The WealthTech Podcast Episode Transcript

Host: Mark Wickersham

Guest: Gareth Lewis, Co-CEO & Co-Founder Delio

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Mark Wickersham: All right, Gareth, welcome to the Wealth Tech Podcast. I am happy to have you on the show. Today, I have Gareth Lewis, founder and co-CEO of Delio.

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Mark Wickersham: Would you mind giving yourself a brief introduction and then an overview of Delio?

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, of course, good to be here, and thanks for having me, Mark, I appreciate it. Yeah, so as Matt, I'm Gareth Lewis, I'm founder and co-chief Executive here at Delio, so, I kind of cover a lot of the… I guess myself and my co-CEO have a bit of a

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Gareth Lewis: a natural front office, back office split to a degree, so a lot of my time spent, out… out in the market, kind of, identifying, kind of, strategic direction of the business, identifying and kind of building up on our, kind of, key commercial

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Gareth Lewis: you know, commercial relationships, strategic partnerships, and trying to drive that overall strategy of the business. We've been around for…

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Gareth Lewis: You know, nearly coming up to a decade now, so we've kind of seen a lot of,

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Gareth Lewis: moving parts in the industry. We've positioned ourselves to be quite, I think, fluid to how the industry evolves and develops. So, yeah, it's important for us to kind of be out in the market and kind of, making sure that where we position ourselves and how we're playing reflects the, I guess the, the tailwinds in the industry to that effect.

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Gareth Lewis: So yeah, so maybe a little bit… a little bit on us as a… as a business. So we founded the business in… in Cardiff, in South Wales, which is where I'm from. And the genesis of the business and what we are today have stayed pretty consistent. I think. You know, we focus on trying to be the… the underlying plumbing, pipes, rails, picks and shovels that

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Gareth Lewis: other financial firms, can strengthen and enhance their alternative investment capabilities, so that's quite a broad remit and mandate. You know, what it means in practice is we kind of are, more of, like, an operating infrastructure layer rather than strictly a platform. We're agnostic across

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Gareth Lewis: you know, type of products on the system, type of firm that's using it, and also who they're, kind of, servicing from their customer base. But, like, real focus on the journey of Delio has been kind of commoditizing the technology workflows that you need for distribution, reporting, and client advisor experience when it comes to alternatives. So.

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Gareth Lewis: to power that, we've built out a white-label operating system, lots of, kind of, configurable modules, workflows, and tools that can be delivered on a self-serve basis, or customized and tailored in-house by the Delio team. So what that kind of means in practice is, you know, not one use case of application of Delio.

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Gareth Lewis: is… is the same as another one. You know, we see a lot of, you know, often two clients that could look very similar on the outside, you know, using completely different things, and two customers that might look very different using the same

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Gareth Lewis: underlying, kind of, workflow capability. So I think, that's kind of the genesis of our offering to market. We're kind of very, very, kind of.

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Gareth Lewis: focused on being unconflicted, so, you know, we don't have our own marketplace offering, we're not trying to sell our own product or push distribution on our customers. We're really kind of working with them

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Gareth Lewis: understanding where they are in that digital transformation journey and alternatives, and then really mapping that Delio capability around their particular needs based on their objectives. So I think it's a pretty differentiated approach to, say, you know, a more traditional product-focused offering, or a SaaS

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Gareth Lewis: perhaps point solution, we kind of really sit a layer deeper and… and… and leverage that as our kind of uniqueness, and there's a lot of, kind of, breadth and depth in that system now, after having

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Gareth Lewis: You know, deployed a range of different types of use cases over the years, and really spent a lot of time listening to the market and trying to build the tools and the plumbing that we think the industry needs, not just for now, but also for how the industry will evolve in the next 10 years.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, it's certainly been an interesting time in the past 10 years of seeing A lot of, …

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Mark Wickersham: growth and innovation, a lot of growth with private markets in general, but also there's been a lot of innovation in that space. It's certainly one of my favorite topics to talk about. I think it's one of the big areas that

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Mark Wickersham: For family offices in particular, there's finally solutions available to help, kind of, with some real major pain points.

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Mark Wickersham: All along that investment lifecycle, there's a lot of friction, within, private markets, and it's great to see products like Dilio try to…

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Mark Wickersham: tackle that. What… what would you say makes Delio unique, and who's Delio's ideal client profile, or profiles?

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, I think it's an interesting one that perhaps, you know, in some levels it's been, …

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Gareth Lewis: you know, never been, like, an exact science in terms of who the right kind of partner for Denu is, just in terms of a client particular segment. We're… we kind of sit at the intersection of the industry. We view our kind of client verticals across the, you know, the product distributors, such as, you know, our management firms, multifamily offices, RIAs.

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Gareth Lewis: We work with the product manufacturers themselves, so asset managers, GPs, and then that kind of third segment for us, which is kind of a… a direct kind of, …

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Gareth Lewis: customer channel, but also kind of an indirect partnership channel, in a way, is that kind of ecosystem of service providers. So that's the firms who are, you know, looking to build out their own alts capability to service the market, so things like fund administration firms, exchanges, other software providers that are looking to kind of encompass… encompass alternatives into their

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Gareth Lewis: their go-to market. So, there really is quite a, you know, a vast customer segment for us. I think where we play really well is those kind of more

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Gareth Lewis: mid-market to enterprise, you know, level relationships, or firms that are looking for that mid-market enterprise-level technology, experience. So, kind of, you know, we play really well in things like firms that are, kind of, maybe, looking to, kind of.

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Gareth Lewis: standardize their operating system in the way that they may be working with multiple different products and service providers. They've maybe got some manual processes and solutions embedded within different service lines.

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Gareth Lewis: centrally, and they currently have a bit of a fragmented user-client experience on the front end, so that Delio, kind of what we call the OS approach, is really designed to help firms own their client proposition, map the workflows and configure them around their individual needs and use case, but then have that flexibility

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Gareth Lewis: To not have to reinvent the wheel every time they want to do something new in alternatives, whether that's go after a new customer segment, perhaps expand into a new jurisdiction.

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Gareth Lewis: But, you know, where the genesis of the business was from was really that kind of, how do you provide a better end client experience in… in alternatives? So, whether that's filing advisor or the clients engaging with that firm's alternatives capability directly. So we've always kind of gone more, I would say.

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Gareth Lewis: front to back along the infrastructure, rather than necessarily starting at the product and moving through, or working more from a back office and an investor portal on the front end. We try and really go, above and beyond that, and when it comes to, kind of, client experience, either directly on Delio.

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Gareth Lewis: user experience, or, or integrated via API into an existing, existing kind of overlay.

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Gareth Lewis: So, it's been over a decade.

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Mark Wickersham: You obviously have a well-defined value prop now. We talk about this operating system, this digitization of private markets.

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Mark Wickersham: Is that… how did you… why did you start, Delio? Is that mission shifted over time? Talk to me a little bit about your founder's journey with starting the firm.

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, so I think it was, I guess I probably came at it from a bit of a unique perspective as well. I wasn't coming at it from, many years in the industry, it's fair to say. I was 25 at the time, so, I think it was kind of really looking at how things were being done, and being quite curious, and… and…

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Gareth Lewis: you know, thinking about it from, why is… why is this it? Is there more that could be done? And that initial kind of observation was really around

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Gareth Lewis: what existing wealth management firms in the UK at the time had in terms of an alternatives capability, and the limitations that they were facing from being able to do more for their customers in that regard. Yet it was a very… I was working in corporate finance and M&A at the time, and the type of people I was selling businesses for, being involved in selling businesses for.

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Gareth Lewis: they weren't your typical kind of wealth management client of 20, 25 years ago. It was people from all different walks of life and backgrounds who have made their money through the private markets, fundamentally, and, you know, lots of different industries, types of businesses, but they weren't necessarily

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Gareth Lewis: they're very entrepreneurial, very dynamic, and those type of people typically enjoy engaging with product that they can touch, see, feel, understand, and relate to. So, the initial, kind of.

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Gareth Lewis: journey was from that experience in my brief past career, which led me to kind of thinking there must be a better way in exploring how Denio could potentially play a role in that. I always say that I think the key

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Gareth Lewis: …

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Gareth Lewis: a key strength I had at the time. It certainly wasn't kind of network relationships or capital, but it was kind of that blissful ignorance of how difficult it could be to go and build out, what we were trying to build. There was no kind of… it didn't feel like….

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Mark Wickersham: I didn't know how hard the problem was.

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, I didn't know how hard the problem was, didn't realize how big the risk was, and I think I look back on it as that probably being an actual underlying strength, and, you know, that whole not being able to take no for an answer, and I think that's kind of then

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Gareth Lewis: going at it from that perspective, which I think is quite different than, I think, how other films have approached, or are approaching the industry. I think it's just something we've tried to maintain at all times in the business, in terms of trying to think about things a little bit differently, and… and, you know, I think at the time when we launched the business, I think really what I kind of refer to that first wave of

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Gareth Lewis: alternative investment buzz, to a degree, is kind of really, let's just provide some access to products, you know, we just need to kind of tick that box and… and move on. And, you know, we were building a solution that wasn't touching the product, but I think we…

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Gareth Lewis: now kind of seeing in the last, you know, even in the last 12 months now, a lot more firms are thinking about the actual rails and plumbing, because a lot of the infrastructure is currently sat is pretty… there is pretty legacy. It's kind of maybe firms being beholden to players in their value chain that doesn't give them the flexibility they might be looking for.

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Gareth Lewis: And there's a renewed need for, you know, I think there's a recognition across the industry that the shift is there, the inflows are available, they're there for the taking, the growth is happening in the industry, and you can't do that on point solutions, manual workflows, and the like. So, it's been interesting to kind of

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Gareth Lewis: feels like maybe we're a long… hard to describe it as an overnight kind of success, but I think it's really interesting to see how our messaging, which may be, …

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Gareth Lewis: stay reasonably true, but we've been able to evolve a little bit. I think it's… it's now resonating

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Gareth Lewis: you know, word, you know, language we're using, I think, is a lot more commonly used in the industry than it was when we first started the business. I think that's probably the best way of

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Gareth Lewis: best way of describing it, and, yeah, so I think I've kind of sat here a decade on with more conviction in the model than ever, and feel like, really, the industry's moving in the direction I've always hoped and thought it might someday, which is great, but I think there's a lot to be done soon.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, it does seem like the industry's finally got a movement towards…

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Mark Wickersham: You know, you see how public markets behave, and there's lots of reasons for that in terms of the infrastructure that's in place, the standardization that's in place, the connections between the buyers and sellers, and…

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Mark Wickersham: And for private markets to continue to expand, and for even investors to be able to participate in that huge segment of the economy, that there needs to be this kind of, you know, basically an infrastructure play to be able to facilitate the growth in the market, and just take care of these long-standing

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Mark Wickersham: friction points. If you're… what advice would you give, kind of, a younger entrepreneur entering the wealth tech space these days?

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Gareth Lewis: What advice would I? … I think, again, it's kind of… I think this goes, it's probably pretty…

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Gareth Lewis: pretty obvious, but I think you kind of get that, you know, you… particularly when I was, you know, in my early 20s as I was, it was kind of my mid-20s at least, you know, again, there was that… there wasn't really that recognition of what… of what a risk felt like, it just didn't feel like a… a risk at the… at the time, and I think if you are kind of on that more, like, younger.

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Gareth Lewis: edge, I think that's a great mentality and a great, kind of, more freshness to bring to an industry like this. I think, you know, if… there's often, you know, that often… that perspective, I think, is… is valuable, and you've seen some, you know, great success stories, you know, using that kind of blueprint and framework. I think,

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Gareth Lewis: I think that what I always say around business, I don't think anyone can prepare you for, quite how difficult it's gonna be. I think, you know, a lot of people say to you, being an entrepreneur is hard, going to build a business is hard, but I don't think there's anything in…

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Gareth Lewis: or at least I've seen that can ever prepare you for the actual magnitude of how difficult it is and can be, even when things kind of look good on the outside. So, yeah, I think it's, it's really developing a…

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Gareth Lewis: a thick skin as well. I feel like, you know, especially something we've done when maybe the market has kind of taken time to move in the direction. You've got to be able to take a lot of, setbacks and no's, but it's all really how you kind of, how you respond to them, and how do you take them on board. I think we've… sometimes we've done that well, sometimes we haven't done it very well in terms of

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Gareth Lewis: learning from mistakes, but, you know, inevitable mistakes are inevitable, and I think it's, yeah, I think different, there's a lot of considerations to how

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Gareth Lewis: how that journey will unfold for you, and it's not just kind of where you start… when we started the business and what you're doing, it's almost the environment around you as well. There's differences to starting a business in Wales than there is to starting in New York, that probably presents contrasting challenges in different ways, you know?

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Mark Wickersham: So why did you start the business in Cardiff?

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Gareth Lewis: There's a number of reasons. I think, a little bit of it was necessity. You know, I was living up in Manchester, and I moved back in with my parents, and took out a loan, so it was kind of one of those true,

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Gareth Lewis: true startup success, true startup, stories to that regard, so I think there's a little bit of necessity, and much to the, displeasure of my parents seeing me quit a, a stable and,

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Gareth Lewis: potentially prosperous career to come back and move in with them at 25, wasn't necessarily there, but they grew to, they grew to appreciate it, I think. So that was certainly one factor, but I think, for me, I also saw being based in Wales as an opportunity

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Gareth Lewis: for us as a business, but also to do something impactful. I think Wales as a… an ecosystem. We've always, as a country, really, from an economic standpoint, we've always punched

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Gareth Lewis: substantially below our weight. I think a lot of raw ingredients are there, but there's not many examples of what good looks like to build an ecosystem around, but also to learn from. So there's always been kind of an ambition in me to

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Gareth Lewis: create something impactful, and I think, to a degree we've done that, you know, but plenty more we could do. You know, we've created, you know, well over 100 jobs in Wales over the year, probably closer to 200, and…

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Gareth Lewis: That's been great. That's also been a benefit to us as a business, because we've been able to grow a lot more operationally, efficiently than we probably would if we'd been in a larger city where, kind of, cost per head

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Gareth Lewis: for a number of reasons, tends to be… tends to be higher, so that's certainly helped. And I also think there's a lot to be said for the quality of the people that you can find in Wales. You know, I think, you know, we've had some people with us from day one, and I think in terms of

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Gareth Lewis: honesty, loyalty, trustworthiness, integrity, ability to be, well, you know, likeable, those kind of, kind of soft skills I think we've got in abundance in Wales. I think that some of the limiting factors are that kind of…

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Gareth Lewis: you know, conveyor belt of what good… of other high-growth, high-success, fast-paced companies. There wasn't necessarily too many examples to pick from in Wales, but I think, you know, that was also kind of, like, a bit of an ambition of mine to really try and impact that, even in a smaller.

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Mark Wickersham: Love it. Let's talk about the state of the private markets and private market infrastructure. Finally starting to see some mature solutions in the marketplace to address these, you know, inefficiencies across the alternative investment life cycle.

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Mark Wickersham: Where would you say the market is today in terms of, like, digitization and having…

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Mark Wickersham: you know, adoption and automation in place. Well, you know.

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Mark Wickersham: to say the baseball analogy, maybe that's not the best one in terms of what inning we're in, but where would you say we are… what is the state of the private markets in terms of infrastructure, in your opinion?

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, I think baseball, baseball and anthemes might go over my head, being, given the, given the, the relevance of baseball in the, in the UK, but, but yeah, no, we are,

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Gareth Lewis: I think it's, a little… I like to describe it as a little bit of everything, because I think you've kind of got that… wave one of Buzz, as I mentioned, was kind of around access to… access to product, and obviously you saw some of the, you know, well-established names really kind of build

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Gareth Lewis: you know, great success stories in the industry, and I think with that, there was an undercurrent of… of point… what I'd class as point solutions emerging, things like subscription.tools, and, you know, you could list them all out. So I think you kind of had that first wave

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Gareth Lewis: of there, but then, you know, I think people forget that there were still other solutions in the market that were delivering, private markets technology even before the noise was

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Gareth Lewis: the noise was particularly loud, so you're kind of then, I think, coming off the back of that, you've probably got that, …

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Gareth Lewis: combination of legacy system, point solution, and…

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Gareth Lewis: marketplace solutions, and it's really now, I think, the second wave is how that translates into an infrastructure, and I don't necessarily believe it will be a centralized infrastructure where one provider plays the… well, I think it's….

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Mark Wickersham: You're talking… it's product agnostic, is that the, kind of, one of the key attributes when you're….

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Gareth Lewis: I think… I think infrastructure, plumbing, I think the real kind of joining the dots and bridging the gaps, and… and I think we're still a long way away from that. I think, like, my observation's quite interesting. I think there's still a lot of…

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Gareth Lewis: I think a lot of this is on the providers in the market as well, you know, all of us, in terms of… there's a lot of, kind of, yes, that my system does this, it does everything, everything you want, does it do this? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And there's very… quite often when you lift above the, you know, lift the bonnet up, I guess, or lift the hood up, it's a little bit…

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Gareth Lewis: different, so I still think there's a lot of, kind of, digital front ends with a lot of manual

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Gareth Lewis: processes behind the scenes that even, you know, needs… I think needs to evolve. So I still think in terms of that digitization, we're really very…

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Gareth Lewis: early on in the journey, and I think it's an interesting storm in the way that you've got that combination of those point solutions and product-focused firms looking to come in and try and solve the infrastructure piece themselves. You've then got that other end of the spectrum, where you've got really well large, established

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Gareth Lewis: firms that don't necessarily have much of a presence in the alternative space now, looking to find ways to move in and deliver solutions as well. And then you've got those kind of native, particularly with the emergence of AI, you've got these kind of native

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Gareth Lewis: in, you know, firms, I guess, like a Delio degree, with an infrastructure messaging as our core and as our DNA of the… of the business, so it kind of then speaks to me as if, like, the future for, you know, digitizing alternatives is almost that

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Gareth Lewis: decentralized infrastructure. It's a focus on, kind of, configurability and flexibility, and there'll be lots of firms doing things in different ways, but that doesn't necessarily

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Gareth Lewis: mean that you can't drive standardization. I think it just might be a bit of a wavy road, to get there with a number of phases and steps in

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Gareth Lewis: in that journey, but I think there's just, you know, when I speak to, kind of, prospects and strategic partners, it… I say I've got more conviction in the opportunity than ever, I think, even after a decade, and I still just think there's…

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Gareth Lewis: a lot of problems that need to be solved that the existing landscape hasn't, kind of, yet cracked, and I think if you can do that, I think that will really,

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, and I think there's a lot of opportunities for a lot of different types of firms to win in that. I don't think it's going to be a winner-takes-all kind of, market.

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Mark Wickersham: So not exactly the attacking third of the pitch, but, you know, maybe hitting into the neutral third of the pitch.

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a long way to go.

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Mark Wickersham: What are… what are… what's the… how have GPs reacted?

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Mark Wickersham: to your solution, and where do you see GPs helping to solve the problems that exist, and where are they still causing the problems?

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Gareth Lewis: I think the GP… I actually, like, you know, recent times in particular, I think you're seeing a lot more GPs

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Gareth Lewis: thinking about digital experience more so than perhaps before, and they're looking at that in kind of two ways. They're maybe going back to their existing provider ecosystem, whereas Fund Admin's been providing them some sort of document repository, and that was kind of fine when they were working with a smaller subsection of LPs. They're now kind of saying.

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Gareth Lewis: hang on, that's not good enough. As we expand into the more wealth channel, we have larger volumes of investors. Similarly for them, that kind of builds out, then, an operating system challenge, where

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Gareth Lewis: you've probably got different products using different solutions, different providers, probably that whole manual workflow combined with point solution piece emerging. It's how do you really shift that into a…

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Gareth Lewis: a unified, consistent operating system that gives you that single source of truth, but also gives you that consistent client experience that can then be personalized, depending on who the customer segment is. So I think that's… that message and that thinking is starting to happen a lot more in the GP space, and then I guess it's a…

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Gareth Lewis: decision which will be impacted by who they're currently working with, and the size of firm around do they stay reliant on their

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Gareth Lewis: service providers to drive their digital agenda, or do they look to try and bring that in-house and deliver it themselves? And then you've got that whole, do we build something? Do we buy something? Do we plug together lots of different solutions? Do we buy something? Do we invest in something? Do we build a…

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Gareth Lewis: incubator to build out a load of systems. We've kind of seen it, all different kind of strategies for doing that, but I certainly think now that GPs are, really thinking a lot more about it, and I still think there's a lot of gaps to be filled with how that then GP connects into their different customer channels, because you've probably got

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Gareth Lewis: some kind of, you know, there's probably going to be more and more, I think, GPs, you know, working with those wealth clients directly, but then how does that income… how does that affect how they are able to build relationships with that wealth management channel?

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Gareth Lewis: you're seeing those GPs circumvent your traditional marketplace solutions to drive lower fee, you know, to get better value and improve margin. There's a load of trends which all point to them needing the pipes and plumbing, and it's kind of that

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Gareth Lewis: we'll kind of call at the OS approach in Delio, where it's kind of single product source, i.e. them, to multiple customer segments. You need an operating system to manage that. On the distributor side, it's the opposite. We probably have multiple product sources and a single client channel, which is your own private channel, so…

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Gareth Lewis: There's a lot… I think, actually, the needs of the market are converging from a workflow perspective.

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Mark Wickersham: What are some of the challenges and biggest hurdles that… on the LP side, the wealth management side?

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Mark Wickersham: Phase, when… when try to… you know.

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Mark Wickersham: bring private investments to their clients, and how can they…

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Mark Wickersham: Better utilize technology to help overcome some of these friction points.

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, I think, yeah, we've got a bit of a… I think a different search on that, because I think a lot of the market tends to talk a lot about

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Gareth Lewis: education and the like, and I think that

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Gareth Lewis: that does play a role, that's just… there is no getting away from that, but I think what we've seen is actually the… a lot of, kind of, what's being provided to

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Gareth Lewis: the wealth manager almost stops at providing them the product, or trying to provide them the product, so that whole channel from product landing with wealth management form to then the client being able to engage in that product is… is kind of being left for the wealth managers to figure out themselves. Perhaps they… if they have a

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Gareth Lewis: single relationship with one product provider or one third-party platform. They might then be able to leverage some of their workflow tools to do that, but then that leaves them a little bit, kind of, …

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Gareth Lewis: tied, and with a lack of flexibility to kind of own and control their proposition. So, to me, the key challenge in the wealth management side is, is pikes, plumbing.

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Gareth Lewis: And being able to own and control that proposition, and I think in the same way that GPs were thinking about, you know, end user experience, I think the…

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Gareth Lewis: wealth management firms are starting to look at it, or thinking about looking at it, particularly when it comes to how do they differentiate their alternatives capability versus their competitors, how do they personalize the offering to the client, and

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Gareth Lewis: A lot of that comes from having those technology rails in place, because then that also enables you to personalize

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Gareth Lewis: education, and it allows you to personalize what data you're showing these types of clients as well. So I think, again, it's, it's a plumbing and a rails

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Gareth Lewis: challenge, and I think it's difficult to solve, be both, be the product, and be the rails for these types of firms. So I think there's, again, a combination of answers to that question, and some of it might be build… build something yourself with a wealth management firm, some of it might be

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Gareth Lewis: you know.

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Gareth Lewis: engage with a vendor, you know, there's a number of ways to solve that, but I still think there's a lot of planning, particularly if those wealth management firms

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Gareth Lewis: thinking about or looking to go into, embedding alts within retirement accounts, whether they're thinking about going into the retail channel more… more broadly, with a sort of, kind of.

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Gareth Lewis: you know, cutting-edge kind of digital client experience, like you see in the Robin Hoods of the world and stuff like that, deliver how the, kind of, some of those traditional wealth management terms replicate or provide something in terms of

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Gareth Lewis: that could be equivalent from a competitive standpoint, particularly when you've got this new generation of wealth creators coming through, and that talk around the big generational wealth transfer. So, lots of, problems that you could probably summarize into pipes and plumbing, from what I'm seeing.

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Mark Wickersham: Future private markets, obviously a lot of growth, a lot of expansion and alternatives. Family offices have always been kind of chock-full of them, but even still, data indicates that they're looking to still increase their exposure to

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Mark Wickersham: alternatives, and then you're starting to see, you know, in the U.S. side, the REA market, the advisor market, looking to…

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Mark Wickersham: …

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Mark Wickersham: increase their exposure, client exposure to it. Obviously, I think their tolerance for some of the inefficiencies within the market are a lot less than a family office would put up with.

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Mark Wickersham: what does the future hold for private markets? When do we get into the attacking third of the pitch, and what's the, … what needs to get done to get us there? Tell me, you know, 3, 5 years out, where are we with…

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Mark Wickersham: The state of the industry.

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Gareth Lewis: I think… I think, kind of, through…

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Gareth Lewis: Digitization behind the curtains is probably…

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Gareth Lewis: the first one, so it's kind of talking… I always kind of… I always think of this market as very, kind of.

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Gareth Lewis: style and substance, and I think when that style translates into substance, I think is kind of the first piece, because then that means you've kind of truly got the rails to have, …

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Gareth Lewis: to kind of…

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Gareth Lewis: deliver on the, you know, the growth trajectory of the industry, I think. So I think that's kind of very much what I kind of refer to as, like, true digitization. Once that kind of, excuse me, happens, I think there's a lot of,

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Gareth Lewis: And there's a lot of… a lot of, work and projects and heavy lifting that needs to go on across… across the industry and the ecosystem. I think standardizing

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Gareth Lewis: you know, that operating system into standardized connectivity is an interesting one. I think the, ability for data and products to be shared

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Gareth Lewis: across… …

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Gareth Lewis: firms in the market, irrespective of what they're running on and how they're running, I think will be, …

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Gareth Lewis: an opportunity.

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Mark Wickersham: So, like, unique identifiers, those type of things?

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Gareth Lewis: I think so, and there's a couple of firms that, you know, obviously are kind of tackling those challenges and problems, so I don't necessarily think it's, like, the standardization of information, because I think standardization of information can be accommodated in this day and age, you know, from perspective of AI, so different firms will be doing it in different ways, but I think

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Gareth Lewis: that whole…

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Gareth Lewis: interoperability between different players in the ecosystem. As I said, I don't think it's a centralized infrastructure, I believe, on, like, the future being quite a decentralized, just because of the scale and the volume. The scale, you know, you've got so many

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Gareth Lewis: players that will be looking at, or need to play a role in it, just because of the size of their organizations. Plus, you've got that wave of… of emerging, firms, kind of, up and coming, and looking at partnering collaboration. So I think there needs to be,

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Gareth Lewis: you know, more… more focus around, you know, that border ecosystem connectivity. I think…

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Gareth Lewis: at the smaller end of the market, the smaller to mid-sized firms that are doing really interesting things in the space, or have done, and maybe kind of looking for what's next. I think there's some consolidation of the service provider and the provider ecosystem that will happen and make sense to happen, in terms of creating

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Gareth Lewis: less subscale…

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Gareth Lewis: solutions for the industry. I think that will kind of really help with interoperability and true digitization as well, if you go back to those two trends, because I think a lot of that can be solved by

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Gareth Lewis: Firms and ecosystem working together more cohesively.

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Gareth Lewis: I think the other really interesting one buyers look at as well is, kind of, cost to access the products, and… and… and…

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Gareth Lewis: I think there's a… oh, a lot of…

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Gareth Lewis: margin compression or cost pressures to come, particularly as firms are looking to

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Gareth Lewis: use it maybe as a means to differentiate and stand out. You kind of think there's some solutions and some work to be done, and again.

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Gareth Lewis: for those firms that are embracing true digitization and cohesion, that should be easy to deliver to the end customer, if done correctly, so I think that also will create a bit of a shakeout in the market as well. So they're kind of what I see happening

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Gareth Lewis: In the next, kind of, 3… 3 to 5 years, and yeah, just, it's… it's, …

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Gareth Lewis: never a dull moment, right? So, yeah, it's always, you're always seeing news, and this, you know, this happening, and this happening, and this film launching this, and this film trying to do this, and we've got to kind of weigh through it all with a pinch of salt, but, you know, it's, it's all… the noise is there, and it's… it points in that direction, I think.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I mean, you do see a lot of, …

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Mark Wickersham: innovation, I think you see a lot of, …

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Mark Wickersham: Growth in the marketplace in terms of distribution, distribution channels, broader channels, I mean, I think they've…

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Mark Wickersham: you know, we're talking even about accessing the 401K, so even getting down to a retail level, obviously you still gotta get through the kind of that advisory channel, first. I think the custodians on the U.S. side, you know, have a role to play in that, and right now that experience is pretty poor.

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Gareth Lewis: ….

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Mark Wickersham: I think data and transparency is going to be another key aspect of it, and being able to get greater

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Mark Wickersham: transparency, it's been so hard, just that first mile data aggregation for these investments, just at a fund or an LP level, has been difficult, but then to be able to get, you know, operating company-level transparency has been tough. Talk to me about data and transparency.

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Mark Wickersham: Why is data so important, and why, you know, do we see things getting easier for LPs to be able to get greater transparency in private markets?

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, I think, I think, like.

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Gareth Lewis: it's a real tangible problem that most people in an organization who can see and feel, and feel the pain off, so I think when it comes to, like, when you're looking at building a business that's maybe focused on a particular point in a value chain.

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Gareth Lewis: It totally makes sense to deliver a solution for that, and obviously the advanced

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Gareth Lewis: advancements of technology to enable that. Again, it's a balance between the commoditization of those sorts of technologies and how they, you know, how your business evolves from there, but you've certainly seen some great solutions kind of come into market to really

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Gareth Lewis: Tackle those challenges, and seeing good growth, and…

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Gareth Lewis: It's a real tangible problem, you can put a number to it, you can put a cost to it, you can put, pain points to it, so delivering ROI is a, you know, it could be pretty binary in that regard, so…

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Gareth Lewis: Certainly, I think that is being solved, and being solved pretty well, and like I said, you're seeing providers still really focused on that, but you're also seeing films try and replicate that capability in-house because of the advancements in

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Gareth Lewis: in technology as a whole, so I think one of the things around

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Gareth Lewis: That can obviously… I think transparency to me, in terms of how that data is presented and how that user experience evolves, to provide that access to data in a way that's seamless and not reliant on lots of steps in the chain and manual process to bring that together. So, we think about that a lot when it comes to how we've built out our kind of post-investment

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Gareth Lewis: reporting module, kind of working with clients to really focus on ease of getting data in, that flexibility in the middle when it comes to calculations, you know, different firms have different nuances that need to be accounted for, and then how that's visualized downstream, I think is,

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Gareth Lewis: is a long… you know, goes a long way for transparency, but then you've probably got that problem on the front end, which is kind of similar to what you've got on the back end, in the way that you're probably then

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Gareth Lewis: working with multiple firms to access your private market products, and how do you aggregate that? So we've obviously, you know, some well-known names that are already solving that in other asset classes, and are continuing to make moves to try and solve it on the, …

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Gareth Lewis: on the alternative side as well. I think for what we've always saw as an interesting opportunity in data, like, a lot of benchmarking and industry data is kind of reliant on what's happened in the past, and with it being a liquid market, that pass can be quite a long

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Gareth Lewis: a long tail behind it, so I've always thought around how

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Gareth Lewis: You know, providing a better advisor-client experience could help generate better data points around investor sentiment and things like that. So we've got some, you know, interesting things in development and design at the moment around really, trying to get more data

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Gareth Lewis: to be fed back into, but a different source of data, that's kind of where I see our…

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Gareth Lewis: Rolling it, you know, everything from

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Gareth Lewis: you know, dummy deals, which one do you prefer? Those kind of gamification of trying to capture further insights to really try and, you know, enhance the data that can be collated for a firm to make better decisions in terms of what their clients might want to see and what their clients might want to do in terms of the ultimate proposition.

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Gareth Lewis: So yes, you can kind of see it being, …

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Gareth Lewis: you can see, yeah, I think there's still some challenges in terms of, like, you know, accuracy of what's being, generated from, processing. There's… there's challenges around that whole,

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Gareth Lewis: Transparency component, having multiple

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Gareth Lewis: multiple, areas where that can live, you know, there's… there's… there's things to be solved, but there's also opportunity, again, for firms, and you're seeing, kind of, obviously, a lot of these data… data plays that you've seen Michael Anthony Blattock and the like are, kind of, really, got theses around that as well. You're even seeing other firms, you know, seems quite a few firms at the moment have got

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Gareth Lewis: really solve that data problem in other markets, now really thinking about how they can take that and then apply that to the world of alternatives.

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Mark Wickersham: I think, obviously, one of the big areas that have helped with that is around AI. AI's been great to be able to unlock…

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Mark Wickersham: Unstructured information, which most of it in the private markets is unstructured, locked in some sort of document, or has historically been.

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Gareth Lewis: Locked in a document.

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Mark Wickersham: How…

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Mark Wickersham: Has Delio leveraged AI, and what do you see the impact of AI being on the industry in general?

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Gareth Lewis: I think, … Yeah, so I agree to Austin.

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Gareth Lewis: read a lot about this and try to use it. I've got two hours in my diary this afternoon to wrestle with, some of the things I'm working on internally to try and make my life a little bit easier and the company, a little bit better. But, you know, how I've looked at it from our technology system perspective is

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Gareth Lewis: We've got the workflow, end-to-end, you've got that ability to deliver

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Gareth Lewis: configurable workflows, you've got that ability to kind of manage a lot of your alternatives business on our system, so then we kind of look at it, well, what are the quick wins that we can deliver to our customers from

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Gareth Lewis: With AI that can save time, make them more efficient. So that's kind of been the first, first phase. So things like, rather than uploading a, you know, keying in a product to add into the system for distribution, can you upload a PPM?

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Gareth Lewis: and auto-populate that. Same goes for subscription documents. Already, they're kind of massive time savers when you're utilizing

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Gareth Lewis: System en masse, so then, like, we've kind of, like, first wave is really around those quick wins, and then it's more around, then, how can you leverage that

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Gareth Lewis: activity on the platform to make smarter decisions around what you do next and how you do it. So then looking at, kind of, okay, this client hasn't signed their

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Gareth Lewis: NDA, you know, or they haven't downloaded the capital call, right, okay, let's get an automated notification, so when I log into my system, I've got a task list of who's done what, you know. This client's looked at this product 8 times, probably need to follow up with them.

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Gareth Lewis: those kind of, like, actions internally, and really kind of actually… when you've got such a large system like we do as well, I think there's a lot to be said for actually helping with, like, user navigation, because there's a lot of configurations and on-off switches, so us putting together a help center guide is very difficult, because not one platform looks the same, so it's how do you then help

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Gareth Lewis: address that, so we're looking at, kind of, you know, redefine… redesigning our knowledge center at the moment, overlaying it with some platform-by-platform, white-label-by-white-label platform context, that then can develop a tailored

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Gareth Lewis: Help center a knowledge base to help our clients maximise the value out of the system.

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Gareth Lewis: But on the… the next wave after that is really how then we drive that.

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Gareth Lewis: advisors and then clients able to interact with what they're seeing in their client experience. So if they're seeing insights and news from their

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Gareth Lewis: From their firm, how do they engage with that, ask questions, better understand? How can we better help them go through the transaction process, better understand the subscription documents, to reduce error, to reduce drop-offs?

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Gareth Lewis: and then look at how… look at their reporting data and better understand it, or it could just be as simple as a command that just takes them straight to the, post-investment capsule, you know, capsule call that they're looking for, that Chair can then take away and act. So, …

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Gareth Lewis: Multiple steps on there, something around the investor.

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Gareth Lewis: data sentiment as well, and then looking at other firms that we can kind of partner with, really, to help us with that… that data opportunity that we see. At the moment, it's kind of like there's some great stuff in the private company secondaries data side, for example. There's probably multiple

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Gareth Lewis: data firms that we'd probably want to partner with in our journey, so it's how do we do that in a way that's efficient? I think AI will be able to help us with that massively, so we're not too much in a pain of a partner as well as some of the firms we'd like to… would like to work with in an ideal scenario.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I mean, there's so many…

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Mark Wickersham: areas and room that AI can improve upon, even just, obviously, way beyond the data aggregation component of it.

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Mark Wickersham: agenic AI and send up these workflows that can automatically execute these tasks, and then follow up on activities to…

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Mark Wickersham: You know, the user experience to being, natural language, not necessarily knowing how to navigate a system, not needing to know how to navigate a system.

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Mark Wickersham: Not needing to know how to write a report, just asking for the information that you want in a way that you want, and getting that information back.

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Mark Wickersham: You know, they say Promp is the new, you know.

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Mark Wickersham: Language that everybody needs to kind of master going forward, but it is certainly… you can see that being able to unlock a lot of activity and improve that user experience quite a bit.

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Gareth Lewis: Why don't show.

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Mark Wickersham: other kind of… Tech trends are you seeing in the industry?

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Gareth Lewis: Let me touching on the CNN industry. …

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Gareth Lewis: I think that's just more, kind of, a lot… I think… I think it's an interesting one in terms of…

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Gareth Lewis: how customers want to engage with a proposition that's still something that we wrestle with internally, in terms of…

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Gareth Lewis: Is it delivered via a native white label? Is it delivered via a mobile app? What's the pros and cons? You know, we regularly get customer feedback, or we'd love to be able to notify more in Europe than the US, to be fair, but, you know, we want to be able to engage with clients over WhatsApp. Is that a buy-in? You know, you might think it's a good idea, it improves engagement, it's how a customer wants to interact in many territories, but then there's a whole

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Gareth Lewis: undercurrent of, then, complexity from an organisational infosec standpoint and things like that, so I still think there's a lot of, …

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Gareth Lewis: Technology trends around how users will engage with

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Gareth Lewis: platforms and operating systems and systems in the future, and we're truly trying to think hard to make sure we're on the right side of that, rather than the…

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Gareth Lewis: than the wrong side. I think as well, obviously, I think there's a lot more

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Gareth Lewis: It's interesting around the whole use of tokenization. There's a lot of, I think.

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Gareth Lewis: you know, momentum in terms of articles and POCs around…

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Gareth Lewis: Around how that industry's evolving, but we're starting to see a lot of that be applied now in real use cases. Now, we've taken a pretty agnostic approach to… to… to that, where effectively something like, you know, an organization engine can be integrated into the Delio, with Delio sitting as a workflow there, and we've got a couple of projects where clients are doing that already.

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Gareth Lewis: I've always thought more of it around, like, what that means for the ongoing administration of private assets post-trade, in terms of, you know, asset transfers and redemptions and, secondary trading and things like that. So I certainly think there's probably

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Gareth Lewis: a journey that's going on into becoming more, kind of, mainstream use case. I still think it's that balancing act between do the… does the customer need to

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Gareth Lewis: have an interest in that, for that to be the right solution, or is it the right solution anyway? It's still kind of something that needs to be figured out, and I've seen, you know, many firms

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Gareth Lewis: quite, you know, try comparing the two. So I'd say that's quite a big one, actually. Which leads into, kind of, some of the other, kind of, post-investment activities around liquidity, so secondary trading, lending against private markets holdings. We've seen some interesting, developments on that side as well.

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Mark Wickersham: Interesting. I think it is, … I think it's an interesting comment, trying to, you know, meet the users where they want to be, and… but to be able to do it in a compliant manner can be…

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Mark Wickersham: Certainly a challenge.

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Gareth Lewis: understand.

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Mark Wickersham: WhatsApp, or, you know, they like text here in the States, and…

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Mark Wickersham: There's obviously compliance, requirements on both sides.

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Gareth Lewis: And I think, as well, it really depends on, you know, that shift of, you know, how seamless is the interoperability between public and private. I think a lot of the, providers that are obviously well entrenched within those other asset classes as they move into alternatives, how they go about executing that, I think will

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Gareth Lewis: will play a role in answering that question, and then following the story as well, because you've got a lot of real estate… I'm an advisor, for example, already well established and well in trend, so if they can get that whole alternative strategy right, that's a, you know, substantial growth opportunity for them, so they're incentivized to do it. It'll be interesting to see how well that execution goes as well.

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Mark Wickersham: Well, Garrett, this has been great. I love to end the podcast with 3 questions that have nothing to do with wealth tech.

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Mark Wickersham: You're… you're from Cardiff. What is something that people in the States might not know about Cardiff and Wales in general?

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, I think, actually most… do you know what? I think that Welcome to Wrexham documentary has done a lot for… for people of knowledge on Wales. I've kind of seen the transition, even in the last… the last couple of years, as that's come out in terms of explaining the, the soccer pyramid system that some of the Welsh pubs play in, which is the English one. We've also got our own league there, but I'll probably say

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Gareth Lewis: something that often surprises people, particularly when clients and prospects are talking about coming to Wales, it's only 2 hours on the train from London. I think people, with it being a separate country, people actually expect it to be…

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Gareth Lewis: a flight away, and I wouldn't… there's not many flights that go directly into Cardiff, unfortunately. It's something I'd love to see improved, but the, the accessibility is a lot,

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Gareth Lewis: a lot more… a lot easier than people give it credit for, so that's probably, my main one. We've also got, apparently, one of the top,

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Gareth Lewis: 10 best beaches in the world, actually, in West Wales. I know where my dad's from, on the Gower in Swansea, so, that also, tends to surprise people. Unfortunately, we don't necessarily have the, the tropical climate to accompany it, but we do actually have the pictures and everything like that on the water, so….

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Mark Wickersham: Love it. Well, I do love the… …

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Mark Wickersham: the football and the relegation, I love that concept, I'm a big EPL fan, but I think, you know, he could bring it to the states, like, baseball could really use it.

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: football, like, you know, can we relegate the Jets?

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Gareth Lewis: I've always… I've always… I've always… it adds a bit of, yeah, rather than it kind of being tanking to get the first draft pick, you know, it changes the perspective in the latter stage of the season when you're kind of fighting for a lot, you know, and the financial state, particularly when you're going down from Premier League to Championship, and vice versa is,

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Gareth Lewis: You know, they say that that…

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Gareth Lewis: that promotion playoff final from the Championship to the Premier League is probably the richest game in sport.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, no, U.S. owners would never put up with that.

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, come back.

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Mark Wickersham: But yeah, it would be great for sport. I love the whole concept. So you're currently in New York City. What did you find, like, really kind of shocking about living in New York City, in the States, that you really…

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Mark Wickersham: weren't expecting, and then, what do you end up loving about the city?

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, what am I expecting? …

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Gareth Lewis: I think I wasn't… I mean, it always amazes me, the price difference in rents versus… versus Wales, but I think even… I mean, obviously, I spent some, you know, I've lived in London, lived all over, and I mean, it's… it's way beyond London, even on the pricing, which surprised me, because I think in a lot of other things, it's pretty, kind of, comparable, so that was a bit of a shock.

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Mark Wickersham: class, that kind of….

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, I think that was a little shock to the system, particularly when I look at it versus my place in Gardiff and, and the relative of what you get banged for your buck, but … but no, I think in terms of

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Gareth Lewis: Well, the big thing for me that's been a shock, I think there's just a… a massive difference in, kind of, magnitude of opportunity here when

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Gareth Lewis: when building a business versus being transparent in the UK, I think there's just a lot to be said for the size and scale and breadth of the market and the sophistication, and also the people. And I think that, you know, really centers on New York. I love the energy, I love…

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Gareth Lewis: you know, I love the fact that you can pretty much step outside your door in the evening, go for a drink with a contact or a colleague, and you're gonna meet someone super interesting with, you know, really

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Gareth Lewis: well, you know, probably an incredible network and lots of interesting conversation. I just tend to love the energy. I feel like, you know, a day pounding the streets of New York, I feel pretty revitalized and energized and that side of things, so I'm, yeah, I've got a lot of,

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Gareth Lewis: get a lot of enjoyment out of being here, particularly over, yeah, I've been back and forward for a number of years now, but now I've kind of spent focusing my energy and time here, which has been,

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Gareth Lewis: Which has been great, you know, and I think also the… going back to the soccer, you can get… you get better… more time to watch the, … watch… you get better coverage over here than you do in the UK, actually, and it's actually a more friendly time where your… where your partner maybe hasn't made lots of plans for your day, that you can watch it at 7am in the morning before you, ….

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Mark Wickersham: I think NBC does a great job with the, with the premiere.

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Mark Wickersham: I think their coverage of it is great.

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, it is.

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Mark Wickersham: I think New York City, if you can make it in New York City, you can make it anywhere, right? Like, it's really… there is an energy at New York City that you… like a buzz. You know, I like to say, I love going to New York City, but on the flip side, I love leaving New York City, too. After a while, you're like, okay.

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: trade.

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Gareth Lewis: It was, it was a lot going on, but I think everyone, again, I found everyone to be super…

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Gareth Lewis: accommodation and welcoming and keen to help as well, which I don't necessarily think you always have that association with people in big cities, but, you know, when you get to an.

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Mark Wickersham: than they get the reputation from.

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Gareth Lewis: I agree with that 100%.

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Mark Wickersham: Bustodians, I'm gonna throw that out there. But, it's really a good tech hub, too. I mean, it's really kind of a… maybe it hasn't shifted, but it certainly has grown quite a bit in terms of innovation, entrepreneurial technology innovation coming out of New York City in particular.

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Gareth Lewis: creating.

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Mark Wickersham: You see it in a family wealth space. I mean, it is the epicenter for family offices in the States, and the States is the largest family office market, and now you're seeing a lot of…

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Mark Wickersham: innovation coming out of New York City for family office and wealth tech, so it's really great to see. Is there a recent book that you're reading that you'd like to share with the audience?

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Gareth Lewis: recent books. I've just actually… I'm one of these, by the end of my day, I'm so, so brain-drained that absorbing information tends to… sometimes, depends on the day, that can be a bit of a challenge, but I have recently finished, … I don't usually take recommendations and read them. I like to just read, pick up a random book and read it, rather than necessarily read the

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Gareth Lewis: the list that you might get online, so… but I did… I did read Gap Selling, …

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Gareth Lewis: which was kind of, yeah, just, like, really interesting in terms of prospective ways to think about it. I always struggled to, kind of.

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Gareth Lewis: contextualize those sorts of, kind of, I guess, methodologies and theories to the alternative space, because I really do feel it's a space built on

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Gareth Lewis: relationships and rapport and the nuances of the individual firms in every sale is kind of a discussion. Commercial discussion tends to take… grow arms and legs and go in different directions, from what I've seen. But, I think I always go back to Black Swan by Nicholas Taleb. I always think… found… find that to be,

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Gareth Lewis: Probably my number one in terms of, reference material, particularly when you see

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Gareth Lewis: the ups and downs of, say, the private markets in the last few years, and there was, COVID and things like that, and just in terms of

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Gareth Lewis: the… this encouragement of predictability from, you know, investors and things, and forecasting and the like, it's not always,

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Gareth Lewis: it's not always easy to, easy to accommodate, you know, often hard to predict what's… typically, I think it's very difficult what's going to happen in what two years' time looks like, let alone another 5, 10 years from a modeling perspective, but I think it's important to embrace that and

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Gareth Lewis: Yeah, so that's always a good one, good read for me.

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Mark Wickersham: Alright, Garth, this is great. I really appreciate you being on the show.

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Gareth Lewis: Thanks for having me, appreciate it. Thanks for the time.