Kidbrooke’s OutRank® is a solution that engages both client and adviser. Its financial simulation engine can be accessed via APIs to power better financial decision-making for wealth services and financial institutions.

Evida, meanwhile, started as a family office managing a wide range of assets for wealthy families. Initially, the Swedish financial adviser outsourced the management of equity and fixed-income positions to other parties. However, dissatisfaction with their current arrangements and the need to provide for factor-based investments drove a quest for change.

Fredrik Daveus, Founder and CEO of Kidbrooke®, says: “Evida needed realistic modelling and capabilities; it had built complicated excel sheets, but this had created scaling issues and made it hard to build more elaborate risk and tax analysis. It was difficult to maintain quality and to change the excel sheets on the fly to get a more interactive experience between client and adviser.”

The aim was to create a tool that would simulate the financial life of their customers from the present day until 100 years of age. The solution was to use APIs to embed Kidbrooke’s OutRank® solution into a platform provided by another vendor, additiv.

“We worked really hard to understand what the end solution should look like and what functionality was needed. Instead of being prescriptive with the analytics proposition, we worked instead to present the options in an easy-to-understand way so that Evida could self-determine when it came to the end result,” says Daveus.

Daveus says that Kidbrooke® had already identified that the industry, as a whole, tends to look at things primarily from a risk perspective. Consequently, other elements, like performance, ESG and the like, are in danger of being overlooked: “We were also mindful of the need for real-time analytics and to have an offering that was very user-friendly and intuitive to navigate,” he says.

Feedback from the project has been positive. Although the modelling looks simplified, it remains just as robust but is simply presented in a format that is easier to consume and understand. “That benefits both adviser and client because it answers questions like whether a client can maintain their current lifestyle once they retire and, if not, how much extra they need to be investing. It feels real and relatable,” Daveus says.

“The output makes it possible to analyse the uncertainty; tax, risk, investment levels, you can look at what-ifs, rebalance decumulation, move into cash,” he says.

The time to market was a second plus point. The scaling ability to make serving the customer more efficient was reached far sooner than expected, and this has a cumulative effect in adding value over time.

Evida believes that turning the customer meeting into an enlightening, visual and transparent experience will be a core factor in justifying the value of having a financial advisor in the future. Evida utilises this advanced technology to do so and views it as a solid differentiating factor going forward.

Learning outcomes

Daveus says that the client learned that a small team with a limited budget could achieve real results, achieving a superior quality of the modelling, without undue stress.

“Our aim is always to support the client but also to leave the client to decide how to apply the solution and, thus, create their own value within their customer base. We are there to scale, refine and industrialise and help to get to reach that decision, but we do not drive it,” Daveus says. He says that the API pluggability is a key attraction, particularly given a cultural change to accept the value that an ecosystem approach can bring and the role of small vendors within that.

“On the partner side, there are a lot of bigger vendors who are now looking to work with smaller ones as well as financial institutions being more willing to look around and at least consider what smaller vendors can bring,” Daveus says.

He thinks that the need for financial advice/guidance is at a record high and that mastering technology to get the provision to the right people and at scale will be essential.

The biggest problem lies in the legacy systems and data, so a provider that can plug into all that and integrate its capabilities without undue fuss is a thing of value. “It is very viable to plug in specialist tools, and the key is to find the right partnerships where the approach is collaborative and mutually supportive,” Daveus says.

This article is a write-up from The Wealth Mosaic’s Swiss WealthTech Live Event 2022 to launch the Swiss WealthTech Landscape Report 2022. You can access the full report here.