Swiss financier Martin Ebner is taking a stake in a leading Swiss finance software provider. The fintech plans to use the fresh capital to finance its expansion, particularly in digital wealth management in Europe and Asia.
Martin Ebner is back on the dealmaking front: the Swiss financier is taking a stake in Additiv via his investment vehicle Patinex, finews.asia has learned.
He is investing 21 million Swiss francs in Additiv, a spokesman for the Zurich-based fintech confirmed to finews.asia.
Ebners As Anchor Investors
Ebner is a well-known Swiss financier. In the late 1990s, he urged retail clients to invest in the stock market instead of low-returning savings accounts. This plan foundered when his bank racked up massive debts after investors headed for the exits, but Ebner and his bank have since retrenched.
His investment will trigger a capital hike at Additiv, to be fully subscribed by the Ebner-controlled BZ Bank on behalf of several clients as well as Patinex, which Ebner controls along with his wife Rosmarie Ebner. The weighty new investors will advance to anchor shareholders in Additiv, which is thought to generate low double-digit sales.
Equipped with a major injection of fresh capital, Additiv wants to embark on an expansion of its wealth management activities in Europe and Asia. Specifically, the firm is targeting robo-advisory and cloud offerings, Additiv founder Michael Stemmle (pictured above) told finews.asia.
Digital Tools for Banks
Stemmle said he will remain a firm's main shareholder after the cap hike. Various top executives and board members also hold shares in the firm, which was founded in 1998 and initially specialized in software products and later so-called innovative services to digitize finance.
In recent years, Additiv has supplied digital tools such as a robo-advisor to Royal Bank of Scotland Group-owned NatWest, an online lending service to Bob Finance, and an «intelligent» robo-advisor to Descartes Finance.
London, Germany Plans
The Zurich-based fintech already has offices in Singapore and Hong Kong, and has recently won Malaysian bank holding CIMB as a client. Additiv employs roughly 100 staff, including development engineers in Bucharest and Kiev. Stemmle told finews.asia he wants to expand Additiv's cloud-based offerings, open a branch in London and plans to enter the German market.
Additiv's heart and lungs is its digital finance suite, or DFS, an operating platform for financial services which aggregates all a client's internal and external processes and is compatible with any core banking system.
Logical Next Step
DFS can also extra functionalities such as robo-advice, portfolio management, or lending.
The proprietary platform is widely seen as one of the more innovative in fintech. Because of digitization's rapid advance in finance, firms need to utilize their know-how and experience quickly; most have a window of not more than two years to do so, Stemmle said.
Fintech and information technology isn't a new field for Martin Ebner: banking software house Avaloq was born out of his former firm, BZ Informatik, and Patinex and BZ Bank hold roughly 15 percent in rival banking software specialist Temenos.
