Investment Platforms & Operating Models
Investment platforms, portfolio systems, workflow and investment operations.
Asset & Wealth Management
Cost, Scale & Service Performance
Scale only helps if unit costs actually fall as assets grow.
Overview
Fee pressure has made cost-to-serve a permanent constraint. Cost per basis point of assets under management is now a standing board measure, and growth only improves the economics if unit costs genuinely fall as assets rise. That takes measured unit costs, capacity that flexes with volume, and service levels that are tracked and managed rather than assumed.
We measure cost-to-serve and service performance across investment and client operations, redesign the processes and organisation behind them, and run the sourcing question — custodian lift-out, retained in-house, or a mix — on evidence: unit costs, service levels and data ownership. Then we deliver whichever answer holds, including the retained oversight model an outsourced arrangement needs.
We work with COOs, CFOs and heads of operations at asset managers, wealth businesses and platform operators. Engagements run from a cost-to-serve baseline to a full operating-model redesign, or ownership of an outsourcing or internalisation programme through to steady state.
What we do
We build the unit-cost baseline: what each function, product and client segment actually costs to run, measured on a method the business can repeat each quarter. The baseline turns cost debates into decisions, and it is the evidence every sourcing and redesign choice rests on.
We measure where the hours go across investment and client operations, separate genuine workload from rework and workarounds, and size the capacity the operating model can absorb. That shows whether growth needs more people or better process, function by function.
Processes are redesigned front to back so volume growth stops translating one-for-one into headcount: handoffs removed, exceptions handled once, routine steps automated where the case is proven. The gains are measured in the same unit costs the baseline established.
Service levels are defined for the services that matter, measured continuously, and managed through a standing rhythm of daily and weekly routines. Performance conversations then run on the same numbers everyone can see, internally and with providers.
Custodian lift-outs promise scale; internalisation promises control. The economics shift with size, asset mix and the state of your data, so we run the decision on measured unit costs, service evidence and data ownership — and deliver whichever answer holds, including the transition.
Outsourced operations still belong to the manager. We build the oversight model that makes an arrangement work: service measures with teeth, a governance rhythm that uses them, data ownership that survives any exit, and provider performance managed on evidence.
What to expect
The first weeks build the baseline: unit costs by function, service performance as it is actually experienced, and capacity against projected volumes. That produces a fact base the board can use and a sequenced improvement plan. From there, delivery runs through process redesign, service-model change or a sourcing transition, with benefits tracked into the run-rate each quarter. A Capmark partner is accountable end to end.
01
Assess
Establish the current state, the constraints, the risks and the value at stake.
02
Define
Shape the target model and the business case with the executives who own the outcome.
03
Mobilise
Stand up the team, the plan and the governance around the outcome.
04
Implement
Design, build and test the change, with the business alongside.
05
Sustain
Cutover, hypercare and handover, so the business runs it under its own control.
The same five stages on every engagement, led by senior practitioners end to end. How we work
Insights
Related thinking.
Get in touch
Talk to a Partner about Cost, Scale & Service Performance.
Tell us what needs to change and where the pressure or risk is showing.