The trust industry needs to move from time spent to value created.

Time is easy to record and easy to bill. But time is not always a good proxy for value. A trustee may make an important judgement quickly because of years of experience. A payment may consume significant administrative time but be seen by the client as a basic service expectation. A compliance review may take longer than it should because the supporting data is incomplete. A relationship manager may spend time chasing internally rather than advising the client. All of that time is real — but not all of it creates the same value.

That distinction matters because automation will increasingly expose the difference between high-value professional judgement and low-value administrative friction:

• High effort, low client value: manual chasing, rekeying data, updating spreadsheets, searching for documents, repeated status checks, process duplication.
• Lower visible effort, high client value: trustee judgement, risk-based decision-making, structuring advice, complex client conversations, fiduciary oversight, proactive relationship management.

Clients will pay for expertise, responsibility and confidence. They will be less willing to pay premium rates for avoidable administration.

A second roundtable question sharpened the point: if automation reduces effort by 20%, where does the value go? The answer depends on the commercial model. In a time-spent model, efficiency can reduce billable hours unless pricing changes. In a fixed-fee model, it can improve margin if service quality is maintained. In a capacity model, it can help the business grow without adding headcount. In an outcome-based model, it can support shared value if outcomes are clearly measured.

Wherever the model lands, the value has a limited number of places it can go:

• Lower client fees
• Improved firm margin
• More capacity without headcount growth
• Faster service delivery and stronger controls
• Better client experience
• More time for advisory work

So automation value cannot be assessed only as a cost-saving exercise. It has to be connected to pricing, capacity, client experience, service levels and growth — and the answer must be designed, because it will not happen automatically. Without that connection, the value simply gets absorbed into the operating model.

Roundtable pulse data — a quick show-of-hands poll of the senior leaders in the room, not formal research — suggested that most technology was still priced on a seat basis (around 83% of responses), with only a small share on usage-based models (around 17%). Seat-based pricing is familiar, simple and easy to budget. But it does not always align with how automation creates value, which is typically through:

• Throughput and faster turnaround
• Accuracy and exception reduction
• Auto-reconciliation and reduced manual touchpoints
• Capacity release
• Improved control and better client visibility

These are outcome measures, not seat measures. If a firm is trying to grow without adding headcount, or process more volume without increasing operational cost, then pricing based only on the number of users may not reflect how value is actually created. That does not mean every pricing model should become outcome-based overnight — but it does suggest the future is likely to be more hybrid, evolving from effort economics (time spent, seat-based software, manual delivery) towards value economics (workflow volume, service levels, accuracy, throughput and capacity release).

Outcome-based pricing sounds attractive, but it requires confidence. The client needs confidence that the outcome is real; the firm needs confidence that the outcome can be delivered profitably; the technology provider needs confidence that its contribution can be measured. Everyone needs confidence in the baseline — and that baseline is often the missing piece. Firms need to be able to answer:

• What does a payment currently cost?
• How long does onboarding currently take?
• What is the current exception rate?
• How many tasks are handled manually?
• How much relationship manager time is spent on administration?
• How much capacity would be released by automation?
• What service level is realistic?

Without this data, outcome-based pricing becomes difficult to govern. With it, firms can start pricing against measures such as SLA achievement, accuracy and throughput rates, auto-reconciliation percentage, onboarding completion time, payment processing cycle time, exception reduction, capacity released and client responsiveness.

Payments are a practical example of why commercial models need to evolve. They are often operationally heavy, approval-led and sensitive from a control perspective, involving multiple people, systems and review steps — yet clients tend to view them as an expected service rather than a high-value advisory activity.

Indicative, anonymised insight from Optifi’s client work suggests that the billable time to complete a payment — with due process and approvals — typically ranges from £150 to £600, with the highest observed client example reaching £1,000. If that is true, the firm needs to understand whether the effort is properly priced, whether it can be reduced, and whether the value of improvement should be captured through margin, service quality or capacity release.

The potential improvement levers are well understood:

• Fewer manual handoffs and reduced rekeying
• Clearer approval workflow with a stronger audit trail
• Better document capture
• Automated status visibility
• Better exception management

There is also a cost to not deploying technology. It shows up when:

• Firms cannot grow without hiring
• Relationship managers spend time on administration
• Onboarding is slow and clients chase for updates
• Compliance evidence is hard to assemble
• Acquisitions add more systems and complexity
• Next-generation clients expect digital service models the firm cannot support

This opportunity cost may not appear as a direct line item. But it is real — and over time, it becomes a competitive issue.

The businesses that adapt fastest will be the ones that understand where value is created and where effort is being wasted. They will know which activities require professional judgement, which are administrative, where cost-to-serve is too high, where automation can release capacity, and how to convert efficiency into commercial value.

At Optifi, we believe the sector needs to move from effort economics to value economics. Automation should not simply reduce time — it should help firms capture value. The future of trust operations will not be defined by how much time was spent, but by how much value was created.