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How do you want to expand your asset management business?
We want to differentiate ourselves by not just delivering strongly on the core wealth management and investment management. We believe boutiques like ourselves need to develop niche strategies which will be additive to your portfolios.

Can you give me an example of a Bedrock niche?
The disintermediation of banks from lending gave rise to an attractive opportunity: the peer-to-peer lending space (P2P). We set up a fund with a company in Charlotte, N.C. It’s a low-volatility, low-correlation investment strategy which has delivered between 0.5 percent and 1 percent monthly since its launch two years ago.

«Niche strategies your private banker won't show you at a bigger bank»

The fund returned almost 9 percent last year, with quarterly liquidity. This is a niche strategy where I don’t think your relationship manager is going to show you this if you go to a bigger bank.

How do smaller players find these opportunities?
It’s tough because often smaller boutiques just don’t have resources from a research point of view to bring about the opportunities. The fact that we have such a strong investment mindset at the top of house helps a lot, because it runs down the whole organization.

«Four of five partners are from the investment side»

My four partners (Ariel Arazi, Maurice Ephrati, David Joory, and Alexandre Koifman) all come from the investment and trading side. They have proven to be excellent in spotting investment opportunities over the years, and the result is a good long-term track record.

How important are the niches for family offices today?
A good plain vanilla investment management platform is just not enough anymore – even with a very good track record. You need to offer ideas, themes, opportunities and club deals, that are really distinctive and attractive at the same time.

Let’s talk about your back-office software, BRT. What are your growth hopes there?
Until now, we had only been covering the population of wealth managers in and around Geneva and London. If I just think of the number of independent wealth managers in Zurich, there is a massive opportunity for BRT.

«We'd like to see low double-digit top-line growth annually»

The reporting tool can include financial and non-financial assets, so if you want to include your yacht, your artwork, your properties or even your operating business at a certain valuation, that’s something we can do.

What are Bedrock’s financial targets?
If I take a five-year view, we’d like to see the three businesses – wealth management, asset management and BRT – grow their yearly top-line by a low double-digit percentage.

How are you addressing the millennial question?
The reality that is emerging clearly is that roughly two-thirds of the next generation will fire the existing financial advisor of their parents. That’s a pretty significant threat! We need to actively think about how to respond to this, and make sure we can not only keep the client relationship but also cover this next generation in a satisfactory manner.

What does that entail?
The first is content. This generation almost feels guilty about inheriting the wealth. Impact investing is coming to the fore. They have a desire to invest in a purposeful and positively-impacting manner.

«What technology are we putting at the disposal of the next generation?»

We are starting to deliver this investment theme to clients who request it. We also need to look at what technology we are putting at the disposal of this next generation. We have an ongoing assessment of the technology and development needs of our platform.