Traditionally, do-it-yourself investing is kind of complex and time-consuming. Not only do investors have to master complicated online brokerage platforms, but they need to answer many questions themselves. For example: What are good investment products, what is a decent asset allocation, how much risk am I talking…? The FinTech startup Swanest applies a customer-centric approach to tackle this complexity.
The Swanest team, which is based in Brussels and London, today announced that they received an investment of €750,000 from Philippe Gillion. The funding will be used to evolve the product, accelerate marketing activities and to receive regulatory approval that has been obtained recently.
Swanest was founded in late 2014 by four Belgian and Swiss entrepreneurs – Cyril Lequeux (Financial Algorithmics), Nicolas Bindels (Product & Business Development), Silvan Schumacher (Communications) and Youri Tolstoy (IT Systems & Security). The purpose of the company is to build an online investment service to help self-directed investors in building and managing personalised investment portfolios. Besides traditional players from the financial industry, Swanest is competing with a breed of new online investment platforms, so called robo-advisors. However, any bank, investment advisor and robo-advisor promote only model portfolios, that are one-size fits-all investment products. Swanest focuses on investors that value truly personalised investment portfolios that may consist of any stock, ETF or mutual fund.
Silvan Schumacher, Co-Founder & CEO: “We explore questions that self-directed investors face along their investment journeys. Afterwards we automate advice and use algorithms to provide meaningful guidance along the way. We call it an investment assistant. The assistant focuses on mid- and long-term investment strategies.”
Swanest is currently available in a Beta mode. However, the service in undergoing major changes, because the team is looking for more feedback to make sure that built solution is what users truly want and need. Swanest will be available across Europe around mid of 2017, and is looking for more rebels to join the team in Brussels and smart money for its vision to empower self-directed investors with an AI enabled investment assistant.
