In this episode of The Connector Podcast, recorded live at the Trends Investment Summit 2023 in Brussels, host Koen Vanderhoydonk interviews Crispin Rolt, co‑founder of Performativ, a Danish‑based SaaS wealth‑management platform. Rolt explains why Performativ was created – to replace fragmented, costly legacy IT at wealth managers with a plug‑and‑play, cloud‑native solution that consolidates data from hundreds of custodians using machine‑learning and AI, runs on AWS, and offers low total cost of ownership. He outlines the company’s three‑year journey: a two‑and‑a‑half‑year development phase led by a former Goldman Sachs Wealth engineering head, followed by six months of market testing that yielded “overwhelming” traction in Scandinavia and 4‑5‑digit growth. The conversation moves to the firm’s European expansion, highlighting the onboarding of its first Belgian client and the decision to target Benelux because of its tech‑friendly regulatory environment and openness to SaaS. Rolt discusses how Performativ handles market‑specific nuances by maintaining a core engine for data reconciliation and a rapid release cadence of 10‑15 new features per month. He also clarifies the distinctions between asset managers, wealth managers, and (single‑ and multi‑) family offices, and identifies the biggest client pain points – legacy IT complexity and high operating costs – which Performativ aims to solve with a simple, Facebook‑like user experience. The interview concludes with Rolt’s objectives at the summit (networking, lead generation, learning), a positive assessment of the event’s outcomes, and contact details (performativ.com and LinkedIn).
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Welcome to the Connector Podcast, an ongoing conversation connecting fintechs, banks, and regulators worldwide. Join CEO and founder Koen Vanderhoydonk as you learn more about the latest available trends and solutions in the markets. This episode is proudly sponsored by the Trends Investment Summit 2023.
Welcome to the Connector Podcast, live from the Investment Summit. in Brussels. And I have a Danish friend with me, but I know I'm not saying it completely right. Crispin, welcome to the show.
Hi, Koen. Thank you so much for inviting me to your mobile podcast studio. It's a pleasure to be here.
Oh, likewise. But you're from Denmark, but you're not, right?
That's true. I'm— we're based in Denmark. We're a Danish company, but I'm British. But I'm also Danish. I have dual nationality.
Excellent. Excellent. Can you tell me a little bit more about the company you work for, Performative?
Absolutely, it'd be a pleasure. So Performative is, uh, we believe, the market-leading SaaS-based wealth management software. Uh, we were put together when, um, basically the company was formed because a number of years ago we were working at a wealth manager. We tried to find a solution to solve all our operational problems, but, uh, we couldn't find it, so we left the wealth manager and built it ourselves.
Interesting. And When you say there were a couple of problems that you could not resolve, I mean, that were not resolved before, which are those problems? Can you elaborate a little bit on that?
Sure. I mean, we wanted and we couldn't understand why we couldn't find a platform that was a bit like sort of creating a Facebook profile. We wanted something that would give us the opportunity to consolidate data from multiple custodians in a really intelligent way and utilizing machine learning and AI to take away all of that operational cost from us. We didn't want any IT on our own premises. We wanted to just plug in and get a solution out of the box. Yeah, we wanted to make sure that it was the latest technology, it was fast, it was easy to use. We were, you know, that we could benefit from a global market data license. And most of all, and most importantly, it needed a low cost of ownership. We needed to be able to afford it. We weren't a very big wealth manager. We went out, we searched the market, we couldn't find one. So Performative was born. Excellent.
And when you say Performative was born, what has been the roadmap up till The moment you were born up till today.
Sure. Well, our 2 co-founders started the company about 3 years ago. One of the co-founders used to be— he's now the CTO. He was head of technology at— sorry, head of engineering at Goldman Sachs Wealth. And we spent 2 and a half years with a team of developers building the product that we wanted when we were at a wealth management shop. And then we've spent the last 6 months really taking it out to market and sort of testing it on the market.
And as far as I hear, those tests have been extremely successful.
We've exceeded, in all honesty, we've exceeded all of our dreams and hopes. And the traction that we've gained in Scandinavia has been overwhelming. And we are in 4 or 5 digit growth, which of course you often are when you're a startup. But yeah, we are fiercely onboarding customers and getting great traction and a really positive response.
Nice. The fact that you're here at the summit, the Benelux Summit, what does that mean for you? Does that mean you have an international growth path by nature?
It's absolutely— we're down here because after the traction and the success that we were experiencing in Scandinavia, we wanted to explore new markets and we felt that Benelux was a great place for us to go. And I'm happy to announce that we've already onboarded our first Belgian client. So we're already—
Congratulations.
Thank you very much. We're excited and looking forward to meeting lots more Belgian IFAs, wealth managers, multifamily offices. It's going to be an exciting journey.
Excellent. And what has been your reason why to land first in the Benelux, or is it just a general landing into Europe? How could we see that?
It's interesting. I think, I mean, we realised quite early on that we're geography agnostic. So in a sense that we can go anywhere. We're connected to over 400 custodians across the whole of Europe, so we could choose anywhere. And to some degree, we've come into Benelux because we feel that it's an area and a region that will welcome us in terms of technology, has a need for this technology. And let's see. First indications are really positive that it was a good choice to come down here, but time will tell.
Like everything in life. What was particularly interesting about the Netherlands is that the Netherlands was the first country that rubber-stamped AWS as a SaaS provider for banks. So I know that you guys are running on AWS.
We're on AWS, yes. I didn't know that little gem of information, Koen, so thank you very much for that.
You're welcome. But I think that the challenge, I think, would be in Europe is we all say it's a single market. Well, it's the regulator who's saying that, but we all know that there are cultural differences and little changes in market practices. How would you deal with that at Performative?
I think that's really interesting. And you're right, there are market differences, but actually even within markets themselves that I think when I heard someone say the other day, when you know one family office, you know one family office, and they're all different. And all of our clients actually that we have at the moment have their idiosyncrasies and require some new functionality for us to build. And I think the same goes for new markets. But what's interesting with performative is I think we've got the core, uh, product down. You know, we, we've got a really powerful engine that's sucking in and, um, and reconciling custodian data, and we've got a really powerful app, uh, to, to report that data through, um, and a great app for the, for the asset owner to, to get a wonderful digital experience. And I think with that core in place and then our ability to develop and change. You know, we, we do between, you know, 10 and 15 releases of new functionality a month.
Wow.
And, and, you know, we, we can move really fast. And, and, you know, we're learning in, uh, in, in Benelux and, uh, and in Belgium specifically right now with our new clients. And we're, we're, we're building fast the, the, the stuff that's needed for that specific market, and we will do the same elsewhere.
Well, you are a specialist in everything that has to do with wealth tech, but maybe you can explain to the audience, like, what is the difference between an asset manager, a wealth manager, and a family office?
Aye, Koen, that's a tricky— that's a difficult question. And what I learn is—
Well, only tricky questions on this podcast.
Also on that, one person's definition of that is very much different to to the next person's. Uh, you know, what I see is, uh, is, you know, an asset manager is, uh, is, is managing, uh, the money within a fund and, uh, with, uh, with investors investing within that fund. But the, the, it's the manager's responsibility to be sort of the manufacturing part of, um, of a, uh, of, of the business. And then, you know, a wealth manager is, you know, is, is facing, uh, individuals and, uh, has a more holistic view of, uh, of someone's, um, some, someone or some company's complete, uh, complete wealth. Uh, and, um, yeah, and then, you know, we get into single-family offices and multi-family offices, multi being a, uh, you know, opportunity to achieve economies of scale with, um, you know, multi-family offices as opposed to—
What would you define as the, the biggest challenges within The clients that you serve at the moment when you meet them?
Biggest challenges, I think, I think it's our biggest challenges for us are prizing away our potential client from the sort of bag of bones IT setup that they might have at the moment that they know is killing them, that they know is incredibly expensive to run, but But you need a really proactive mindset and to embrace the fact that actually your wealth management software can be like your Facebook profile. It really can be that simple.
Yeah. And you're here now today at the Investment Summit. Did you come with certain objectives in mind? Did you come with anything that you wanted to learn? And have you learned that already? Have you seen that?
I think, you know, we come with an open mind and we come with a, you know, an objective to learn. And of course, we want to meet prospective clients and we want to— ultimately, we want more Belgian and more Benelux clients. But, you know, we've come with an open mind and, you know, met some interesting people that seem to be very impressed with what we've done so far. And, you know, so, so yeah, we've, we've had a very successful Trends Investment Summit and looking forward to following up on all those leads that we've got while we've been here.
Brilliant. And nice to hear that. Then it leads me to my last question. It's a very straightforward one. If people want to get in touch with you, how would they get in touch with you?
Sure, they can, they can visit us on our website, performative With no E, so that's performativ.com. Alternatively, they can reach out to me directly. They would be more than welcome on LinkedIn, perhaps. Crispin Rolt, R-O-L-T, is my surname. Otherwise, Koen, I'm sure that you gladly put people in touch.
Oh yeah, I'm happy to connect. Well, Crispin, it was a pleasure to have you on the podcast.
Thank you very much, Koen. It was, yeah, it was super fun. Excellent.
Thank you very much also to the audience. And as you already know by now, more news on fintech to come in our next podcast. Thank you so much.
Thanks for listening to another episode of The Connector Podcast. To connect and keep up to date with all the latest, head over to www.jointheconnector.com or hit subscribe via your podcast streaming platform.
