Meet Aurelien Vicart, one of our founders & the brains behind VIZIBILITY
Who are you?
I’m Aurélien Vicart and I am 42 years old. I grew up in the south of France, near Carcassonne.
My dad was a shepherd of a flock of 300 sheep’s, and that freedom, those big spaces made me a countryside guy. This is the reason why I move to the Bahamas with my wife and 4 wonderful kids.
What was your career path?
I started my career at Natixis then moved to Commerzbank. I worked 5 years for the German bank from Paris, New York, and London Offices.
Then with the first kid on his way, I was looking for an opportunity to move to a smaller city. Geneva has been the destination where I helped Exane-BNP Paribas to develop the Latin American market for 2 years before joining a fast-growing company (UCAP) for 5 years where I became Partner. Apart from being the Head of Sales for LATAM there, I always took the lead in automatizing the structured products business. I set up reporting tools for them to monitor a structured product portfolio. As a result, we had an amazing tool for the internal sales force, which made me realize that it was a valuable tool that everyone should be able to have. So, after 12 years working in the banking industry, I decided in 2017 to create with my partner, Jerome Zenteno, VIZIBILITY – an open platform for anyone involved with the structured Product industry.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues as an entrepreneur to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
For me, balance is the key. You must understand that this is a marathon, not a sprint. As an entrepreneur, you can feel like everything is a race, but my advice is to slow down and take the time to do things in the right way.
It’s also important to take the time to build a good team around you early on. You can’t do everything yourself and you’re not the smartest person in the room. A trusted team allows you to take your head out of the day-to-day and think about your business´ next growth stage.
Why did you create VIZIBILITY?
When we launched VIZIBILITY, we quickly realized that Price comparison wasn’t the main key to grow our business. Service was the key to success. Why not the pricer? because we knew that a multi-issuer platform will come quickly to the market and will create an efficient access to prices. It took around 10 years for Equities and 5 Years for the Fixed Income Market to be efficient. But with nowadays technology, it only took 2 years to see a multitude of multi-issuers platforms. And all of them made the price comparison tool the most important part of their business model to sell more, without focusing on portfolio monitoring.
So we created VIZIBILITY to bring in a real added value to that industry: offering a very efficient reporting to monitor a structured Products Portfolio. It might look crazy, but most of Private Banks are using excel books to monitor their portfolio of structured products….and you all know that sharing an excel file with your team, and colleagues is impossible. That´s why we have created a multi-level user platform with dedicated rights to satisfy the needs in the chain of interested users: issuer, trading desk, asset manager, and HNWI.
It is only after the finalization of lifecycle management that we have integrated all issuers in our platform and receive firm quotes within 90 seconds.
What was the hardest part of creating VIZIBILITY?
The initial stage of creating a unique nomenclature of products that will fit any kind of structured Products. We can now cover any payoff! Once you have this solid base, you can consolidate anything and develop on top of it without trouble or limitation.
Plus, it took us time to explain to our developer’s team how structured products work.
What is Vizibility’s edge compared to other platforms?
VIZIBILITY comes from the industry, our platform was designed for experts by experts with in-house & cutting-edge technology, this advantage makes us understand and know what the industry wants and needs.
Our interface is pretty unique, easy to use, and self-explanatory, where you can get a sense of the situation with a quick snapshot.
To this, we must add that our platform is easy and rapidly implemented and offers flexibility to tailor-made solutions depending on the client’s needs.
VIZIBILITY, as a tech company, makes an important investment in the quality of the data but also understands how the human resources behind it are essential to make it possible.
Can platforms help increase the adoption of structured products? why?
Of course, as mentioned, we are here to change the industry. To make long-term partnerships with a sustainable business.
Many platforms offer education to sell more. Our goal is to democratize Structured Products by focusing on their users, as we understand it will help them analyze their portfolio and, based on their understanding, adjust them. In this portfolio-building business, our job is to provide the best tool for advisors, so they can build their portfolio and manage them in the best way.
We also provide transparency between the advisor and the final client, which translates into trust, key to growing the pie.
Finally, we provide investment solutions to launch campaigns easily and efficiently which enlarges volumes. We recommend a balanced portfolio allocation, but it is key for advisors to understand the structured notes and feel comfortable explaining them, which will enrich the client with a diversified allocation that includes notes.
We still see fear in the industry to have exposure to structured notes for different reasons, and we believe that it is not in the best interest of high-net-worth clients.
Future plans for VIZIBILITY
VIZIBILITY is only at the beginning of its route! We have a high-level roadmap to continue developing our platform.
In addition, we have created a community with our clients: private banks, broker-dealers, and insurance companies. We listen to their needs and work together, we are a business-data-driven company. Our final goal is to provide the best solutions in the industry.
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