We are Blanco. Your invisible force in fintech.
Our manifesto
The world of finance is heading towards the future at dizzying speed. Techno-optimists are preaching the gospel of Artificial Intelligence. Digital technology is outperforming human skills and leads to‘financial inclusion’: it increases efficiency, reduces complexity and lowers costs, making previously inaccessible financial services available to everyone and encouraging clients to demand more value for money.
That’s why we currently see a widely held conviction that humans will eventually be completely replaced by robots in finance. But at Blanco, we dare to think that ultimately, this won’t be the case. We believe that the human factor will always remain crucial in our industry. Self-driving cars still require a human in the driver’s seat for when things go haywire, don’t they?
At Blanco, we firmly believe in the symbiosis between mankind and machine. Technology brings efficiency and lowers costs, while people will always bring trust and empathy to the table. That’s why we’re developing a digital Wealth Management Platform that saves time and money by automating the entire wealth management cycle, including the KYC process, in a responsible and honest way. But client contact and the ultimate investment decisions are deliberately left in the responsibility of ‘analog’ human hands.
All this leads to financial inclusion: Blanco makes wealth & asset management services more accessible and easier than ever. In fact, Blanco helps wealth and asset managers to stay competitive in our tech-dominated future, because our technology sets you free to spend more time on your clients – and that is where the magic happens. Ultimately, it’s not about us or our technology. It’s about people: it’s about you and your clients.
We are Blanco. Your invisible force in fintech.
Company profile
Pan-European fintech provider Blanco was founded in 2015 by Joost Walgemoed (co-CEO) and Bernadette Wijnings (co-CEO). The company is on a mission to become the number one trusted provider in Europe of a cost saving, plug & play all-in-one platform for Wealth Managers. Currently, Blanco offers a Wealth Management Platform, consisting of two products: firstly, the KYC & Compliance Suite simplifies the complex KYC process to such a high degree that even financial companies outside of the asset management industry have started using it as well. Secondly, the Investment Suite is built on the teams’ deep knowledge of the asset management industry. In 2019, Blanco integrated the portfolio management system of Airs into the Blanco Investment Suite. Up until that moment, Airs was the Dutch market leader in this field.
Blanco holds five offices spread across the Netherlands, Belgium and Ukraine. Currently, over 50 Blanconians from 15 different countries are employed by Blanco. Inclusive, nimble and determined are the important values on which the Blanco team thrives. Day to day management is formed by Bernadette Wijnings (co-CEO), Manouk Fles (Chief Legal & Compliance Officer), Joost Walgemoed (co-CEO), Johan Verschelden (COO), Katrien Van Parijs (CTO) and Duncan Hobeijn (CFO).
Blanco currently serves over 140 professional clients, including wealth- and asset managers, family offices, trust companies, investment funds, brokers and banks. Collectively, this underlyingly represents 25,000 high-net-worth individuals and administrative assets under management of over 20 billion euros. We’re about to onboard 150,000 retail investment accounts.
In 2017, Blanco was nominated for the Dutch Fintech Awards, was a finalist at the Red Herring 100 Europe and co-CEO Bernadette Wijnings won the Women in Fintech award in Luxembourg. In 2018, Blanco won the NRC Live Fintech Impact Award. In 2019, Blanco won the Amsterdam Fintech Forum Award 2019 and the third prize at the Fintech Junction Award for the best European Fintech Startup. Blanco was also named Sprout Challenger50 2019 by Sprout. In 2020, Blanco was nominated for the Computable Awards. Among others, KBC Venture Fund, Volta Ventures and Dutch Founders Fund participate in thefintech startup-turning-scaleup.
Supervisors & Advisors
Conny Dorrestijn
Her mentorship at The Global Give Back Circle is part of her ‘FemTech’ drive to encourage young girls and women to step up to an independent – financial – life through education, a safe home and traineeships.
Hidde Hoogcarspel
Koen Schrever
If you want to deliver an elevator pitch, you might reach him on the badminton course or on his bike to work.
Alex Brabers
Alex holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Leuven. He worked in the banking sector for a few years and then went on to work for the European investment company, Gimv. During the 27 years that he worked there he focused on venture capital technology, gradually adding biotech and private equity. Through Gimv, Alex has served on many boards of directors, including Nomadesk, Invest Europe, Telenet, Orange Belgium, Inside Secure and many other companies.
His greatest success was in founding and growing Telenet. Alex is currently Managing Partner at Bratavi. He is also a director at Automation, YouConnect, 3d investors and Festival van Vlaanderen.
Kalo Bagijn
Today he is a director at the online pension bank Brand New Day Bank, which he co-founded with fellow BinckBank founder Thierry Schaap in 2011. Kalo is a guru when it comes to financial services based on new technology and is therefore a big support for Blanco.
Willem Meijer
Additionally, he’s an independent director at the Enterprise Division (Amsterdam Court of Appeal), and he holds a position in the Supervisory Board of Euroclear.
Leen Meijaard
In addition, Leen holds a number of supervisory seats, including at Ajax, Amsterdam’s champions league football club. Leen provides important support in our clients contacts and our product strategy.
Xavier De Pauw
After a career with Merrill Lynch in London, he co-founded MeDirect Bank Group with backing from private equity fund AnaCap. He was co-founder and CEO of the digital challenger MeDirect Bank Belgium. MeDirect was, amongst others, a pioneer in online wealth management, innovated in the savings market and democratised investments in funds. Xavier subsequently joined Degroof Petercam as Group Head of Strategic Innovation and Marketing, where he focused on the digitalisation of the private bank and asset manager. Currently, Xavier is co-founder and CEO of wealthtech MoneyCo.
Xavier also co-founded Fintech Belgium, where he was president for three years. He co-authored the crowdsourced The WealthTech Book. He is a partner at Foster Capital, a financial boutique that connects investors with meaningful projects.
Investors
Join our team
At Blanco, we’re about creating win-win situations.
We’re neither selfishly focused on our own interest nor on winning by defeating others (so common in financial industry culture). Just like we believe in the symbiosis of technology and human knowledge, we feel that both teamwork and close cooperation with our clients is the way forward. We want to create win-win situations and we’re happy to let our clients get all the credit. Because in the end, it’s not about us. It’s about you and your clients.
We continuously strive for quality.
We prefer to ‘Just Do It’ and let the quality of both our technology and expert services do the talking. We believe in aligning our interests with our clients, in order to develop the best products and services. Our technology and services are based on our extensive knowledge of the financial industry and are aimed at lowering costs and removing complexity. Together with our expert services, we’re making things breathtakingly efficient and simple for all.
