Pepper Inside – A Call to the Investor Community

In an earlier article in FinLedger, Pepper CEO Pulak Sinha and Romi Mahajan called “AssetTech” the $100 trillion Bogey. They purposely decided to go “hyperbolic” with the title for a few reasons. First, they believe that Asset Management as a class is underserved by FinTech. Second, they wanted people to realize that sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. Indeed, to suggest that $100 trillion is under management is to downplay the actual numbers, which estimates place at closer to $120 trillion.

Such numbers are staggering. $100 trillion exceeds world GDP. $100 trillion would be the value of 100,000 newly-minted unicorns.  These numbers are baffling and daunting.  But to the brave go the spoils and as such, the Pepper team decided to build an enterprise-grade system that could manage data and decisions in this vast and underserved space.

The guiding principle of AssetTech must be “stewardship.” There is a massive moral and fiduciary responsibility for managing other peoples’ and institutions’ money. There is also a great deal of complexity- with hundreds of asset classes, differing sectoral and geographical rules, specific protocols related to the management of institutional wealth, and changing regulatory regimes. There is also what we call the “usual” complexity which is to say, it is difficult to optimize ROI given the abundance of investment avenues. As such, decision-making in this space is non-trivial. We thus need intelligent systems of record to be able to quickly interpret data and act on it in time-frames that are often compressed. Asset Management is not for the faint of heart.

AssetTech must mirror that reality. Good enough is not good enough in this space. The Pepper experience illustrates many aspects of this idea: $6 billion is managed on the Pepper platform and that constitutes a small fraction of what is possible; nevertheless, each institution, each Asset Manager deserves the highest level of stewardship possible – for its data, decision workflows, customer information, and contribution to ROI. $6 billion and $60 billion are different in scale but in “kind,” they are the same.

Those who entrust their money to Asset Managers have the right to ask hard questions – including “How are you managing all the data and driving ROI for me?” Further, with all the news about fraud and breakdowns or loopholes in controls, “How are you managing risk while optimizing my ROI?” They have the right to know what systems are being used to handle these processes.

For investors to believe that their money is at once safe and simultaneously growing, they must ensure that the institutions managing their money are progressive and circumspect with technology. Put simply, they need to believe that the “innards” of the money-management institutions are healthy and solid.

The phraseology is inescapable. And we must flatter one of the great technology companies by plagiarizing what we believe is the most powerful message in the history of technology. You all know it: “Intel Inside.”

In AssetTech, investors must insist on “Pepper Inside.”

Work with us to make your data and decision infrastructure rock-solid.

Have Pepper Inside.