Capital Markets
DigFin has a little hypothesis: that the more specific and boring a fintech’s business, the stronger the proposition. Two new fintechs seem to fit that bill.
Artius Global is a Singapore-based regtech targeting shareholder disclosure. As CEO and co-founder Jacqueline Pang explains, asset managers must disclose to an exchange or regulator when their holding of a listed company exceeds a certain threshold. Moreover, that disclosure is short (two days, in Hong Kong’s case).
For asset managers operating in many markets, they face disclosure needs to many regulators, in local languages. It’s hard to get the data when it involves many positions across complex corporate entities and fund structures. Processes are manual, and timelines are tight. Failure to report on time can lead to fines, bad headlines, and even expose the fund’s board of directors to criminal and civil liabilities.
Artius brings a pre-configured rulebook for every market and standardizes rules so large banks or asset managers can pre-populate most of the reports. This frees compliance teams to focus on the problems, and lets them calculate positions earlier in the day. Pang has a few institutions using the software and is eager to land global banks.
Divizend, based in Germany, is another specialist. Family offices and private banks often do not claim tax refunds. Seems hard to imagine, but Ray Chan, Divizend’s strategic advisor for Asia, says small tax refunds are too time-consuming to bother with, and some $20 billion of rebates go unclaimed. Automating the process, however, makes it easy.
Divizend’s software automates refunds for withholding tax, in the form of an API. It is planning to launch new features, including a portfolio aggregator so investors can view their portfolios across multiple banks, and a portfolio optimization tool to help clients hone their risk/return profile.
There are plenty of fintechs that do aggregation and optimization. Divizend’s thin end of the wedge is the tax refund product. Is this enough for it to grow into these broader services? Is the refund size big enough to get adoption? Chan says the startup has one private bank in Switzerland using the core software.
