Hello Marie, could you introduce yourself in a few words?

Hello, my name is Marie, I’m 30, and I split my time between Paris and Montpellier, where I recently took a big step by buying a house to renovate. It’s a project close to my heart, blending my love for design with the desire to create a space that reflects who I am, all while juggling the unexpected challenges of daily life. After several years in Paris, working in consulting and real estate, I felt ready for new adventures: there’s this house to renovate with the Mediterranean as a backdrop, and then, of course, this new entrepreneurial journey with RockFi!

‍

Can you tell us a bit about your background?

I studied at HEC and then joined the consulting firm Artefact as a data consultant. I later joined Beanstock as one of their first employees, serving as Head of Operations.

I built several teams—architects, legal experts, property management, and brokerage—and structured the entire Operations department. It was a very exciting experience, where I was able to implement automated processes and refocus the business on providing personalised support to clients, particularly first-time buyers.

At the same time, I trained in Product Management to develop the tech and product side: we gave ourselves a year to launch an app for estate agents, an app for clients, and to build our internal back-office from scratch in order to create a solid, high-performance tech structure to support our growth.

‍

Why and how did you decide to co-found RockFi?

The story is quite surprising, as I didn’t initially think I would follow this path: it’s a field my parents have been working in for 35 years.

But I met Pierre Marin a little over a year ago, and he told me about his project... in wealth management. I loved his energy, and the project felt like an obvious choice! On one hand, my experience in Proptech operations gave me a clear vision of the technological potential in the financial sector. On the other hand, I thought of my parents, who are wealth management advisors themselves, and whom I’ve so often heard complaining about the increasing complexity of compliance and administration in wealth management. The burden of admin cuts them off from the core of their profession: the time spent with their clients.

‍

Can you tell us more about the wealth manager’s experience and how tech can radically transform it?

It’s a fantastic profession, where a real bond can be formed—a genuine, intimate relationship with a client and their family, sometimes spanning several generations. This "human" dimension is the first thing a private banker or wealth advisor will talk to you about when discussing their job. And then... they’ll tell you about the complexity of the admin.

Today, there is a real contradiction in the experience of a wealth advisor or private banker: there is ever more administration, more constraints, and more tools to integrate... all while needing to be present for their clients. These demands are contradictory, and since you can’t avoid compliance or admin, it’s the time spent with the client that suffers.

However, this conviction needs to be clarified: in the wealth management market, "full tech" doesn’t work; human advice is irreplaceable in our sector. At RockFi, we view tech as a tool—a lever to serve the relationship: it enriches, it doesn’t replace. We work on automating everything that doesn’t provide real value: administration, and "cold," standardised information. The whole challenge is to refocus the profession on true added value: spending time with clients and offering them personalised advice tailored to their life projects and experiences.

‍

‍

Do you have any examples of opportunities identified with your managers that you are currently working on?

Yes, we have identified several opportunities, and one of the most promising today is Artificial Intelligence, which opens up incredible possibilities for personalisation.

• The first example is the idea of ultra-personalised asset allocation using AI. Today, a banker recommends an allocation, but they don’t have the tools to closely monitor all their clients' portfolios on a daily basis. The consequence is that clients end up with allocations where nothing happens for 10 years. Yet every week, or even every day, market news can impact risk exposure and therefore asset allocation. If an AI is capable of analysing the market every day and alerting us to weak signals, we want to follow that thread and design a dynamic allocation where each client is informed in real-time of risks, and where their advisor can proactively suggest rebalancing. We even want to go as far as hyper-personalising every newsletter sent to clients with alerts and market news that is targeted and relevant to their specific portfolio.
• The second example is the possibility of offering clients a 360° report to view their managed portfolio and their wealth in a holistic way. Having a centralised view allows advisors to perform better analyses, but also to define strategies and recommendations that are much more adapted and personalised.

These are two examples among many others: we are focusing primarily on resolving friction points, but tech can also help us open up new territories of opportunity for our managers.

‍

We’ve talked a lot about the current experience for managers; could you tell us more about the client experience and their pain points? Perhaps give us some examples?

There are two key friction pointsthat I mentioned earlier.

The first is the cumbersome nature of the onboarding process. There is a communication issue regarding the sheer volume of documents to be signed. Clients sign them without ever really understanding why. They approve a process, then three months later, they are asked to sign again, even though nothing has actually changed. All of this creates administrative complexity that slows down the process and causes avoidable frustration. Our challenge is to bring meaning back to compliance.

The second point is the lack of personalised advice. Too often, clients are told about products or structures they aren't familiar with, without being told why it’s the best solution for them. There is a tendency to jump straight into offering complex products without having built and validated a clear strategy first. At RockFi, we do things differently: we start by defining a comprehensive, personalised strategy, and then the products and tools follow, based on the objectives. If it fits from the start, great. If not, we adjust. The main thing is that the products serve the strategy, not the other way around.

‍

So, you are effectively carrying out a dual transformation: by transforming the experience for managers, are you also transforming the experience for the client?

Our vision is clear: to simplify private wealth management to better serve our clients. The goal is to solve the clients' problems, but to do that, we first have to tackle the blockers faced by the bankers. That is an obvious prerequisite for us. By freeing up their time and putting their performance at the heart of our actions, we directly improve client satisfaction with advisors who are more available, proactive, and efficient.

‍

Who are your clients today?

Our clients are mainly entrepreneurs, athletes or artists, business leaders, and younger generations coming into an inheritance. What they all have in common is that they want a simpler, higher-performing model.

More broadly, we are currently witnessing an unprecedented transfer of wealth. In France, 16 million people aged between 60 and 80 are set to pass on hundreds of billions of euros to their children. It is the largest transfer of wealth in history. These two generations have very different needs: the former will need personalised advice, while the latter will look for more technological solutions. Our goal is therefore twofold: to support the former through this transfer process and to anticipate the expectations of the latter, in order to become the benchmark in private wealth management for this new generation.

‍

Can you tell us more about this client experience?

I can give you three of our key areas of focus:

1. An intimate experience

The client experience in wealth management is very unique because you are truly entering the client's private life. You are talking about money, family situations, tax contexts, and long-term life plans. Sometimes, this touches on sensitive subjects like a death or a divorce. You are entering the client's personal and family world, and that requires a great deal of subtlety and elegance. The client is entrusting you with very sensitive information, so building a relationship of trust is crucial. That is what makes the client experience both fascinating and complex. You cannot automate everything, because technology is impersonal by nature. What really matters is the quality of the human relationship between the advisor and their client.

2. Celebrating wins

There are specific moments in this experience that we want to handle with particular care, most notably: the moment we celebrate our clients' victories. The question here is how to highlight the successes, performance, and key milestones of wealth management. Every client will approach this idea of celebration in their own way. But it is never a trivial moment. A family legacy or the fruits of a lifetime of work are often the result of numerous choices and risks taken over time. Taking the time to acknowledge these achievements is a key element of the client experience.

3. Nurturing passions

We also work extensively around our clients' passions. We try to build personalised experiences around what drives them and makes them tick. Passions are deeply personal, and they link naturally to wealth management because, ultimately, we are helping clients achieve projects that are close to their hearts. What drives everyone is the ability to fully live out their passions, and our role is to help them achieve that.

‍

How do you work?

We work a lot with design methodologies—integrating our clients or private bankers into the thinking process as the starting point for everything we build.

• A genuine observation phase. At the beginning, we conducted an "undercover" observation phase for over six months with five to six advisors to observe the client relationship as closely as possible and identify pain points and strengths.
• Then, a phase of co-construction and ideation with all stakeholders, collaborating in particular with experience design specialists. We intentionally approach this stage with a great deal of naivety and candour to avoid preconceived ideas and biases. The goal is to break away from existing models and think differently. We obviously involve volunteer clients and independent wealth advisors (CGPs), whom we consider to be true beta-testing partners in our approach. This allows us to establish a target vision that serves as a compass. At that point, everything seemed possible to us, and that guided us towards what could constitute the best experience for our clients.

We are in a process of constant improvement : we question, we test, we learn, we improve, and then we scale up. And we continue to challenge the status quo to always further optimise the experience for our advisors and clients.

‍

Any final words?

Join us! We aim to triple our headcount by the end of 2025; we are looking for talent to join our Product Management and Operations departments and breathe new life into wealth management! Don't hesitate to write to me if you would like to join the adventure!