An Interview with Craig Pearson CFA, Private Wealth Systems CEO and Co-founder

‘Our Cloud-Based Software Platform is a Financial Intelligence Tool that gives Family Offices the Power to Actively Oversee the Management of their Complex Wealth’

“Our system—built from the ground up after working with several hundred family offices around the world—is unique because we capture, calculate, process, and present more data, faster, more accurately, at a lower total cost than any other system in our industry across all global jurisdictions.”

Financial technology has been around virtually as long as the financial services industry itself. But since the economic meltdown of 2008, a new breed of disruptors has had an ever lasting impact on how financial services are delivered, managed, and consumed.

Private Wealth Systems is a global financial technology company that provides multi-asset, multi-currency portfolio management and consolidated investment reporting software for family offices and private banks. Its transaction-based platform provides those who manage highly complex wealth with instant access, understanding, and oversight over the drivers of risk, return, income, and expenses far better than traditional methods. This in turn means faster and more informed decision making, as well as a single aggregated view of an investor’s total wealth across multiple custodians, managers, asset classes, currencies, and entity structures.

The company’s cloud-based platform also enables clients to classify each security the way they want—to deliver the most personalized analysis of asset allocation, investment policy reviews, and financial strategy. Its platform, built by a team of industry veterans,provides the most sophisticated multi-asset, multi-bank, multi-currency account aggregation, data reconciliation, performance calculation, custom client reporting, and digital dashboards for mobile users.

Private Wealth Systems’ platform supports all financial assets including; equities, fixed income, private equity, hedge funds, real estate, art and collectibles, currencies, and derivatives. Its platform is used by ultra-high-net-worth individuals, private banks, wealth advisors, and family offices.

The company was established in 2014, is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, with clients on four continents.

Craig Pearson spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Why was the company set up? And what do you propose to bring into the market?

We want to transform how ultra-high-net worth investors (UHNWI), and their trusted advisors engage in the management of sophisticated wealth. UHNW investors control over $32 trillion in global private wealth, yet they lack the basic ability to have a single consolidated view of their total wealth – limiting their ability to make informed financial decisions. The best example of this is Brexit where investors lost over $2 trillion in a single day. I still hear from family offices around the world who didn’t understand their exposure to Brexit until they received their quarterly statements from their managers indicating a substantial financial loss. Wealth is fragile and it can’t be managed blindly. Private Wealth Systems is eliminating the friction of information in order to empower ultra-high-net-worth investors, and their trusted advisors, with the information they need to make informed investment decisions, regardless of asset class, bank, investment manager, currency orentity structure.

As an industry-defining financial technology (FinTech) company, can you shed a little light on the philosophies of your company and how you’re making such an impact in the industry?

Our philosophy is that the individual wealth owner, and their trusted advisors, should have total transparency regardless of financial complexity. A twenty-year-old with $10,000 in savings has plenty of FinTech tools available to gain oversight over their finances. Yet someone with $30 million to $30 billion has literally no means of actionable oversight over their wealth – it’s crazy. Sophisticated investors should have the information they want, when they want, classified the way they want, structured the way they want, in the format they want, on the device they want, in order to be an active participant in managing their wealth. By providing digital, personalized, one-touch access to all of the financial information within a complex global portfolio, we believe we can fundamentally shift greater control back into the hands of the wealth owner enabling them to have a better understanding of their wealth and how it’s managed. In turn, access to this level of data will also give advisors the ability to provide better guidance to their clients, further cementing the investor-advisor relationship.

Briefly explain your products and services.

Private Wealth Systems cloud-based software provides family offices and investment managers with multi-asset, multi-bank, multi-currency account aggregation, data reconciliation, performance calculation, and omnichannel client reporting. Our platform in conjunction with our outsourced data reconciliation and data management services captures, consolidates, reconciles, calculates, and presents actionable and highly-personalized insights to drive better, more informed decision making for those who manage complex wealth. Our platform was purposefully designed to support the most complex global wealth and aggregate financial data across every bank, manager, account, currency and asset type – from marketable securities, structured products, currencies, and derivatives, through to alternative assets (private equity, hedge funds, real estate, direct investments) and physical assets such as art and collectibles. Our system is unique because we capture and process more data, faster, more accurately, and at a lower total cost than any other system in our industry across all global jurisdictions.

What are the factors/ elements that make your company stand out from the competition?

To be a leading company you must be a sustainable innovator – fundamentally transforming the industry by challenging current orthodoxy or frameworks and reimagining how to solve the ‘problem’ or even recasting the problem itself. One of my favorite quotes is from Henry Ford who said, ‘If I asked people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse’. Reimagining the problem helps to create a leading solution. Our aim is not just to offer the single best investment reporting platform, but to create transformative technologies and tools that will reshape the dynamics of the market and change how financial services are delivered, consumed, and managed. One of the top global private banks recently said that Private Wealth Systems is in the best position to become the Amazon of financial services to the global high-net-worth community. What we are building is much more than just a consolidated wealth reporting platform. This is why we have taken the time and capital investment to build a system from scratch. By building a system from the groundup we are solving the structural issues that continue to plague this industry.

Can you support clients outside the United States?

Absolutely! Our system is unique with the ability to support transaction level multi-currency events across all asset classes including public, private and physical assets. The United States only accounts for 33% of the world’s ultra high net worth population. There are more individuals and more collective wealth outside of the U.S., and there are inherent complexities in supporting global wealth which makes our platform unique and in great demand. In addition, the explosive growth in wealth and the number of wealth owners across all jurisdictions has created enormous opportunities for FinTech and FinServ companies to collaborate and re-design how wealth owners are supported—eliminating the information and transaction friction that exist with legacy infrastructures. It’s incredibly exciting.

Craig Pearson CFA: A Brief Background

Craig Pearson, CEO, co-founded Private Wealth Systems 45 days after restructuring and selling a leading investment reporting company. With the backing of three prominent family offices, Craig started Private Wealth Systems with the intent on solving the structural industry challenges that continue to plague legacy software systems and the global financial services industry in terms of data capture, data processing, and data presentation. Beginning his career as an investment banker and later transitioning into financial technology, he has held leading positions at several of the largest fintech companies with direct experience in trade order management, multi-asset portfolio management, compliance, and reporting. Mr. Pearson is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and holds a Masters degree in Finance.

“By providing precise personalized, one-touch access to all of the financial information within a complex global portfolio, we believe we can fundamentally shift greater control back into the hands of the wealth owner enabling them to have a better understanding of their wealth and how it’s managed.”