In January 2020 Ortec Finance opened its office in Melbourne and appointed Stefano Lee to head up the office, as Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand. Invest Victoria gave Ortec Finance a warm welcome sharing messages that they were glad another organization decided to establish their local office in Melbourne.
Was this step a wise one for Ortec Finance? How did the team do and what did they encounter? Was this first year a success?
How it started
Martijn Vos, COO Ortec Finance: “After our careful and thorough analysis of our expansion options, we made the decision to enter the Australian and New Zealand markets. The analysis of the pension market, competitive landscape and cultural fit made us confident we could be of added value to super funds with this expansion. This first year showed we were absolutely right.”Goal
Ortec Finance aimed specifically at expanding with its performance measurement and attribution solution PEARL. Elske van de Burgt, Managing Director Investment Performance: “We have been active in Australia and New Zealand for some time now, so we knew a bit what we would encounter. The specific market situation, client needs, ability to configure PEARL to match the requirements, together with our experiences on project management and cultural match, made us confident we could be successful. We started looking for the right person to lead our office and were very glad we found Stefano. Stefano brought us a great personality, an extensive network and deep understanding of what is going on in the investments area for super funds.”Looking back at one year in Australia
Stefano: “After a warm welcome from both Ortec Finance and Invest Victoria, we quickly set up our office and started to reach out to all prospective clients. Although we have started the office with a small team, establishing a local office quickly proved to be the right decision not only for our existing clients in the region but for our prospective clients as well. It is great to see so much interest from various super funds in Australia in our performance and attribution solution PEARL, but also in our other solutions such as our Climate & ESG suite, our asset & liability management, strategic and tactical asset allocation solution GLASS and our wealth management offering.”Stefano continues: “the COVID-19 outbreak has proven to be a challenging condition to operate in for the first year but we have managed to find ways to successfully onboard two new clients this year in Australia and New Zealand. It was great to have so much support from our head office in the Netherlands and great to see so much interest in our solutions. I can’t wait for COVID-19 to be over so that we can go back to resuming our lives as we remember it and meeting my clients, prospects and colleagues in person.”
Looking forward: steady growth in internalization of investments with super funds
In 2021, Ortec Finance expects steady growth in its client base and hopes to further widen the scope of its solutions in the Australian and New Zealand markets. Stefano adds: “We are seeing a steady growth in the internalization of investments with super funds, which has led to a growth in technology solution requirements. With our local presence, changing landscape in the industry and stricter regulations for better insights combined with some interesting product enhancements coming up, we look forward to further expanding our presence in the region as the leading technology provider for the super funds”.Contact
