30 Best CEOs of the Year 2020 30 Best CEOs of the Year 2020 | Page 37

What are the qualities
required to be a successful
CEO?
There are three qualities a
successful CEO must have. First, a
good financial sense, the ability to
understand the numbers. Second, a
good operational sense, the ability
to understand the business and
lastly, a successful CEO has the
ability to inspire others!
If you had not become a CEO,
what else had you dreamt of
being?
I had the dream of being close to
the creative industry. I grew up
wanting to be a cartoonist; I
admired, George Shultz’s “Peanuts”
and the Snoopy era, I really wanted
to do something like that. I have
in sense achieved that. I have
created another business that
is I’m producing and directing
documentary films and a television
series for our local PBS affiliate.
What do you think was
a striking factor that
made you to choose this
profession?
solution which allows advisers
to streamline and expedite client
on boarding by automating the
process of opening accounts with
financial institutions. It takes quite
a bit of time, and we are building
automation with the ability to
move money between accounts.
When they need to place trades or
move cash between banks, we can
automate a lot of those steps and a
lot of those processes.
When I graduated in 1997 there
were not a lot of opportunities
available for people with my
background in finance and
computer science and I couldn’t
find the job that I was looking for,
so I just decided to create it! Ever
since then, I’ve always tried to
create jobs that I want.
Are there any products that
your company is planning to
launch?
Quite a few, we serve advisers that
serve very wealthy families, and we
have developed a number of tools
that will allow those advisors to
help serve their families efficiently.
We’re looking at adding risk
modeling tools for our portfolio
and investment reporting solutions.
We’re currently launching a new
Overall, we are creating a
technology ecosystem for firms so
they can support these very wealthy
and sophisticated families. This
ecosystem connects everything from
their CRM and accounting systems
to their financial planning tools and
investment management platforms.
We reduce redundancy and the
areas where human error can occur
as well produce new analytics
and comprehensive reporting, not
previously possible, by pulling data
from all of the above technology
solutions with in the ecosystem.
SR
Rick Higgins, CEO and Founder of Risclarity
Creative engineer, entrepreneur, thought leader and financial
software expert to the nation’s wealthiest families seeking
to leverage leadership and entrepreneurial experience
to increase the prosperity of individuals, families and
organizations. Rick Higgins founded Risclarity in 2010.
Previously, he co-founded Wealth Touch in 2001 and is
credited with creating the groundbreaking technology that
served as the foundation for the firm.
In the 1990’s, as Co-founder of Higgins-Knecht, a technology
consulting firm, and Digital Partner, a financial technology
firm. Higgins established himself as an innovator and leader
in the field of family wealth management. In 1999, The sale
of Digital Partner to My CFO Inc., a Silicon Valley-based
online pioneer in the ultra-high-net-worth market, firmly
placed Higgins at the heart of what became known as the
technological renaissance in wealth management.
Today, Higgins is regularly invited to speak to family offices,
insurance companies and financial planning groups all over
the U.S. and abroad.
Rick Higgins, CEO & Founder
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