WealthTech in Frankfurt

WealthTech is software for wealth management and private investing: robo-advisors, digital brokerage, portfolio tools and the systems banks use to advise clients. Frankfurt carries this field on two sides. It is the seat of Germany's largest fund managers, and it is the base for the startups that sell them software or compete with them directly. A wealth manager in Frankfurt now runs a traditional advisory desk and a digital layer on top of it.

The city's fund industry has a trade body of its own. BVI, the Bundesverband Investment und Asset Management, is based in Frankfurt and represents the German investment fund industry; its members manage several trillion euros for retail investors, insurers, pension schemes, banks, churches and foundations. A WealthTech firm that sells into German asset management deals with a BVI member sooner or later.

DWS Group, headquartered on Mainzer Landstraße, is majority-owned by Deutsche Bank and manages more than one trillion euros in assets, based on its own reported figures. It runs classic funds and a digital advisory arm that feeds Deutsche Bank's private banking platforms. Union Investment, also headquartered in Frankfurt, is the asset manager of the German cooperative banking group and works with more than 6,800 Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken branches, according to its own company profile. Both firms invest in the digital front ends that let a bank customer check a portfolio or run a savings plan from a phone.

Frankfurt is also where the WealthTech providers connect to market infrastructure. Deutsche Börse, based in nearby Eschborn, and the data specialists at the WM Datenservice innovation lab supply the price feeds and reference data a robo-advisor or portfolio app needs to run.

A robo-advisor in Frankfurt needs the same authorization as a human advisor. Offering portfolio management or investment advice through software counts as a regulated financial service under section 32 of the German Banking Act (KWG), and BaFin treats a robo-advice platform as it treats a human advisor for licensing purposes. Whether the advice comes from a person or an algorithm makes no difference to the authorization question.

On top of the national license, MiFID II sets the rules for how the platform collects client information, checks that a product suits the client and discloses its costs. A WealthTech firm building in Frankfurt designs its onboarding questionnaire and its cost disclosure screens around these two layers before it writes a line of investment logic.

Portfolio digitization is daily work at the large asset managers: DWS and Union Investment both push savings plans, robo-style model portfolios and app-based reporting to clients who used to get a paper statement once a year. Private banks in the city face the same shift, since their private banking advisors now compete with apps for the same younger client.

Tokenization is the newer topic. Advisors can distribute tokenized real-world assets through the GDX Primary Market, which opened Frankfurt's regulated infrastructure to digital securities, and firms such as Gubbi build the distribution layer that connects a wealth platform to these products. Someone new to WealthTech in Frankfurt can start with a large asset manager's digital arm or with one of the fintech programs at TechQuartier, where several early-stage wealth and investment startups are based.

Finance Loop is the meeting place in Frankfurt for people who build and sell WealthTech: product managers from asset managers, advisors, and the founders of investment platforms. It connects the finance, IT and AI communities and is built in collaboration with TechQuartier and Frankfurt Main Finance.

Finance Loop was a partner of the FinTech Founder & Investor Evening in Frankfurt, presented by Finteda, the law firm Schalast and the wealth management software company Fincite. For portfolio questions that touch bitcoin, the masterclass Bitcoin for Investors covers access routes and custody. Related pages: private banking in Frankfurt and WealthTech in Germany.

WealthTech is software and digital services for wealth management and private investors, from robo-advisors to the portfolio and reporting tools banks use with clients. It is a branch of fintech. The WealthTech answer in the knowledge hub goes through the category in more detail.

DWS Group, majority-owned by Deutsche Bank, and Union Investment, the asset manager of the German cooperative banking group, both have their headquarters in Frankfurt. Both firms run digital advisory tools alongside their fund business, and both sit inside the reach of BVI, the German fund industry association, also based in the city.

WealthTech topics run as sessions inside broader finance events in Frankfurt; the city has no standalone WealthTech conference. Finance Loop lists the meetups, seminars and conferences where the field meets in the events overview and in the calendar on this page.