by selling a mature, well-positioned company—in fact, his wealth trajectory puts him well over $100 million before 50. Post-exit, he had moved post-exit funds into multiple alternative investments.
When he approached us, he was having trouble managing what had become a highly complex set of holdings. He didn’t have a single dashboard to understand who was doing what with his money. The fair market value dashboard only told half the story.
He wondered if iPaladin would help him organize the management of his wealth operations and information. So he gave it a try—and it did.
Client #3: A recent widow with two children at home.
Her problem:
She suddenly inherited managing the family’s private wealth as a trustee. She needed help understanding how her shared wealth was now structured and navigating her new role as a trustee.
Four years after her husband died suddenly and tragically, this woman came to us for help. Her late husband had operated a multi-million-dollar business. When tasked with taking the reigns as a Trustee, she realized that what she inherited was a significant responsibility without any preparation. With four children, two still at home, she was overwhelmed by the challenge of managing multiple trusts, working with professional co-trustees, and making investment decisions.
She was too deep in grief and shock for the first two years to worry much about their finances. But at some point—about four years after his death—she began questioning who was managing her wealth, what they were doing with it, and why. Concerningly, no one could give her a straight answer. What she wanted most was transparency.iPaladin gave her that insight. Using our platform, she could keep track of what was happening with her trusts and investments and who was involved in its management.
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Family offices—composed of many moving parts and people—are complex and often grow completely unmanageable. By using iPaladin, we can package all those moving parts into a single vehicle and hand our clients the keys.
