Up-and-coming platform company is wasting no time as it invites advisors to join digital wealth revolution
It’s fair to say that the wealthtech industry has gotten a boost, with measures to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic driving a widespread shift toward the virtual. But even before that tailwind reached its current gale-force strength, one upstart Canadian platform was already making a splash in the Canadian market.
“We’ve been overwhelmed with the response from the investment community across both the MFDA and IIROC, including financial advisors and portfolio managers,” said Fotios Saratsiotis, president of Pascal Financial, which was launched just in January.
Beyond “duct-taped” solutions
In response to its soft launch in the first quarter, financial advisors have inundated the company with requests for demos and information on how to start using the platform, Saratsiotis said.
He noted that even in large financial institutions, there is still an unhealthy dependence on ‘90s-era tech. And while robo advisors have been repurposing their B2C platforms into B2B solutions for wealth managers seeking a digital revamp, he said the advisor practice has unique needs for which the Pascal platform was built.
“We’ve been consistently told by people from the industry that the sophistication of our platform is the best they have seen,” Saratsiotis said.
With a fully integrated system, Pascal claims to give advisors a comprehensive view of a client’s investment portfolio “without switching between technologies that are duct-taped together.” The products it can accommodate run the gamut from mutual funds to ETFs, OM products, private equity, and even structured products.
“We bring in sophisticated analytics and AI-powered portfolio management tools that elevates the portfolio construction and monitoring capabilities,” Saratsiotis said, adding that the platform provides a completely digital and highly intuitive user experience. A portfolio stress-testing feature, which lets advisors show clients how their investments would have performed in different black swan events, is another reportedly popular function.
Users are also getting a lot of mileage out of Pascal’s CRM module, which allows conversations through secure messaging and videoconferencing that doesn’t require any downloads on the part of the clients. InvestorDNA, its behavioural finance tool, promises great value both for prospecting and for promoting a better understanding of investor risk profiles amid a climate of increasing regulation.
Getting in on the ground floor
With significant demand behind it, Pascal hasn’t let any moss grow under its feet. In its first six months of existence, the company has appointed a chief strategic advisor to shore up its leadership team, and has notched noteworthy wins through deals with Sterling Mutuals and Fidelity Clearing Canada. It’s also offering some of its platform’s best features as part of a free tech bundle, Prevail by Pascal, which advisors can avail of until July 1.
“Prevail was not part of the business plan. When Covid-19 hit, we thought this could be an opportunity to help advisors with pieces of our platform to help advisors engage and communicate with their clients,” Saratsiotis said.
More broadly, Saratsiotis sees a full-on digital wealth revolution under way as growth stories exemplified by Shopify and Slack point to a tech-directed diversification of Canada’s economy. That thinking inspired Pascal’s latest move: a $1.5-million private placement offering on DealSquare.
“At first, we had to bootstrap our own financing as Canadian investors tend to need proof of concept before they provide backing,” he said. “We feel we have that now, and we chose DealSquare because of the digital innovation they are delivering for the private capital markets through the NEO Connect platform.”
Aside from opening an opportunity for clients to add complementary exposure to private equity within their portfolio, Saratsiotis said the DealSquare listing allows advisors to get in on the ground floor of the wealthtech revolution and participate in Pascal’s growth story. That includes potential partnerships that would allow expansion into the U.S. – that was originally slated for 2022, but an earlier entry is now in the cards – as well as into Southeast Asia.
But that’s all for later. Right now, the company is making Canada its priority as it works hand-in-hand with existing clients and welcomes new ones to digitize the country’s wealth-management industry.
“We work with all business models from the smallest dealer to the Big Six, and everything in between,” Saratsiotis said. “We’re on a mission to help the advisory business level up, engage, and grow using the most advanced AI-powered and behavioural finance-informed digital wealth platform in Canada.”
