Australian Wealth Fintech Eyes Growth

Picture Wealth has completed a A$12 million equity and debt funding round, at it sets its sights on reinventing the country’s financial advisory and superannuation landscape.

The fast-growing company has completed late-seed funding round and acquired 100 percent of financial services licensee NEO Financial Solutions (NFS) for an undisclosed sum, it announced on Friday on its blog.

With the acquisition, NFS managing director Mark Edman will become chief operating officer, and give the group a combined footprint of 94 advisers and $2 billion in funds under advice.

We felt acquiring NFS with its robust compliance protocols was the way forward so that we could offer advisers and their clients a new home amidst very turbulent market conditions, said Pettit in the statement.

Picture Wealth was co-founded in 2018 by chairman Neal Cross, who was previously DBS Bank’s innovation chief, and CEO David Pettit, a private wealth entrepreneur, aiming to use technology to empower people to understand and manage their finances.

The hybrid wealth manager brings together digital automation and licensed, human financial advisers to provide users with personalized actions and insights based on their financial profile. It highlights gaps and opportunities to grow their wealth, and helps users with the changes required for them to reach their targets. It also has an adviser side, which allows the needs and expectations of clients to be met through structured servicing protocols and bespoke financial advice.

It now has revenues of A$20m, A$2 billion of funds under advice and over 40,000 clients.

As others are running out of the industry, we are running in…We have the technology, the business model and the people behind us to make a significant dent in the wealth industry in Australia, Cross said in an interview.

Australia’s wealth management industry was shaken up with the Hayne royal commission into misconduct, leading the big four banks to exit the sector.