A fintech leader at 30 playing a key role
Lisa Schroder played a key role in the success of the Swiss-initiated F10 fintech incubator programme before joining Swiss fintech firm vestr
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THE exciting new world of fintech is attracting young talented people and one of them is Lisa Schroder, who is the Singapore-based director for business management at vestr, a Swiss fintech company. She played a key role in the success of the Swiss initiated F10 fintech incubator programme before she joined vestr.
Schroder has received early recognition for her efforts as she was awarded the Singapore FinTech Association’s (SFA) Leaders under 30 Award in 2021 for her active engagement and contribution to the fintech ecosystem in Singapore since 2018.
She said: “It recognises my persistence to bring the fintech community together. On the one hand, I was coordinating hackathons that not only let participants develop new and exciting prototypes and business ideas, but it also included a mentor network of 20 plus individuals and an independent jury of 12 to assess these prototypes and business ideas.
"On the other hand, I was able to keep the fintech community active by organising networking drinks and hikes during Covid times when we were limited to groups of 5 in Singapore.”
In June, Schroder had the opportunity to attend the inaugural Point Zero Forum in Zurich.
“I was attending to represent vestr and connect with our existing client representatives and get a sense of new, interesting solutions that we could connect to the vestr AMC (actively managed certificates) platform. As a platform provider, vestr is able to connect to third party providers via API (application programming interface). So new data providers of alternative data such as crypto are interesting areas for us to explore,” she says.
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Schroder was introduced to the digital world of the financial services industry via an internship. Working closely with financial institutions and startups enabled her to experience first-hand how technology can make the finance industry more efficient for consumers.
She said: “While the areas of payments and personal finance gain more attention in the fintech developments, I realised that the capital markets are still lagging. Due to the complex nature of the industry, it takes incredibly smart and experienced innovators to address these problems and build suitable solutions.”
F10 is a global innovation ecosystem with offices in Zurich, Singapore, Madrid and Barcelona. It believes that the fastest route to innovation lies in early collaboration between startups, incumbents and investors. Each stakeholder benefits from shared skills, experience and insight. Swiss-based SIX is F10’s founding sponsor.
“F10 is a fintech incubator and accelerator which supports and guides startups in transforming their ideas into successful companies while stimulating worldwide collaboration with international finance organisations." says Schroder.
"Working with SIX, the Swiss stock exchange and other leading financial institutions like Julius Baer, R3, PwC Switzerland and Generali, F10 is at the forefront of the new financial paradigm, bridging the gap between exciting new ideas and tomorrow’s leading products,” she adds.
She worked with F10 in Zurich as a programme manager to co-execute the 6 month incubation programme with 15 startups.
“For the programme, we recruited mentors and worked with investors to prepare the startups for the Investor Day and Demo Day. In parallel, I was coordinating global hackathons in Singapore, Vienna and Zurich.
“After 2 successful hackathons in Singapore in 2018 and 2019, I relocated to the lion city in 2020 to open F10’s new hub and replicate the 6-month incubation programme here,” Schroder said.
F10’s Singapore hub was incorporated in late 2019. The first incubation programme with 10 startups was launched in May 2020 with a small F10 team of 3, with virtual support from the bigger team in Zurich. Jonas Thuerig, now F10’s Asia head, joined in March 2020, while Jayadeep Apte completed the team as a startup coach in June 2020.
“Besides running the incubation programme, we prepared an acceleration programme to connect scaleup teams from APAC with our local corporate partners. In parallel, we built a mentor network of 60 plus,” says Schroder.
At SFA, Schroder is in the Women-in-Fintech subcommittee. While the SFA aims to connect people and companies of the traditional and digital financial services industry in Singapore and regionally, the subcommittee aims to inspire, mentor and empower women in the fintech community. Its activities include outreach via community calls, collaborative events with fintech companies and large financial institutions, and featuring outstanding female leaders and makers in this space. Schroder says that within these 3 pillars, she is looking after the community outreach.
“In parallel, we are currently working on a new initiative that will be launched in September. A hint – we will focus on more female representation in entrepreneurship.”
At vestr, Schroder’s role is three-fold. Firstly, she manages the Singapore office including HR, admin and accounting tasks; coordination of POC; network expansion and does fundraising.
Secondly, she works with the company’s Swiss client team on onboarding one of the French clients including serving as their primary point of contact; querying information and replying to questions and issues; coordination with internal infrastructure and technical teams.
Thirdly, she is in charge of communications and marketing for vestr in Europe and Singapore, including building brand awareness via social media, events and awards; creating press releases with clients and partners; as well as content for the company’s website.
vestr was founded in 2017 in Switzerland. It now has more than 30 team members in Europe and Singapore with several clients across Europe and is currently running a Proof of Concept (POC) with Bank Julius Baer in Singapore. The goal is to launch the company’s cloud-based platform in Asia that connects issuers of structured products and external asset managers.
The company’s founders are experienced traders and quants with a focus on providing modern technology solutions to the field of actively managed certificates (AMCs), which are a flexible and cost effective alternative to traditional investment funds. It is estimated that the total assets under management in these certificates already exceed US$1 trillion on a global basis. The highest growth region for AMCs continues to be Asia, primarily based out of Singapore and Hong Kong.
The vestr AMC engine is the first web-based, white labelled solution that digitises the entire AMC lifecycle. It enables asset managers and issuers of AMCs to automatically create, manage and monitor their products, allowing the AMC business to be successfully scaled, while the automation of time consuming and complex processes enables them to stay compliant.
The platform is accessible anytime, anywhere with a secure Google Cloud infrastructure, using state of the art security and two factor authentication.
Furthermore, the platform provides extensive and customisable reporting functionalities and a complete point in time audit trail. The vestr AMC engine introduces digitisation and scalability into a highly profitable and maturing market that is only partially automated at present. And the vestr platform acts as an interface between buy and sell side institutions by seamlessly facilitating the creation and management of AMCs.
“We strive for a safer and more sustainable management of active investment products. By reducing manual processes and operational friction, we enable investment managers to focus on their core competencies while we take care of the technical infrastructure. Due to the flexible setup of the platform, we are able to onboard third party providers who can enhance the active investment strategies,” Schroder tells The Business Times (BT).
Schroder says she has participated in several exciting fintech projects. One of them is Sophia, which was co-founded by Christine Yu, Nicole Denholder and Tanya Rolfe in Singapore. It is a platform for financial education for women in Asia. The focus is on diversity and early-stage investing.
“Another personal favourite is Seedly, co-founded by Kenneth Lou in Singapore. Personal finance is an important aspect of everyone’s life and yet the lack of understanding prevents many individuals from taking charge of their own financial freedom. Seedly addresses this issue by creating a personal finance community that encourages peer-learning,” Schroder tells BT.
“Our women in fintech subcommittee of SFA will launch a new initiative in September this year to inspire and motivate more female representation in entrepreneurship,” she adds. Other examples are Do The Math, which is a ESOP calculator for tech ventures, and #AFTERIWD Database, which is a database of spokespersons in South-east Asia.
Schroder, 30, is German and was raised in the south of the country near the beautiful Lake of Konstanz. While she started her university education in literature and linguistics at the University of Konstanz, Germany, and the Universite de Lyon 2, France, along the way, she decided to make a switch to business studies.
Outside of work, she tends to spend time with her partner on bikes, on trails, or around a board game with friends.
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