JPMorgan acquires WealthOS to overhaul UK pension machine

Wall Street just placed a definitive bet on Colombo’s engineering talent to solve a London problem.

JPMorgan Chase has acquired WealthOS, the Sri Lankan-founded wealth management infrastructure platform, for an undisclosed sum. The deal, confirmed by FinTech Futures and EconomyNext, sees the banking giant absorb the entirety of WealthOS’s staff and intellectual property. This isn't just an acquisition; it’s a tactical seizure of the "plumbing" needed to fix the United Kingdom’s $3 trillion pension market.

JPMorgan has been aggressively expanding its UK footprint since buying the robo-advisor Nutmeg for a reported £700 million in 2021. But while Nutmeg gave them a brand and 275,000 customers, it didn't solve the archaic backend issues that plague pension transfers. WealthOS does.

The Speed of Money

The acquisition brings WealthOS’s 60-person team, distributed between London and Colombo, under JPMorgan’s Personal Investing division.

The core value proposition here is speed. Legacy pension infrastructure is notoriously slow and expensive to modify. WealthOS, however, claims its cloud-native operating system allows banks to launch digital wealth products 3x faster and 40% cheaper than traditional vendors, according to data from their seed funding round.

For JPMorgan, which is fighting to modernize its offering against agile fintech competitors, those efficiencies are critical. The bank is effectively moving from renting technology to owning the stack.

Colombo to Wall Street

Founded in 2019 by Anton Padmasiri and Chamat Arambewela, WealthOS utilized a "distributed workforce" model, combining strategic leadership in the UK with a heavy engineering engine in Sri Lanka.

The startup had already attracted serious attention prior to the buyout. In 2024, they closed a £4 million seed round led by Barclays. Now, their technology will be deployed at a much larger scale.

In a personal statement regarding the exit, COO Chamat Arambewela highlighted the significance for the distributed team:

"For a ~60-person wealthtech company built across London and Colombo, this is an incredible milestone... It's a powerful validation of our platform... and it's humbling to know our technology will now help power the wealth infrastructure stack within JPMC’s International Consumer Banking division." - Chamat Arambewela, COO (Source: LinkedIn)

The Integration

The deal signals a maturity point for Sri Lanka’s tech ecosystem, proving it can build mission-critical financial infrastructure for the world’s largest bank.

Integration begins immediately. The WealthOS team will join JPMorgan Personal Investing, the unit formed after the Nutmeg acquisition. With the backend now secured, the bank is expected to accelerate its rollout of new retirement planning products in the UK, closing the gap between user expectation and legacy reality.