Peruvian Fintech, Zest Capital, Leverages Technology to Bring Flexible Investment Strategies to Everyday Investors

Zest Capital is a Peruvian fintech and asset manager co-founded by Eduardo Gálvez (CCO) and two other partners in 2016. The company is focused on asset management and investment advisory. Currently, Zest has USD $120mm in assets under management (AUM) with over 4000 clients.

At a Glance

Since inception, Zest has enjoyed constant growth and continues to accelerate. They saw an opportunity in Peru offering structured notes to a large investor pool, essentially democratizing access to this type of
security for people that are not considered high net worth individuals.

From a current average investment ticket is of USD $28,000, they are on track toward reducing that average KPI by providing their offering to an expanded target market of investors and increasing their client diversity.

To support this goal, they needed strong technological infrastructure which would streamline the back end and front end and deliver functionality that would serve as a market differentiator against the “old and traditional competitors” in Peru, which they saw as not being transparent enough with their customers and charging fees that were too high when compared to developed markets and the LATAM region.

The Solution

Zest selected BRITech for the combination of a flexible/powerful platform and a highly-experience implementation
and support team which would facilitate project developments and progress to achieve their goals.
They began development from the viewpoint of the user experience, starting in early 2019 with the goal to
have all the relevant information of their clients, and their clients’ portfolios, in one platform. And since
starting, they have been adding other platforms to help improve the user experience and become more efficient internally as well, including:

– Bloomberg
To get real time prices, real time reports, news, alternative financial information—a crucial platform for their
investment team.

– DocuSign
Which offers big support for compliance and back office and allows them to reduce the signing and documentation process and become very efficient.

– Salesforce.com
The biggest CRM in the world, which improves the follow up and maintenance of their clientsand serves as the streamline between the sales team and the operations team.

– An revised front end Web Site
Recently updated to centralize all of their published content on social networks, focusing on financial education to strengthen customer loyalty and lead generation.

– A new Mobile Zest App
Wherein customers can get real-time information on their portfolio, coupon payments, tax reports, and market news; and communicate with advisors.

The Results

“We are very comfortable with the architecture we have now”, said Gálvez. “The backend, all-in-one solution that was developed for us by the BRITech team last year helps us to centralize data and send data to all of the platforms that we use by API connections. This ultimately lets our client interaction be faster and friendlier, helping us drive customer loyalty.”
The resulting solution with BRITech is fully integrated with Bloomberg which lets Zest receive all of the market and data news, with Salesforce.com and DocuSign which uploads all the know-your-customer (KYC) information.

The BRITech portfolio management system sends all the data about the investment portfolios, the profit and loss,
coupon dates, tax reports, maturity of the securities, investment reports to the web site and the new app.
Zest is continuously innovating in the market. They see this new web/app layer as a big step to helping them
approach the affluent, young professionals who are currently still building their wealth; who are more acclimated to technology like smart phones; the Millennials who will become Zest’s new target in a few years.
With this new technology in place, Zest is well-positioned for this pending market transformation. Their feedback, and their strong NPS score, tells them that the digitalization they have made is a key feature to their strong customer relationship and vote of confidence that they continue to build with their customers.

Working with BRITech
“Working with BRITech, the word that represents it best is ‘flexibility’; not only of the tech solution, but also of the project team”, said Gálvez. “They helped us to design a solution for our requirements and bo!lenecks two years ago which has improved the performance of our company internally and with our clients, by far. As a growing company, we are always changing and improving our process. The close collaboration we have with the BRITech support team has resulted in very quick responses – and very quick shifts in the development as well. All the new features and functionality that the management team of Zest has requested has been accomplished by BRITech—with a lot of
good suggestions and feedback from them in the process. So, we feel very comfortable with the long term relationship that we are building with them.”

The Future

Zest is building partnerships with other financial players in Peru in order to expand their customer scope—bigger
investors such as mutual funds and insurance companies.
Thus, they will likely be integrating their solution with third parties – specifically for customer data flow.
They are also planning to enter other markets including Mexico, Colombia, and the U.S. where they want to further
democratize access to structured notes. Colombia and Mexico have a similar situation in their capital markets to Peru. And the U.S. has many potential customers with money (savings) offshore—which happens in several regions.
All of these challenges will demand further development in collaboration between Zest and the BRITech team, continuing development and progress in a successful project.

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