Ela Bilgin
Credit: Ela Bilgin

London-based investment management expert and SmartWealth co-founder Ela Bilgin explains why outdated infrastructure is emerging as one of the biggest risks during the $84 trillion Great Wealth Transfer.

Over the next two decades, an estimated $84 trillion will pass from Baby Boomers to Millennials and Generation Z, making it the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history, according to research by Cerulli Associates. Yet while most discussions focus on investment performance and estate planning, a more fundamental question is beginning to reshape private banking: can institutions built for previous generations meet the expectations of today's digital-native clients?

Associate Private Banker at Union Bancaire Privée (UBP) Ela Bilgin argues that the industry's greatest challenge is no longer preserving assets purely through market cycles but modernising the operational infrastructure behind it. As younger clients demand real-time access, greater transparency and seamless digital experiences, legacy systems are becoming one of the biggest obstacles to effective wealth management.

Ela Bilgin has built her career at the intersection of private banking and financial technology. She advises ultra-high-net-worth clients as an Associate Private Banker, is an Associate Chartered Banker with CISI IAD Level 4 qualifications, and co-founded SmartWealth after years of working with international families. Her research on blockchain integration in banking was published in the Expert Journal of Economics.

In this interview, she explains why outdated banking systems pose a growing risk for wealthy families, how infrastructure is redefining private banking, and what financial institutions must do to stay relevant in the era of the Great Wealth Transfer.

Much of the discussion around the Great Wealth Transfer centres on investment returns. Yet you believe outdated banking infrastructure may pose the bigger risk. What makes you say that?

Ela Bilgin: Market volatility is something the industry knows how to manage. Private banks have spent decades refining investment strategies, diversification models and risk controls. Markets go through cycles, and that's expected.

What worries me more is the infrastructure behind wealth management. Family assets are often spread across multiple banks, investment platforms, legal structures and jurisdictions, while the information needed to manage them sits in disconnected systems, manual spreadsheets and unencrypted email chains. That creates operational risk, weakens cyber security and makes succession significantly harder. In many cases, wealth isn't lost because of poor investments. It's lost because families lack clear communication, data sovereignty and reliable access to information when ownership passes to the next generation.

You've worked with ultra-high-net-worth families in London and helped oversee a portfolio of roughly £1.8 billion in assets. From what you've seen, how different are today's heirs from the generation that built that wealth?

Ela Bilgin: The difference is less about money and more about expectations. Many first-generation wealth creators built businesses through personal relationships and valued direct access to trusted advisers. For them, a long-standing banking relationship was the primary sign of security.

Their children look for something different. They want the same speed, transparency and seamless digital experience they get from every other modern service they use. This younger UHNW generation wants to be far more actively involved. They want to learn, understand their global footprint and exercise genuine control over their assets. Fragmented, legacy systems simply do not provide that agency anymore. They still value expert advice on complex structures and cross-border planning, but they expect it to be supported by up-to-date, real-time information, intuitive technology and frictionless collaboration, not static quarterly reports and outdated administrative processes.

How often do you encounter families where the next generation questions whether they need a private bank at all? What are they looking for that traditional institutions struggle to provide?

Ela Bilgin: That question comes up far more often than it did a few years ago. Younger clients don't automatically see the value proposition of a traditional private bank when they can monitor investments and execute transactions through modern digital platforms.

What they want is a single, live view of their aggregate financial picture, secure collaboration tools for family members and advisers, and instant access to reliable data instead of waiting days or weeks for answers and manual consolidation. Traditional banks still offer deep expertise, but many operate on infrastructure designed for a completely different era. The institutions that modernise how they serve clients without losing the human element will be the ones that retain capital.

You've led onboarding and compliance projects across multiple jurisdictions. How much of the friction clients experience comes from regulation, and how much comes from outdated technology?

Ela Bilgin: Regulation often gets the blame, but it's usually the technology that's slowing everything down. Compliance under FCA, AML and cross-border regulatory requirements is demanding, yet it doesn't have to translate into weeks of manual paperwork and administrative delays.

Modern systems can automate much of the verification process while maintaining the exact same stringent regulatory standards. Regulation defines what needs to be verified. The technology platform determines whether the client experiences it as a smooth, high-quality process or a frustrating operational bottleneck.

Alongside your banking career, you're building SmartWealth, a capital management platform that is already being piloted by leading family offices. What problems convinced you that existing systems weren't enough?

Ela Bilgin: The exact same operational issues kept coming up. Most family offices simply lack unified operational visibility and routinely overpay for fragmented software suites that don't work properly together. Families had no single source of truth because information was scattered across banking custodians, legal structures and proprietary software. Advisers spent countless hours manually consolidating data, while highly sensitive legal documents were still being exchanged over standard email.

That isn't just inefficient. It creates severe cyber and operational security risks. Excellent investment performance means very little if the underlying operating system is unreliable. Together with my co-founder, Konstantin Bozhenko, we built SmartWealth as an all-in-one ecosystem suited to UHNW individuals who want to manage their wealth independently, as well as family offices and wealth advisers seeking seamless operational control. By integrating the OpenWealth standard for real-time asset feeds and deploying an air-gapped private AI assistant, 'Ela AI', we enable families to access information, search trust clauses and make decisions without compromising data privacy. In our long-term roadmap, SmartWealth will also connect directly with private banks, creating a digital bridge that enables frictionless account opening, full visibility into bank fees, clear comparison of product offerings and real-time multi-custodial data sharing.

You've worked with clients across Europe, the CIS region and the Middle East. Are wealthy clients becoming more alike in what they look for from their advisers?

Ela Bilgin: Investment priorities and asset preferences still vary by region because local markets, tax rules, regulations and business cultures differ. But when it comes to digital infrastructure, the expectations gap has almost disappeared.

Whether they're in London, Zurich, Dubai or Riyadh, younger clients expect the exact same baseline: instant access to real-time information, institutional-grade cyber security and the ability to manage their global financial picture across borders without unnecessary friction. Digital expectations have become global, even if investment strategies remain localised.

Drawing on your experience as an Associate Chartered Banker and co-founder of SmartWealth, what would you advise the board of a global private bank to prioritise over the next five years to remain relevant for the next generation of clients?

Ela Bilgin: I'd start with open infrastructure. Clients shouldn't have to navigate multiple isolated platforms just to understand their own financial position. Banks need to move away from data silos, adopt global standards such as OpenWealth and give clients one clear, reliable view of everything they own.

The second priority is privacy-first innovation. AI will become central to wealth management, but only if clients know their sensitive family data remains private, encrypted and entirely under their control through air-gapped systems. By embracing modern operating bridges such as SmartWealth, financial institutions can significantly reduce onboarding friction, provide full fee transparency and deliver the real-time control that next-generation clients demand. The institutions that solve both infrastructure connectivity and data sovereignty won't just keep pace with the next generation. They'll set the benchmark for the entire industry.