WeInvest bags $12m to help banks grow their clients’ wealth

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For years, wealth management has been a very traditional sector, says WeInvest CEO Bhaskar Prabhakara.

“The complexity of investment, of managing your money, hadn’t decreased in any way over the last 10 to 15 years,” he tells Tech in Asia. “The tools available were still pretty archaic. The experience was uneven depending on whether you knew who to talk to.”

So in 2015, he set up WeInvest, a digital advisory platform service for banks, brokers, asset managers, and financial advisors. The Singapore-based startup develops a number of tools to help these professionals engage their clients, plan and monitor investment, analyze portfolio performance, and more. Then it operates these tools for them, becoming a partner rather than just a vendor.

Today, WeInvest announced it has raised US$12 million for its series A round. The bulk of the funding comes from Schroders, a London-based international asset management firm, which acquired a minority stake in the startup. Angel investors that hold senior positions in the financial industry also joined the round.

A wealth of digital transformation

Asset managers and financial advisors as well their customers are increasingly turning to online tools. According to a 2016 survey by Ernst & Young, most wealth clients consider digital their preferred channel for receiving advice and are familiar with robo-advisory products.

High net-worth individuals primarily favor such tools – over 70 percent claimed they would consider them.

So large firms are paying attention. Schroders was actually one of the first ones to back a robo-advisory startup. Four years ago, it joined a US$32 million round in London-based digital wealth advisory Nutmeg.

Markus Gnirck, co-founder and CEO of Tryb Group, thinks that digital advisory startups can scale a lot faster by partnering with financial institutions. “Combining user-centric tools from companies like WeInvest with the advantages of a financial institution in having a license, back-office systems, and settlement capabilities, gives consumers a powerful ecosystem of new age banking,” he points out.

While it’s likely that large firms will try to build their own tech or acquire startups to do it for them, Gnirck believes partnerships are more likely. “I believe the future consists of networked systems that leverage data, customer relationships, and core systems in the most efficient way from various stakeholders,” he says.

Business partner as a service

WeInvest offers a range of products on a software-as-a-service model, similar to startups like Singapore-based Bambu. Where WeInvest differentiates itself, according to Prabhakara, is in working with its clients to actually run operations.

“It’s an end-to-end business unit that we plug in,” Prabhakara says. “We usually work with a business head, or head of wealth, or CEO, about how we add almost like a new business to their organization, which could be far more efficient and potentially lucrative.”

The startup has also taken time to build bespoke investment strategies – something that affluent investors and high net-worth individuals value, according to Prabhakara.

The startup has created what it calls “thematic baskets,” or a series of short-term investment bundles that focus on specific scenarios, such as a basket that invests in chocolate snacks and coffee products.