The finance industry is riddled with high maintenance legacy IT systems and processes. Increased regulation is creating demand for specialized, flexible systems with lower maintenance costs. Sharpfin, a Swedish company, is tackling the issue of legacy systems in wealth management, while Finland-based Invesdor is doing the same in equity and bond offerings.

The two fintech pioneers have now partnered up to raise equity crowdfunding for Sharpfin. The company, which develops and delivers modern wealth management software for banks, financial advisors, asset managers and family offices, is raising up to SEK 5 million via Invesdor’s crowdfunding platform.

“The finance industry has, for too long, been satisfied high maintenance, legacy systems. However, due to increased regulation, higher demands on flexibility and pressure on administrative costs the future demands efficient, flexible software. The future needs Sharpfin,” says Sharpfin CEO and co-founder Markus Alin.

Prior to Sharpfin, Alin was software architect at Credit Suisse Asset Management, management at fintech firm Swissrisk AG and CEO at portfolio management system provider Triental AB. He founded Sharpfin together with a colleague from Triental, Billy Svensson. Svensson has worked as programmer and as software architect roles at various projects with banks and insurance companies such as SEB, Nordnet, Swedbank and Folksam and as an entrepreneur. Sharpfin’s board of directors includes Heiner Weber, former executive vice president of Lombard Odier, and Marcus Ek, head of contract management at Ericsson in the Middle Eastern and African region.

For Invesdor, Sharpfin’s equity offering is one of its first moves into the Swedish market. Invesdor currently operates in Finland, the UK, Denmark and Norway. Since 2012, it has helped 93 growth companies raise funding from investors of more than 70 nationalities.

“I know from my experience as a portfolio manager in London that the asset management and wealth management firms are under pressure,” says Peter Moore, equity director at Invesdor. “Compliance requirements are increasing and fees are decreasing, but the systems are still out of the 90s. Sharpfin has the technology, the people and the network to take advantage of this changing industry.”

“We believe that crowdfunding is the future of investments. Having many investors investing smaller portions make their investment portfolios more diverse”, says Markus Alin. “This is in line with the very essence of our vision. We even have parts of the measure for risk adjusted performance in our company name, ‘the Sharpe ratio’.”