The arrival of the “platform economy” has been one of the most seismic shifts in commerce over the last 15 to 20 years — from online marketplaces pioneered by the likes of eBay, through to super apps such as Southeast Asia’s Grab that spans everything from food delivery to digital banking. 

By allowing consumers to effortlessly connect with a vast array of products and services from a central point, platforms offer a kind of convenience that is unparalleled, and in doing so, they have disrupted virtually every industry they have entered.

Part of this success is about scale. Digital infrastructure has enabled these platforms to accommodate tens of millions of users, move into new markets with relative ease, and connect businesses with customers to an extent that has previously been unobtainable. In corporate services, helping companies to achieve and optimise scale is at the core of what we do. And yet our industry has been slow to recognise and embrace the transformative scaling power of digitalisation.

This industry-wide status quo is ripe for disruption. At Vistra, we’re no stranger to pioneering progress, having developed a truly global, world-class service proposition that empowers our clients to navigate complexity and operate efficiently, regardless of where they engage us from. Now, we’ve set our sights on building a digital ecosystem that complements our wealth of corporate service expertise. We want to make what we do more accessible to clients and put capabilities into their hands: whether that is initial set-up with entity incorporation or understanding and meeting regulatory requirements. We’ve always sought to be innovative in our solutions for clients, so why not innovate on how they’re delivered as well?

More Visibility Less Friction

A large part of what we do day-to-day involves tackling thorny issues, so we’re acutely aware of the pain points our clients come up against—everything from juggling complex regulatory requirements and tracking compliance deadlines, through to inefficiencies in onboarding. Running a business in multiple jurisdictions entails so much complexity that even the most dedicated management teams can struggle to maintain the kind of holistic view needed to run things smoothly. The inefficiencies in these processes don’t just slow down operations—they pose significant non-compliance risks, which can have severe financial and reputational repercussions.

The first stage of our tech development has focused on one area of our capabilities – formation and full lifecycle entity management. But ultimately, our platform will put the full sweep of the Vistra offer into a single, easy-access, on-line location. Disparate data and manual processes will be replaced with a centralised, consolidated source for intel and data across the entirety of a global entity estate – uniting business leaders and compliance specialists with a comprehensive, unified and actionable overview, while delivering an audit-ready level of detail. It means clients will have the optionality of self-serving on simple, transactional requests, or directly connecting with one of our experts where extra support, insight and advisory are required. We’re not looking to become a software company, but rather, we’re working to harness technology in such a way that it unifies and augments what we already do. In the process, we’re reimagining how corporate services are delivered; a logical extension of our commitment to helping businesses achieve progress without friction. 

Ambition, powered by capability

For over 15 years, Vistra has built a reputation on transformation, combining organic growth with an ambitious set of acquisitions and integrations spanning over 40 businesses. Our recent merger with Tricor allowed us to scale up dramatically; we now have 9,000 professionals in over 50 jurisdictions, giving us truly global reach and market-leading capabilities. In many ways, the story of Vistra’s international growth is reflective of our clients’ own journeys. We don’t just understand their pain points—we’ve gone through many of the same challenges ourselves. Now, given our combination of capability and experience, we’re uniquely positioned to deliver transformative potential in our industry through the power of a global platform.

However, the technology is simply a means, rather than an end in and of itself. We will continue to be a global services provider not a pure-play tech co. We’re only able to create and compound value for our clients because of the incredible people we have working for us, and it’s making this collective expertise more accessible that will power this next phase of our evolution. Platforms have achieved the success they have because they act as an effective conduit to things of value for consumers, all while offering greater choice, flexibility, and convenience. Likewise, Vistra’s platform will put all of our people’s extensive capabilities in one place, giving our clients the same kind of accessibility and seamlessness they’ve come to expect in other parts of their day-to-day lives. The win here is for optionality – we are empowering our clients’ choices and helping them to make decisions with confidence in their pursuit of progress.

We’ll have done our job right if our customers’ experiences are defined by things like minimised paperwork, the ability to easily navigate compliance across multiple jurisdictions, or the speed with which one of our experts was able to get to the root cause of their tax issue. The end result will be a better way of engaging corporate services, putting more opportunities within reach of our clients with less effort on their part.

After all, what is a platform if not a place from which to launch something greater?