The Cost of Legacy Systems: Why Indian Family Offices Are Moving to All‑in‑One Solutions

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The structure of wealth in India is changing. Behind the growth in asset values lies a quieter revolution in how families manage, govern, and preserve that wealth. Today’s portfolios span listed equity, private markets, real estate, international holdings, and philanthropic trusts often spread across dozens of custodians, accounts, and legal entities. For many family offices, the challenge is no longer investment selection. It is data consolidation and ownership.

For years, spreadsheets and standalone tools were enough. They gave advisors flexibility and offered principals a sense of visibility. But as the scale, structure, and speed of wealth have evolved, these tools have turned into bottlenecks. Delays in reconciliation, mismatches across reports, and disjointed decision-making are now common not because of poor management, but due to systems that were never designed for the multi-layered complexity of modern family offices.

If You Can’t See It Together, You Can’t Think About It Together

“Most families don’t realise how fragmented their view of wealth is until they try to ask a basic question, like how their asset allocation and performance has tracked over the past quarter,” says Chirag Nanavati, Managing Director of Asset Vantage. “If that answer requires three people, four reports, and five spreadsheets, something is broken. What families need is one version of the truth, not three manually reconciled ones.”

This fragmentation does more than slow things down. It undermines strategic thinking. When information is siloed by advisor or entity, families find themselves reacting rather than planning. Reports become backward-looking validations instead of forward-looking analytical tools. In an environment where both volatility and opportunity are increasing, this is no longer viable.

Security and Privacy Is Not an Add-On, It’s the Core Infrastructure

As wealth becomes more digital, the exposure surface becomes wider. Family offices are now seen as high-value targets often with less institutional security than private banks. The issue is not just about preventing cyber threats. It is about knowing and controlling who has access.

Asset Vantage runs on a private cloud environment for each family with bank-grade encryption, role-based access, and full audit trails. Every action taken on the platform whether a report download, a ledger edit, or a login is logged and traceable. For family offices dealing with multiple internal and external advisors and operators, this level of governance is essential.

The Next Generation Is Not Waiting for PDFs

Globally, an estimated USD 83 trillion in family wealth is expected to be transferred from older generations to their heirs through 2048, according to UBS’s Global Wealth Report 2025. India too is entering a critical phase of generational transition, as family-run enterprises and investment portfolios begin to pass to next gens. But the handover isn’t just financial; it is operational. The next generation is stepping into responsibility with a different set of expectations. They want access, structure, and visibility and not just summaries. They are accustomed to real-time information, any-time mobile access, and seamless digital experiences.

“The next generation isn’t waiting for end-of-month reports. They want to check their family’s portfolio on a Sunday morning, mid-flight, with the same ease they check their messages,” says Shaan Dalal, Director of UNIDEL Group, the parent company of Asset Vantage. “And not just the balances, they want to see allocation drift, performance history, upcoming capital calls, all from their phone. That’s not a feature anymore. It’s a baseline expectation.”

The AV PRO mobile app was designed precisely for this need. It gives next-generation family members a dashboard that’s both visual and informative, with push notifications on capital calls, drift from investment policy, and upcoming maturities. But unlike other tools, it does this without sacrificing control or privacy principals can determine exactly what each user sees and when.

The Cost of Legacy Is No Longer Hidden

Despite these evolving expectations, it’s estimated that over 70 percent of Indian family offices still run their operations on legacy systems. These include disconnected accounting platforms, outdated reporting tools, and Excel-heavy workflows. In many cases, they rely on the institutional memory of key individuals, making knowledge transition during succession a serious vulnerability.

The cost of such dependence is not always visible until it becomes urgent. Errors go unnoticed, reports take days to compile, and financial decisions are made without fully reconciled data. And when leadership changes whether due to succession, retirement, or sudden illness, the gaps become clear.

“Asset Vantage is not tied to a legacy platform, which makes it unique. I now have partnership accounting capability and can tag my investments with their geography in a user?friendly manner. This has simplified my SFO’s complex financial data with customization as per my needs.”

– Family Principal, Single Family Office, India

Audit Trails, Permissions, and Preparedness

Family Offices are not just expected to manage wealth anymore. They are expected to prove how they’ve managed it. Regulatory reviews, internal audits, and family board meetings all demand transparent workflows, clean documentation, and reliable reporting- the foundation of that capability is an auditable system of record.

Asset Vantage enables entity-level audit trails, customizable chart of accounts, capital gains tracking, and multi-period performance metrics including IRR, TWR, and DVPI. Every report is tied to real transactions. Every number can be traced back to the ledger.

Built by a Family Office, for Family Offices

Asset Vantage, A UNIDEL Company, was created to produce what it could not find elsewhere: a full and actionable view of its assets and liabilities. A Family Office of a tech group, frustrated by tedious manual workflows, built its own answer to scattered data and hidden risks. That answer became Asset Vantage: general ledger accounting and reporting software that brings clarity to modern wealth.

AV empowers global Families and their trusted advisors to make better informed financial decisions. Powered by integrated general ledger and performance reporting technology, this Financial OS is the backbone for Family Offices and their advisors.

Wealth is no longer defined by what is owned, but by what can be seen, understood, and acted on, instantly.

For media enquiries, email us at info@assetvantage.com.

AV Managed Services

The Cost of Legacy Systems: Why Indian Family Offices Are Moving to All-in-One Solutions

If You Can’t See It Together, You Can’t Think About It Together

Security and Privacy Is Not an Add-On, It’s the Core Infrastructure

The Next Generation Is Not Waiting for PDFs

The Cost of Legacy Is No Longer Hidden

Audit Trails, Permissions, and Preparedness

Built by a Family Office, for Family Offices

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