The financial services industry is being shaken by the tech revolution that is reshaping the world. And the Wealth Management landscape is stranger to this transformation. This industry has experienced a massive transformation since the economic crisis hit the markets, back in 2008. The pandemic has only boosted this change.

Higher regulation and compliance costs, different expectations from the customers or new incumbents are just some of the new challenges that Financial Institutions need to face.

Amid this scenario, Fintech startups have found the perfect breeding ground to grow. These companies are faster, closer to new generations of customers (yes, we’re talking about millennials) and more flexible when change is needed to survive.

In this article, we have chosen 6 wealth management startups that promise to change the way we do things. 

Cred

Cred offers an AI-based, B2B platform, that is changing the way financial institutions acquire and engage clients in the investment advisory industry. 
It is also a Barclays-backed company operating in Europe and in the U.S. and it was part of one of our batches at Plug and Play Frankfurt.

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We have talked to Ben Fried, CEO and Co-Founder at Cred. “With Cred, Financial Institutions deliver highly personalized investment portfolios to digital clients.” That helps FIs increase “conversion rates, engagement, and AUM.”
“Cred’s data platform enables Financial Institutions to utilize their client data and relationship to more effectively offer the right financial product, to the right client, at the right time.”

Responsive.ai

It was inevitable that we added a few robo advisors to the list. These tools are really changing the way wealth managers work (and the way customers get in touch with them).

Responsive.ai is not just another robo-advisor, though. Davyde Wachell, CEO and Co-Founder, has explained to us their value proposition:

“Responsive is a hybrid wealth advisor solution for enterprises. We help managers grow client wealth and loyalty by providing personalized and adaptive service at scale.”

At Responsive they enable “enterprise research terms with tools for understanding client diversity and events that drive revenue and loyalty”. They also provide a cognitive assist to frontline advisors that “keeps focus on actions that grow and defend assets”. Responsive is calibrated to evolve wealth team performance at scale by exploiting client analytics, and the hybrid wealth advisor service model.

Bambu

Bambu is a company founded in 2016 by Ned Phillips, Luke Janssen, and Aki Ranin. They provide their own robo-advisor technology, that is aimed to “transform digital wealth globally”. That’s what Ned Phillips, Founder and CEO at Bambu, explains: “We enable businesses by making saving and investing more straightforward and intelligent for their clients. The smart advisory solution is powered by our proprietary algorithms and machine learning tools”. 

Bambu is Singapore-based and has subsidiaries in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom, as well as representatives in Africa, Europe, and America. 

And how do they help Financial Institutions? First, “with our white label robo, we offer investors a natural experience in finding the right investment strategy for their clients' needs.” Phillips says. “Instead of a traditional single risk profile portfolio, the white label creates personalized portfolios for each of your life goals.”

And second, Bambu offers “a dashboard that improves the efficiency of relationship managers within the banks by creating talking points for their clients. The platform processes various live and past data to offer a unified view of the market and house view.”

Sarwa

This Dubai-based fintech combines innovative technology and human advice to make expert investing “available for everyone.” The platform’s algorithms and human advisors help Sarwa’s clients open an account in minutes via facial recognition, track their goals via an intuitive dashboard, and rebalance their portfolios when the market causes their investments to drift from their target.

Source: Sarwa. On their website, you can estimate the projection of your investments 

Mark Chahwan is Co-Founder and CEO at Sarwa. “We help financial institutions differentiate and expand their reach to offer wealth advisory to the mass-affluent and retail clients. We do this by leveraging technology to optimize their cost-to-serve, and offering an intuitive and easy-to-use dashboard to allow clients to make sense of their financial picture and manage their investments.”

handcheque

This Vienna-based company has a mission that looks simple, but it’s definitely not. In short, they want to make payments “easier and more convenient.” With that in mind, they have developed a smartcard that enables customers “to store all their payments and loyalty cards on one certified Mastercard card, that has the same dimensions as any other card.” Thehandcheque card comes with a complimentary that acts as “a personal finance manager”, where customers have all their spendings and loyalty cards in one place.

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Khaled Asef is CEO at handcheque. One of the main goals when writing this article is to really bring forward how these startups can help Financial Institutions and Wealth Managers in particular. Asef sees it like this: “handcheque is a B2B company that offers its technology to financial institutions. The main benefit is the collection of all transaction and loyalty data, which gives financial institutions a better understanding of their customers. Customers can channel all their existing cards through the handcheque card, which gives financial institutions a unique and comprehensive set of data about their customers. Based on this, they can offer tailored services and products to their client needs, particular financial products, and concierge services for high net worth clients.”

AdviceRobo

“AdviceRobo eats risk for breakfast”. That’s their motto (and it’s quite accurate). This European startup was founded by Diederick van Thiel and Rosali Steenkamer in 2013. They developed software for predictive risk services and technology “to increase acceptance rates for credit applications whilst keeping the risk level the same”:

Artificial Intelligence is the secret weapon powering their solutions. They have an AI-based platform that combines data from structured and unstructured sources. On this platform, AdviceRobo aggregates “big behavioral data to credit score self-employed, start-up companies, millennial and other thin-file customer segments.”

The way they help Financial Institutions is clear. Rosali Steenmaker, Co-Founder of the company, sees it this way: “AdviceRobo is Europe's leading psychographic credit scoring company. The psychographic credit score measures financial attitude, motivation, and behavior of people through an online interview. The resulting score and profile support lenders in accepting thin files that they would reject otherwise. This leads to more customers, less risk, or both!”

Nowadays, AdviceRobo is on the KPMG/H2 Global fintech 100 list, part of the London City Fintech 50, and has won multiple awards for its added value to responsible lending.

Conclusion: Finding the Best Wealth Management Startups

The experts at our Fintech team have an always-on approach to finding wealth management startups. We're continually sourcing the best startups, and we connect the most suitable ones to corporations that are looking to innovate.

The companies startups in this article are just some examples of future-thinking companies in the field.

For corporations in the financial services industry, change is slow and can be difficult. Most of the leading corporations worldwide are already collaborating with startups as a part of their corporate innovation strategy. At Plug and Play, we help them in every stage of the way.

Get in touch today and discover examples of innovation in financial services fostered by the Plug and Play Fintech program.