Welcome to our new Deputy Head of Technology, Vassilios Antonopoulos who has recently joined our team in Luxembourg.
With the private capital sector facing unique challenges when it comes to digitalization, we are delighted to have an expert with strong financial services and technology background helping our clients tackle these issues.
Find out more about Vassilios, his experience, what made him join AssetMetrix and the role he will play in enabling AssetMetrix to transform the private markets space.
My name is Vassilios Antonopoulos, I’m originally from Greece. I have a Computer Science degree, I studied in the UK and I have been living in Luxembourg for the last 25 years. I have always worked in the financial services, I was a consultant at Accenture, worked for Credit Agricole, was the IT Director at Mizuho and I worked for RBC for the last 12 years.
During my time at RBC, I was part of the funding team of IT Relations Management, which is a part of the client-facing IT because we believed that IT should be around the table during the discussion with the clients, especially in technology-driven companies, like AssetMetrix or even like the big custodian banks that have a big technology component in their services.
Tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to joining AssetMetrix
AssetMetrix is a company that has a very important and established technology presence in terms of private capital technology capabilities in Germany.
This is creating a unique position for AssetMetrix as an actor in the technological innovation in the private capital and private equity business.
For me as a person that has financial services experience but also as an engineer, I like building things, so joining a dynamic company in this service is something that is exciting and I’m sure we can do a lot of things in this very dynamic and evolving domain.
What does your role as Deputy Head of Technology entail?
I’ve joined AssetMetrix as a Deputy Head of Technology and I will try to help AssetMetrix to develop its technological capabilities and help the current CTO in his duties.
We are moving our data centres, because Luxembourg is one of the leading places of having a data centre in Europe nowadays. I’m based in Luxembourg because of the proximity with our technology service providers but also with some of our main investors.
What I bring to the company is the experience of financial services industry in order to make sure that we are staying on the wave of innovation in terms of technology but at the same time we are staying up-to-date regarding our obligations towards our clients in terms of IT governance and in making sure that our services are 24/7.
We are not only a technology development company, we are providing technology-as-a-service. I am responsible for the service component, to make sure that we provide services to our clients that are secure, protects them of any cybersecurity threats, has the proper IT governance and is compliant.
At AssetMetrix we have a very important IT capability, we are more or less 40 professionals, I have the honour working with at least 4 PhDs in our teams. Therefore, I really believe that in terms of development, architecture and the very IT topics, we are really good.
What are the major challenges in terms of technology you have so far seen in the private capital landscape?
I believe that the main challenge in terms of technology in the private capital is that the private capital industry is not at the same level of technological maturity as the mainstream. Main inhibitors in private capital space are the non-standardization of the services and the communication challenge, there is no swift in private capital.
This is something that of course is industry-wide but over and above some infrastructure elements like this, we can always develop technologies that help digitalize the assets. The structures which many times in the private capital space are quite unique, therefore make it not so easy to create synergies to design from one client to another, from one fund to the other. Nevertheless we help to digitalize all this space and also the communication with the clients providing mainly services either to GPs or LPs. They can use technology-as-a-service to be able to develop their activities and grow their business without an exponential cost in terms of people or other costs which are related to the expanding a business.
Tell us more about some of the developments coming up
AssetMetrix is a growing company, it’s not just a Fintech, it’s not a start-up, it’s a company that has been there for 25 years. Therefore, we already have a structure in place and are at the next level of our development. As is known in the market we have an office in Luxembourg, we are moving our operations and our data centres to Luxembourg. So my other main responsibility is to act as the point of contact for AssetMetrix’ Luxembourg technology. I work together with my Business Development colleagues to face and inform the clients, as well as industry associations about our capabilities.
If you want to accelerate your digital transformation in Private Markets, contact our team:
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As part of the BAI Anniversary Brochure 2022, AssetMetrix’ CTO shares insights on the topic of technology transformation in private equity and looks at how fund managers and investors can turn challenges into opportunities.
