30 Best CEOs of the Year 2020 30 Best CEOs of the Year 2020 | Page 36

A Jedi in Family Wealth Systems
Integration & Client Reporting: Risclarity
“Producing effective, actionable reporting is both art and science.”
I
nvestment products are
becoming more diverse so
keeping track of the ultra-high
net worth family’s assets and
their value is becoming extremely
difficult. This can make monitoring
the family’s wealth, at best, more
time consuming and, at worst,
almost impossible for the family
administrator or trustee. Risclarity
has developed its own systems
and procedures for monitoring the
composition and performance of
a family’s investments and other
assets. Risclarity’s system will
present the family or its advisers
with comprehensive and timely
reports, consolidating the family’s
entire asset base. The asset and
performance analyses within
the reports are tailored to the
individual family’s needs in a way
that is believed to be unique in the
marketplace.
In conversation with
Rick Higgins CEO and
Founder of Risclarity
What was your motivation to
start Risclarity?
I grew up in the family office
environment, a “Family Office” is
basically a company that serves
a very wealthy family to help
manage their financial assets. My
parents were accountants, and
they both worked and served very
wealthy families. As was coming
out of graduate school with a
degree in Information Systems
basic computer science degree, my
mother tasked me with how best
to serve these families. I decided to
leverage technology instead of just
throwing more people and hours
at the problem. Back in the late
90’s we developed software that
would pull information directly
from financial institutions from the
banks to produce a series of reports.
They were web-based reports at
that point, and it was very unique
for that time frame. These reports
allowed us to leverage how we
would consolidate information from
these very complex and wealthy
families.
What is that one thing
you are proud of in your
company?
I’m most proud of the team that
we’ve assembled. I’ve had a
relationship with my team for at
least ten years, and it is really a
stunning stellar group. I work with a
very talented and intensely
customer service-oriented
group of people.
Who are the other successful
entrepreneurs you look-up
to?
There are several people that I
look up to, Steve Jobs is one of
them. He was undoubtedly an
innovator, somebody who’s very
insightful and intuitive around
user experience, user design, and
built to solve everyday problems.
Bill Gates is another person who
is very innovative and always tries
something new and seems to have
the ability to see the future.
Several people have been in my life
that aren’t as well-known names,
but they have been huge influences
in my ability to lead into manage
to and to find the right talent. A
gentleman by the name of Frederick
Mayer. He was the patriarch of the
first family I served. He was a very
genuine person, somebody who was
authentic and lived in the moment.
One thing that he always said was,
“Just be yourself, be the best and be
the best person you can be at any
point in time, but don’t try to be
somebody else.”
“We aspire to empower the most influential families around
the world to be better informed in their financial decision-
making through efficient, accurate and comprehensive wealth
reporting.”
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