WealthTechs Inc. was officially founded in 2010 and is based in beautiful Park City, Utah. Since then, WealthTechs has become a leader in the custodian data aggregation space. But our story actually starts well before 2010. Our founder & CEO is Chris Casey.
Back in the late 1980’s, Chris helped put a little-known start-up called Advent Software on the map in New York City by selling and implementing some of Advent’s largest and most complex clients such as Kidder Peabody (now UBS), the legendary investment advisory firm Forstmann-Leff and others.
After an abrupt, but overdue departure from Advent in 1995, Chris wanted to scratch his entrepreneurial itch and started Lync.NET, a white glove, yet affordable technology consulting firm catering to advisors in New York City. Lync.NET took off like wildfire and became the first large-scale independent advisor technology consulting firm in New York City.
At Lync.NET, Chris met Ryan Dickau (now CTO of WealthTechs), Gaston Vera (now COO of WealthTechs) and David Otero (now CDO at WealthTechs) who developed the industry’s first report package management software solution nicknamed “PackMan” and the industry’s first client facing web reporting portal solution named appropriately and so late 90’s “WebReps”.
Hidden behind the popularity of PackMan and WebReps, one of the consulting services that Lync.NET offered its clients was the development of custodian data interfaces which integrated with Advent Axys and The Professional Portfolio. Not to date ourselves, but this was way back in the pre-internet days of modems.
Lync.NET developed interfaces for some leading custodians who wanted to avoid the high cost of being on Advent’s Custodial Data Network, including Schwab Institutional (who in 2001, sued Advent for the right to develop their own interface to Axys and won the case and subsequently chose Lync.NET to do the development. Schwab caved to Advent and grandfathered in all Axys clients at the time at $900 per year, some readers may still have this deal…you are welcome), AIG, Dean Witter (now Morgan Stanley), Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder (back office & custodian for Soros Fund Management back then, now First Eagle Investments).
Lync.NET, PackMan and WebReps products were sold in 2010 to SatuitCRM, a leading provider of CRM to the institutional buy side. After the sale and earnout with SatuitCRM finally closed in 2013, Chris launched WealthTechs Inc., with the goal of being the biggest and best provider of advisor billing systems in the world by selling a billing system that was developed at Lync.NET.
Chris hit the ground running, looking for clients for the newly launched WealthTechs Billing System, named ClearView Billing. To Chris’ dismay, the appetite for an advisor billing system was lackluster, but, a recurring conversation kept happening with advisors Chris spoke to. The recurring conversation was related to Advent Custodial Data and its high costs, sky high annual price increases, slow to no bug fixes, and a barebones data integration app in Dataport.
After getting a few hard rejections on ClearView Billing and emphatic agreements that the industry needed an ACD competitor; Chris shifted the focus of WealthTechs to building a world-class, outsourced, cloud-based custodian data aggregation, normalization, and integration app company. To do this, Chris initially tried to develop custodian interfaces with his friend Joel Heyman, using Monarch, which is a codeless data transformation app. The Monarch solution did not scale well and Joel, working full time for a large NYC investment firm was not available to do all the work necessary. Chris realized what was needed was above both his and Joel’s technology paygrades. Chris and Joel parted ways and are the best of friends to this day.
Chris contacted the leaders of his development team from the old Lync.NET days: Ryan Dickau, Gaston Vera and David Otero, who had, coincidentally just left SatuitCRM. Chris, Ryan, Gaston, and David reunited and began the development of the core technology for WealthTechs Portfolio Accounting Data platform in 2014…and so the story goes….WealthTechs was born this way!
