A new spinoff from institutional asset management firm Fusion Asset Management, Wealthinity, is aimed at small to medium-size private banks and wealth management firms offering access to a range of pre-built, high-performing investment portfolios through a web-based portfolio construction tool.
Taras Rybak (pictured), one of the Founders of Wealthinity, says: “Digitalisation is not just about process automation. It is really about the democratisation of the industry.”
The driver behind launching the services has been that after 15 years of managing institutional and, latterly, wealth and retail money at Fusion, the team could see that the wealth industry was adopting greater levels of digitalisation and the overall landscape was changing.
“This gives many opportunities for smaller wealth companies but also presents certain challenges,” Rybak says. “Historically, the sector was dominated by large banks – vertically integrated businesses where everything was done in-house. Today costs are increasing and smaller players, wealth managers and advisers have been pushed out and no longer serviced by larger firms.”
The new Wealthinity platform enables wealth firms to complete the full client service cycle in just 15 minutes, including risk assessment, portfolio construction and client reporting, enabling a firm to improve client service and drive increased business growth.
“We are giving smaller firms access to the resources and expertise that a larger institution would have,” Rybak says, describing the new service as complementary to other services, sitting within the existing back office system and alongside existing relationships.
The portfolios are offered through ETFs, and there will be mutual funds and structured products portfolios added shortly, with a client report generating capability that offers the opportunity of own branding.
“The ideal client for the new service is a wealth manager or private bank with up to EUR2-3 billion in client assets and no strong inhouse investment management expertise,” Rybak says.
