additiv, a SaaS provider to the wealth management industry, has appointed Kevin Hardy, a former managing director at BlackRock and Northern Trust, to head up its Asian operations based out of Singapore.
Hardy said, “Only through embracing the use of cloud-based technologies and data will asset managers be able to thrive in, and through, this current period of unease.”
Hardy brings over 25 years of experience in the asset and wealth management industry to his position at additiv. He worked for many years as an investment and fund manager at Legal & General and then at State Street, before joining Northern Trust where he headed up Asia Pacific for Northern Trust General Investments. More recently, Hardy was managing director, head of Singapore and head of ETF and Index Investments in APAC for BlackRock.
He succeeds Dario Bernasconi, who was acting as interim head of Asia and who now returns to his role as group head of operations and partners.
The appointment coincides with a period of rapid growth for additiv. Since the launch of its cloud-based DFS System of Intelligence, an orchestration engine that sits between record-keeping systems and customer channels and powers customer engagement, additiv has enjoyed rapid growth and is expanding its team across the world.
The appointment underlines the importance of the Asian market to additiv. Asia is additiv’s second-largest market after Europe and it is investing to take advantage of the growth in the region as well as capitalize on the success it has enjoyed with customers such as CBA in Indonesia. In particular, additiv sees the potential to use its orchestration engine to help clients to launch new digital business models as well as to tap into new distribution models, especially as these clients attempt to win a large share of the fast-growing mass affluent market in Asia.
Michael Stemmle, additiv CEO, said, “additiv is growing rapidly across the world, but especially in Asia, where our product proposition matches the key market trends in terms of delivering richer customer engagement to broader demographics of customers, and facilitating networked models for aggregating supply and demand.”
