Justin Wright, Yield App Co-Founder, COO and CFO: “We maintain an open dialogue with our customer base and place an emphasis on transparency”

In the technologically-advanced world we live in, the wealth management industry has come under considerable stress due to combined forces of regulation, competition, technology, and demographics. New technologies have gained massive traction in recent times to easily engage and understand the market in new ways. For many years, some portions of the financial markets had to deal with unnecessary restrictions creating inefficiencies in the free allocation of capital. When there is widespread adoption of digital assets, we can witness faster and easier issuance of new securities while the cross-border transactions are streamlined. These benefits will also apply to the likes of bonds, securities, and fund shares.

Globally there are various companies delivering excellent platforms for digital wealth, but Yield App stands out from the rest. At Yield App, the team believes that everyone should have access to the best earning opportunities. The company’s mission is to unlock the full potential of digital assets, combine them with the most rewarding opportunities available across all financial markets, and make these available to the world. To achieve this, Yield App provides an innovative digital wealth platform that bridges traditional, digital and decentralized (DeFi) finance in the easiest way possible.

In conversation with Justin Wright, Co-Founder, COO and CFO of Yield App

Q. What’s your story? And what led you to the establishment of Yield App?

I spent my formative years career-wise in capital markets and investment banking, which afforded me the opportunity to travel extensively and immerse myself in many diverse cultures from a business and social perspective. After the global financial crisis, I embarked on an entrepreneurial journey throughout Asia Pacific, where I have resided for the last two decades. As clichéd as it may sound, fintech and the original intention by some of its pioneers to democratize finance resonates with a younger generation alongside the millions of individuals that have been left behind by the traditional banking system, particularly in developing nations. Putting some of the key skills and insights I have honed over the years to work for the betterment of the financial service industry is at the heart of Yield App’s concept of wealth generation, and decentralized finance is the driver of this tectonic shift in how products are both structured and delivered.

Yield App is still in its infancy, having been founded by several passionate individuals with varying backgrounds in financial markets and blockchain development, spearheaded by Tim Frost, my partner, and our Group CEO. When we discussed the idea of creating a borderless wealth management platform that was simple to use and powered by the returns offered through DeFi, the entire digital asset passive income sector was largely unknown outside of crypto natives. Since that first discussion in the middle of 2020, the entire digital asset thematic has evolved so rapidly to the point where we are witnessing a huge migration of traditional capital market players into the digital asset space, particularly around investment and wealth management and now the intersection of these services in the metaverse.

Q. ‘Yield App unlocks the full potential of digital assets with a simple, safe and accessible digital wealth platform.’ Sounds promising. Would you like to elaborate on this a bit more?

From a security or safety standpoint, the industry is awash with horror stories; whether that is hacks or malicious acts by operators themselves, it is going to take time to establish broader trust across the ecosystem as a whole and move away from some of the negative connotations that have historically been associated with cryptocurrencies. As with anything new, there are growing pains; at Yield App, we are focusing on eliminating these risks for our customers. This encompasses our technology platform itself, our income-generating activities, our people, and the technology that underpins it, ensuring our adherence to accepted regulatory customer protections. For the latter, this includes KYC, AML, and fair promotion coupled with education spanning DLT, financial literacy, and industry metalanguage, to name a few. For security overall, our five-pillar approach is covered in more detail on our website, where you can also find our educational blog series.

Q. In what industries are your clients? Can you provide us with one or two success stories describing the challenges your clients faced and how your solutions helped them overcome those challenges?

Our customers hail from a diverse range of industries both within and outside the digital asset space. We have a blockchain project that closed a financing round, a portion of which has been deposited with Yield App; their daily earnings on this capital cover a significant amount of their operating expenditure, affording them more runway to complete the development and launch of their project. We have some customers that are subsidizing their mortgage interest payments with their Yield App earnings and we are also seeing several customers including family offices diversifying their portfolios and self-managed pension funds through the addition of digital asset passive income streams available through Yield App.

Q. What plans for transformation are you pursuing to remain relevant now and in the future?  

For Yield App, staying relevant is about ensuring we are servicing the needs of our customers to the highest standard; in the first instance, this translates to capital preservation. With any wealth management enterprise, it should not be forgotten that our customers have granted us a privilege as custodians, and that trust needs to be honored. We maintain an open dialogue with our customer base and emphasize transparency so that we can create and add new or improved products and services as demand grows and as the broader market evolves. On the marketing and research side of our business, we are constantly learning and seeking new innovative areas that we feel can provide value for our customers, such as the metaverse and NFTs, where such endeavors align with the Yield App brand. Long-term growth for Yield App is part of maintaining the trust we have established, ensuring that our original offering stays true as we grow our customer base and iterate our technology platform and business infrastructure without foregoing the changes and opportunities that present themselves on an almost daily basis.

Meet the leader behind the success of Yield App

Justin Wright is Co-Founder, COO and CFO of Yield App, an innovative digital wealth management platform. Justin has over twenty-five years’ experience in finance, banking and capital markets, initially working with Herzog Heine Geduld in the London Stock Exchange International market making and arbitrage team before joining Credit Lyonnais Securities on the special situations desk. Justin went on to found a number of capital market business on behalf of US based investment banks both in London and Australia ahead of becoming Executive Director and Senior Portfolio Manager for Cranport Hedge Fund, a diversified multi-asset class, alternative investment fund, for whom he appeared as a regular guest commentator on CNBC Asia’s live business programs. Since 2008, he has held several advisory roles and acted as lead advisor to capital and debt transactions on behalf of a number of Southeast Asian market leading company’s operating across multiple business sectors. Justin remains an investor in and advisor to multiple finance, technology and real estate projects and is Co-Chair of the Global Digital Finance DeFi working Group alongside being a passionate FinTech regulatory advocate.

“As the industry evolves, Yield App and our team will continue to seek out the most innovative and market leading opportunities that we can deliver to our customers within the tenets of simple, safe and accessible as we have since the start.”