Jean-Marie Bettinger, Managing Director of SGG Luxembourg, describes the impact of new technologies on an international group such as SGG. Interview.

 

You‘ve just carried out a reorganisation.

What are your goals?

We are shifting our focus to concentrate on our long-term goals. Our main objective is to ensure we are meeting the needs of our international clients, while also providing our employees with an enjoyable working environment. This in turn contributes to the growth of our company globally. The digitalisation of our industry is making great progress, both in relation to the working conditions of our personnel, as well as in terms of systems and processes. We have recruited exceptional people in order to secure excellence at all levels and have reorganised our teams around three main functions: Business Developers, Client Directors and Delivery Officers. I must point out that this reorganisation was carried out with the active involvement of many employees who participated in working groups and with the valuable support of our staff representatives. I’m thrilled by how the transformation has been embraced by our teams. Everyone has fully understood that our clients count on our proactivity and commitment to help them with their specific needs, wherever they are based in the world.

 

Can you give us a concrete example?

A good example would be our new onboarding platform, which we call ‘PDC’ for ‘pricing, due diligence and contracts.’ Previously, becoming a client of SGG could take up to a few weeks, however, by improving our due diligence and contracts processes and developing a new competitive pricing structure, we have been able to dramatically reduce the onboarding time to just a few days, both for our corporate clients as well as for fund clients. Our ‘PDC’ department is led by Thierry Jacob, who knows SGG inside out.

 

 

« I'm very confident about the future of the Grand Duchy. »

 

How do you envisage SGG after this digital

transformation?

I think the process will always be ongoing, but I can

already identify two great sources of added value: our new IT systems allow us to make repetitive tasks more automated, freeing up time for our people to work on other key tasks, thus allowing our clients to be 100% focused on their core business. For example, we’ve just launched our new client portal, ‘SGG Xchange’ which allows us to easily share all kinds of documents with our clients. Ultimately, we want our clients to be able to view their accounts or tax returns on their mobile phones in a few seconds! What’s more, we’ve just obtained the ISAE 3402 certification for fund services lines, which confirms the quality of the processes and internal controls systems for the tasks subcontracted to SGG, within the framework of

investment funds. This perfectly meets our clients'

expectations.

 

Where is Luxembourg going?

I’m very confident about the future of the Grand Duchy. It’s clear that big private equity firms and property developers will keep launching businesses here and the country continues to attract wealthy clientele. These clients are consumers of high value-added products and they choose Luxembourg to support their assets and their investments abroad, while respecting all the laws and regulations which are constantly evolving in all the countries in which they are present. As a result, the future of Luxembourg will also involve establishing businesses in other jurisdictions so we can stay close to our clients and offer them the best tools, wherever they are in the world. All our ongoing changesare driven by Luxembourg and are applied across the group, using a matrix approach. For instance, Pascal Rapallino's arrival as Group Family Office Leader allows us to roll out our Family Office offering across our network. At the end of the day, we remain committed to our “bespoke” culture, offering the speed of a small structure combined with the means of a major international player!

 

« Our new IT systems allow us to make repetitive tasks more automated, freeing up time for our people to work on other key tasks, thus allowing our clients to be 100% focused on their core business. »