Bootstrapped Estonian-Luxembourgish fintech Depowise is scaling with tier-one banks, betting depositary efficiency is the next big margin story.
Depowise is chasing a quieter but lucrative corner of fund finance: the depositary function, where banks are legally required to monitor cash flows, safekeep assets, and provide independent oversight for every fund they service. “These are demanding, highly regulated responsibilities, and most depositaries still run them across spreadsheets and disconnected tools,” says Melanie Moos, Managing Director of Depowise. As assets under management climb and regulation tightens, that function is becoming a genuine cost, capital, and operational-risk driver on bank balance sheets, not a compliance box to tick.
The Estonian-Luxembourgish Fintech company says its platform now supports more than €2 trillion in assets under oversight across over 3.000 funds, spanning UCITS and alternative strategies, all built without raising outside capital. Its client roster includes ING, Mitsubishi UFJ, and Brown Brothers Harriman, tier-one banks running large, complex fund books. “A platform that serves them has to be built for that reality, not adapted to it afterwards,” Moos notes, citing the higher cost-to-serve and operational risk manual processes carry at that scale.
“The priority for the next phase is to keep earning that kind of trust as we scale.”
“We have grown to more than 3.000 funds and over €2 trillion in assets under oversight, with zero client churn, and we have done that without external investment,” Moos adds.
For depositary banks, the economic case is about margin protection as much as regulatory compliance: automating oversight lets assets under administration scale without a proportional rise in headcount, error rates, or capital set aside for operational risk. Moos frames the driver as fund growth and complexity rather than regulation alone, with frameworks such as DORA and AIFMD II acting as an accelerant that “turns that from a someday project into a near-term priority.”
Going forward, the strategy leans on winning further tier-one banking mandates across Europe and Asia rather than volume growth for its own sake. “The priority for the next phase is to keep earning that kind of trust as we scale,” Moos says, positioning Luxembourg’s €5-trillion-plus fund industry as the springboard for wider international expansion.
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