Raza explains that his firm took 2025 to conduct a total review of their cybersecurity infrastructure. Mandating a shared responsibility for cybersecurity between the firm and its advisors, they took additional steps to strengthen their cybersecurity offerings. Rather than viewing it as an area of technology, Mandeville approaches cybersecurity as one of the foundations of their business resilience. They’ve deployed advanced security measures like enhanced encryption protocols, mandatory multi-factor authentication, and AI threat detection systems. They’ve backed up those tools with new policies and guidelines as well as staff training..
While most of the adoption of those policies was dealer-led, Raza explains that Mandeville has given their advisors a list of dealer-approved third-party service providers, allowing for a degree of individual comfort and customization within the parameters of a secured list. He argues that this takes away the legwork for advisors of conducting due diligence for technology, freeing their time to serve clients.
While 2025 was a landmark year in terms of Mandeville’s review and reform in cybersecurity, Raza notes that these investments will be ongoing and iterative. He notes that the expectation from clients is always that their dealer can protect them against fraud, and meeting that expectation requires a degree of vigilance and perpetual upgrading.
Raza believes that his firm has an advantage in making these big-picture investments and upgrades: their investment philosophy. Mandeville Private Client espouses a clear framework for wealth management and wealth creation. Because they believe in that approach and in the quality of their investments, day to day issues like market volatility can occupy less mental space for advisors and the dealer.
While dealer business models are so widely dispersed and varied that trying to replicate another dealer’s approach to an issue like cybersecurity would be pointless, Raza believes that dealers can adhere to a few key principles going forward. The first is to survey the client base to determine need and survey the industry to determine what technologies are used more broadly. Advisor feedback is key to this process as it teaches dealers what their advisors believe is working. With a view to what is expected, what is desired, and what is commonplace, dealers can build a cybersecurity framework that suits their unique business. That framework can serve as the foundation for the industry’s evolution into true wealth management.
