Innovations in Wealth Management Technology: Best European private bank for innovation

It is rare that financial services firms invest in a side business that has little obvious revenue benefit, and rarer still that such a side business is a tech venture. Lombard Odier – more usually associated with the values of traditional Swiss private banking than Silicon Valley – took on the task of creating a social network for the independent asset management industry back in 2009.

“The logical stage after the generalized social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn is a specialized social network,” says Olivier Collombin, head of Lombard Odier’s asset management business.

The platform, E-merging, provides a business-to-business network for independent portfolio managers and family offices and those that serve them such as HR professionals, IT consultants and lawyers. It has some 15,300 members from 56 countries.

“We thought it could be useful to independent wealth management professionals who are challenged by their small size to have a network available to them of verified professionals in their field that they could speak with,” says Collombin.