GTN Asia’s CEO on Digitalising the Investment and Wealth Management Lifecycle

Julien Le Noble, CEO of GTN Asia Financial Services, offered delegates at the Hubbis Independent Wealth Forum in Singapore on May 10 some valuable insights into the evolution of digital execution and investment platforms, as well as discussed the merits for the independent wealth community to work with external partners and FinTechs. This is a brief snapshot of his talk for readers to digest alongside a detailed yet concise slide.

GTN is a FinTech pioneer with more than two decades of success, holding broker-dealer and capital market services licenses in multiple jurisdictions through its subsidiaries, and today working with over 300 financial institutions and FinTech partners worldwide.

With the continuing rise in demand for digitised trading, investment and wealth management solutions, GTN set up a Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) regulated subsidiary in Singapore to work more closely with both Asia-based clients and partners.

Leading GTN Asia is Julien Le Noble, an industry veteran in global trading in financial markets, wealth management technology and FinTech entrepreneurship.

He explained that globally, the firm’s two pillars are global trading and digital wealth management. Clients include banks and securities brokers, asset managers, fund management companies, EAMs, and multi-family offices working with GTN to access a comprehensive network of global markets and multiple asset classes.

Julien explained that the firm has a global presence that spans Singapore, UAE (Dubai), the US, Europe, and South Africa. They are backed by strategic investors like IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and SBI, one of the largest financial services firms listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Julien told delegates that GTN is purely B2B and B2B2C and works with its clients as business partners, helping them innovate, diversify and expand their business efficiently and cost-effectively across 87 markets, across diverse asset classes and multiple segments, as well as optimised settlement, reporting and also custody.

“Our value proposition really revolves around several key elements,” he told the independent wealth managers and other parties at the event. “A single relationship with GTN gives you access to a broad range of markets and products offered on best-in-class technology that is highly cost-effective for customers, helping them achieve efficiencies at scale.”

Julien explained that GTN's value proposition revolves around a comprehensive global trading ecosystem that includes best-in-class execution, custody, and post-trade solutions. In addition, their investment and trading solutions also offer seamless integration with the existing services of regulated financial firms via a suite of co-branded front-ends or versatile API framework.

He further explained that they also offer a flexible account structure to fit client needs, with their partners able to choose between a disclosed account structure for their end clients or an omnibus account structure, ensuring client anonymity and control.

And he noted that GTN offers a digital wealth management offering primarily in the form of a portfolio management engine that enables their partners to construct, optimise, backtest, and rebalance model portfolios or bespoke portfolios that GTN can help devise.

He said the third pillar is their FinTech API connectivity. “We recognise that some clients want to keep control and ensure that they manage the client experience, so we empower them through our comprehensive API framework while they retain control over their clients’ journey and user experience,” he reported.

Julien also offered delegates some scene-setting observations on the global wealth markets, noting that based on the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Data Book 2022, there is a dynamic evolution taking place in the mass affluent segment (USD100,000 to USD1 million of net worth), which has tripled in size in the past 20 years from 208 million to 627 million. The middle class in developed nations typically belongs to this group and offers ever more opportunities for the wealth industry worldwide.

The HNW segment, he remarked, is core to the EAMs and MFOs present in the room, but for those wishing to build additional scale, the mass affluent market is also a great opportunity, especially in Asia. This fastest-growing wealth segment is still left largely unserved. With a 9.6 per cent annual CAGR, the mass affluent segment has already outpaced its HNW counterparts. This large pool of assets is predominantly held in cash positions. Over a third of this pool needs to receive active WM advice. This presents a tremendous untapped opportunity for all WMs.

He explained that GTN’s proposition as a platform provider for global trading and portfolio management spans all these segments and continuously adapts its offering to the market conditions and outlook.

For further reading on GTN Asia and Julien le Noble, see this recent Hubbis feature article:

https://hubbis.com/article/redefining-trading-and-investment-management-solutions-in-asia-pacific-an-interview-with-gtn-s-ceo-julien-le-noble

And please click here to view the accompanying slides to this presentation: http://pdf.hubbis.com/pdf/gtn-presentation-iwm-2023.pdf