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Altoo Blog
17 June 2025
Blended Finance and Catalytic Capital: What UHNWIs Should Know
What is Catalytic Capital?
Catalytic capital is seed money for projects that help society. It is patient, flexible, and accepts high risk. Expected returns are usually modest; sometimes investors aim just to keep their money’s value. As long as some return is expected, it counts as impact investing. If no return is expected, however, then it qualifies as pure philanthropy.
Catalytic capital takes many forms such as low-cost loans and first-loss equity. The goal is to “set the stage” for socially oriented projects in areas like clean energy or healthcare. This early funding helps attract other investors later. For example, when a UHNWI gives a low-cost loan to a social enterprise, the loan might make the enterprise more attractive to commercial investors.
What is Blended Finance?
Blended finance happens when other investors add money to projects that have already received catalytic capital. These later-stage investors typically want greater returns. They feel safer investing because catalytic capital has taken on the biggest risks associated with a new business.
In impact investing, blended finance parallels the venture capital funding model. Later-stage impact investors see that early money has reduced risk, so they are willing to back an impactful project. This approach helps scale impact in areas like renewable energy and affordable housing, as larger amounts of capital flow in. For example, a development bank might give a low-cost loan for a solar project. This makes it attractive for UHNWIs who want greater financial returns from the socially impactful venture.
Example Scenarios
Catalytic capital deals don’t always lead to blended finance. But blended finance always needs catalytic capital first. Here are two hypothetical examples:
Catalytic Capital Example: A UHNWI gives a $1 million low-interest loan to a microfinance startup in Africa. The startup uses this money for technology upgrades and to prove that the business model works. Banks then provide $5 million in commercial loans.
Blended Finance Example: A development bank gives a $5 million low-cost loan to a renewable energy fund in Southeast Asia. The fund builds wind farms. Next, a UHNWI expecting competitive returns invests $3 million in equity. Ultimately, the project brings renewable power to thousands of homes.
Tracking Performance with the Altoo Wealth Platform
According to the GIIN 2024 report, blended finance is more popular among private debt-focused impact investors. 63% of such investors had participated in blended finance as opposed to 39% of private equity-focused ones.
Whether blended finance takes the form of debt or private equity – or any other asset class – UHNWIs can track performance seamlessly with the Altoo Wealth Platform.
The platform automatically gathers data from many sources across diverse portfolios. It then analyses and displays this information clearly in easy-to-read dashboards, with advanced tools for measuring returns against goals (such as 2% for a catalytic loan or 10% for a blended finance fund). Results automatically appear in easy-to-read dashboards to give wealth owners a complete picture of how their money is growing.
Operationally, the platform frees ultra-wealthy families and their trusted advisors from tedious manual workflows associated with tracking impact investments. This way, they can focus on the human sides of impact investing, i.e. defining what social returns look like and pursuing the relationships and community building that make their investments meaningful to society as a whole.
Takeaway
Catalytic capital and blended finance give UHNWIs important ways to create change while earning returns. Whether starting projects with loans or scaling them through structured equity deals, these strategies align wealth with purpose.
Ready to unlock the potential of these increasingly popular forms of impact investing? Request a demo of our platform today. See how we can help you drive impact with precision. Contact us at hello@altoo.io.
11 June 2025
Empowered by the Purpose: The Rise of the Digital Matriarchs in Impact Investing
Why Impact Investing Resonates with Women
Research confirms that women tend to prioritise social and environmental impact more than men. According to UBS’s 2023 report, 83% of women globally want their investments to reflect their values. This inclination is particularly strong in Western Europe, where awareness of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) issues runs high.
Women’s approach to wealth management often emphasises long-term outcomes and purposeful capital allocation, with a focus on climate action, gender equality, and community development. These priorities naturally align with impact investing, which blends financial performance with societal benefit.
Female Impact by the Numbers
- 70% of European women plan to increase their ESG investments in the next 3 years (UBS, 2024)
- $1.164 trillion in impact assets under management globally (GIIN, 2023)
- 92% of UHNW families cite “shared values” as key to intergenerational cohesion (PwC, 2024)
- 1 in 3 Swiss women now actively participate in financial decision-making for family wealth (Credit Suisse, 2023)
- Top causes for women investors: climate action, healthcare access, and poverty reduction (JP Morgan, 2023)
Accessibility of Impact Investing
Impact investing is no longer the preserve of institutional giants. Minimum investment thresholds vary: some private equity funds require €250,000 or more, but green bonds and ESG mutual funds allow entry points as low as €5,000. Even modest allocations (1% to 5% of a portfolio) can generate meaningful impact when pooled strategically.
Barclays Private Fund reports that UHNW women typically allocate between 10% and 20% of their portfolios to impact investments, signalling a growing commitment to marrying wealth and purpose.
A Case Study in Purposeful Wealth Management
Consider Anne, a 45-year-old French entrepreneur who founded a successful startup in Paris. Interested in education and gender equality, she turned to impact investing to extend her influence beyond business.
Anne uses Altoo, a Swiss digital wealth platform, to manage her diversified portfolio. The platform consolidates her private equity, real estate, and philanthropic assets, tagging investments according to their social or environmental impact. Crucially, it enables her to share a transparent dashboard with her two daughters, fostering intergenerational engagement.
Anne’s experience exemplifies how UHNW women leverage technology to align capital with values while preparing heirs to steward wealth responsibly.
The Role of Digital Platforms in Impact Investing
As impact investing takes hold among ultra-wealthy women, digital platforms like Altoo are emerging as key instruments of financial control. Far from being mere dashboards, they function as architecture for values-based capital allocation and streamline complex portfolios. “Wealthy women today are not just seeking returns, they are seeking resonance. We empower them with a platform that transforms complex wealth into clear, actionable insights, enabling them to invest with both confidence and conscience,” says Ian Keates, CEO of Altoo AG.
Key features of the Altoo Wealth Platform include:
Consolidation of Assets: Users can view their entire portfolio, including private equity, real estate, and philanthropic investments, in one place.
Tagging: Investments can be tagged based on their alignment with specific criteria, allowing for easy tracking and reporting.
Liquidity Monitoring: The platforms provide insights into available liquidity, facilitating timely reinvestment into impact ventures.
Intergenerational Sharing: Dashboards can be shared with family members, promoting transparency and involving heirs in wealth management decisions.
Beyond financial metrics, Altoo also supports the tracking of non-financial KPIs through a combination of API integrations, uploads, and data from third-party managers. This provides a measurable, credible view of impact for clients who demand substance behind sustainability.
Crucially, these capabilities are embedded within a robust framework of privacy. Switzerland’s Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) offers stricter controls on cross-border data flows than the EU’s GDPR, affording conscientious women greater command over their financial metadata. For those investing in sensitive areas (such as reproductive health, migration, or human rights) this level of discretion is not a luxury, but a necessity.
Legacy Through Impact
UHNW women are increasingly channelling their capital into thematic strategies that reflect deeply held values such as gender equality, health innovation, and clean energy chief among them. These investments offer more than financial performance; they provide a tangible avenue to support causes that matter. At the same time, legacy looms large. With 65% of UHNW families now using impact investing as a tool to align generations (PwC, 2025), the emphasis is shifting toward inclusion. Digital platforms make this possible by enabling shared decision-making, tracking impact across asset classes, and mentoring the next generation through real-time engagement with family wealth.
Yet purpose must be backed by proof. As scrutiny around ESG claims intensifies, UHNW investors are turning to third-party verification, self-reporting frameworks, and blockchain-based tracking to ensure their capital creates measurable good.
Platforms like Altoo are instrumental here, offering integrated tools for impact authentication, alerts for regulatory changes, and robust due diligence capabilities to guard against reputational and compliance risks. In this way, digital platforms are not just custodians of capital, they are curators of trust in an investment landscape where values and verification must go hand in hand.
Note: The information provided is based on available data and trends as of 2025. Investors should conduct their own due diligence before making investment decisions.
How to Create a Simple Impact Investing Checklist
- Define Your Core Values
Clarify what matters most to you (climate action, gender equality, education, etc.). - Choose Your Impact Themes
Select focus areas like women-led startups, renewable energy, or affordable housing. - Pick Your Investment Vehicles
Decide on asset types: public equities, venture capital funds, green bonds, and more. - Set Clear KPIs
Establish measurable goals for both social impact and financial performance. - Monitor Performance
Use a digital tool to track progress and adjust as needed.
4 June 2025
Five Key Reasons UHNWIs Are Embracing Impact Investing
For many wealthy families, philanthropy is a core value. Impact investing fulfills this mission while offering opportunities to grow wealth. Beyond these obvious benefits, impact investing addresses equally compelling but less apparent drivers: enhancing public reputation, aligning family values across generations, and strengthening portfolio resilience.
Together, these five reasons form a powerful framework for UHNWIs to achieve both personal and financial objectives in the 21st century:
01 Societal Returns
Impact investing allows UHNWIs to deliver measurable societal benefits while fulfilling their philanthropic aspirations. For example, investments in renewable energy projects can reduce carbon emissions by millions of tons.
According to BloombergNEF’s Energy Transition Investment Trends 2025, investment in the low-carbon energy transition worldwide grew 11% to hit a record $2.1 trillion in 2024. This massive capital deployment is fundamentally reshaping the global energy landscape. When $728 billion flows into renewable energy and $747 billion into electrified transport in a single year, the cumulative effect creates substantial emissions reductions. The sheer scale of this investment replaces carbon-intensive infrastructure with clean alternatives at unprecedented pace, creating measurable progress toward a cleaner, greener global economy.
02 Financial Returns
Contrary to the misconception that social good compromises profit, impact investments can deliver competitive financial returns. Research published by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) at the end of 2024 showed that 88% of impact-focused investors in Asia were satisfied with their financial returns.
The numbers speak clearly: private equity impact investments averaged 20% returns in 2024, exactly meeting expectations. Impact investments in equity-like debt and private debt actually exceeded expectations, respectively delivering 12% versus 10% expected and 10% versus 9% expected.
03 Public Reputation
Impact investing can enhance the public image of wealthy families. By aligning their portfolios with global priorities like sustainability or social equity, UHNWIs gain recognition as forward-thinking philanthropists.
Younger philanthropists particularly embrace using technology and social media platforms to find, support, and promote causes aligned with their efforts to advance the greater good. This trend to publicise impact investing — alongside a growing focus on impact investing itself — was identified as one of four key philanthropic trends to watch in 2025 according to UBS.
04 Intergenerational Alignment
According to PwC’s guide to impact investing for family offices, allocating capital according to social conscience is not a temporary trend that younger generations will abandon. Therefore, aligning with heirs on defining the greater good and how to work toward it is becoming essential for ensuring family legacy continuity — especially as portfolios are rebalanced and philanthropic strategies come under new leadership.
Impact investing can create a shared language and common purpose that bridges generational differences, ensuring family wealth serves consistent values across decades.
05 Risk Mitigation
Impact investments often focus on sectors like renewable energy that tend to offset volatility in other sectors according to many analysts. Goldman Sachs research from 2024 identified advancing sustainable growth as a multi-decade megatrend. Goldman pointed to the rising volume of green, social, and sustainability (GSS) bond issuance — which reached just under $1 trillion in 2024 — as evidence.
Government moves to promote sustainability remain consistently in the spotlight. Safeguarding the planet is a common theme at World Economic Forum meetings. As of 2025, publicly listed companies in the EU and USA must comply with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and Securities and Exchange Commission reporting requirements. Such regulations create structural demand for sustainable investments.
Time: The Essential Foundation of Successful Impact Investing
Without adequate time devoted to impact investing, wealthy families cannot deliver on its potential. Success requires dedicated time investment in three critical areas:
Defining and measuring social returns takes extensive research and reflection. Investments that genuinely create meaningful change — from reducing carbon emissions to improving education access — require careful evaluation and measurement. Some degree of introspection is often necessary, as assessments of social good can be subjective and highly personal to each family.
Ensuring competitive financial returns demands rigorous analysis. Impact investments must be measured according to objective criteria just like any other investment, requiring thorough due diligence and ongoing monitoring.
Building family alignment requires ongoing dialogue. Whether or not families publicise their impact investing efforts, aligning all members — particularly those taking or inheriting decision-making responsibilities — around impact investing’s role in the family legacy is essential. Finding this alignment takes time through multiple conversations and often formal documentation.
Altoo: Creating Time for What Matters Most
The Altoo Wealth Platform automatically consolidates, analyses, and visualises data on all of a wealthy family’s assets — including impact investments in whatever form they take, such as public equities, private equity, or debt.
This automation creates significant time savings. Family decision-makers and their trusted advisors can save time on financial reporting through streamlined operational processes and intuitive dashboards. More importantly, they can spend increased time on the human aspects of impact investing as they are freed from copying data from statements, checking spreadsheet formulas, and handling other manual processes.
The platform also features secure digital messaging to ensure the right people have easy access to objective financial information when aligning around the aspects of impact investing that truly define a family’s legacy.
Ready to enhance your impact investing strategy? Schedule a demo today by reaching out to us at hello@altoo.io.
27 May 2025
Fintech for Family Fortunes: The Altoo Way to Wealth Clarity
The Altoo Wealth Platform: Built To Bring Clarity from Complexity
Today, wealthy families often have highly diversified portfolios of bankable assets like equities and bonds held at multiple institutions around the world. A variety of non-bankable assets like real estate, private equity, collectibles, and sometimes cryptocurrencies are also in the mix.
Diversification is a hallmark of the best wealth management strategies, but consolidating and reporting data on a wide range of assets continues to be a headache for family offices. According to Deloitte’s 2024 findings, 61% of family offices cite data consolidation as their top digital priority but just 28% have implemented effective reporting tools.
Our flagship product, the Altoo Wealth Platform, is designed to address this challenge. The platform enables ultra-wealthy families to easily consolidate and oversee their entire wealth landscapes across banks, geographies, and asset types within a single, intuitive interface. The technology powering the solution securely integrates directly with custodians to provide near real-time performance updates.
The platform is distinguished by its highly visual, customizable interface. “We wanted to eliminate friction without eliminating nuance,” says Altoo CEO Ian Keates. With extensive experience leading operational and innovation projects at financial institutions in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, Keates brings valuable operational credibility and a strong understanding of the complexities that come with managing wealth. “This is not about replacing advisors,” he notes. “It’s about equipping them and the wealth owners they serve with better tools.”
It is a winning approach. According to our 2024 client survey, the platform brings over 90% users increased confidence in their financial oversight and faster decision-making.
Advancing Open Banking in Wealth Management
Keates also serves on the board of the OpenWealth Association, a Swiss-led initiative that standardizes API protocols for wealth management. OpenWealth defines, maintains, and operationalizes global API standards to establish efficient connectivity between banks and wealth technology providers, enabling open finance use cases.
“Open banking in wealth isn’t just about efficiency,” Keates explains. “It’s about sovereignty and alignment. Our clients want full visibility and control without giving up discretion.”
The Altoo Team: Blending Tradition with Innovation
Many fintechs appear to be on a mission to disrupt the financial industry. Not Altoo. The company is rooted in cross-disciplinary expertise and links symbiotically to all the other elements of a wealth owner’s financial ecosystem. The team – many of whom have previously worked at institutions like UBS, Accenture, Avaloq, and private family offices – includes financial analysts, cybersecurity engineers, UX specialists, and client relationship managers.
Altoo maintains a biweekly product release cycle, informed directly by user feedback and regulatory developments. “One of our core principles is agility with accountability,” says a senior product lead. “Clients are trusting us with their financial DNA. We don’t just build features; we validate them to ensure they meet the highest standards of security and usability.”
Altoo’s entirely Swiss-based data architecture and dedication to cybersecurity also set the company apart from other fintechs. The company deploys zero-trust infrastructure, secure cloud environments hosted exclusively in a tier 4 data centre in Switzerland, and routine third-party penetration testing. These security measures adhere to FINMA and GDPR guidelines.
From Burden to Insight: Family Office Success Stories
Across Altoo’s growing user base, the value of the platform is often measured not just in saved hours, but in reduced stress and improved governance.
- Onelife SA, a Swiss family office, slashed its monthly data processing time from 20 hours to just two, while decreasing audit burdens by 83%.
- ALBAPAZ, a multifamily office, used the Altoo Wealth Platform from day one to deliver a superior experience to each of the wealth owners it serves.
These milestones in Altoo’s track record are among the many reasons wealthy families and their trusted advisors rely on us. This evidence points to a growing need for tools that provide strategic clarity without adding operational noise.
Recognition and Momentum
Altoo’s traction hasn’t gone unnoticed. The company was named one of Switzerland’s Top 5 Growth Startups in 2023 by the Swiss Fintech Awards. Forbes recognized Altoo as a leading Swiss wealth management platform offering consolidated wealth data aggregation, performance reporting, and risk management, simplifying wealth management for family offices by providing easy-to-use tools for tracking both liquid and illiquid assets and integrating legal and compliance reporting.
What You Gain as an Altoo Client
For family offices, engaging with Altoo means more than just adopting a tool. It’s a step toward institutional-grade governance in a private setting.
Wealth Management, Reimagined:
| Legacy Approach | Altoo Approach | |
|---|---|---|
| Wealth Visibility | Wealth was scattered across multiple banks, spreadsheets, and paper files with no single source of truth. | All assets are consolidated in one secure platform, offering 360° visibility in near real time. |
| Reporting & Oversight | Reporting was manual and time-consuming, prone to errors, and often triggered audit challenges. | Reporting is automated, audit-ready, and significantly reduces administrative workload and compliance stress. |
| Decision-Making | Insights were delayed, decisions reactive, and context depended heavily on intermediaries. | Real-time dashboards, trend analysis, and scenario planning tools enable proactive and informed decision-making. |
| Client-Advisor Collaboration | Communication involved repetitive information requests, misaligned data, and endless email threads. | A shared digital environment improves collaboration, with exportable reports and faster, more strategic advisor discussions. |
| Succession & Legacy | Documentation was scattered and lacked transparency, especially for the next generation. | Legacy planning is digitised, with intuitive access for heirs and trustees, ensuring continuity and clarity. |
| Security & Sovereignty | Data was hosted in mixed or unknown jurisdictions, with limited control. | All data is hosted securely in Switzerland, aligned with FINMA standards, and clients control access on their terms. |
| Digital Literacy & Control | Clients relied heavily on institutions for tech and lacked confidence in evaluating fintech providers. | Altoo empowers clients with the knowledge and tools to manage digital wealth independently and securely. |
Tired of juggling multiple institutions and data sources? Let Altoo streamline your wealth oversight with clarity and control.
Book a demo today! Get in touch at hello@altoo.io.
21 May 2025
Where a Wealth Fintech Calls Home: Why It Matters for UHNWIs
Wealth Fintech Selection Criteria: The Obvious and Not-So-Obvious
When reviewing a wealth management fintech as a potential partner, among the most important decision criteria should be answers to two questions:
The obvious: Does it address practical needs?
Fintechs typically aim to address a narrow range of pain points in clients’ financial lives.
For UHNWIs with access to trusted advisors and other financial service providers of the highest caliber, partnering with a fintech is not usually the only way to solve a particular wealth management challenge — it is a way to solve that challenge better.
For example, UHNWIs will tend not to rely exclusively on a “roboadvisor” fintech, as talented humans are better at understanding and responding to the nuances of a wealthy family’s goals and circumstances.
In comparison to machines, however, these professionals are rarely as good at — or interested in, usually — sourcing and entering data, running routine analyses, and all the other tedious tasks that are necessary to inform the strategic advisory where human intellect shines. This pain point in wealth management workflows is among several addressed by the Altoo Wealth Platform, which automates data aggregation, analysis, and visualisation for all the various bankable and non-bankable assets in UHNWIs’ complex portfolios.
The not-so-obvious: Where does it manage wealth data?
In the digital age, where a technology company is headquartered and/or operates may not seem very important. Data easily flows across borders and everything is online anyway, right?
Think again. Different countries have different data protection laws. National regulators hold fintechs within their jurisdictions legally accountable for keeping data secure according to local rules.
For owners of significant wealth, the question is not if they can work with a fintech company in a particular country but rather which country’s laws best regulate fintechs to ensure private data remains private.
Switzerland: The Gold Standard for Wealth Data Protection
Wealth data handled by a fintech based in any reputable jurisdiction will be “safe enough” in most cases. For example:
- In the US, wealth fintechs must follow the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) for data privacy. State laws like California’s CCPA add protections.
- In the EU, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) safeguards wealth data.
- In the United Arab Emirates, authorities like the Central Bank and Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) enforce data protection laws.
- In Singapore, the Monetary Authority (MAS) oversees the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA).
Switzerland, however, is the jurisdiction of choice for the most discerning UHNWIs intent on protecting their wealth data. Other jurisdictions may suffice, but none match Switzerland’s unique blend of regulatory stability and reputation for meeting the needs – including those related to data protection – of UHNWIs.
In comparison to other jurisdictions where many fintechs call home, Switzerland shines when it comes to:
- Centralised regulatory authority. Unlike the United States’ fragmented regulatory landscape where wealth owners navigate a patchwork of federal and state laws governing data privacy, Switzerland offers a unified, comprehensive regulatory framework. The US approach creates uncertainty, especially with legislation like the CLOUD Act (2018), which grants American authorities access to data stored overseas by US cloud providers. In contrast, Switzerland’s centralised data protection regime provides a single, coherent set of rules enforced by dedicated regulatory bodies, offering the predictable, privacy-centered stability that ultra-wealthy clients seek.
- Flexible, independent innovation. Switzerland’s Federal Act on Data Protection (nFADP), effective 2023, aligns closely with the European Union’s GDPR but simplifies compliance; Swiss fintechs are better positioned to focus on securing client data in practice and not just demonstrating that they are on paper.
Track record. Switzerland is the oldest “niche player” in the global wealth ecosystem when it comes to offering stability for ultra-wealthy families. Exciting possibilities and strong data protection laws can be found in emerging wealth management and fintech hubs like the UAE and Singapore, but such jurisdictions do not rival Switzerland’s legacy and proven reputation.
Altoo: A Swiss Partner for Legacy-Level Data Protection
Altoo, exclusively managed and operated in Switzerland, is a prime example of a secure wealth management technology provider operating under Swiss data protection laws. Unlike many competitors who rely on third-party cloud services, Altoo maintains proprietary infrastructure through its self-owned data cloud housed in a Swiss tier 4 data center — exceeding regulatory requirements and establishing an exceptionally strong security foundation.
The Altoo Wealth Platform aggregates, analyzes, and visualizes data from multiple sources across wealth owners’ portfolios — including both traditional financial assets and non-bankable investments such as real estate, private equity, and collectibles — to provide a truly holistic view of total wealth.
Beyond the technological advantages, Altoo’s commitment to security is evidenced through rigorous penetration testing protocols and its zero-compromise approach to data sovereignty.
By operating exclusively under Switzerland’s client-centric regulatory framework, Altoo offers more than technological efficiency — it provides the confidence that wealth owners’ financial legacies remain protected within a jurisdiction renowned for its stability, discretion, and unwavering commitment to data protection.
Protect Your Wealth with Confidence
When selecting a wealth management fintech partner, discerning UHNWIs must look beyond functionality to consider the critical question of jurisdictional security. While developed economies like the United States, European Union, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore offer adequate data protection frameworks, for ultra-wealthy investors demanding the best of the best they fall short of the gold standard established by Switzerland.
With Altoo, you aren’t simply adopting a wealth management tool — you’re embracing a comprehensive security philosophy where your financial data receives the same level of protection as your physical assets. In an increasingly volatile digital landscape, this approach is essential for preserving multi-generational wealth.
Experience the Altoo Wealth Platform for yourself! Contact us for a demo.