Redefining Trading and Investment Management Solutions in Asia-Pacific: An Interview with GTN's CEO, Julien Le Noble

GTN is a FinTech pioneer with decades of success, holding broker-dealer and capital market services licenses in multiple jurisdictions through its subsidiaries, and today working with over 300 financial institutions and FinTech partners worldwide.  With the continuing rise in demand for retail investment and digitised wealth management solutions, GTN set up a Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) regulated subsidiary in Singapore to work more closely with both Asian based clients and partners. Leading GTN Asia is Julien Le Noble, an industry veteran in global trading in financial markets, wealth management technology and FinTech entrepreneurship.  Hubbis had the opportunity to interview Julien to learn more about GTN's for transforming Asia-Pacific's trading and wealth management sector.

GTN prides itself on being a high-touch technology partner that combines digital solutions with traditional relationship management based on trust, expertise, and reputation. The company aims to be the preferred technology solutions partner in the Asia-Pacific region and is committed to expanding its local presence and building strong relationships with clients.

"Our platform enables both institutional buy-side and sell-side partners to access global markets with rich functionality, enhance their order and execution management, and improve their post-trade operations and custody services," said Julien Le Noble, CEO of GTN Asia.

State-of-the-art solutions

According to Julien, GTN's digital platform is "truly state-of-the-art". It offers a global trading platform with multi-market, multi-product execution, post-trade service, custody, and a wealth and portfolio management platform designed for investment managers, asset managers, and EAMs looking to digitise their operations.

"We provide the technology and services that these clients need to automate the investment governance and portfolio management process, from client profiling to portfolio creation, optimisation, monitoring, and rebalancing," said Julien. "In short, investment managers and wealth advisors can leverage our platform to differentiate and scale their business while we focus on delivering technology and services, allowing them to focus on client acquisition and relationships."

Two strands perfectly intertwined
 

"We are 100% institutional, offering multi-asset solutions to some 300 B2B or B2B2C partners today worldwide”, emphasised Julien. In his opinion, GTN’s uniqueness is the seamlessly integrated global trading and wealth management platforms, and robust API connectivity.

GTN’s Global Trading Platform is an end-to-end, out-of-the-box technology package that is a fully-hosted, future-proof, managed infrastructure in the cloud. “We facilitate frictionless trading and investment management to meet the wide range of needs and expectations from our partners, and it is all delivered cost-effectively,” he explained. “And very importantly, we never go anywhere near our partners’ clients.”

Additionally, he remarked that GTN is closely aligned with its partners.

“If they do well in managing and increasing their AUM and building transactions on the platform, it's a win-win for both GTN and the clients,” he reports. “We do not charge platform fees or fixed fees or license fees; we want to align ourselves with our clients. So, if they're successful, we're successful together.”

Empowering the wealth management industry

The wealth management industry has placed its trust in GTN to facilitate their trading and enhance their mid- and back-office operations with seamless digital capabilities. GTN also provides tools to help its clients scale and automate their private clients' investment and wealth management process.

A leading example of GTN's impact can be seen in a global investment manager’s effort to bring their in-house investment strategies in the form of the model and thematic portfolios to life.

“We host those portfolios on the platform, enabling the execution, as well as the mid-office and back-office functionalities,” he explained. “In this way, we are a one-stop solution for investment managers, from onboarding to portfolio creation, optimisation, rebalancing, analytics and reporting capabilities. And all these are seamlessly integrated with the execution and post-trade servicing and custody capability. The result is the investment manager can leverage our tools and modules at scale, deliver advice, manage their clients’ investments, and not worry about the technology and the servicing of the middle and backend, which we take care of.”

Julien explained that GTN’s DNA is built around flexibility and adaptability. Essentially, GTN offers three approaches to their arrangements.

Three approaches on offer

GTN recognises that each client is unique, which is why they offer three bespoke approaches to their solutions.

The first solution is a fully hosted, managed infrastructure in the cloud. As Julien explained,

"Clients can outsource their entire front-to-back trade and operations lifecycle to us and benefit from a highly scalable and future-proof platform to support their business growth in an ever-changing landscape."

The second solution is GTN’s best-in-class web and mobile apps, front-to-back, or desktop applications that can be white-labelled or co-branded. “The partners can offer their end-clients the services under their own corporate identity, but still benefit from all the front-to-back functionality delivered by GTN,” said Julien.

For those who want to maintain control over the user journey and interface, GTN offers a comprehensive framework of widgets and APIs. As Julien noted, "This is not coming simply from a blank page; we leverage what we have already developed ourselves”, and for added scalability, clients can tap into GTN's rich library of APIs.

No matter what approach you choose, GTN empowers wealth management businesses.

Empowering partners for success

"It is crucial to note," he clarified, "that we never impose any specific model on our partners. Furthermore, we operate on a client-anonymous basis, meaning GTN does not require any information about our partner's end clients. Instead, we focus on providing technology and servicing to support our partner's business whilst they concentrate on acquiring clients and maintaining relationships."

Our partners stand to benefit from significant revenue growth opportunities and improved client retention in a highly competitive market. Furthermore, GTN can enhance efficiency, a critical factor in the face of rising operating costs.

"GTN can fulfil these objectives and significantly improve our partners' capabilities and potential," he declared. "Our partners soon recognise that partnering with us makes sense from a build-purchase-partner perspective. Developing a comprehensive digital architecture is a daunting and expensive task. Still, we offer proven solutions that are delivered quickly, efficiently, and at a competitive price through our unified, consolidated, and highly adaptable offerings."

Building GTN's future in Asia

Julien pointed out that the backdrop for his key priorities is the remarkable and compelling opportunity for digital wealth models in Asia. "The number of vendors, partners, and providers, whether they are disruptors or traditional, speaks to the incredible opportunity set," he explained. "Singapore, for example, has managed the pandemic well compared to other North Asian countries and is benefiting from an influx of people and companies setting up operations here."

As CEO of GTN Asia Financial Services, Julien's first mission is to increase awareness and understanding of the GTN brand and proposition. "GTN has already seen great success in other regions, and our expansion into Asia, which started just over a year ago after we obtained the full CMS license from the MAS, has been very positive," he said. "We are excited about our current traction and are continuing to raise awareness for GTN in Asia."

His second objective is to position GTN at the forefront of the minds of both the buy-side and sell-side as the preferred platform for global trading, execution, custody, investment governance, investment management, and wealth management. "In short, we want to establish ourselves as the go-to platform of choice," he added.

Finally, to make these aspirations a reality, his third mission is to build the right team. "We currently have a team of close to 20 in our Singapore office, as we commit to provide high-touch client support and servicing to complement our digital-first platform offering. We understand the importance of proximity when it comes to client support and servicing. This is very important to our clients and therefore we have assembled a team locally that works with our group resources on all aspects of our clients operations from onboarding to tech support to operational support and dealing-sales trading," he stated.

Capitalising on the regional opportunity

To conclude the conversation, Julien mentioned that his new role at GTN has come at a perfect time for him. "There is a wide regional opportunity, and with the restart of travel and increased activity in the region, this is a great time to be promoting our valuable solution for our partners," he said. "This is a highly dynamic region with a diverse range of potential clients across often challenging markets. However, the unifying factor in the region is its dynamism and opportunity."

Getting Personal

Julien hails from the bijou Antibes on the French Cote d’Azur. He studied Economics at the University of Nice, later completing his finance and business administration degree in Toulouse, home to one of the top-rated business schools in France.

When he finished business school some 27 years ago, military service was mandatory for young men, but there was an option to serve out that time in a corporate environment. So instead of military camp, Julien found himself on the way to Chicago working for Société Générale in their derivatives department. “That kickstarted my international career in the world of finance.”

After Chicago, he moved to London, where he launched an online retail equities broker. He moved to Asia 20 years ago, living and working in Singapore and Tokyo.

Prior to joining GTN, he had founded FinTech start-up Smartfolios in 2015, which catered to the wealth management industry. Smartfolios was acquired by Finantix in 2018, eventually being rebranded into InvestCloud.

Julien is married and has three young children aged 10, 8 and 5.

He and his wife retain their love of discovering the Asia Pacific now that travel has resumed. “The whole APAC region is remarkably diverse and interesting. We love the whole experience, from Australia to Japan to Indonesia and everywhere in between. Travelling with our young children opens our eyes to a world we did not really notice before when single or as a couple.” But Singapore is home. “Singapore is wonderful for family activities, such as swimming and tennis,” he says. “For now, the main family sport is tennis, and I hope as the children get older, they will also  learn golf, another passion of mine.”

About GTN

GTN is a FinTech pioneer with decades of success, holding broker-dealer and capital market services licenses in multiple jurisdictions through its subsidiaries. Backed by strategic investors like IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and SBI Ventures Singapore Pte. Ltd., a group company of SBI Holdings, Inc., one of the largest financial services firms listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, we are committed to empowering brokers, banks, wealth managers, independent advisors, asset managers, and fintechs with scalable and innovative investment and trading solutions that enable access to a comprehensive network of global markets and multiple asset classes making investment and trading accessible for all. GTN's investment and trading solutions are designed for a seamless integration with the existing services of regulated financial firms and FinTechs via our co-branded front-ends or versatile API suite. The GTN API suite, inspired by embedded finance, provides the adaptability to develop bespoke trading/investment applications or incorporate GTN features into existing platforms, enhancing their value proposition. In addition, our comprehensive global trading ecosystem includes best-in-class execution, custody, and post-trade solutions. To learn more, visit www.gtngroup.com or connect on LinkedIn.

GTN brings together a diverse team of over 300 talented individuals spread across Dubai, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the UK, and the US, united by a shared passion and purpose: empowering clients and transforming the accessibility to investment and trading opportunities to all.