Guillaume Desclée, CEO and Founder, Abbove talks about their technology solutions and the most exciting trends in FinTech.
1. Can you give us a brief of your career before Abbove? How did you find your way into FinTech?
After a three-year study program in Paris, Oxford and Madrid, I obtained a master degree in management, finance, economics and marketing. After this, I started my career at Danone Paris in 2006 where I was responsible for the improvement of low profitability products and was involved in mainly operational and industrial projects.
In 2009, I traveled to Brazil where I became the cofounder of IMPULSO, the first crowdfunding website that connects investors from all over the world with micro-entrepreneurs in Brazil. I returned to Belgium in 2010 with an entrepreneurial energy and new knowledge about crowdfunding. I wanted to apply the Brazilian crowdfunding model to a Belgian context. This desire eventually turned into a project called MyMicroInvest, an equity based crowdfunding platform.
Six years later, in 2016, in the midst of a fundraising round, I suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and three strokes. This was a big shock for my health and I had to recover for a full year. Finally, it was also a turning point in my life: I decided to quit MyMicroInvest, but I didn’t leave behind the love for entrepreneurship.
In 2017 I founded a company with two friends, Guillaume de Monie and Gaëtane Meurant, to develop a wealth planning platform called PaxFamilia, a solution destined for financial advisors who want to offer their clients a whole new wealth management experience.
2. Could you tell us more about Abbove and what was the inspiration behind starting this company?
Abbove is a company developing a wealth planning platform for financial advisors and the clients they accompany.
We started this company after talking to a hundred Belgian and French families who told us about their needs and difficulties in wealth management. It resulted from these interviews that their wealth was often a source of concern: the families did not have an overall view of their assets, the documents related to their wealth were scattered among different places and people, they felt overwhelmed by the need to monitor and follow-up on their assets and the impact of the organization of their inheritance on the wellbeing of the family was a big source of anxiety. After many exchanges, we co-developed with these families the solution they were dreaming of: a digital patrimonial passport called “PaxFamilia”.
The families then recommended the solution to their friends and invited their advisors to
access their wealth information on the platform. The advisors were quickly convinced of the
interest that such a platform could represent for their profession and wanted to offer it to
some of their other clients as well. To take into account their needs, PaxFamilia was then
transformed into a B2B2C platform with powerful tools for advice and reporting that were
added to the digital wealth passport.
In addition to family offices, accountants and asset managers, we have also been developing our platform for the bank BNP Paribas Fortis and their private banking clients under the label “PaxFamilia” since 2018. After this successful banking case and a growing demand from the private banking sector, we decided to further adapt our platform to larger financial institutions. In addition to being able to guarantee “family peace” to their clients, these institutions seek to improve the way they work, collaborate and extend their wealth
management services. That is why we started looking for a name that would better describe this wider scope. Thus, in June 2022, we changed our name from PaxFamilia to Abbove and started preparing to extend the distribution of our platform to other banking institutions.
3. What makes Abbove unique? How does it stand out from its competitors?
Abbove’s uniqueness lies in the fact that it’s the only “collaborative” wealth planning platform that connects advisors, their clients, data and technology in one place. Indeed, the platform is destined for financial advisors who can use the many tools and inventories to gain efficiency and quality to offer their clients the best wealth management services. However, the platform can also be accessed by these clients themselves, who can thus consult their wealth data 24/7 and even complete their information base. Thanks to this possibility of cooperation, advisors have at their disposal an always up-to-date wealth information base, and their clients get an improved and digital experience.
4. What are the technology solutions that Abbove offers?
Our wealth planning platform helps financial advisors to achieve three goals with multiple tools:
1. To understand their clients wealth inside out: to offer solid wealth advice, advisors are in need of an up-to-date, consistent and structured data base. On the platform, they find different kinds of organized inventories in which they can store data about their clients’ assets, gifts, family and marital situation, important documents, etc.
2. To serve their clients with the right solutions at the right time: the platform offers advisors powerful planning tools to help them discover opportunities to serve their clients in the best possible way. To this end, the tools are directly connected to the clients’ individual databases so calculations and projections can be made in an automated way. Advisors can make use of a financial planning tool to follow-up on the evolution of their clients’ wealth, calculate an estimate of the inheritance tax their clients’ heirs will have to pay and create customised and clear client reports.
3. To follow-up on their clients on a regular basis: to offer the best wealth management advice, advisors should create a relationship of trust with their clients. This can be achieved by maintaining regular contact through the intuitive client interface of the platform that facilitates communication, cooperation and transparency.
5. Could you give a sneak peek into the recent developments at Abbove?
Recently, we have especially been focussing on connecting our platform with more different data sources, such as wealth planning tools, information systems, etc. Currently, we are also working on a “light version” of our platform that will be available on mobile. This would allow our users to be able to access their wealth information whenever they want, wherever they want. Finally, we are further internationalizing our wealth data model to adapt our platform to local and international wealth structure specificities.
6. Tell us a bit about your culture. What makes Abbove’s culture unique?
Just as we once founded our company to bring peace of mind to families, we have always focused on the well-being of our employees. The uniqueness of Abbove’s culture is that ambition, energy and progress are held in high regard and are embodied by our employees, while the overall atmosphere that prevails is one of empathy, caring for one another, creating a welcoming environment and bringing out the best in each other. You can find more information about our company culture on this webpage.
7. Abbove (PaxFamilia) has been selected as a WealthTech100 company for the second year in a row. What do you want to comment on the company’s recognition in the list?
It’s quite the honor to have been selected by this prestigious list for the second year in a row. It’s a recognition for all the hard work that has already been put into making our wealth planning platform the ideal solution for financial institutions, and it is highly motivating to keep up this pace to achieve our future goals.
8. In your opinion, what are the most exciting trends in FinTech right now?
New trends are constantly popping up.
Data is more available and structured thanks to open banking, third party apps (micro-services and tools) are interconnectable through API and there is a growing maturity of the artificial intelligence and machine learning capacities.
These three technological trends combined together will change the wealth tech industry for good.
This will allow us to collect more data than ever on our platform and provide people with a limitless number of apps that will leverage this data to provide more services. On top of that, in a world of high tax and financial complexity, the artificial intelligence tech will help to provide people with the best advice they could ever receive.
9. What are Abbove’s plans for expansion and growth? Where do you see it in the coming years?
Our priority now is to leverage our positioning and USP in the private banking industry. We want to accelerate our growth in this market in Europe and serve more private banks. First in Benelux, France and Switzerland and then to other countries. We already signed contracts with international banking groups that will accelerate our internationalization and distribution in Europe. We’ve been growing on average by approx. 60% per year and we want to continue at this pace.
10. What is the biggest piece of advice you would want to give to company leaders?
It is obvious, but as time goes on I’m getting more and more convinced of this: Cherish your employees, they are your best asset. The only reason why you’re performing is because people around you are giving the best of themselves. Make sure they have everything they need; they are listened to, they know what they have to do and understand WHY they are doing it.
11. Where do your passions lie? What do you think defines you as a person?
My passion lies in life and love. Being healthy is not a given. Being aware of this helps to put things into perspective. It helps to understand what a big or small problem in life is. To not worry when it is not necessary and to cherish the essential.
Beside this, I’m an optimistic and (it goes along with it) enthusiastic person. I love to play collectively and build extraordinary projects with passionate people. That’s what I have always been doing: creating companies with passionate and outstanding people. A good example of this is Abbove.
12. Which motivational quote drives you to achieve more at work? How do you manage to stay relevant in such a fast-paced industry?
Pope Francis once said “You can have flaws, be anxious, and even be angry, but do not forget that your life is the greatest enterprise in the world.” I’m not seeking to achieve more at work. I’m seeking to achieve my best in what I do and have fun. I can do more but I don’t necessarily want to do more. Everything has its space in life. Having that (work-life) balance probably helps me to do things right. I’m not worried about the velocity of the industry. I trust myself and I trust my team. That’s my bet.
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