Birdee is an investment management company offering an online discretionary portfolio service for Mass Affluent investors. Through a combination of algorithms, it lets investors choose a portfolio, created by its experts, that best meets their expectations and risk profiles, and that, in function of these, is constantly optimized in order to provide the best return. This new Fintech startup has just been launched by Gambit Financial Solution. We asked Co-founder and CEO Geoffroy de Schrevel to give us more details about this smart suite of portfolio management applications.
What is the purpose of your startup Birdee?
For everything we do at Birdee, we want to make money a better support for what comes next. We want to reconnect people with that money they rightly own, but which they somehow lose track of, due to the lack of transparency of the current financial system.
That’s why Birdee presents today a product that is not offered today by financial institutions, a product that actually fills the gap between a saving account and actively managed funds. Indeed, thanks to our proven algorithms, our expertise in portfolio management, and the use of ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), we’re now able to match the best of both world: the simplicity and cash availability of a saving account and the performance of the best portfolio managers.
Besides, we take at heart to use the technology developed by our experts, with a human touch as a way to treat everyone’s money with the professionalism and respect that is often exclusively reserved to the wealthiest people only.
How did you come up with this idea?
Since its creation in 2007, Gambit (a company specialized in decision making support software for investment advisors) has always advocated for a client-centric focus in the investment service. Therefore, it has developed its solutions in that direction for all those years. And the market proved it right. Nowadays, people won’t accept product push anymore. They expect financial services that are more mobile-friendly, more transparent, easier to understand and more accessible.
That’s why Gambit has decided to combine the various algorithms it has developed and marketed over the last years to build a purely digital, online and automatic solution for portfolio management – Birdee.
What services do you propose?
To make it short, Birdee is an investment management company offering an online discretionary portfolio service for Mass Affluent investors. Through a combination of algorithms (also known as robo-advisor), it lets investors choose a portfolio, created by its experts, that best meets their expectations and risk profiles, and that, in function of these, is constantly optimized in order to provide the best return.
In details, Birdee is not only offering a new product, it provides a brand new service and client experience. It’s all about reconnecting people with their money. This is translated by the possibility for the investors to choose their portfolio(s) differently: indeed, they can whether select one in function of the risk-return that best suits them, or in function of a wider investment theme they have emotions about. We understand people have values, beliefs. And if they want them to be reflected in their investments we’ll allocate their portfolios accordingly.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the Birdee platform is designed to offer transparent and simple monitoring over your money. It helps you grow it and understand when, how and why it fluctuates. To make this easy monitoring possible, we built a notification system that will inform investors (at the frequency and the level of details they wish) about the status of their portfolios – e.g. its composition, its risk characteristics, its performance.
In practice, we have noticed that there are investors who are attached to human interactions, and others who feel more comfortable in an all-digital experience. So we have developed our solution into two complementary offerings:
- Birdee Institutional: through this offering, we propose our technology and expertise to financial institutions willing to provide to their clients a new automated discretionary portfolio management service, with a completely novel digital experience. This Mifid 2 compliant platform can be set-up and products can be offered to individual investors in less than six months.
- Birdee Money Experts: through this offering, Mass Affluents investors, in 2016, will be proposed to directly invest in our portfolios, starting from as low as €1.000. Clients will have a permanent access, via the web or their mobile device, to the full information on their portfolios, including risk and performance, and will be able to add or withdraw money at any time, just like for a saving account.
What is your business model?
Depending on the level of the amount you decide to invest, we charge the appropriate fixed fee. Simple and clear. No bad surprise and no extra overcharge. Ever.
How does it fit into Gambit’s strategy?
Gambit is the technology provider, while Birdee is the simplification interface to make it accessible to a larger amount of investors. Whether Gambit or Birdee, both companies contribute to the same great mission: transforming the financial industry into a client-centric one. Until then, Gambit will continue to develop its technology and propose it to the financial institutions, and Birdee will be the bridge to bring this technology directly to people in a simple and transparent way.
Do you think Luxembourg can turn into a major fintech hub in Europe – or beyond?
We think Luxembourg is already an incredibly inspiring fintech hub! The financial infrastructures are already concentrated there, and it attracts more and more IT talents. There is only a spark missing, the flagship fintechs that will lead the movement for all the others. We want to be one of those. That’s why we chose Luxembourg to establish Birdee. We think it really is the ideal environment to develop and promote finance innovation.
