In this episode of Business Reporter's "Fintech Talk" series, Kai Linde was invited to join a discussion on "Developing and delivering a digital wealth management strategy". Host Charles Orton-Jones spoke with him, Kontora's Chief Investment Officer Patrick Maurenbrecher and the co-founder of the Open Wealth Association, Simon Alioth, about the state of play with regard to the digitalisation of wealth management.
Maurenbrecher, explained from the perspective of a user the gains in efficiency his multi-family office, Kontora, has achieved implementing the QPLIX Wealth Management Platform.
The third participant, Simon Alioth, then opened up the perspective even a little further, toward data standardisation: Global management consultancy Synpulse and the Swiss regional bank St.Galler Kantonalbank (SGKB) have established the OpenWealth Community with the aim of defining an API standard for wealth management. An increasing number of banks (and even more members) in Switzerland are already supporting the establishment of the new API standard. Some banks have already gone live with the OpenWealth APIs.
Covering 80-90% of APIs with a common standard could increase efficiencies tremendously in the wealth management ecosystem and lead to the democratisation of this sector. Biggest challenges: Private equity is lagging behind in terms of digitisation with the majority of big players still providing data in pdf files, which stands in the way of implementing digital transformation projects. Digital interfacing replaces digital storerooms where pdf and other files are stored by simply setting up a connection with the custodian bank and receiving all the required historical data.