Halo Investing: How This Company Makes Structured Notes Easier

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jun 16, 2019
  • Halo Investing, the world’s first and only independent multi-issuer technology platform for Structured Notes, announced it raised $12 million in Series B
  • Allianz Life Ventures, a Piton Investment Management affiliate, and William Blair Circle provided the funding

Halo Investing is considered the world’s first and only independent multi-issuer technology platform for Structured Notes. Recently Halo Investing closed a $12 million Series B round of funding at an undisclosed valuation from Allianz Life Ventures (part of Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America), an affiliate of Piton Investment Management, and William Blair Circle (an affiliate of William Blair).

With this round of funding, it will help further the company’s international footprint and support initiatives that will change the way that Structured Notes are purchased, accessed and traded, and expanded into new asset classes. Structured Notes generally require minimum investment sizes of more than $1 million and have only been accessible by high net worth investors. And the Halo platform delivers Structured Notes to Advisors around the world and ensures transparency, competition, and price efficiency to all investors.

As Halo remains independent, the company can deliver buy-side wealth management channels with the best investment for a client in an issuer-agnostic way while ensuring that client data is protected. Plus Halo helps both issuers and buy-side customers improve their order management workflow and assisted in making back office and product compliance more efficient and provides a seamless end-to-end Structured Note solution for its partners.

“While Halo was built for the Buy-Side, we have 18 leading Issuers on our platform that really see the value of Halo’s mission to disrupt and democratize what has traditionally been dominated by a few select Wall Street banks,” said Halo co-founder and CEO Biju Kulathakal. “We believe that open access where Issuers truly compete and don’t pay to access Advisors’ orders ultimately keeps the market fair, balanced and transparent. It’s what all of us as investors ourselves should expect and demand from our solution providers.”

Kulathakal is a serial entrepreneur and is also known as one of the co-founders of Redbox, a venture partner at Chicago-based venture capital firm OCA Ventures, and founder of Trading Block. Halo was also founded by president Jason Barsema — who was previously an executive at Credit Suisse.

“Allianz Life was especially interested in Halo because of their belief that all investors should have access to the same investment products,” added Corey Walther — who is the head of distribution relationship management and business development at Allianz Life. “In addition, they are doing some innovative work with the power of their analytics and automation capabilities, and we are excited to assess how that can be applied to the annuity marketplace.”

The Halo platform offers Structured Note education, content generation, and independent secondary liquidity. Plus the Halo platform gives advisors the tools necessary for understanding, evaluating, and executing Structured Notes almost instantly — which simplifies and demystifies the complex investment product.

“Halo’s relentless mission to change the world for the better really resonated with us at William Blair,” explained William Blair CFO Jon Zindel. “Coupling this with Halo providing our Advisors with the most disruptive technology in the Structured Note space, we were thrilled to have the opportunity to participate in a company that has already made such an exciting impact around the world.”

The Halo platform also delivers one of the most extensive pre-and post-trade analytics to aid advisors in making informed decisions across 5 continents. And it offers best-in-class lifecycle management tools, improving risk management, and trade monitoring for advisors, trade desks, and compliance teams. Plus the company also runs a proprietary competitive auction process for live trades, promoting transparency, and price competition.

“Halo was purpose-built for Advisor’s needs, having the mantra of putting positive impact before profits,” noted Barsema. “Whether you are a firefighter or a Fortune 500 CEO, ALL investors deserve access to protective investing, done in an independent and unbiased way. This has been the key to making Halo one of the largest platforms in the world, and we couldn’t be prouder to have Allianz and William Blair stand by our side on this mission.”