Depowise, the Estonian-founded oversight and process automation startup for financial services firms, is expanding into the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company aims to increase its current 5% market share tenfold in the domiciled funds market of Luxembourg, Ireland, and the UK, valued at more than €16.5 trillion. Over the next five years, Depowise plans to achieve a volume of assets on the platform of €8 trillion and become a market leader.
Leading this significant expansion is Leonid Belov, the newly appointed Managing Director for the UK and Ireland. Belov has a wealth of experience across front-to-back and cross-asset-class solutions, having worked in leading financial institutions such as BlackRock, State Street, MSCI, and Bloomberg.
“Having known Leo since our Bloomberg days, I have always admired his drive and insight. During one of our chats, I brought up my ambition to develop Depowise, and this resonated strongly with Leo, who thought we could disrupt the status quo and bring about meaningful change,” says Artur Reiter, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Depowise. “We are beyond delighted to welcome Leonid Belov to our team. His exceptional talent in growth engineering, coupled with his strategic approach, sales expertise, and extensive financial technology knowledge, will undoubtedly secure our success in these new markets.”
Mr. Belov shares the excitement: “Depowise has incredible growth potential that I couldn’t resist being a part of. The dedication and achievements of the team in just three years – developing a market-leading end-to-end tool for the depositary market – are truly impressive.
Market starving for automation
The global asset servicing and management industries are in dire need of technological advancement. “Despite the significant pace of automation, a meaningful proportion of the industry still relies on manual processes for critical tasks. We see this as a big market opportunity for Depowise – our modern technology can unlock scale and achieve viable efficiency for our customers,” notes Belov.
„In Queen Elisabeth’s time, asset custody and oversight were managed primarily in Excel; in King Charles’s time, we aim to move it into Depowise, and by the time Prince William picks up the reigns, it will be largely driven by AI,” says Belov.
Depowise offers a comprehensive automation solution that streamlines compliance, oversight, safekeeping, reporting, and record-keeping tasks, significantly reducing manual efforts and inherent inefficiencies.
Unicorn-size market potential
Based on discussions with Depowise clients and prospects we note that around a third of asset servicing and management companies in the UK and Ireland currently use multiple service providers to manage different parts of operations, around another third use in-house solutions, and nearly every organisation still heavily relies on Excel. The market size for automation in this sector is projected to grow to over €7bn by 2027, and with no complete, end-to-end competitors, Depowise aims to become the market leader within five years.
Our 2022 customer survey showed that Depowise increased efficiency for our customers by up to 82%. “You don’t have to spend your mornings searching for discrepancies because Depowise does the checks for you in the background,” Sven Peekmann, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Depowise explains the efficiency phenomena. “Now, when nearly 90% of daily work is done automatically, Depowise allows you to focus on the issues with the most significant business impact.”
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