Bringing forth the market champion of wealth management tools
Read the interview with Virginie Fauvel, CEO of the Harvest group, conducted by Benoît Descamps, Editor-in-chief of Investissement Conseils.
Created in 1989, Harvest focused on external growth and the European market by taking over two major players on the French market, Fidroit and Quantalys, within a year.
Virginie Fauvel, Harvest’s CEO since September 2020, tells us about her strategy, her development goals and the first consequences of her operations for the users of her various solutions.
Virginie Fauvel, CEO of Harvest
Investissement Conseils: After Fidroit in November 2020, Harvest announced the acquisition of Quantalys in June. What are your goals?
Virginie Fauvel: This external growth strategy is consistent with our Conquête 2025 strategic development plan, the objective of which is to take our great mid-sized company to the next level by bringing forth a French champion of the European market for wealth management and financial software, through external and organic growth.
This plan also aims at making the Harvest group a happy and desirable company to attract talented employees, but also a company with a strong customer service culture.
Today we find that our market is fragmented, with many small players while others are similar in size to us and, more importantly, still clearly focused on their domestic market.
In our industry, it is now necessary to reach a critical size to address regulatory – we are regulated by the ACPR or French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority – IT security and business technicality issues. Our desire is to become, by 2025, the market consolidation platform at European level.
Quantalys allows us to reach this European dimension, as the company is already well established in Italy, with ten or so employees in Milan, but the company is also active in Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, etc. Our aim is to gain a foothold on the German, Belgian, Swiss, Luxembourg and Italian markets first, before moving on to Spain, Portugal, the UK and Scandinavia.
This external growth strategy is consistent with our Conquête 2025 strategic development plan, the objective of which is to take our great mid-sized company to the next level by bringing forth a French champion of the European market for wealth management and financial software, through external and organic growth.
What are you currently focusing on for your wealth management customers?
The initial objective is to build APIs between all the tools in the range so that they can communicate with each other, as we are convinced that our customers no longer wish to re-enter their customers’ data from software to software, which also prevents input errors. In 2022, all our tools – Harvest, Fidroit, Quantalys – will communicate together painlessly for wealth management professionals.
Secondly, we continue to transition all our solutions to SaaS mode. This is already the case for the Clickimpôts tool, which will be followed by Harvest’s flagship software, Big Expert, a new version of which is currently being tested and should be delivered by the end of the year.
In addition to its structural aspects for our products, clear synergies between tools are emerging: information on Quantalys funds is transferred to O2S, as are the model portfolios and tools for monitoring the good match between risk profiles and portfolios. All these interactions will also enhance the functionalities of MoneyPitch, our tool for consolidating accounts intended for end customers.
Big Expert is gradually enhanced by Fidroit fact sheets and O2S integrates Fidroit solutions, our range of training courses has been extended, the Patrithèque and Fidnet enrich each other…
While we look at the market as a whole, we have requirements in terms of size and IT security. All players may be of interest to us as long as their solution is relevant to our customers, has not yet been developed internally, and the company has a foothold on the European market.
We will also converge the Business Link offers accessible from O2S and Quantalys which relate to communication between our tools and the various suppliers’ Extranets (SCPI, life insurance contracts, Private Equity, etc.) for product purchase, arbitration, payment, withdrawal processes, etc.
Beyond these product enhancements, companies also improve their structure in terms of human resources, finance, marketing, communication or even sales.
What type of company could you acquire in the near future?
While we look at the market as a whole, we have requirements in terms of size and IT security. All players may be of interest to us as long as their solution is relevant to our customers, has not yet been developed internally, and the company has a foothold on the European market.
What is Harvest lacking in France?
Not much is missing… You should know that our solutions are extremely wide-ranging, with offers in credit, training, account aggregation, customer relationship management, etc. We supply 70% of wealth management advisers, 100% of banking and insurance companies.
Could you unify the names of your different activities?
No, because our three brands, Fidroit, Harvest and Quantalys, are highly valued on their respective markets and by their customers. We should however change the name of the holding company, with a meaningful connotation for the international market. Furthermore, our tools such as O2S or Big, among others, could also be upgraded to be more meaningful and raise the profile of our offering.
Can you tell us a little about your shareholders?
Harvest was delisted last year. Rothschild Five Arrows is our majority shareholder and holds more than 60% of the capital. Its intention is to be a long-term partner to help us deploy our plan to conquer Europe. This gives us stability and a simple shareholding structure that allows us to make quick decisions.
Could you give us some figures on the Harvest group after your various acquisitions?
Since December 2019, our workforce has increased from two hundred and seventy to four hundred employees today, and our turnover from €31.9 million to more than €50 million.
This is a growth project: there have been no redundancies; we have even recruited nearly fifty new employees since I arrived in September 2020.
Today, two hundred and fifty of our employees are fully dedicated to technology: our solutions are entirely designed in-house, with wealth management experts. Around one hundred other employees are business experts in law, pension and finance.
By 2027, our objective is to achieve a turnover of more than €100 million and have a firm foothold in three to four European countries, in addition to France.
Interview by Benoît Descamps for Investissement Conseils