Swiss online wealth manager True Wealth reached one billion francs of client assets under management a decade after its founding. The initial goal was to reach the milestone sooner.
Reaching one billion francs in client assets marks a milestone in a company's history. True Wealth, which started in 2013 to revolutionize digital wealth management, did just that, according to a statement on Thursday.
A few years ago, the timeline was considerably more ambitious. In 2015 CEO and co-founder Felix Niederer held out the prospect of reaching the billion-dollar mark much sooner. «I think we should have the billion together in less than two years,» he told finews.ch at the time.
Scaled Back Ambitions
At the end of 2016, client assets under management then amounted to around 50 million Swiss francs among 1,000 clients. Even then, ambitions were scaled back significantly, with the target adjusted to 100 million francs for the summer of 2017.
According to Thursday's announcement, the now attained billion franc goal is held by more than 17,000 customers in asset management and tied to the voluntary supplemental Swiss pension provisions (pillar 3a).
«This is a great success for our company, of which the entire team at True Wealth is very proud,» Niederer says. He said that the growth is all the more remarkable because the growth trend has been continuously upward in the face of a stock market and exchange rate environment that «offers little tailwind.»
New Clients
Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank (BLKB) acquired a minority stake in True Wealth in the summer of 2016, and owns 40 percent of the company. True Wealth doesn't charge management fees in the securities-based pillar 3a. In October, the company launched a 3a securities savings offering, which is now being used by over 4,000 customers.
The growth is said to be mainly due to high customer confidence, stable net new money inflows, and the launch of the Pillar 3a app. The central pillar of the digital wealth management offering is exchange-traded index funds (ETFs).
Alongside Niederer, a physicist and portfolio manager, Oliver Herren co-founded True Wealth. Herren is also co-founder of the leading Swiss e-commerce marketplaces Digitec and Galaxus.
