How did the business perform in 2025, and what drove its growth over the past year? How has the cost-income ratio trended this year, and what were the key factors influencing it? Looking ahead, what are your main priorities and strategic plans for 2026? 

2025 marked a defining phase in Farro Capital’s evolution, a year that reaffirmed our conviction in what disciplined excellence can achieve. Built on a foundation of sound principles and guided by a team of seasoned professionals, the firm continues to advance through organic expansion, operational optimisation, and deliberate refinement. 

Farro delivered strong growth in AUM, productivity, and profitability. This performance is driven by the addition of new clients and a doubling of asset management fees amid strong returns, supported by disciplined cost management that strengthened operational efficiency while preserving the quality of client service. 

Farro Capital turned profitable in 2025, transitioning from an expansion-led negative P&L in 2024. The cost-to-income ratio improved significantly year-on-year, underscoring stronger operational leverage supported by an integrated technology platform. Streamlined onboarding, reconciliation, and reporting processes shortened production cycles and enhanced productivity without expanding structural costs,  achieving higher revenue efficiency while maintaining our white-glove service standards. 

Looking ahead to 2026, Farro’s strategic priorities focus on four imperatives: 

1. Hire and strengthen top talent across wealth management, investment, and operations to deepen expertise and client engagement. 
2. Accelerate growth in asset management, launching new strategies across alternatives, systematic, and thematic investments. 
3. Implement a comprehensive AI roadmap across all business areas, enhancing client experience, productivity, and decision-making through data-driven insights and intelligent automation. 
4. Advance Farro Philanthropy, a blended-finance initiative co-led by a seasoned climate investor, pragmatic capital-markets architect, and mission-driven clinician-innovator, mobilising philanthropic, concessional, and commercial capital for climate resilience and sustainable enterprises.

Q2: Looking at the investment outlook for 2026, which markets and asset classes are you prioritising for client portfolios to capture opportunities while managing risks? How are clients currently allocating their portfolios, and what trends are you seeing in DPM adoption and investment behaviour? 

2026 is shaping up to be a balanced environment amid global policy easing: moderating inflation and stable growth on one hand, yet relatively high valuations and low risk premiums on the other. In such conditions, prudence becomes an edge. 

At the heart of Farro’s multi-asset framework lies a focus on steady real income and quality capital growth, complemented by a rigorous, veteran team–led approach to identifying and assessing tactical opportunities. High-grade, short-to-intermediate credit, and low beta dividend remain the foundation for steady carry, while quality global equities in the US, EU, EM, Japan, and India anchor capital growth. Within Asia, select policy-aligned sectors, technology, financials, materials, healthcare & consumer, offer asymmetrical opportunities. 

Across styles, factors, and strategies respectively, a delicate balance of growth and value styles, quality and momentum factors, and discretionary and systematic strategies provides portfolios with a diversified stream of risk-return. Meanwhile, within alternatives, market-neutral strategies, selective private credit, and secondaries provide uncorrelated returns and yield profiles, while sustainable infrastructure supplies duration and inflation protection. Long-term modelling across global research houses indicates equity-risk premia of 3.5%-4% and durable income returns from investment-grade credit – an environment favouring a balanced allocation. 

Client behaviour reflects the same maturity. Families are moving from defensive liquidity to goal-based portfolio design, balancing income, growth, and legacy. DPM adoption continues to rise as clients recognise that a consistent process often outperforms tactical trading. 

Farro’s distinction lies in aligning family governance with portfolio architecture, ensuring that investment, liquidity, and succession decisions move cohesively across generations.

Q3: With artificial intelligence increasingly shaping the wealth industry, how has the firm leveraged technology and AI to transform processes and enhance value for both clients and the back office? What key technology upgrades were introduced in 2025, and what are your digital priorities for 2026 and beyond?

2025 was an important year in advancing Farro Capital’s digital and AI architecture. Our focus was clear: to strengthen reliability, governance, and intelligence across the platform. We implemented AI within our asset management process, enhancing our quantitative strategies. Alongside, we launched an internal AI readiness programme to equip our team with practical tools that improve research, analysis, and client servicing efficiency. Complementing this, AI-related governance policies were introduced to ensure the responsible and secure deployment of emerging technologies. 

Operationally, we upgraded our data-integration framework and introduced an enhanced risk reporting module that helps with scenario stress tests, providing clients and the investment team with clearer visibility and faster decision support. These initiatives are supported by strengthened cybersecurity and continuity frameworks across Singapore & DIFC. 

Looking to 2026, the next phase will expand AI-led compliance, complete, and roll out a secure client portal light for document vaulting and dashboards. We are also working on automating regulatory reporting packs, steps expected to raise efficiency. 

Farro is transforming through key focus areas centred on intelligence, integration, and long-term impact: 

• AI-enhanced portfolio optimisation: applying advanced algorithms and predictive models to improve asset allocation, risk-adjusted returns, and portfolio resilience. 
• Unified dashboards: intelligent, data-driven views that provide clarity, foresight, and consolidated insight across portfolios.
• Generative AI tools for staff: empowering our team to craft insightful memos, reports, and family blueprints with precision, creativity, and purpose. 

Ultimately, our goal remains unchanged: to make complexity invisible, deliver insight effortlessly, and ensure every interaction feels personal, precise, and built to last.

Q4: With regulatory scrutiny and compliance requirements intensifying across the wealth industry, what updates can you share on how your firm is strengthening governance and compliance frameworks? How are you proactively managing risks while ensuring a seamless experience for clients? 

As global oversight intensifies, Farro Capital treats compliance as culture, not constraint. In 2025, the firm strengthened its three-lines-of-defence framework, harmonising MAS, DFSA, and IFSCA requirements under a single policy architecture. This alignment ensures consistency across Singapore, Dubai, and GIFT City operations while preserving local nuance and accountability. 

Key upgrades included automated KYC refresh cycles, real-time transaction monitoring dashboards, and integrated liquidity and exposure metrics that provide continuous oversight of counterparties and client portfolios. Together, these measures enhanced early-risk detection, improved audit transparency, and reduced manual intervention, allowing client teams to focus on advisory depth rather than administrative friction. 

This philosophy of frictionless governance, embedding protection that operates silently in the background, ensures that resilience and responsiveness coexist. The outcome is a boutique platform with institutional-grade discipline, where risk management, regulatory rigour, and client experience are fully aligned.

Q5: The private banking industry saw a plethora of leadership and structural changes in 2025. Looking into 2026, what are your key priorities for attracting and retaining talent across the front, middle, and back office? Are there plans for new hires in key markets?

Private wealth is, above all, a people business. In 2025, we invested heavily in our own bench, expanding senior talent across private markets, investments, philanthropy advisory, and client experience. We also launched Farro Academy, a structured learning platform that integrates investment theory, regulatory updates, and next-generation stewardship training. 

Our hiring philosophy mirrors our investment ethos: selectivity and sustainability over scale. Diversity remains a cornerstone for us, being one of the most ethnically diverse family offices. In 2026, we will continue strengthening capabilities in DPM, impact investing, and technology-driven operations, with targeted expansion across Singapore and Dubai, while exploring expansion into feasible new markets. 

In a year marked by leadership changes across our industry, Farro remained anchored in continuity. Stable leadership brings consistency of direction, enabling us to make deliberate, long-term investments in the firm’s future. Investments that build enduring excellence rather than short-term results. 

At Farro Capital, we believe that wealth stewardship is both an economic and ethical act. The world’s wealth is global; its responsibilities are local. Our task is to connect both through disciplined investing, rigorous governance, and a philanthropic platform that transforms intent into measurable impact. 

2025 was about consolidation; 2026 will be about composition, refining how capital, technology, and human insight work together to serve families and the societies they shape.