Technology comes to ESG’s aid in Glide, Hayden Matthews’ new investment fund

One of the nation’s top private bankers is launching a tech fund focused on green and sustainable investing amid an accelerating drive by business to achieve net zero emissions.

Hayden Matthews at Birchgrove in Sydney: ‘Glide is the next evolution of wealth.’ Picture: John Feder

One of the nation’s top private bankers is launching a tech fund focused on green and sustainable investing amid an accelerating drive by business to achieve net zero emissions.

Hayden Matthews, the former boss of HSBC’s private banking business in Australia and a long-time adviser to a number of the nation’s richest families, claims the new business – named Glide – will be the first to use artificial intelligence and machine learning in ESG-positive and sustainable ­investing.

Matthews, who advises on more than $2bn in managed wealth and previously ran ANZ’s local family office division, says Glide will give clients access to the best of domestic and international offerings without the so-called “greenwashing” which has pervaded ESG investing.

“We see clients seeking access to ESG-positive and sustainable investments, without making major sacrifices to targeted risk/reward balance,” Matthews says.

“Those products are out there, particularly on the international market, but also developing rapidly in Australia.

“It’s a matter of listening to clients, hearing them, and sourcing what they want, in a market which for too long has tended to simply promote what pays best and is easiest to deliver.”

Glide will use an investment scorecard based on the United Nation’s Sustainable Investment Goals but will ask each client the principles they want to protect in their investing.

This could include social equality, clean water, recycling or reducing greenhouse gases.

Glide will also use augmented Artificial Intelligence (AI) and behavioural finance – the study of the influence of psychology on the behaviour of investors – to remove what Mr Matthews says are “biases or assumptions that stop us making money”, overseen by a team of quantitative investment specialists.

“It is our client’s journey of wealth beyond money, not ours. We want people to invest with impact which is aligned to their personal values.

“So the client pursues their vision of conscious wealth. We want to educate people on assessing and responding to ESG impact while avoiding false and misleading claims regarding sustainability. This is not about greenwashing,” he says.

“We are saying to our clients ‘We will make you money like we have in the past but please look at the green option first. It could make you the same amount of money or even far more for the same level of risk’.”

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Subject to regulatory approvals Glide aims to launch its app on Google Play and the Apple Store in 2023. While it will initially only be available to wholesale Independent Financial Advisors and professional investors within Australia, it aims to be available to Australian mass-affluent clients from mid-2023.

Matthews claims Glide is “the next evolution of wealth”.

“Sustainable banking combined with wealth management and accessible private banking made simple,” he says.

Glide has already established a wealth-development think tank, inviting senior wealth advisers, high-net-worth clients and family offices, private bankers, data scientists and financial technologists into a program to determine what is possible today, and what the future holds, to optimise wealth client portfolios and ­experiences.

It also tapped Nobel prize winning behavioural finance research popularised by Professor Bob Shiller of Yale University and the concepts Mr Matthews learnt first-hand while completing his Masters degree in Wealth Management at Yale University in 2014.

There he studied the inner workings of the world’s largest hedge fund through Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates and the Yale Endowment Fund.

Glide is seed-funded by five family offices, with backers including the rich-lister Maloney family’s Tulla Group, named after the Maloneys’ Irish home town.

Tulla became part of Australian corporate folklore 12 years ago when it reaped $340m from the sale of its stake in listed mining services firm MAC Services to US oilfield services company Oil States International.

Since then, Tulla has built on its wealth by investing in venture capital, private equity, debt, food and agriculture and gold, and last year floated a firm known as Tulla Resources on the ASX.

Its attraction is a 50 per cent interest in the Norseman Gold Project in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields, a joint venture with ASX-listed Pantoro.

“The reason I believe in the Glide thesis is because I’ve worked extensively in corporate finance and international trade for over 30 years and so understand intimately where this innovation makes sense,” says Tulla chairman and family patriarch Kevin Maloney.

“The ability to manage all your global assets effortlessly and simply from the palm of your hand is a game changer.

“The growth of the electric car market in recent years is incredible. EVs are certainly the future and lithium-ion batteries are the catalyst to this change.

“Like Glide, this is a clear example that with the right elements and the right amount of inspiration and technology, you can change an entire industry. When you have a solution that will pave the way for better services to future generations, people take notice.”

Matthews says Glide was sufficiently capitalised from its initial investors to reach positive cashflow on its initial product offerings and to meet its targeted first phase platform development.

He says it will also consider incremental fundraising to speed up platform and product delivery as its client base developed and on achieving relevant licensing applications, which are currently under way.