Wealth and asset management firms face a challenge to enhance connectivity and digitalize to remain competitive. However, Frédéric Perard and Van Ta of SuisseTechPartners see the challenge as an opportunity to focus on organizations like private equity firms and family offices that are receptive to adopting digital solutions.

What are the technological challenges of the asset and wealth management industry?

The Wealth and the Asset management industries are currently facing several key strategic challenges which we could all connect one way or the other to the need to become digital and to be in a position to adapt their service offering to remain competitive and face new entrants. The main complexities these institutions need to solve are mainly around the capacity to manage and protect efficiently a consistent set of data, to connect to their end customers in a real time and digital way, to process front to back a comprehensive list of financial instruments and to report back the expected information to customers, boards and regulators. Additionally Wealth and Assets Managers need to be in a position to adapt their product offering in a timely and cost effective way to face the growing ESG inclination of investors or the evolution of distribution models. Solutions to solve these questions are shaping up and I would like to mention the several emerging blockchain initiatives in the area of fund distribution which could revolutionize the fund industry and could be the future model to market open and closed end funds to any segment of investors.

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“We have a solution which we think can solve the current technological challenges faced by many financial institutions.”

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Why have you chosen to work together ?

Van and I have known each other for more than 20 years now since our working relation started with the implementation of the fund accounting platform Multifonds. We have had a client to provider relationship for more than 10 years and we have then developed mutual respect and a similar approach of the Fund industry and its operational challenges leading to the evolution of the software. We share as well the same personal values which are respect, teamwork and attention to people. We both like the capacity to develop our activities in a structure where time to market, client focus and creativity are essential. Hence when we got in contact during spring 2021 and Van told me about her new venture with the creation of Suissetechpartners and the development of the PMplus software, it did not take long to see the mutual interest in working together. Van had already taken the same approach in Asia, recruiting Simon Collier to head our Asian development. The other key factor for the decision has obviously been the PMplus platform developed by Van which is already at a very mature state of development and can be marketed to various segments in the financial industry. PMplus is a front to back multi-asset software built as a cloud-native app based on unicode incorporating the best open source components. PMplus has in our view the potential to be one of the leading platforms to replace legacy applications in many sectors.

How do you imagine the future of Suissetechpartners?

Suissetechpartners is a Fintech company and a startup by essence which means that we are less visible and have limited resources compared to bigger technology firms, but we have a solution which we think can solve the current technological challenges faced by many financial institutions. We are currently reviewing our go to market strategy in order to make sure that we focus on the right sectors where not only growth is important, but where the buyers are ready to opt for digital solutions and  where the focus is on developing new service offerings. From that point of view, Private Equity Firms and Family Offices offer similarities. Asset managers also need to adapt their distribution chain to the digital world and they represent a good opportunity as well for Suissetechpartners. The very rich functional coverage of PMplus and its cloud native architecture allow us to shape the solution to the needs of the prospects and to facilitate implementation. The fact that we have a single database and we are accounting based represents the Holy Grail to provide an end to end cost efficient platform to our clients. Still, we are conscious that we must further develop our platform to face the leading platforms on the market and we are currently benchmarking PMplus with experts to do so. This is a key step to make sure that in addition to marketing and communication, PMplus and Suissetechpartners will get on the radar. Finally, our management team has successfully developed business in major assets servicing companies and our Founder has previously developed with Multifonds the number one platform for fund accounting, starting from scratch. We are currently recruiting the next generation of leaders who are going to be in charge of developing our firm over the longer term.

If we execute our plan accordingly, we see a great future for Suissetechpartners.