Jonathan Steinberg: Jarrett, do you want to start?
Jarrett Lilien: Sure. You look at the various platforms and we’re competing with the biggest names out there and doing extremely well. And I think we’re doing extremely well because of our sort of holistic focus. We have content. We have a lot of tools that people can use to do analysis we’re able to generate customized reports for advisers to use with their end clients. So there’s – that’s really one of the big reasons for that branding change. It’s more than just models, it’s this holistic approach. But one of the things that we also do is we work very closely with advisers to get them up on models and get them using models. I talk about on many of these calls, if you go back over the last few years, that one of the bigger macro trends in wealth management is actually financial advisers using centralized models or home office models and we’re right at the front of the line there helping them do that.
In terms of growth and how we go about it, it’s sort of along the lines of what I was just speaking about is helping people transition to using models which still there is room to go of people in that macro trend getting there. But once they’re using them, getting them more comfortable and using maybe more than one model and then helping them bring more and more of their clients onto the program. And that’s what I talked about earlier with seasoning, and that’s why I’m also so bullish about the growth. I feel it’s in the pipeline where, again, we know that the assets follow the client growth. And again, we had about 40% AUM growth in models last year, but over 100% client growth. So the growth strategy is really about, again, penetration and seasoning those clients as they come on board while we continue to add new clients to the program.
Keith Housum: Great. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Next question today is coming from Michael Cyprys from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now live.
Michael Cyprys: Great. Thanks. I just wanted to follow-up a little bit on the commentary around tokenization, the benefits that you’ve outlined sound very compelling. But I understand it’s still very early days. I was hoping you can elaborate a bit on some of the hurdles that’s holding back further adoption including more broadly across the industry? And what catalyst do you think could accelerate that adoption? How long do you think this can take? Is it five years? Is it a 10-year journey in terms of more widespread adoption? And what sort of progress might we see in 2024 that can really help move the dial on adoption across the industry?
Jonathan Steinberg: Thank you, Michael. Well, let me first start. I would say the biggest hurdle to adoption has been regulation, the regulatory environment to bring this about has been extraordinary, though we’ve had tremendous progress, whether it’s a Bitcoin ETP launch in the U.S. the digital funds approved by the SEC, all the 38 states of money transfer licenses achieved, but regulation doesn’t just happen overnight. Those approvals are really take a long time, but we really are at the end of this journey. And the greatest thing that I can say is that we started this journey in reality, three and four years ago so that we are – while people are now talking about tokenization and they’re doing proof of concepts, we’re actually launching a business on it.
And so I think that is the thing that will – that’s taken the longest amount of time. Why you’re going to see adoption is the same reason that you saw adoption in ETFs. It will be a better experience, faster, cheaper, more functionality. Those kinds of elements matter to people and a better experience around your assets and money is allowing WisdomTree to go from just impeding for your investments, where listen, I’m very proud again about that $100 billion that we’ve accomplished over the last 16, 17 years. But to be able to go after savings for those that have been following WisdomTree for years, the savings account is a black and white TV and it matters to people that they get more income out of their savings account and more utility and more efficiency out of all of these assets.
So I think that’s what’s going to drive it will be this better user experience. And you’re going to start seeing it at WisdomTree, this upcoming year really starting in Q2 with more actual downloads and funded accounts. But Will, why don’t you add to this?
Will Peck: No, I think you covered a lot of it, Jono. I mean the one thing I’d point out on Page 14, a lot of people have just because like a token has the potential to be more liquid than another asset, doesn’t mean that unless there’s actually liquidity provision and demand that it will trade more right? So I think you’ve seen over the past few years, some people are like, “Oh, I’m going to tokenize this private fund and it will magically start trading.” We all know that’s not how it works. It’s actually about the underlying and demand for it. So what I think is exciting about what we’ve done, both on the retail side of WisdomTree Prime and also in terms of institutional and B2B use cases is building the portal to kind of meet clients where they are and actually demonstrating and creating the better utility around these assets as opposed to just putting them out there and hoping they start trading.
