Sean O’Driscoll (ONE): Combining Experts with Intentional Innovation

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Sean O’Driscoll, Group Operations Lead at ONE, discusses how intentional innovation and expert-led automation are transforming governance, compliance, and service delivery. By creating scalability, mitigating risk, and enhancing the client experience, these advancements are setting new standards in the industry. Interview

How is ONE integrating technology into its governance framework to enhance client compliance?

Technology plays a central role in how we deliver modern governance solutions across all aspects of our business. We have embedded it across our framework to strengthen compliance, enhance transparency, and enable effective oversight, all while improving the client experience. For example, a key area of focus has been the use of technology to support delegate oversight, including investment managers, fund administrators, and other third-party providers. Through custom-built dashboards and integrated monitoring tools, we track delegate performance, key risk indicators, and compliance metrics leveraging integrated data. This enables our teams, and our clients, to identify exceptions while allowing teams to focus on the value add.

What about the much-feared due diligence process?

We have digitised and automated parts of our due diligence process, allowing us better tracking and to conduct more structured reviews, with better documentation and follow-up – which leads to better outcomes. All of this supports our broader mission: to empower our clients to focus on their core business, while we ensure that governance, oversight, and compliance are handled with the highest standard of care, transparency, and efficiency.

What recent tech innovations have transformed your service delivery, and how have clients responded to these changes?

We are in an exciting phase of our technology journey—driven by client feedback, regulatory evolution, and the deep experience of our team. Innovation for us is intentional. For example, board reporting is a key part of our governance framework, by using our AIFM / Management Company platform F-ONE, we gather all necessary data and information seamlessly. We've digitalized the board reporting process, allowing us to produce high-quality, standardized reports with just a click. This means we can deliver these reports in minutes, making the process much more efficient. As a result, our team is freed from time-consuming manual tasks and can focus more on value-added activities.

How do you balance human expertise with automated systems in decision-making processes?

For ONE, automation is not about replacing human expertise—it’s about unlocking its full potential. Governance is complex and context driven. Sound decision-making still relies heavily on experienced professionals applying their judgement. Our approach is to use automation to eliminate repetitive, manual tasks, so our people can focus on what really matters: interpreting data, identifying exceptions, and delivering high-value insights to our clients. This model, tech-enabled, expert-led, allows us to provide faster, more accurate information while maintaining a high-touch, consultative service. Every system is designed to support and elevate judgement-based decision-making. Ultimately, it is about using technology to elevate the human role, helping our teams and our clients operate more effectively, with greater transparency, focus, and control.

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