Wealth-Platform Integration Leader

The mandate

Two acquired wealth businesses now share branding and sales targets, but their portfolio books, adviser desktops, fee logic and compliance controls remain separate. Clients with holdings on both platforms receive inconsistent valuations and documents, while promised synergies depend on an undefined migration. The integration executive resigned after the board rejected a single big-bang conversion plan, leaving a leadership gap before major product renewals and regulatory commitments fall due.

Across sixteen months, the interim leader will choose a defensible platform disposition, establish authoritative client and portfolio records, design migration cohorts, reconcile fees and tax lots, and unite adviser workflows without masking different legal or fiduciary obligations. The work must convert acquisition synergy into retired systems and simpler operations while protecting suitability evidence, market access, corporate actions, client reporting and complaint handling.

A permanent integration or platform executive will be confirmed by month ten and lead the final migration cohort under observation. Handover requires successful command of a market-day exception, an adviser-readiness decision and a steering-committee challenge on residual coexistence cost. The successor receives the platform rationale, data decisions, client treatment rules, control evidence, vendor commitments and synergy baseline, including all exceptions whose resolution extends beyond the interim term.

The seat may set integration sequencing, stop a migration, reallocate approved programme funding, decide target patterns below reserved thresholds, require client-level reconciliation and hold vendors to contracted evidence. It may not approve client remediation, interpret fiduciary duties, change product terms, authorise market access, sign supplier amendments, accept regulatory breaches or close a books-and-records platform without accountable officer approval.

The remit excludes leading the acquired-business commercial merger, advising individual clients, acting as compliance officer or running normal investment operations. Success is measured by completed cohorts, reconciled holdings and fees, retired technology, realised operating benefit and a permanent leader capable of closing the remaining estate. Parallel platforms relabelled as a strategic target state will not qualify as integration.

Why this seat is open

The departed executive proposed a big-bang migration without credible client-level reconciliation or fallback, and the steering committee withdrew confidence. Leaving the seat open would allow each acquired business to defend its platform while synergy costs continue. Temporary authority is required to establish evidence-based cohorts, make target choices that are larger than either legacy team’s remit and prepare permanent leadership through a live conversion rather than a prolonged search.

What you will own

• Establish the target disposition for portfolio books, adviser desktops, digital journeys, reporting, data and control evidence.
• Define authoritative client, account, instrument, holding, tax-lot, fee and transaction records across both acquired platforms.
• Segment migration cohorts by product, adviser practice, data quality, legal obligation, market dependency and client communication need.
• Direct client-level reconciliation for holdings, cash, cost base, income, fees, corporate actions and historical document availability.
• Set readiness gates covering adviser training, operations capacity, market-day support, rollback, complaints and compliance evidence.
• Track acquisition value through platform retirement, vendor exit, process removal, capacity release and verified run-cost reduction.
• Induct the successor through final-cohort command and transfer decision history, exceptions, economics and stakeholder obligations.

Candidate qualifications

• Has integrated acquired wealth or investment platforms containing portfolio accounting, adviser workflow and regulated client records.
• Understands holdings, tax lots, fees, corporate actions, suitability, reporting and market operations at migration-decision depth.
• Has rejected a big-bang plan and delivered controlled cohorts with client-level reconciliation and proven operational fallback.
• Can decide target-platform disposition without treating the larger legacy estate or strongest political sponsor as self-evidently correct.
• Has converted acquisition synergy into decommissioned systems and removed process rather than reporting gross migration activity.
• Demonstrates succession through a permanent leader tested in live migration, market exception and governance decisions before handover.

Non-negotiables

• Will work the Sydney hybrid schedule and attend designated adviser offices and quarterly integration committees.
• Must disclose relationships with wealth managers, platform vendors, custodians, integrators and parties connected to the acquisition.
• Brings regulated wealth-platform migration with reconciled client assets; generic post-merger technology governance is insufficient.
• Will not authorise migration where holdings, cash, fees or historical evidence cannot be reconciled at the agreed client level.

1. 49 words maximum. Which client-level reconciliation has stopped one of your wealth-platform migration waves?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you decide between acquired platforms when scale and functional fitness point in opposite directions?
3. 49 words maximum. What live event should the permanent successor command before you hand over accountability?