You focus on client acquisition and relationships,
we carry the regulated services,
Operating system, out of the box
Your clients trust you, but you can't provide asset management, securities advice, or discretionary mandates without a license. Under a referral arrangement, regulated services are carried out by a licensed corporation under law; you keep doing what you do best — acquiring clients, maintaining relationships, and delivering your own expertise. Arki gives you the full family-office operating system, from client management to compliance workflow, out of the box.
Legal basis for the referral arrangement: under Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Ordinance (SFO) and the Code of Conduct, a licensed corporation may lawfully accept clients referred by another firm and provide regulated services.
You have the clients and the expertise,
but can't touch regulated services
Your clients trust your judgement — but their needs are spilling past your service boundary.
No license, no entry — the opportunity flows to someone else.
Clients and expertise — but no regulated services
Your clients trust your professional judgement — in law, tax, insurance, or trust matters, you're the one they rely on. But the moment they need asset allocation, securities advice, or a discretionary mandate, you don't have the license to carry it. You watch their needs spill past your service boundary, and watch the opportunity flow somewhere else.
Clients want one-stop service, you can only offer one specialty
HNW clients increasingly expect family-office-grade integrated service — investing, compliance, tax, succession, cross-border — ideally handled by one team. Pure law, pure tax, or pure insurance is no longer enough to keep them. Either you find a way to round out the capability, or accept that clients will flow to integrated providers.
Building a licensed team isn't realistic
Applying for Hong Kong's Type 1／4／9 licenses takes 2–3 years, a Compliance Officer commands a seven-figure salary, plus ongoing compliance overhead — for a firm whose core business is professional services, this isn't a question of investment size, it's simply not in your business model. You don't need to be licensed yourself; you need a path to practice compliantly without it.
The risk of overstepping is real
Providing regulated services without a license — whether deliberate or through a blurred boundary — can breach the Securities and Futures Ordinance and AML legislation, and expose you to regulatory action and legal liability. Your clients trust you, but trust is no substitute for compliance.
Compliance red lineClient information is fragmented and unmanaged
Client basics, service history, communication logs, preferences and needs are scattered across email, WeChat, Excel, and personal notes — there's no single place that shows "who this client is, what we've done for them, and what they need next." Swap out an advisor and context restarts from zero; expand the team and information-sharing falls back on verbal handoffs. Even setting aside family-office capability, client management alone is dragging down your efficiency.
Two tables.
One compares the path, the other compares the efficiency.
Which route gets you to compliant practice, and where the operational efficiency really diverges — laid out side by side.
Compliance path: apply for a license vs. take referrals
Operational efficiency: with referrals, the system makes the difference
Three steps to compliant practice —
without being licensed yourself
Clear roles, clear legal basis: you keep the client relationship; the licensed corporation carries the regulated services under law.
You onboard the client
You hold the direct service relationship with your client and continue to deliver your own expertise (legal, tax, insurance, trust, etc.). When the client has regulated needs — asset management, securities advice — the referral workflow begins.
The licensed corporation carries the regulated work
The client is referred to the licensed corporation. As the regulated entity, the licensed corporation provides SFC Type 1 / 4 / 9 services under the Securities and Futures Ordinance and the Code of Conduct.
Joint service, unified experience
You and the licensed corporation collaborate in one system — you own the relationship and your own specialty; the licensed corporation owns execution and compliance for the regulated services. What the client sees is a unified, professional, compliant experience.
Legal basis: under Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Ordinance and the Code of Conduct, a licensed corporation may lawfully accept clients referred by another firm and provide regulated services. The referrer is not licensed, does not provide regulated services, and does not bear regulated liability — roles and responsibilities stay cleanly separated.
On top of the referral model,
an operating platform, ready out of the box
You don't build it from scratch. You get a system tested in real practice, ready to run.
Client management
Every client's profile, asset data, and service history in one place. Each relationship continues to deepen your firm's own knowledge base — client profiles that get richer with every interaction.
Compliance workflow
KYC / AML drafting, referral documentation, compliance-status tracking — standardized inside the system, not glued together by hand.
Third-party resource network
Existing partners onboarded and maintained centrally; missing ones can be picked from the platform's marketplace of vetted providers — ready to use. Trust, tax, legal, insurance — no need to source from scratch each time.
Carries the most repetitive work
Arki orchestrates an AI assistant team that takes the most time-consuming repetitive work off your team. They draft, screen, organize, and remind — decisions, signatures, and accountability stay with you and the licensed corporation.
- ·Auto-drafts client KYC / AML background files in multiple versions
- ·Generates standardized referral docs (referral agreement, risk disclosure, client confirmation)
- ·Tracks compliance status continuously and triggers expiry reminders
→ The heaviest paperwork in the referral workflow gets absorbed by AI.
All compliance rulings are signed by the licensed corporation's Compliance Officer- ·Continuously organizes client profiles — preferences, family structure, service history — structuring scattered communication into a clean record
- ·Matches third-party resources and drafts referral docs based on client information
- ·Generates meeting minutes and pushes extracted action items
→ Your time shifts from "hunting for info and writing docs" back to "serving the client".
All client communications are gated by your team- ·Tracks and summarizes market developments
- ·Generates client portfolio analysis reports
- ·Drafts investment white papers
→ Research sits on the licensed corporation's side; your clients benefit from professional investment research.
Research is used on the licensed corporation's side- ·Compiles real-time updates on regulatory changes, pushed to your workspace
- ·Continuously updates the family-office knowledge base, helping your team understand the full picture
- ·Curates compliance highlights related to referrals, lowering your team's learning curve
→ Even if family-office work isn't your core business, your team can ramp up quickly.
Internal team use · for understandingFirm console · Family cockpit, working together
Manage clients and referral workflow on desktop; the client sees the complete, unified service on mobile.
Experience, license, technology —
without all three, this can't be built
Nearly 30 years of family-office practice
Drawn from nearly three decades of family-office work at a top firm — covering investing, compliance, governance, and succession across the full lifecycle.
Carried by an SFC-licensed corporation
Regulated services are carried under law by a Hong Kong SFC Type 1 / 4 / 9 licensed corporation — the regulated entity, holding the liability.
Built by a top Silicon Valley AI team
Built by a top Silicon Valley AI team and deeply trained on real family-office workflows.
Legal basis for the referral arrangement: under Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Ordinance and the Code of Conduct, a licensed corporation may lawfully accept clients referred by another firm and provide the following regulated services.
Arki was first deployed at EIA Capital — a Hong Kong SFC-licensed family office that has operated for nearly 30 years and manages over a billion in assets. Every module was forged in real business, not a lab.
Arki is the system we use ourselves, every day.— EIA Capital
Between referrer and licensed corporation,
each only sees what they're meant to see
Single-tenant isolation
Your client data is physically separated from other firms — its own database, never shared.
Referrer / licensed-corp permission isolation
Permissions are strictly separated between referrer and licensed corporation — each side sees only what it should.
On-premise deployment
On-premise deployment supported — data does not leave the jurisdiction and does not touch public models.
AI within boundaries
Screen, draft, organize, remind — but no compliance rulings, no investment advice, no direct market connectivity.
Regulatory alignment
Aligned with PDPO / PDPA privacy requirements; cross-border transfers actively blocked.
Certifications in progress
SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications are in progress.
Disclaimer: the above is a framing for description, not legal advice. The final external wording on regulated services and referral arrangements will follow legal counsel's drafting.
Book a demo to see how the referral model lands in your business
Based on your firm type, client structure, and business scenarios, we'll walk through the system and the referral workflow live.