Asset management digital solutions firm Kurtosys is set to open a Luxembourg subsidiary in the first quarter of 2022. New CEO Lee Godfrey explains.
You’ve spent much of your career in Luxembourg, at Kneip and more recently Intertrust. Presumably, the fact that the grand duchy is your home wasn’t the only factor driving your decision to open a subsidiary there?
As someone who took Luxembourg nationality because of brexit, it’s one of the things we underestimate the impact of. In the asset management industry, world distribution is already impacted so we wanted to give our clients the opportunity to have a European base. We’ve clients in Luxembourg, Paris and elsewhere in Europe and they asked are you going to be present in europe? Why Luxembourg? It’s partially because I’m here. If you’re going to start anywhere, from a fintech perspective Luxembourg is a hugely comfortable place to develop a business. I’m thinking of joining the LHoFT. And I think there’s a lot of openness from the government and support for a fintech startup here.
You said in an article that you hoped to tackle inefficiencies of the industry. Tell us more about that.
Kurtosys started in the UK 18 years ago. The technology that I joined to use was developed in 2021. We launched a new platform with multiple outlets of the same data to satisfy the asset managers’ needs to communicate their strategy. That includes the traditional performance data but also more so the ESG components of that data set.
This technology will allow an asset manager to be more bespoke in client reporting and allow them to adapt more to the needs of that client. A lot of people want to interrogate the ESG component. Now it’s just an annual report, whereas going forward it could be real-time data.
“Now I’m putting in place a client success team that focuses on the front, forward-looking client management […]”
Lee Godfrey
Where would you say the asset management industry is at in terms of digital transition?
I think on the investment side, asset managers are using more technology in terms of portfolio creation with AI. In the middle and back office it’s still manual. There are a lot of legacy systems that are so intertwined it’s difficult to take out.
Is the asset management industry behind? Yes. I think marketing departments are very behind. They don’t understand what digital means and what it can bring as a concept. Digital isn’t just about technology. It’s about ways of working and the whole end-to-end client experience.
You succeeded the founder of Kurtosys, Mash Patel. What will be your focus as CEO?
Mash is a mathematician. The Kurtosys website talks about our platform and technology, but not what we do for our clients. I’m going to bring maturity in terms of converting products into solutions. Client experience has never been our number one priority. Now I’m putting in place a client success team that focuses on the front, forward-looking client management, and I think that’s what Kurtosys has been missing. We will build that team wherever the clients are.
What sort of team are you looking to build in Luxembourg and where will it be based?
The presence we have will depend on client needs. I would say that we will have half a dozen people at some point. We will look for experience in digital, which is hard to find in Luxembourg, as well as people who understand client challenges around distribution to their investors and people who understand products in relation to regulatory change. I’m still thinking about where the office will be. Probably the LHoFT.
What further announcements can we expect in the short-term?
In Q1, we will have the first big product launch. And we have a very large North American client using us to redesign all their online assets.
