The Europe-based financial technology firm, which has expanded rapidly in recent years and snapped up a number of acquisitions, has rebranded and is pushing forward on a number of fronts, its managers say.

In all the buzz around fintech right now one would be forgiven for thinking that the industry is dominated by firms only a few years’ old at most. But some of the players in the field, while growing rapidly, have quite a long history. 

Step forward as an example the Europe-based business, Objectway, which is celebrating its 25th birthday and which recently unveiled a snazzy new logo at a conference in Amsterdam – where your correspondent was present – as part of its branding update. Growing through a range of acquisitions and organic moves, the firm’s executives were in ebullient mood as they explained the evolution of their product/service suite. 

One of the signature qualities of Objectway is how its products come in a variety of “modules” so that clients can pick and choose offerings they want, and customise them to suit their needs, rather than be required to buy a one-size-fits-all offering that will often prove a burden to install and fit alongside legacy systems. Given the amount of M&A action in today’s wealth management field, with firms trying to reconcile different systems and keep up with rising client and compliance demands, flexibility isn’t just something that is nice to have, but crucial. In this sense, Objectway is very much a la carte, not a set menu restaurant. 

So argues Peter Schramme, chief business development officer. Along with a number of his colleagues, he set out to this publication his firm’s approach and strategy.

“With our focus on wealth and investment management mainly across EMEA, we  engage in a much more complex reality than is the case with most of the competition,” Schramme said, speaking at the conference, held at the Conservatorium Hotel in central Amsterdam. “We cannot respond to this [industry] in a monolithic fashion,” he said. Objectway, he said, wants to be known for providing a “scalable and efficient answer for diverse and complex set of needs”.

One of Objectway’s most visible offerings at present is Conectus, described on the corporate website in the mind-bending vocabulary of fintech is an “omni-channel, omni-device user experience platform designed specifically for the investment and wealth management services segment”. In other words, Conectus provides communications and reporting services, enables self-directed investment, client relationship management and goals-based investment advice. And it does this on all kinds of devices, ranging from an Apple phone to a mighty desktop. Or to pick another module, there is “eXimius”, the portfolio management offering. Another is BETA Global, an institutional and private client settlement system that is available through a service bureau or as a client-hosted solution. At times it is hard to keep up with all the modules sitting in the window.

The firm’s growth rate in recent years has been relatively rapid; it reports annual revenues of €60 million ($62.6 million) or more and now has over 150 clients across 15 countries. Delivering its service and product range requires a hefty workforce: there are more than 500 employees working in nine offices in Italy, UK, Belgium and South Africa. (Objectway recently opened a new office in Johannesburg, South Africa.) Acquisitions have been notable recently: at the end of December, 2014, Objectway bought 3i Infotech Western Europe; it also bought the BETA Global European back-office system from Thomson Reuters in 2015; eXimius, the portfolio management software operation mentioned above, was another Thomson Reuters deal. The last five years have seen extensions of business to France, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.

Schramme talked about how the firm has its “centres of competence” - such as its design centre in Milan, Italy - to get across the idea that this is a business with a relatively flat hierarchy, albeit with a definite structure, so as to make its array of offerings and significant number of staff work together without fuss.

Objectway also sought to make an impact through research to drive debate. Recently, the firm, along with Efma, cooperated on a global survey called Digital Engagement & Collaboration In Wealth and Investment Management. Among its findings is that digital technology is now a boardroom-level issue – with some variations, while many financial services groups see onboarding of clients a challenge in this compliance-focused period. One item that caught this writer’s eye was that when the point was put as to who asks for digital service, a smaller share of HNW clients asked for it than was the case among affluent persons. (The report was compiled from various sources; more than 2,000 financial organisations were contacted, and firms providing ideas about their plans included CheBanca! of Italy; Nedbank of South Africa, BNP Paribas Private Banking in Belgium and a large Danish bank.)
 

Conectus
Georgios Lekkas, chief product officer, enthused about Conectus, launched in 2015 and which went live this summer. 

“Conectus is probably our most significant product. It is at the front end and a sort of shop window,” he said, even though of course no such platform can succeed without strong, efficient engines behind the scenes.

“I think the most important development [at Objectway] is the orchestrated development towards a micro-services paradigm,” he said. Or, in other words: “Everyone can have services in a `mix-and-match’ way,” he continued. Objectway’s offerings are platform-agnostic - they can be operated on a cloud, or in-house, on a Microsoft or Linux platform, he said. “Our customers want to be much more busy with us and they want more development and deepen what they do,” he said.

He was asked about the “hybrid” nature of some of Objectway’s offerings – the way in which clients can have an online and face-to-face interaction with managers. (One service offering is actually called Hybrid Advisory.) At first, when digital technology first began to make waves, digital “pure plays” made ground but as the area matures, hybrid models are gaining ground, he said.

This is clearly the firm on an upward curve, and its message about the need for firms to climb aboard the digital train was pretty relentless during its busy conference schedule. As chief executive Luigi Marciano puts it, “digitisation should lead to business growth, ultimately.” “To achieve that, financial institutions must manage customer experience and business processes in a digitally integrated fashion. The thought-provoking perspectives shared during our conference can foster the strategic decisions of wealth and investments professionals,” he said.

Objectway is now a quarter of a century old, and yet the impression one gets is that its most rapid growth pace may be yet to come. At some point this firm may come up against certain scale issues - managing all its moving parts could be a challenge. But it appears its “module” approach and decentralised way of cooking up interesting “digital” meals might be able to keep hungry wealth managers fed and watered for some time to come.