Lunate, the Abu Dhabi-based alternate investment fund with more than $50 billion of assets, is partnering with Bank of New York Mellon Corp. on a new fintech venture to tap into the region’s burgeoning market for wealth management.
Alpheya, which will start with $300 million in capital, will provide a range of digital services, including client onboarding, financial planning, portfolio construction, trading and rebalancing, risk management reporting, and analytics, according to a statement on Tuesday.
The firm will start serving clients in the fourth quarter of 2024 and is on track to hire at least a hundred staff locally and globally, according to Akash Shah, chief growth officer at BNY Mellon. The US bank has a minority stake in the new firm.
“This product is demand driven,” Shah said in an interview. “We saw that our clients, mostly banks in the region, wanted to serve their wealth market, but didn’t have the right technology and capabilities to do it, and they were trying to build or buy it very quickly.”
Roger Rouhana, who was the head of strategy at BNY Mellon in New York for almost five years, is the chief executive officer of Alpheya. Under his leadership, the firm is looking to capture the Gulf region’s $5 trillion wealth market that’s growing at 8 to 10% a year, a pace rarely seen in financial services globally, Shah said.
Lunate and BNY Mellon are also looking to bring other shareholders into the business and are actively engaged with other potential regional investors, Shah said.
