Mu Chen is a serial entrepreneur and investor. He spent his schooling years in Singapore and the US. After graduating from the University of Virginia, he jumped into the US finance and tech sectors. He worked in investment banking in New York and later became a product manager at an alternative data startup in New York, and eventually launched his own data analytics company in Asia. With over a decade of experience in finance and the fintech space, Mu has served as a guest lecturer at the Tsinghua University School of Finance and published insightful writings on China’s economy. Recognising the immense opportunities arising in Asia’s burgeoning fintech and wealth tech space, Mu not only personally invested in Canopy but also assumed the role of CEO in 2023.
Current landscape: Bridging the infrastructure gap
The world has witnessed a significant accumulation and migration of wealth to emerging financial centres like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Dubai. However, this rapid expansion has brought with it a critical challenge: a notable shortage of talent and, more importantly, a lack of robust infrastructure to house this escalating wealth, causing many family offices and wealth managers operating at a suboptimal scale. Recognising these crucial gaps, a group of former finance professionals from the region established Canopy in 2014.
Their goal was simple: leverage technology to make wealth management processes more efficient, sustainable, and affordable. It’s worth noting that during those early years, while the wealth tech sector in the US was already mature with established players like Plaid and Addepar, Asia’s wealth tech landscape was in its infancy.
As Canopy launched and developed, it did so in lockstep with Asia’s rapidly expanding wealthy clientele. Mu humbly notes that, for many early clients still in the wealth accumulation phase, monitoring and managing their growing assets often took a backseat. Interestingly, it turned out that Canopy’s main competitor was not another tech firm, but the ubiquitous spreadsheet: Excel. Yet, Canopy saw beyond this challenge, identifying it as a significant opportunity to provide a more sophisticated solution.
Just as a pilot needs to see all relevant data while navigating, wealth owners and managers need a comprehensive view of the assets and portfolio conditions. Canopy is focused on building an automated navigation board for wealth owners and managers.– Mu Chen, CEO at Canopy.
A solid foundation for solid wealth management: Conquering data integration
To have a robust wealth management process, a family office needs to get the number right in the first place. Canopy, however, observed that many clients spent substantial time manually entering their portfolio data into Excel for analysis, taking them from the more crucial tasks such as portfolio management and risk management. This inefficiency spurred the company to address a fundamental challenge: automating data inflow and custodian (banks, brokers and other custodians) data connectivity across the diverse and complex Asian wealth sector, where IT regulations vary considerably, depending on the country.
Canopy succeeded where even well-established platforms, which enjoy robust relationships with firms like Goldman Sachs in the U.S. or Europe, continue to face hurdles in forging similar connections in key markets, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, or Dubai.
For banks that do not provide APIs for data access, Canopy has created AI algorithms to handle data in various formats, such as Excel and PDF, making it easier to gather and process information.
Over the past decade, the company has turned its data engine product as a leading data integrator. It can connect with nearly 100 major financial institutions like the Bank of Singapore and Goldman Sachs’ Singapore branch, as well as other similar firms in the region; however, its reach extends far beyond Singapore alone. Canopy serves the clients across East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Middle East, and Europe.
Additionally, in keeping up with family offices as they further professionalise and institutionalise, Canopy has developed its platform to support their evolving needs. The platform offers features that enable them to manage not only their portfolio data but also deeper portfolio analysis, such as designing asset allocation strategies, currency risk tracking, performance attribution, structured product condition tracking, concentration analysis, fee expenses analysis, etc.
Shaping the future: The AI co-pilot for wealth managers
In the wake of COVID-19, the collapse of Credit Suisse, and rising geopolitical conflicts, there has been a notable shift in banking relationships among the wealthy. Wealthy clients from around the world are increasingly opening private banking accounts and moving asset custodianship to Asia, aiming for greater security and diversification. According to McKinsey’s report, the AUM of Asia–Pacific WealthTech industry is expected to grow by 25%~30% per year from 2022~2027, reaching 2 trillion USD, with Singapore and Hong kong leading the race.
Recognising these macro trends, a group of existing shareholders, including prominent venture capital firms and family offices from Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, and Thailand, chose to reaffirm their commitment to Canopy by injecting new capital and enhancing the team in 2023.
With this fresh backing, Canopy has started further integrating AI into its robust system. This summer, the company launched its new AI agent projects—a significant milestone. With the AI projects, Canopy is building a co-pilot and guidance system on top of their robust portfolio data system for wealth managers. Rather than just keeping up with the changing financial landscape, Canopy is actively working to shape its future, starting in emerging wealth centres such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai.
