Swiss FinTech startup WealthInitiative is helping private banks and family offices to unlock synergies among their HNWI clients. To do so, WealthInitiative has launched a platform to cut out the middlemen in real estate, art and passion investments, and direct equity investments.
Real estate, art and passion investments – such as classic cars, yachts, private jets or rare watches – and direct equity investments represent a dynamic multi-trillion-dollar market. Yet traditional wealth management institutions and family offices are remarkably ill equipped to cater to the growing demand from their high net worth individual (HNWI) clients.
While technology makes it a breeze to trade shares and other securities, wealth managers often lack the right tools to find their clients a new holiday home, sell their rare watch collections or find the right private healthcare company to acquire.
FinTech startup WealthInitiative, founded in 2015 in Zurich, Switzerland, has launched a platform geared towards the needs of wealth management institutions and family offices to facilitate transactions in this fast expanding universe.
The new WealthInitiative platform is used internally to help wealth management institutions explore synergies among their own clients in the various departments and locations. It provides institutions with a new internal tool and creates a secure market where clients’ assets can easily be traded.
The platform is available as a cloud-based solution, or can be hosted on banks’ IT infrastructure. WealthInitiative is offered as a white-labelled platform, and is primarily used by wealth managers on behalf of their HNWI clients.
Unlike startups that seek to disrupt the traditional wealth management model, Zurich- based WealthInitiative offers a solution that aims to bolster private banks’ and family offices’ competitive edge.
By facilitating secure and efficient transactions in real estate, art and passion investments and direct equity investments, WealthInitiative enhances wealth managers’ value proposition in relation to asset classes that are often most dear to their clients’ hearts.
By matching supply and demand through a trusted platform, private banks and family offices avoid the steep fees normally charged by intermediaries, allowing them to generate additional revenues. Moreover, the platform speeds up transactions, enhances confidentiality, and significantly lowers costs for clients, leading to a superior client experience.
In the near future, WealthInitiative will allow various wealth management institutions and family offices to securely reach out and connect with each other, multiplying transaction flow, and creating additional opportunities for clients and institutions.
WealthInitiative will thus develop into a matchmaking platform for private banks, family offices and key institutions around the world to enable them direct contact from seller to buyer, eliminating steep fees pertaining to the trade of tangible assets and the transactions related to direct private equity investments.
The competitive advantage of WealthInitiative beyond its niche concept is the state-of-the art digital features inbuilt in the platform. Easy to use and equipped with the latest technologies available, the platform enables fast and intuitive interaction.
WealthInitiative is also planning to work on the integration of blockchain technology to allow tracing provenance and ownership of assets traded on its platform, which will further add to the security of transactions.
Founder of WealthInitiative, investment advisor and art investment expert Douglas Azar, says: “I strongly believe that creating synergies among clients is the next growth driver for wealth management institutions and family offices.
“Throughout my experience in private banking and art investment research, I kept on wondering about the lack of tools that would allow wealth management institutions to better exploit this untapped potential. WealthInitiative was born out of a desire to fill this gap.”
WealthInitiative was founded in 2015 in Zurich, Switzerland by investment advisor and art investment expert Douglas Azar. The company launched its online platform in early 2016 to foster synergies among wealth management institutions related to transactions in real estate, art and passion investments and direct company investments. WealthInitiative’s offering is geared towards wealth management institutions, asset management firms and family offices globally, and allows efficient, confidential and secure trading of assets on behalf of their high net worth clients. The company is backed by an international group of private investors based in major financial hubs.