From a system of record to a system of action
18 Mar 2026
Quantios CEO Guy Harrison discusses with Zarah Choudhary how growth, consolidation, and artificial intelligence are reshaping the corporate, trust, and fund services landscape — and why core platforms are evolving from systems of record into systems of action
Image: Quantios
Corporate, trust, and fund services (CTFS) may still be viewed as one of financial services’ more conservative corners, but beneath the surface the industry is undergoing structural change.
In conversation with Guy Harrison, CEO of Quantios, it becomes clear that growth, consolidation, and automation are reshaping the operational backbone of the sector — and redefining what core infrastructure means.
For nearly four decades, Harrison says Quantios has built software dedicated exclusively to CTFS. Its platform sits behind corporate trust and fund administration firms — the operational infrastructure that allows them to onboard clients, oversee governance processes, fulfil regulatory filings, and run accounting, all within a single environment - and, following last year’s acquisition of Klea, delivers a significantly enhanced capability for managing complex legal entity structures.
If administrators are the visible face of the industry, Harrison describes Quantios as the plumbing beneath it.
“We’re the infrastructure that sits behind their business and allows them to perform all of their core processes in one place,” he says. “It gives providers a single pane of glass into their customers — across jurisdictions, entities and business lines.”
Today, the cloud-native Quantios Core platform serves more than 600 customers across over 101 jurisdictions. But that scale reflects broader shifts reshaping the CTFS market.
Growth, complexity and consolidation
Over the past decade, what was once seen as a steady, relatively traditional sector has evolved in three clear ways.
First, it has grown. The industry has experienced consistent expansion — around five per cent compound annual growth by Quantios’ assessment — with further growth expected over the next five years.
Second, it has become more complex. Administrators are supporting more jurisdictions, more entity types, and more specialised service lines than ever before. At the same time, regulatory pressure has intensified, particularly in anti-money laundering (AML) and tax transparency requirements. Compliance is no longer static; regulation is constantly evolving across multiple territories.
Third, consolidation has accelerated. Large global players have acquired smaller firms, expanding both geographic reach and service breadth. While this consolidation creates scale advantages, Harrison argues it also introduces operational fragmentation.
Firms are now grappling with multiple operational teams, legacy technology stacks and disparate processes inherited through acquisitions. The challenge is no longer simply growth — it is delivering consistent service across a sprawling footprint.
“How do you provide a consistently excellent level of service to a global client when you’re operating across multiple jurisdictions and multiple platforms?” Harrison asks. “That’s the question many are now trying to solve.”
Scaling in constrained environments
Operational strain points are emerging in several areas.
Many administrators operate in high-cost, talent-constrained locations such as the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. Scaling headcount to meet growing demand is increasingly difficult. Meanwhile, consolidation has left larger firms with layered legacy systems that do not easily communicate with one another. Offshoring and incremental efficiency gains have delivered some cost benefits over the years, but Harrison suggests these measures alone have not generated true operational leverage.
The current focus, he explains, is on platform consolidation — migrating fragmented, on-premise systems onto a unified, cloud-based environment that can enforce governance, standardise data quality and deliver consistency across business lines. This shift is already playing out in the market: Equiom, for example, recently completed a full migration to QCore, Quantios’ flagship cloud platform, modernising its digital infrastructure.
Modernisation, however, has historically been slow. These systems are mission-critical: deeply embedded in workflows and daily operations. Replacing them requires not only technology change but operational transformation. An estimated 70-80 per cent of firms in the industry still operate on heritage on-premise platforms. Until recently, cloud alternatives tailored specifically to CTFS were limited.
Now, Harrison says, the shift is becoming more realistic. After 18 months in the market, Quantios’ cloud-native platform has enabled the firm to refine migration methodologies, increasingly productising the process and embedding AI tools to make transitions more predictable and efficient.
Security, he emphasises, remains foundational. Handling significant volumes of personally identifiable information and regulatory data means cyber resilience is non-negotiable.
“It’s the first principle from which we build everything.”
The AI opportunity: From assistance to agency
If cloud migration represents one structural shift, AI represents another.
Harrison believes the potential economic impact is substantial. By his assessment, between US$3-5 billion of manual processing cost exists across the industry today — much of which could be automated or augmented through AI.
However, this is not a case of removing humans entirely from the equation.
“These are highly deterministic, zero-defect processes,” he says. “And many are regulatory. You cannot delegate full authority to AI. There will always need to be a human in the loop.”
The most immediate gains are emerging in repetitive, rules-based workflows. For example, transcribing bank statement transactions into general ledgers — a routine but time-intensive accounting task — is well suited to automation.
Quantios has already deployed generative AI capabilities within its platform, including automated report summarisation, risk reporting and client overviews. The next phase involves embedding what Harrison describes as an ‘agentic workforce’ directly into the cloud platform — AI agents capable of executing defined operational tasks within controlled parameters.
Governance and explainability are central to this model. AI tools must be tested extensively before production deployment, operate within clearly defined limits and provide transparency around decision-making.
“You always need to be able to explain why the AI did what it did,” Harrison notes — particularly when regulatory accountability is involved.
Managing regulatory divergence
Global CTFS providers face an additional structural challenge: regulatory divergence across jurisdictions.
Regulation is not only complex but dynamic. Requirements shift frequently across AML, tax reporting, and corporate governance frameworks. For firms operating across dozens of territories, keeping pace can be resource-intensive.
Quantios approaches this through a combination of dedicated regulatory expertise and network effects. Internal specialists conduct continuous horizon scanning across the 100-plus jurisdictions supported by the platform, identifying regulatory updates and embedding them into the software.
At the same time, the firm leverages feedback from its global client base to validate and pressure-test changes before production deployment.
“The power of the network is as important as the expertise,” Harrison says.
AI is also being explored to accelerate aspects of regulatory monitoring, again with human oversight retained.
From a system of record to a system of action
Looking ahead, Harrison sees the role of core platforms evolving.
Historically, CTFS technology has functioned primarily as a system of record — the authoritative repository for books, records and compliance data. Increasingly, however, Harrison believes these platforms will become systems of action.
More operational processing will occur directly within the platform. More analytics will be embedded natively. And, as AI agents mature, more work may be performed by the system itself — within controlled governance frameworks.
“As well as being the system of record, we will become the system of action,” he says. “Doing more work in the system — and increasingly, by the system.”
For an industry balancing growth, consolidation and intensifying regulatory scrutiny, that transition could mark a defining shift in how CTFS firms operate in the decade ahead.
In conversation with Guy Harrison, CEO of Quantios, it becomes clear that growth, consolidation, and automation are reshaping the operational backbone of the sector — and redefining what core infrastructure means.
For nearly four decades, Harrison says Quantios has built software dedicated exclusively to CTFS. Its platform sits behind corporate trust and fund administration firms — the operational infrastructure that allows them to onboard clients, oversee governance processes, fulfil regulatory filings, and run accounting, all within a single environment - and, following last year’s acquisition of Klea, delivers a significantly enhanced capability for managing complex legal entity structures.
If administrators are the visible face of the industry, Harrison describes Quantios as the plumbing beneath it.
“We’re the infrastructure that sits behind their business and allows them to perform all of their core processes in one place,” he says. “It gives providers a single pane of glass into their customers — across jurisdictions, entities and business lines.”
Today, the cloud-native Quantios Core platform serves more than 600 customers across over 101 jurisdictions. But that scale reflects broader shifts reshaping the CTFS market.
Growth, complexity and consolidation
Over the past decade, what was once seen as a steady, relatively traditional sector has evolved in three clear ways.
First, it has grown. The industry has experienced consistent expansion — around five per cent compound annual growth by Quantios’ assessment — with further growth expected over the next five years.
Second, it has become more complex. Administrators are supporting more jurisdictions, more entity types, and more specialised service lines than ever before. At the same time, regulatory pressure has intensified, particularly in anti-money laundering (AML) and tax transparency requirements. Compliance is no longer static; regulation is constantly evolving across multiple territories.
Third, consolidation has accelerated. Large global players have acquired smaller firms, expanding both geographic reach and service breadth. While this consolidation creates scale advantages, Harrison argues it also introduces operational fragmentation.
Firms are now grappling with multiple operational teams, legacy technology stacks and disparate processes inherited through acquisitions. The challenge is no longer simply growth — it is delivering consistent service across a sprawling footprint.
“How do you provide a consistently excellent level of service to a global client when you’re operating across multiple jurisdictions and multiple platforms?” Harrison asks. “That’s the question many are now trying to solve.”
Scaling in constrained environments
Operational strain points are emerging in several areas.
Many administrators operate in high-cost, talent-constrained locations such as the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. Scaling headcount to meet growing demand is increasingly difficult. Meanwhile, consolidation has left larger firms with layered legacy systems that do not easily communicate with one another. Offshoring and incremental efficiency gains have delivered some cost benefits over the years, but Harrison suggests these measures alone have not generated true operational leverage.
The current focus, he explains, is on platform consolidation — migrating fragmented, on-premise systems onto a unified, cloud-based environment that can enforce governance, standardise data quality and deliver consistency across business lines. This shift is already playing out in the market: Equiom, for example, recently completed a full migration to QCore, Quantios’ flagship cloud platform, modernising its digital infrastructure.
Modernisation, however, has historically been slow. These systems are mission-critical: deeply embedded in workflows and daily operations. Replacing them requires not only technology change but operational transformation. An estimated 70-80 per cent of firms in the industry still operate on heritage on-premise platforms. Until recently, cloud alternatives tailored specifically to CTFS were limited.
Now, Harrison says, the shift is becoming more realistic. After 18 months in the market, Quantios’ cloud-native platform has enabled the firm to refine migration methodologies, increasingly productising the process and embedding AI tools to make transitions more predictable and efficient.
Security, he emphasises, remains foundational. Handling significant volumes of personally identifiable information and regulatory data means cyber resilience is non-negotiable.
“It’s the first principle from which we build everything.”
The AI opportunity: From assistance to agency
If cloud migration represents one structural shift, AI represents another.
Harrison believes the potential economic impact is substantial. By his assessment, between US$3-5 billion of manual processing cost exists across the industry today — much of which could be automated or augmented through AI.
However, this is not a case of removing humans entirely from the equation.
“These are highly deterministic, zero-defect processes,” he says. “And many are regulatory. You cannot delegate full authority to AI. There will always need to be a human in the loop.”
The most immediate gains are emerging in repetitive, rules-based workflows. For example, transcribing bank statement transactions into general ledgers — a routine but time-intensive accounting task — is well suited to automation.
Quantios has already deployed generative AI capabilities within its platform, including automated report summarisation, risk reporting and client overviews. The next phase involves embedding what Harrison describes as an ‘agentic workforce’ directly into the cloud platform — AI agents capable of executing defined operational tasks within controlled parameters.
Governance and explainability are central to this model. AI tools must be tested extensively before production deployment, operate within clearly defined limits and provide transparency around decision-making.
“You always need to be able to explain why the AI did what it did,” Harrison notes — particularly when regulatory accountability is involved.
Managing regulatory divergence
Global CTFS providers face an additional structural challenge: regulatory divergence across jurisdictions.
Regulation is not only complex but dynamic. Requirements shift frequently across AML, tax reporting, and corporate governance frameworks. For firms operating across dozens of territories, keeping pace can be resource-intensive.
Quantios approaches this through a combination of dedicated regulatory expertise and network effects. Internal specialists conduct continuous horizon scanning across the 100-plus jurisdictions supported by the platform, identifying regulatory updates and embedding them into the software.
At the same time, the firm leverages feedback from its global client base to validate and pressure-test changes before production deployment.
“The power of the network is as important as the expertise,” Harrison says.
AI is also being explored to accelerate aspects of regulatory monitoring, again with human oversight retained.
From a system of record to a system of action
Looking ahead, Harrison sees the role of core platforms evolving.
Historically, CTFS technology has functioned primarily as a system of record — the authoritative repository for books, records and compliance data. Increasingly, however, Harrison believes these platforms will become systems of action.
More operational processing will occur directly within the platform. More analytics will be embedded natively. And, as AI agents mature, more work may be performed by the system itself — within controlled governance frameworks.
“As well as being the system of record, we will become the system of action,” he says. “Doing more work in the system — and increasingly, by the system.”
For an industry balancing growth, consolidation and intensifying regulatory scrutiny, that transition could mark a defining shift in how CTFS firms operate in the decade ahead.
NO FEE, NO RISK
100% ON RETURNS If you invest in only one asset servicing news source this year, make sure it is your free subscription to Asset Servicing Times
100% ON RETURNS If you invest in only one asset servicing news source this year, make sure it is your free subscription to Asset Servicing Times
