How Mandeville is addressing the industry’s biggest threat

2025 has been a year of putting out fires. Market volatility has spiked over various periods and fears of both bubbles and underperformance have had to be allayed. Advisors have managed the rapid onset of new technologies along with the rapid realignment of global trade and security arrangements. If you ask Agha Raza, though, none of those fires represents the greatest threat to the advisory business today. In the view of the Chief Operating Officer at Mandeville Private Client Inc. makes the case that cybersecurity represents the largest existential threat to advisory firms today.

Raza outlined why he sees cybersecurity as such a massive issue and how breaches in cybersecurity can derail all the success advisors and their firms have built. He explained how his firm has invested in their own cybersecurity processes and how that foundation has allowed them to roll out further additions to their overall technology stack. He stressed, too, the importance of maintaining a consistent framework for investing that can empower an advisory firm to focus on these larger threats without getting bogged down in the day to day.

“The cybersecurity threat in 2025 was most significantly highlighted by the breach that occurred within the regulator itself,” Raza notes, referencing the cybersecurity threat to CIRO that the SRO identified in August. “The work from home phenomenon has really made advisors a lot more vulnerable. You add to that the increasing use of unfamiliar technologies like video conferencing software, VPNs, and remote access to networks, all of which have made it harder to identify attacks. The risk to client trust, to firm reputation, and to business bottom line is enormous.”

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.

“We believe the highest value an advisor can provide their clients is the creation of wealth, and our investing framework is designed to deliver on that objective,” Raza explains. “But wealth management is not just about maximizing returns. Advisors must take a truly 360-degree view of a client’s financial life not just their investments, but all of their assets: properties, businesses, cash flow, intergenerational wealth transfer, legacy considerations, and more. That’s why we emphasize integrated wealth management and advice.”

He adds that Mandeville’s model is strengthened by selective external partnerships that allow the firm to offer private banking, trust and estate planning, and mortgage solutions, services not commonly available through a boutique dealer.

“With a full scope of ancillary services, advisors can expand the menu of value-add solutions for clients,” Raza says. “But they must never lose sight of the core objective and the greatest value we provide: creating wealth for our clients.”