With platform development at MVP and a full launch anticipated early in 2025, we catch up with Alan Schmoll, our Product Head for the Global Entity Platform - to understand how technology is set to transform client experience at Vistra and why now is the perfect time to disrupt the status quo in the corporate services industry. 

Why is Vistra developing platform technology?

Platforms are proven to transform industries. We can look at consumer platforms like Uber, Amazon and Spotify that have literally changed the game in their respective industries. Or we can look a little closer to home accounting platforms like Xero that have democratised the way that businesses - large and small - are able to run their accounting and finance at the touch of a button. 

All these examples have a handful of things in common. They simplify the user experience, smooth the path to progress and put products, services and the positive outcomes they confer, within easier reach. By making it easier for customers to connect and transact, platforms deliver the benefit of convenience – delighting customers and earning their loyalty along the way.

With more freedom for customers comes more opportunity for the provider. Any new platform relies on a core of data. And once that data is in place the value of the platform begins to be realised – allowing the platform operator to view, mine insights, plug and play apps – all in ways that augment and enhance the value the customer experiences. The possibilities are limitless.

Why a platform? Why now?

Vistra’s been a leading player in corporate services for some time now. As the business has grown, we’ve both acquired and developed technology to support and serve our clients along the way. Now we’re determined to bring our data together to unlock the next generation of client service. And we’re not just limiting the platform to our own data. This is a true platform for our clients where they can import and manage all their entities, not just the ones Vistra manages.

It’s fair to say our sector or industry has been somewhat slow to embrace the transformational benefits of platform technology. But with our recent combination of Vistra and Tricor, we have the global reach, the critical mass of services and perhaps more importantly, the vision and investment in place to make the move our clients have been waiting for. 

Right now, pulling data from disparate sources is like ‘eating glass’ for our clients. Many rely on manual processes to stitch together data from multiple sources. Bad enough when clients are operating in one or two jurisdictions, but many of our clients have operations all around the world. It’s a time-consuming headache that results in a lack of confidence in compliance matters. There’s an obvious need for data centralisation – and when you pool and organise data in one place – you unlock previously hidden insights. This is set to put clients on the front foot and deliver big wins for their organisations.

Here at Vistra, we know the time is now for this kind of game-changing development. Often start-ups or new market entrances push industries toward disruption.  Alternatively, seasoned players feel the pull to create value. But thanks to visionary leaders like Jonathon Clifton and Simon Webster and the backing provided by Barings EQT – Vistra is forging ahead to pioneer this transformation for our clients and our industry.

What does the platform do?

The endgame is that our corporate customers will come to the platform to complete all of the tasks they need in a couple of clicks. But platforms are not built overnight. For us, incorporating an entity was the obvious place to start – everything we do at Vistra really stems from that point of business inception. There’s simply nothing further upstream. So our incorporation tool allows clients to self-serve. Initially in a few key global locations, with more to be added as we enable the integrations to make this seamless, world-wide. We’re not alone in providing this functionality. There are some other techs around – but typically their provision is either local or niche. At Vistra, we’re well on the way to be being able to do this on a global scale – that’s what makes our incorporation tool really interesting. What used to take our clients weeks, will be within reach within a matter of hours.

Next up is entity management. We’re creating an entity ledger – a single source of truth that solves all the compliance headaches of disparate data. Migrating a client’s whole entity estate into the platform is set to be super simple – AI assisted, drag and drop. The system will do the work – so the benefits are immediate. 

There will be all the functionality you’d expect – dashboards, alerts and traffic light systems to help efficiently direct the user’s attention towards the stuff that needs doing. It provides a fast-track to more confident compliance so leaders spend less time worrying about what’s not been done and more time thinking about how to achieve their next strategic goal.

What’s driving Vistra to develop the platform?

Ultimately, our job is to make it easier for clients to get things done. That’s our promise - to deliver progress without friction. That might mean self-serve, but equally important is the ability to access real-life expert support in real-time – so we’re also building our traditional managed services across incorporation and global entity management into the platform – to give our clients the ability to choose.

Beyond these features at launch, we expect to add extra services at a rapid rate. The net result for the client is more agility, adaptability and resilience. The speed of change in business is relentless – so platforms that create advantage in keeping pace and getting ahead have to be the future…irrespective of industry.