Vincent Pignon, founder and CEO of Wecan, talks to FinMag about this innovative secure data transfer platform, primarily aimed at companies in the financial sector. With nine awards at the WealthBriefing Swiss Awards, including "Best Data Provider", "Best Compliance Solution" and "Best Blockchain Solution", Wecan is establishing itself as a leader in the field. In 2024, the company plans to expand its services and accelerate the adoption of its platform by a growing number of financial institutions, aiming to reach 200 clients by the end of the year.
Can you introduce Wecan to us?
Wecan is a secure data transfer system, primarily designed for exchanges between companies, but eventually also for individuals. We currently operate in a B to B to C model.
We are built on a distributed infrastructure, which is one of our distinctive features. Data storage is distributed across each of our clients or on servers dedicated to each client, thereby eliminating the risk associated with a centralized server, which is often vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Our ecosystem is based on a blockchain ledger, guaranteeing the traceability of all entries and modifications in data transfers. Finally, our system uses a utility token called WECAN, which makes it possible to settle anchoring fees on the blockchain.
What is the concept behind your ecosystem?
When we co-created the solution with the leading private banks, Pictet, Lombard Odier and Edmond de Rothschild, one of the questions was governance. We had two options: either they entered Wecan's capital, or we launched an independent association, the Blockchain Association for Finance.
It was this second choice that was favored, so that Wecan's solutions could become global and a genuine market standard. The association has one main mission, which is to pool resources. Thus, the creation of standards, security audits and legal contracts are carried out by the association, and all members benefit from this. It is a historic initiative in wealth management.
What does your ecosystem enable and who is it aimed at?
Our infrastructure offers our clients, mainly banks, asset managers, wealth managers, trustees, family offices and others, the possibility of simplifying their onboarding process with custodians.
It also facilitates the updating of information, particularly with regard to regulatory changes and compliance. In addition, it simplifies the annual reviews carried out by custodians, auditors or regulators, covering the events of the past year and all the associated documentation.
What observation did you start from? Why did you create Wecan?
There were two main challenges. The first concerned cybersecurity. Although most banking players are aware of the risks and seek to equip themselves as best they can, there was a crucial lack of suitable equipment for their external relationships handling sensitive data, particularly that of end clients.
The second challenge was the optimization of data transfer processes, which were carried out several times with different counterparties. A striking example is that of a trustee with relationships with 130 custodian banks. Before Wecan, it had to send 130 letters with each change of circumstance, such as a change of person in the commercial register, an event that occurs almost daily. This meant it had to manage piles of letters to be sent every day. With Wecan, it can put everything on the platform and carry out updates for all its counterparties with a single click, receiving a confirmation indicating that its counterparties have indeed received, acknowledged and processed the information.
You have been recognized 10 times at the WealthBriefing Swiss Awards?
Indeed! We received "Best Data Provider", rewarding our ability to act as data aggregators and to share this data among all stakeholders. We almost always win this title.
Then, our blockchain solution was recognized as the best at the European level last year and this year.
Finally, we won the "Best Compliance Solution" title. We thus cover the three key aspects: optimizing compliance, processing data and using blockchain, an area where concrete use cases still remain relatively limited in companies' day-to-day operations.
What are you preparing for in 2024?
This year will most certainly be one of the most exciting since our founding!
We are considerably broadening our areas of application. Historically, our work has focused primarily on the compliance of management companies vis-à-vis custodian banks. From now on, we are able to manage the onboarding of end clients in a B to B to C model, a major aspect that we wanted to address from the start and which is part of our roadmap for this year.
We now handle the onboarding of employees, which is crucial for intermediary structures in the financial sector, as this data is monitored and must be shared among several parties. We have also introduced the processing of supplier onboarding, in order to guarantee their compliance.
By integrating ourselves as a supplier with banks or major players, we found that most were using spreadsheets or even paper to manage this process. We have therefore put in place reusable online templates to simplify this process.
We also facilitate onboarding for investors by allowing them to have virtual data rooms containing consistent data that can be shared with their auditors and other stakeholders. This is an important aspect of our work.
Finally, we are going to considerably accelerate the adoption of our platform by a greater number of financial institutions. We are therefore planning several announcements of new major banks that will join us in the coming weeks. We currently have around a hundred institutions using our services, and we are aiming for 200 by the end of the year.