Ola Abdul: What scale really means for platforms
Fundment Founder & CEO Ola Abdul speaking at Fundment LIVE - The Adviser Edge in January 2026
A few weeks on from Fundment LIVE – The Adviser Edge, with a little distance and perspective, one thing feels clear: the most important change wasn’t new ideas for their own sake, but a more honest conversation about where platforms genuinely support advisers, and where they still get in the way.
There’s been a noticeable change recently in how people talk about platform technology and in the pace at which ideas across the sector are being adopted. That’s healthy. It suggests the industry is starting to look more honestly at how platforms behave in practice.
For years, platforms have been treated as “just IT”; something that can be outsourced, rather than something that natively supports financial planning. Planners then absorb the friction themselves: manual processes, workarounds, delays. Clients rarely see it, but they feel it.
That model doesn’t scale.
From the ground up
At Fundment, we didn’t start by asking how to make platforms look better. We started by asking how they should work. That meant rebuilding the core; custody, trading, data and workflow, so advice can be delivered cleanly, consistently and without hidden operational drag.
Because scale isn’t just about assets. It’s about:
how reliably instructions move from decision to execution
how quickly money moves when timing matters
how clearly information flows between adviser, client and investment
and how accurately retirement income, rebalancing and withdrawals are carried out over time.
Clients don’t experience advice and execution as separate things. To them, it’s a single promise: this plan will happen.
That promise matters most at real moments in life: starting a family, buying a home, changing careers, supporting ageing parents, or moving into retirement. These aren’t abstract financial decisions. They’re personal, often stressful, and time sensitive.
“That’s the difference between a platform that looks modern and one that actually behaves like infrastructure.”
Good advice creates direction. Technology sits right at that junction. When it works well, it quietly reinforces the adviser’s value. When it doesn’t, it erodes trust, even if the advice itself was sound.
That’s why events like Fundment LIVE - The Adviser Edge mattered. Not as a showcase, but as a forum for honest conversations about where financial planning firms are already heading, conversations that are now being turned into real changes across firms throughout the country. We’re proud to have helped create that space.
A platform that ‘behaves like infrastructure’
Our role will always be the removal of the operational friction that gets in the way of plans being carried out properly, so advisers can focus on judgement, relationships and outcomes.
That’s the difference between a platform that looks modern and one that actually behaves like infrastructure.
What’s changing now is that advisers are seeing the contrast more clearly. Once execution becomes predictable, data is genuinely connected, and processes no longer need explaining away, expectations reset.
That change won’t be immediate. But it will be decisive. The platforms that matter in the next decade won’t be defined by noise or novelty. They’ll be defined by whether they work, day after day, especially when it counts.
That’s the work we’re focused on, deliberately, and for the long term.
Ola Abdul is Founder & CEO at Fundment