Martin Signer is a financial and fintech thought leader and serial entrepreneur. Martis is the CEO and Founder of smartmoneymatch.com. Martin has a master’s degree (lic. oec. publ.) in quantitative finance from the economic faculty of the University of Zurich.
Prior to his activity and founding SmartMoneyMatch he was responsible for the market risk management of the Clariden Bank. Besides his activity with SmartMoneyMatch Martin Signer is also active as a university lecturer and author of several publications.
Martin Signer was born in Zug and speaks German, English, French, and Spanish. His hobbies are sports (tennis, golf, and cycling), chess and music.
Martin Signer Questions
1. An introduction from Martin Signer – background, overview, education, starting in traditional finance…
2. Can you highlight some of your career highlights?
3. Can you tell us about SmartMoneyMatch.com organisations and focus?
4. What are your views on our fintech special in Switzerland?
5. With Covid-19 what challenges, opportunities, trends do you see now?
6. What are your visions for the present and future of fintech special when it comes to investment, asset management and investment match?
Martin Signer Interview Notes
About Martin Signer’s background. My background is in banking and the financial system. After a few years working on financial services in Switzerland, in my last job, with some colleagues, we decided to broaden our offerings to a wider audience so we decided to create a new company: smartmoneymatch.com. The idea was to make trading and investment more accessible without the need of intermediaries.
About smartmoneymatch. One of our goal when we built smartmoneymatch was to create an ecosystem in the investment space. As I have learnt throughout my experience is that sometimes, investors and people looking for investment struggle to find each other, especially regarding meeting their specific requirements. So that is where we get in with our platform to help asset managers, investors and companies find the right contact. We are heavily focused on B2B.
Among our solutions, something that is really interesting for our users is the event calendar. We have added a functionality where we and our users can do digital events for companies and investors to network.
Another solution is that we built a sort of social network where users can mutually connect with each other on the platform. This functionality is similar to LinkedIn focusing on relevant criteria for the investment industry (at registration you can choose who will be able to see your information)
Our platform is built and live and it is live and available in different locations around the world, including the US and many parts of Europe, which are our main markets at the moment. Although I feel like borders are increasingly less and less important because most processes and operations are done virtually, in a digital space. And I think Europe is in a privileged position as we can easily engage with Asia and America as we are in the middle.
We have some very high quality investment audience and partners, including Reuters and Bloomberg among them.
About Fintech. When you see FinTech as a whole you might get lost because fintech is applied to different sectors and solutions, some of them many different to each other. The term itself doesn’t generate value as it is an umbrella concept. From my experience coming from Switzerland, we provide a specific solution as a service provider using digital tools and technology which can be said to be under -and serving- the Fintech industry. In fact, most big financial institutions today can be described as fintechs as they are all adapting to new technologies very quickly.
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About SmartMoneyMatch.com
Smart Money Match is an investor and investment matching serviceconnecting professionals and investment service providers. It is a network that connects the global investment community in over 200 countries and territories around the globe.
The investment matching platform SmartMoneyMatch.com offers two main functionalities:
1. Investments can be classified analogous to eBay and according to these criteria you can offer or request investments. You can state what your supply or demand is and give other users the opportunity to search for supplied or demanded investments within the given criteria.
Additionally, a request for proposal (RFP) within the given criteria can be made, and potential suppliers can state which kind of RFP they are willing to receive in their inbox.
The classification for the investments fall in with the following criteria (with the respective sub criteria):
– Asset-Class with the respective sub criteria
– Investment vehicle (incl. consulting, congresses and research)
– Liquidity (type of market)
– Investment Focus
– Investment form (active/passive especially for funds)
– The legal structure with questions regarding distribution (e.g. in which countries for qualified/non-qualified investors, minimal investments etc.), currency, fees, track record etc.
2. Users can mutually connect with each other on the platform. This functionality is similar to LinkedIn focusing on relevant criteria for the investment industry (at registration, users can choose who will be able to see your information).
The criteria are:
– Are the user already a contact (like LinkedIn)
– What type of user he or she is: General/demander (investor) or supplier (e.g. asset manager)
– If an investor: Is he/she a qualified/accredited investor
– The assets under management (AuM) of the investors. As an investor the user can choose whether or not you want to reveal this information at registration.
– Home address (country)
– Possible communication language(s)
– Business trips e.g. in the user’s profile they can indicate when they are in at any time, to facilitate meetings/business trip planning.
Martin Signer Links and Sources
https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinsigner/
https://www.crunchbase.com/person/martin-signer
https://www.smartmoneymatch.com/who-we-are
Founder Dinis Guarda
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