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.” 36