Dispatch, a New York-based data infrastructure company specializing in back-office workflows for wealth management firms, has announced the formation of its first advisory board. The four-member panel brings together executives with extensive experience across advisory, custody, and financial technology, according to a company announcement.
The board includes Bob Oros, who served as chairman and CEO of Hightower Advisors for six years before stepping down from the CEO role last year; Rajini Kodialam, co-founder and former COO of Focus Financial Partners; Stephen Langlois, former president of Kestra Financial who also held senior positions at Fidelity Investments, LPL Financial, and eMoney Advisor; and Sachin Shah, a fintech operator who helped scale 55ip through its acquisition by J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
The appointments come as Dispatch reports a period of rapid growth, with its customer base expanding fivefold over the past year and the collective assets managed by firms on its platform jumping from roughly $900 billion to more than $9 trillion.
Addressing the Scale Problem
Dispatch's core argument is that operations teams at wealth management firms have reached a ceiling. As firms grow through acquisitions or organic advisor recruiting, the manual work of opening accounts, onboarding clients, and reconciling custodial data compounds faster than headcount can keep pace. "Historically, scaling a wealth management business has meant asking operations teams to absorb more work and complexity – a model that simply doesn't scale," Oros said in the announcement.
In a previous interview with InvestmentNews, Dispatch CEO Rob Nance noted that the industry still relies heavily on spreadsheets and manual data entry to move client accounts between firms. "Transitions are among the most operationally complex workflows in wealth management, and until now, the industry hasn't had purpose-built software to manage them on," Nance said. "Firms have been forced to choose between a custodial program they may not qualify for and a manual process built on spreadsheets and people."
Each board member brings a distinct perspective. Oros led Hightower through a series of acquisitions that grew its assets under advisement from $57 billion to $1.8 trillion before moving to a newly created president role at PPB Capital Partners earlier this year. Kodialam co-founded Focus Financial in 2004 and later served as COO, overseeing the partnership model that consolidated dozens of independent RIAs before the firm's 2023 take-private sale. Langlois has moved between technology vendors and distribution platforms, including leading Fidelity's acquisition of eMoney Advisor before running Kestra's broker-dealer and RIA businesses. Shah spent nearly three decades building fintech companies, most recently helping scale 55ip's tax-management platform to roughly $70 billion in assets before its 2020 acquisition by J.P. Morgan.
Fragmented Tech Ecosystems
Kodialam highlighted a specific pain point for multi-firm platforms. "Home offices supporting large, diverse networks of firms across fragmented technology ecosystems have long been expected to centralize operations and scale without the infrastructure to do so effectively," she said. This is a common complaint among RIA aggregators, many of which have grown through a wave of M&A that shows no sign of slowing, often inheriting incompatible back-office systems from acquired firms.
Dispatch's product maps the data fields each custodian requires, pulls in existing information from an advisor's CRM and planning tools, and generates a single client request rather than several redundant ones. The company says its workflow has cut complex household onboarding from hours to roughly 30 minutes in at least one case study involving Sanctuary Wealth. "Deep connectivity into custodians is essential to making complex wealth management operations work at scale," said Langlois.
Advisor Mobility as Backdrop
The board announcement comes about two months after Dispatch launched Advisor Transitions, a tool designed to move advisors and client assets between firms. That launch followed a record year for advisor movement, with Diamond Consultants' 2025 Financial Advisor Transition Report counting more than 11,000 experienced advisors who switched firms last year. A separate count by ISS Market Intelligence found nearly 39,000 representatives moved to another firm in 2025. "What we continue to see across the U.S. wealth landscape is steady migration toward independence, with advisors and reps increasingly moving to a more fragmented RIA market," said Alan Hess, vice president at ISS MI.
Shah, whose background is on the operating side of fintech deals rather than advisory practice, tied the board appointments to that growth story. "The company is solving an urgent, expensive problem that is critical to revenue across the wealth and asset management ecosystem," he said. The new board's formation also aligns with broader industry moves, such as FMG Suite's recent leadership hires and Cetera's addition of a tax-focused advisor community leader, underscoring the importance of operational infrastructure in a competitive market.
