Phil Watson

Founder, CEO at Lightbox Wealth

Speaker

Phil Watson has spent over 26 years in financial services, the last 22 building and leading wealth management businesses at the intersection of investing, data, technology and AI.

Phil is Founder and CEO of Lightbox Wealth, a practitioner-led investment lab for family offices and wealth fiduciaries. Lightbox Wealth combines Phil's practitioner experience with AI and data engineering to bring institutional-grade portfolio, risk and governance capability to family offices and wealth managers.

Phil has also worked from inside a family office himself. As founding Chief Investment Officer of a private single family office, he oversaw portfolio construction, manager selection and performance analytics, and built the end-to-end governance framework and technology platform behind the family's multi-asset investment programme. That first-hand experience running a family office's own book, not just advising one, supported Lightbox Wealth's practitioner-led approach.

Before founding Lightbox Wealth, Phil spent over a decade in senior roles at Citi Global Wealth, most recently as Managing Director leading Platform Development & Innovation - an end-to-end strategy-to-execution change programme across more than 40 major projects for a $7bn-plus revenue business. Earlier, he built Citi's Global Investment Lab from scratch: a leading analytics and advisory capability that delivered bespoke investment solutions to more than 1,000 family offices across the US, Latin America, Asia Pacific and EMEA, and grew client volumes twofold and revenue threefold. For over 10 years he sat on Citi Private Bank's Global Investment Committee, helping set asset allocation strategy and acting as a voting member on the managed accounts committee for assets exceeding $100bn.

Phil's expertise spans portfolio construction and manager selection, investment analytics, big data and AI platforms, and the governance frameworks that let family offices and wealth managers use them with confidence. He was voted FT PWM Digital Leader of the Year in 2021, and his team won FT PWM Best Bank for Big Data & AI. He continues to lecture senior industry professionals on the practical application of AI in wealth management.

Outside of work, Phil is a keen supporter of fundraising for MND, enjoys spending time with his family and is an enthusiastic traveller.