CEO Blanco Joost Walgemoed, looks ahead to 2020

What are your plans for Blanco in 2020?

“This year everything will be about customer satisfaction. We’re very happy with the takeover of AIRS and the establishment of Knox, where Blanco is one of the initiators and also the service provider. The number of professional customers Blanco is now allowed to work for has increased to over 100. This year we’ll again do our utmost best to add as much value as possible for our customers with our products and services.”

How do you see the integration of AIRS?

“Our focus will be on connecting the Blanco KYC suite to the AIRS platform in the 1^st half of this year. This will primarily mean that the two platforms will be able to exchange information. Both AIRS and Blanco’s software will continue to exist side by side in this first step. We want to slowly work towards a greater convergence of the software, whereby AIRS will use the Onboarding technology of Blanco and Blanco will develop the functionality of AIRS into the Investment suite of Blanco. In February we’ll present an action plan to our customers. In addition there’s of course an organizational integration, in which the two organizations will be merged”. 

“We see being and remaining compliant as the biggest challenge for our customers in 2020. Regulations are becoming more and more complex, it’s almost impossible to keep up with them. We see this as a huge opportunity to help. It’s for good reason that Compliance has now been given a place in Blanco’s new management team. Manouk Fles has become Chief Legal & Compliance Officer. In the coming year the compliance functionality in the current KYC suite will be further expanded and we’ll develop a new module at Blanco: the Smart Risk Classification. With this module end-customers can be classified based on risk. This classification takes place on the basis of the risk policy of our professional client, the wealth- and asset manager. In addition, the client is continuously monitored on the basis of the risk classification.”

“We also want to work more intensively with the Blanco User Group this year. In this group several customers give quarterly feedback on new features and releases of our products. In 2019 we already worked together with a number of customers. In 2020 we would like to expand this User Group even further. We’re therefore still looking for parties who want to participate in this User Group. We meet once a quarter, giving you the opportunity to fully engage with the product. Sign up here by sending an e‑mail to: teamup@​useblanco.​com

Which new developments do you expect in the 1^st half of 2020?

“The focus is on the one hand on bringing the Investment suite to production for the members of Knox. In addition, we’ll add new features and the existing modules will be made even easier for the user. An example of how we’ll do that is: making the Financial investment plan more flexible. Customers now have to fill in all 42 questions in one go. And if the customer wants to change 1 thing, he or she has to pass through all the questions again. Obviously, that’s not convenient. That’s why we’re going to break it up into separate parts so that each part can be completed and/​or changed separately.

We’re also launching a native app, suitable for both IOS and Android. Asset managers will be able to offer their clients their own app, downloadable from the app store, with which they can view their own securities portfolio. It goes without saying that it’s a white label app, which has the complete look and feel of the asset manager. We’re also going to support children’s accounts and come up with a contract generator, so that our professional clients can maintain and generate their own contracts via the Onboarding street”.