In a few words, could you tell us about yourself, what Fundvis does and what makes it special?
I am Leonhard Kossmann, a Luxembourgish-German data scientist turned co-founder and CEO of Fundvis. Fundvis is a workflow management platform designed for the fund industry. We bring structure into daily operations by streamlining all fund-related workflows on one platform. Our cross-industry platform enables clients to oversee all operations and counterparties in real-time and helps with data management.
Fundvis offers its solution in three pillars:
1. Setup: reserved alternative investment funds (Raifs), European long-term investment funds (Eltifs), special purpose vehicles (SPVs), etc.
2. Lifecycle: investment process, investor relations, etc.
3. Compliance: due diligence and follow-ups, questionnaires and the new Dora module
Fundvis is designed in an intuitive way, enabling clients to onboard both internal and external users while saving crucial time and increasing efficiency by taking away the daily mail ping-pong. All processes on Fundvis can be created, customised and duplicated in the client’s private process database with a few clicks, ensuring they are always able to react to any situation in the right way.
Fundvis works a lot with investment funds in Luxembourg. What do you consider to be the biggest challenges facing the company and the industry?
The company faces numerous challenges, foremost the pressure on the cost side in order to stay attractive and competitive. Several factors have made the local servicing industry more expensive which are now opening the door to competitors that can convince with this argument.
Digitalisation is no more an agenda point during the annual meeting, but an actual necessity
Additionally, the sector is fighting the war of talent which is needed to sustain daily operations, which are still heavily executed in a manual manner.
You’ve closed your first external financing round of €470,000. How do you plan to deploy this funding?
The financing round is composed of funding from the Fit4Start programme--which we successfully completed last year--and investments from business angels. The funding will be used to grow our operational team, specifically on the business development aspects and to invest in the further development of the Fundvis Co-Pilot, the process automation solution.
We are also enhancing our offering on the data processing side, where the aggregated data from the workflows can be transformed in the desired output format (reports) and data format.
You’ve mentioned the Digital Operational Resilience Act (Dora), which aims to harmonise and reinforce the resilience of the information systems of financial sector entities and their information and communications technology (ICT) providers. It will come into effect next year. Concretely, what will Fundvis offer to help the industry comply with these new requirements?
Fundvis will offer a Dora module that spans all five pillars of the new regulation. Within each pillar, Fundvis will provide best practice workflows for all specific requirements and possible scenarios. Using these workflows as a working basis for the pursuing of the regulation drastically facilitates the user interaction of all involved parties while providing automated proof of compliance through the Fundvis audit trail.
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An example would be ICT incident management. Whenever such an incident occurs, users can respond by triggering the relevant workflows on Fundvis and following all the steps and requirements described. As soon as the process has been worked on, it can be approved by a 4-eye principle and if accepted, be completed. After the completion of the process, the application can transform the input data into a report or data file and transmit it directly via API (application programming interface) to the Luxembourg Financial Sector Supervisory Commission, the CSSF. The platform will also store all these processes even after they are completed and the audit trail with all user interactions log is always available in real time.
Fundvis’ new advisory board features several industry experts: Alessia Lorenti (independent director), (founder of Kneip), Martin Vogel (global head of strategy at Waystone) and Olivier Renault (managing director of Kantara Advisory). What do you think will be their most valuable contributions and what opportunities are you most excited about for the near future?
This great team of industry leaders have personally been involved in the development and shaping of Luxembourg’s fund, financial and fintech sector. Every single one of them are known and recognised for their expertise and knowledge in their field. We are extremely happy that they are joining the board of Fundvis, supporting us as a young company and myself as a young founder. Their market understanding and strategic thinking will play a crucial role for the next steps of Fundvis and its development into a cornerstone provider of the global fund industry.
From l to r: Olivier Renault, Martin Vogel, Alessia Lorenti and Bob Kneip have joined Fundvis’ new advisory board. “I have seen Fundvis evolve since its inception in 2022 when I mentored the Fundvis team in the Catapult acceleration programme,” Lorenti commented in a press release. “I strongly believe Fundvis is a cutting-edge solution to allow the alternative investment funds industry players to enhance their operational and cost efficiency, while reducing risks, through automation and digitalisation.” Photo: Fundvis
We see that the market is finally adapting to the new and sometimes hard reality where digitalisation is no more an agenda point during the annual meeting, but an actual necessity. More players will need to fill their performance gaps created through resource shortage and increasing regulation by integrating software in their daily operations. Fundvis fills this gap by automating process after process and supporting on regulatory matters with clear and compliant best practice workflows to be followed.
This article was published for the Delano Finance newsletter, the weekly source for financial news in Luxembourg. .