The enduring logic of relationship-first technology

Rohit Mahna is a seasoned financial services and enterprise technology executive with over twenty years of experience at the intersection of WealthTech. He most recently served as Head of Client Growth at Fidelity, where he led the Client Relationship Group, overseeing both sales and relationship management teams serving institutional clients across Fidelity's wealth management business.

Before joining Fidelity, Rohit spent more than a decade at Salesforce, where he was responsible for defining and driving transformational go-to-market strategies across banking, asset management, and capital markets. He also played a foundational role in building Salesforce Financial Services Cloud. Today, Rohit serves as the Chief Revenue Officer at DriveWealth, a global B2B Brokerage-as-a-Service platform.

Mark Swan, CEO and Co-Founder of Nevis, had the opportunity to sit down with Rohit at Future Proof Citywide to discuss how the WealthTech industry has evolved and where it is headed. Check out some of the takeaways from the conversation below.

Relationships remain the foundation

Wealth management has always been a relationship business. That has not changed.

“Whether you’re a financial advisor, a banker, or an insurance agent, the relationship is the business,” Rohit noted. “When I began my career, technology was being used purely as support for those relationships — an IT function, not a strategic one.“

Early in his career, Rohit identified a gap between the horizontal technology stacks on the market and the deeply relational, context-intensive world of financial services. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud was built specifically to address that gap. The technology landscape has changed significantly since then, but Rohit’s core thesis has not: relationships are the foundation of the industry, and technology’s role is to support and strengthen them.

The time is now for enterprise registered investment advisors (RIAs) to adopt all-in-one solutions

Rohit sees several converging forces reshaping the RIA landscape. Fee compression is real and accelerating, as clients expect broader service for the same cost. That pressure is driving consolidation, and Rohit expects the industry to bifurcate: mega-firms with scale and resources on one end, and highly differentiated niche firms on the other.

The firms caught in between, large enough to carry overhead and operational complexity, but not differentiated enough to command premium pricing, will face the greatest pressure.

”Enterprises are going to want more all-in-one platforms rather than niche solutions and point solutions,” Rohit said. “The era of stitching together fifteen different tools is coming to an end. Firms want an integrated experience for their advisors, and for their clients.”

More tools does not necessarily mean more efficiency or more productivity. Now is the time for RIAs to evaluate the ways that AI can automate and augment processes in a platform that helps advisors have a full picture of their clients. That conviction informs Rohit’s skepticism of point solutions. Having observed the RIA landscape closely, Rohit believes narrow tools address narrow problems. His vision is a unified platform where advisors can handle the full scope of their responsibilities in one place. Rohit predicts the firms that want to grow efficiently at scale without compromising client service will invest in an all-in-one platform like Nevis.

Why your AI vendor should feel like an extension of your team

What separates a true partner from a vendor is what happens after a contract is signed. When privacy, security, and governance matter more than ever, you want a team that is building toward where the industry is going, not just solving for where it is today. The forward-deployed model of Nevis means the team is embedded with customers during onboarding, learning the nuances of their workflows, their client base, their advisors' habits and configuring the platform around how they actually operate. The best AI in the world fails if it isn't implemented with precision and supported by people who are as invested in your success as you are. Rohit and Mark were able to discuss the benefits of working with a platform solution that offers its customers guidance, expertise, and customization based on their needs rather than off the shelf, niche solutions that have little flexibility or adaptability.

Thinking in outcomes, not products

One of the more clarifying frameworks Rohit applies to financial services is Jobs-To-Be-Done: rather than asking what product a client wants, ask what job they are trying to accomplish.

For advisors, the implication is significant as their value extends beyond managing assets or producing financial plans. It lies in serving as a trusted partner across the full complexity of a client’s life. The technology supporting that advisor needs to be equally comprehensive: connected, and centered on the client’s actual goals. You can only make informed decisions about your client if you have all of the context and data around that client in one place, another reason that an all-in-one platform is a better solution than a point solution.

What does this mean for the future of WealthTech?

The firms that invest in an all-in-one solution like Nevis, one that AI can power to be more efficient, more personalized, and more genuinely valuable will hold a durable competitive advantage. Customer-centricity will not be a differentiator, it will become the expectation.