Rob Mallernee Q&A: AI, Trust, and the Next Decade of Family Offices

What does Eton’s founder believe will define the next decade of family offices? Robert Mallernee, founder and CEO of Eton Solutions, believes the next decade belongs to family offices that become AI-native while keeping full control of their data — using AI to shift from reporting to real-time decision-making, without ever outsourcing the family’s data sovereignty. In this Q&A he explains why he built AtlasFive, what AI genuinely changes, and the questions every principal should ask.

Robert Mallernee built Eton Solutions out of his own family office, creating the AtlasFive® platform to solve problems he lived with first-hand. We sat down with him to discuss AI, trust, and where the profession is heading. The conversation is edited for length.

You built AtlasFive® from inside a family office. What problem were you actually trying to solve?

“The same problem every family office has: the data was everywhere and nowhere. We had excellent people spending their days gathering statements, reconciling spreadsheets and assembling reports that were out of date the moment they were finished. We were paying for judgement and getting data entry. I wanted a system that did the assembling so the people could do the thinking. That is what AtlasFive® became — one platform that runs the office, rather than a dozen tools that describe it.”

Everyone is talking about AI now. What does it genuinely change for a family office?

“It changes what the office is for. For a century the family office was an organisation of record — its job was to know what happened. AI lets the platform keep the record automatically, which frees the office to focus on what should happen next. We call that decision intelligence. EtonAI™ handles more than a thousand operational use cases today; the result is that reconciliation and processing become exceptions to review rather than weeks of work. The hours go back to the family and to judgement.”

What worries you about how AI is being adopted in wealth?

“Data. The rush to adopt AI has people handing their most sensitive information to systems they do not control, sometimes to train models that serve other clients. For a family office that is a fiduciary failure. The right question is not ‘what can the AI do’ but ‘whose data is it learning from, and who holds the keys.’ We built Eton so the family holds its own encryption keys — Bring Your Own Key — and we certified our AI management system to ISO 42001 so it is independently auditable. Control of the data is not negotiable.”

Some worry AI will replace family-office staff. Will it?

“It replaces tasks, not people — and the tasks it replaces are the ones nobody wanted to do. The analyst who spent a week aggregating statements does not lose their job; they get the week back to do analysis that actually matters. The talent model inverts: fewer people producing data, more interpreting it. The good people become more valuable, not less, because their time is finally spent on judgement.”

You talk about ‘a family office in your pocket.’ What do you mean?

“The capabilities that used to require a staffed, multi-million-dollar office — consolidation, oversight, control — can now reach an individual wealth owner through a platform. That is EtonAlpha, from $25,000 a year. A family that could never have justified building an office can now have the substance of one. That democratisation is the part of this I am most proud of.”

What is your advice to a principal evaluating all this?

“Ask whether a system operates or only reports. Ask who controls your data. Ask how many workflows the AI actually runs end-to-end, not how many features it lists. And be honest about what you need — most families need their data consolidated and their admin handled far more than they need another reporting dashboard. The technology to do this exists today, in production. The only real question is how quickly you adopt it.”