In this episode of The WealthTech Podcast, host Mark Wickersham sits down with Shaun Parkin, founder of Hall Road Investments and the voice behind The Family Office Sherpa.

Shaun shares a candid, experience-driven look at why many family offices struggle with governance, technology, and change management—and how small “workarounds” often create long-term risk, inefficiency, and technical debt.

Drawing on his work advising single-family offices across Australia and APAC, Shaun explains:

• Why governance—not portfolio performance—is often the real bottleneck
• How Excel and manual processes quietly undermine oversight and scalability
• What modern family offices should expect from reporting, data, and AI
• Why every family office needs a clear owner for implementation and change

As always we end the podcast on a personal note with Three Questions that Have Nothing to Do with WealthTech.

About Shaun Parkin

Shaun is Principal of Hall Road Investments and has over 20 years of family office focused experience.. Prior to establishing Hall Road, Shaun spent seven years at Boston-based asset manager, State Street Global Advisors where he had numerous roles including Australian Head of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and national head of relationships for Insurance, Endowment, and Family Office clients.

He also held roles in capital markets and middle office with Lonsec, Shaw Stockbroking in Sydney and GLG Partners and JP Morgan in London. He also had a small Mongolian detour which is worth having a chat about.

Shaun is also creator of The Family Office Sherpa, a family office focused podcast and newsletter.

https://www.thefamilyofficesherpa.com/the-podcast

About Hall Road Investments

Assisting Single and Multi Family Office teams looking for an outside view on investments, operations & technology.

About The WealthTech Podcast:
The WealthTech Podcast is a bi-monthly interview series hosted by Mark Wickersham. Each month we present conversations with various industry leaders that focuses on the challenges family wealth firms face with technology, people and process. The podcast is produced by Brad Oliver.

The WealthTech Podcast is brought to you by the generous support of Risclarity. Risclarity fills the technology gaps family wealth firms face when serving the complex needs of ultra-high net worth families.

Disclaimer
Information provided is for educational purposes only. Opinions expressed and estimates or projections given are as of the date of the presentation there is no obligation to update or provide notice of inaccuracy or change.