We were looking to enter the market with sophisticated technology that involved straight-through processing capability. As far as we could see from the feedback from market participants, any platform with straight-through processing would be the first of its kind. This would involve significant investment.
That size of investment, coupled with scepticism about whether the market was ready for a transparent offering, meant that Novia’s investors wanted more reassurance. Further effort was put in to support the proposal.
Bit by bit, this reassurance was forthcoming and in 2014, we completed our planning and capital raising. We started to build the system at around the end of 2014.
The aim was to build a fully technology enabled multi-currency platform with assets held in custody offshore. Since we announced our plans to do this in January 2015, we have been flooded by enquiries from all around the world.
Technological interest
Of most interest would seem to be the level of technological sophistication we plan to bring to a market that is still in large part in thrall to using the fax machine, subject to extraordinary time delays and stuck with manual processing. The latter inevitably involves inputting errors.
We are not naive enough, though, to think enquiries automatically translate into business. Having been in the platform space since it first arrived in the UK in 2000, we know the length of time it can take to get advisers to adopt a platform – but we are hugely encouraged.
What makes us even more encouraged is that we have suddenly seen regulation being introduced in numerous domiciles all around the world. Such jurisdictions include Holland, Hong Kong, Singapore and, most recently, South Africa, all following RDR-style principles. There is no doubt more will follow.
It would seem that by a mixture of luck and judgement we are launching at just the right time.
As we sit poised to launch, there is huge excitement at Novia Global at the opportunity that lies ahead of us and our platform. The systems are built and functioning, and we await final authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority before we hit the take-off button.
