Lawrence Wintermeyer, CEO of Avrio
By Jules Lavallee
Lawrence is the CEO of Avrio and has held roles chairing and managing alternative investment funds in managed futures, energy, and global reinsurance, following a career in Big 4 advisory services. He has served the global financial services sector in the UK, EMEA, the US, and APAC including banks, investment managers, and insurance companies, and has run and advised technology startups. He is the Chair of Global Digital Finance (GDF), a not-for-profit industry association, promoting fair and transparent markets for crypto and digital assets and has held several trade association board roles including the OECD, Innovate Finance, and PIMFA (UK). Lawrence has an MBA and is a regular Forbes and Fintech.TV contributor covering fintech, crypto, and digital assets.
Tell us about Avrio. What has been your focus in 2024?
Avrio is a financial services technology and data company delivering digital market infrastructure and services on an institutional grade full technology stack, transacting across private markets, public markets, and digital markets – a multi-asset class global platform. Our focus in 2024 has been on M&A and we have acquired a number of new technologies to build out the products we are bringing to market in 2025. We have bolstered our core US regulated securities broker dealer platform, Arkonis, with a number of new capabilities extending both our regulated and unregulated offerings.
These include Block ETXs – indexed and thematic products for the tokenized global markets; an asset tokenization platform – ETFs, ETPs, ETNs, and real-word assets with a big focus on private markets and alternatives; a crypto lending platform – un-hypothecated lending for borrowing and trade; a big data domain – externalities and analysis to support investment decisions; an AI platform – deploying GenAI agents across asset platforms for analysts, portfolio managers and investors; and, a state of the art platform for alternative asset managers to manage the compliance of primary and secondary issuances through to cap table management.
We have assembled some of the best global talent on the Avrio team, and are preparing for two market MVPs in 2025, one in the US, and one globally. In all, it has been a very busy and exciting year for the Avrio team.
Tell us about Avrio’s ATS technology.
AVRIO is a registered market infrastructure provider with a full technology stack and the parent company of Arkonis. Arkonis is the operator of a broker dealer and Alternative Trading System (ATS) in the US. Arkonis Capital, LLC, a US broker dealer (BD) and market infrastructure, services, and data provider with an institutional grade full technology stack transacting equities and debt and includes:
- A trading engine (ATS), qualified matching services (QMS), quotation bureau (QB), and a Transfer Agent (TA) for transacting in unregistered securities and private markets;
- Exchange management (EM), order management (OM), portfolio management (PM) and client management (CM) for transacting in registered securities, ETFs, and funds in public markets; and,
- A Digital Assets Derivate Exchange (DEX), SEC application pending, and an NFT trading platform for digital assets markets.
The technology enables clients and partners to create, manage, and trade any product on a global platform, and is blockchain agnostic. This enables clients to capture and scale market opportunities while creating standardization and best practices designed to prevent fraud, protect investors, and comply with know-your-customer and anti-money laundering compliance laws.
Arkonis Capital LLC is a member of the FINRA and SIPC.
What is the synergy like between you and your Avrio co-founder, Vincent Molinari.
I liken our partnership to some of the great partnerships we have learned from: Buffet and Munger (he’s Warren) or if you are a music fan, Jagger and Richards (I am Keith). I call him the Rainmaker – his dealmaking and network are second to none in the fintech space and he has a pedigree and track record on Wall Street building regulated alternative trading systems which is outstanding.
Vince petitioned the SEC for digital assets early (the JOBS Act), obtaining the first permissions from the SEC and bringing the first ATS tokenized asset to the market in the US – The St. Regis Property token. He is now the CEO of FintechTV, broadcasting from the NYSE trading floor, and has shone a light on a larger and more diverse number of founders, entrepreneurs, and executives across global fintech than would ever get this sort of exposure through traditional linear financial media. He is also the executive Chair of Avrio, and we work closely on everything – he is a legend.
He calls me the Zookeeper. I have a background in asset, finance, and talent management and have run alternative funds and technology companies. My job is to look after all the animals and their diverse needs for food and care around the clock, and to make sure we don’t put the wrong ones together. Management of the bulls here is critical, but the bears are equally as important – delivering secure, trusted, consistent performance through markets is what we are all about.
A decade in top tier management consultancy serving the global financial services sector when I was younger was invaluable to me as a capital and talent manager – I worked in most areas from classic strategy and transformation to performance improvement and cost reduction. Indira Nooyi, the former CEO of PepsiCo once said of her experience working at BCG (for 6 years), that every year in management consultancy is like three years of management experience due to the scope and compressed timescales of client engagements. After a decade in management consultancy, I felt like I had been working for 30 years, and certainly felt I had the accumulated experience.
Vince and I share a core set of values with family, work, and community, and in my humble opinion, are very generous with the time we dedicate to all of these. We were initially brought together collaborating on advocacy work for the digital assets industry in New York (at the UN). Vince was one of the first Advisory Council members of Global Digital Finance (GDF) and advised me as we were building it in 2018, we decided to put together our companies into Avrio, and the rest is history.
You are the Chair of Global Digital Finance (digital assets industry association). What is your mission?”
GDF’s mission is “To promote and underpin the greater adoption of market standards for the use of crypto and digital assets, through the development of best practices and governance standards in a shared engagement forum with industry, policymakers and regulators.”
GDF’s is unique in the industry association space as we bring together both unregulated and regulated firms in the financial services sector to deliver crypto and digital assets best practices, standards, and advocacy from a small core of funding members. Our “open” engagement forums attract companies of all shapes and sizes around the world and includes many of the leading firms who participate in our publications and outreach.
We are more like a global “open innovation platform” than a typical trade association, it’s the “power of the crowd”. GDF also runs a separate quarterly forum for regulators to keep them aligned with the voice of the industry and this extends to engagement with policymakers in Washington, London, Brussels, the Emirates and APAC.
I never thought I would be working in the not-for-profit sector, let alone founding and chairing an industry association. In 2015, I was asked to be the CEO of Innovate Finance, the UK FinTech association which was conceived by then Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne – it was an honor and a privilege – I got the job because of my team and community building experience across different tribes. My wife was so supportive of me taking a “career break” from my business to run a not-for-profit, I am eternally grateful. It was one of the richest life experiences I have had professionally.
Just as I was setting up Avrio in 2017, my now GDF co-founder, Simon Taylor, Brainfood’s brains, suggested we set up an association focused on crypto and digital assets, and the rest is history. I am blessed as I have a world class executive team whose capacity and output is breathtaking, a very supportive cofounder and board who are big contributors to the association, and a global community of members from small fintechs to big financial institutions, who “get” open collaboration and the importance of working together to move the needle with markets, governments, and regulators.
Our advocacy work has focused on crypto and digital assets and tokenization and look where we are in the world now in 2024 going into 2025. GDF played its small and humble part in developing this global industry and advocacy ecosystem for which we are proud.
You are a regular contributor to Forbes and FINTECH.TV. What is hot and trending in the market?
Without a doubt, the number one trending topic in my community is the US and crypto. I just published a Forbes piece “Crypto Has Its Berlin Wall Moment As U.S. Aims To Make History”. The big story here is the price of bitcoin hovering just under its psychological $100,000 mark, driven by significant institutional buyers. President-elect Donald Trump is promising to safeguard the national bitcoin stockpile and Cynthia Lummis is pushing the BITCOIN Act. The US looks set to become the first developed economy to have a strategic bitcoin reserve.
One of my favorite Forbes pieces is “Abu Dhabi Draws A Line In The Sand As The Capital Of Capital: MENAs Investment Management And Fintech Oasis” published after Abu Dhabi Finance Week last year. I have been attending and speaking at the conference for years, but 2023 just blew me away. With a who’s who of global capitalists and big announcements, the big story is how Abu Dhabi is building a global financial center to deliver the global capital markets of tomorrow for MENA to the Global South and APAC.
I recently did a couple of FintechTV interviews at NYSE with fintechs that are set to move the markets. I spoke to Milena Kholhoffer at Ownera, a fintech that has developed “buy and sell side router” software that connects up all of the financial institution protocols on “token islands” into one interoperable platform. Owner has partnered with FIX to pilot the routers for capital markets so that that ultimately, investors can access JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs digital asset offering through a “single platform”. In a recent interview with Daniel Coheur at Tokeny, we discussed what is driving buy side interest in digital assets, which tipped the scales in 2024, and raised the importance in token standards and the ERC3643 Foundation which is seeking to set the standard for Real World Asset tokens.
The big FintechTV scoop in the Emirates in September was “What Finstreet’s first regulated digital venue in ADGM means for investors and companies.” I was interviewed by FintechTV anchor Remy Blair to discuss Finstreet’s three subsidiaries, the first regulated global market infrastructure providers to offer an end-to-end hybrid traditional and blockchain-powered ecosystem to investors and issuers, covering the full lifecycle of financial assets, including origination, issuance, trading, settlement and custody. This is a milestone for the Emirate’s digital asset ecosystem, watch this space.
What do you look forward to the most at Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW) in December?
ADFW convenes many of the world’s innovative capitalists from banking, asset management, and FinTech on par with Davos or Milken’s LA Conference. The number of events now running across the week will blow your mind, and across a vast range of themes like economics, capital markets, blockchain, investment, fintech, family offices and Islamic Finance, to name a few. Most importantly, it is the one place over a couple of days you will meet the most influential leaders in global finance.
I am looking forward to moderating a panel, “Globalisation of Digital Assets, What’s Missing?” at Blockchain Abu Dhabi on Wednesday December 11 with Sebastien Badault, Ledger, Nick Jones, Zumo, Stella Lim, Partior, and Naveen Mallela, Kinexys (formerly Onyx) by J.P. Morgan. The panel will focus on what is missing in the digital assets ecosystem to further unlock and scale to mass adoption the myriad of benefits such as fractional ownership, peer-to-peer trading and security, transparency and operational agility. FinTechTV is an ADFW media partner and I will look forward to a few media grabs with leaders in the region. Vince chairs the day for the ADFW Startup Campus and Venture Stage on December the 10th, which I always look forward to.
With the sovereign wealth funds, the Central Bank of the UAE, the Securities and Commodities Authority, and the world class innovator Abu Dhabi Financial Markets (ADFW) and Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) working in concert with the government’s progressive “capital of capital” vision, Abu Dhabi has become the place for financial institutions, hedge funds, asset managers, and digital Financial Market Infrastructure (dFMI) providers and Multi-Lateral-Trading Facilities (MFTs), like Avrio, to set up offices. We all have a focus on how the emerging capital markets in the Emirates will be digital financial markets that further transform economies from the MENA and the Global South to APAC.
What I am also really looking forward to, in addition to a break from the December weather in the Northern Hemisphere, is the meetings we have set up, and bumping into so many community friends. ADFW is one of a handful of events that convenes my global tribe, and I am always amongst so many friends, old and new, it’s a bit like a family gathering for me. Avrio is beginning a large funding round in the US led by our investment banking advisors, who will be with us in Abu Dhabi, and we are looking forward to meeting with partners interested in doing business with Avrio in the US.
Tell us about your vision for 2025.
It is a bull market for crypto and digital assets, and Avrio has positioned itself to take full advantage of this. We are launching our ATS, Arkonis, in partnership with a US Financial Institution to bring 2,500 Fis, family offices, and RIAs to the platform for digital assets, private markets, and alternative assets. The growth of digital assets, ETPs, MMFs, derivatives, and credit products, has been nothing short of stunning for most, and we will launch a suite of digital asset indexed and thematic products. We are activating our (global) network, digital financial market infrastructure, and product solutions with regulatory certainty, to deliver these (new) growth areas to investors.
The “plumbing” is being replaced in wholesale financial markets (it’s actually been underway for nearly a decade) and new digital technologies are almost in place in most parts of the end to end value chain to connect everything up so that it works securely and efficiently for assets sellers and buyers alike. Stablecoins, deposit and treasury tokens are the next big things, cash on ledger is key to making Web3 scale to mass adoption, and further enable collateral eligibility of digital assets, one of the biggest benefits of ledgers and digital assets and tokens.
In addition to our acquisitions and developments in 2024, Avrio has been focused on GenAI’s role in regulated financial services. Our commercial commitment to partners in this space has been on the increase this year. The benefits of GenAI are likely clearer to analysts and quants who have worked in the space already for several years – AI agents enable us to do complex data collection and analysis in significantly compressed time frames. From Large Language Models (LLMs) down to specific jobs for agents in Small Language Models (SMLs) and curated market data, for example ratings and disclosure data, agents act as a trusted co-pilot for analysts, portfolio managers, and asset allocators, who still make the final decision compose, buy, and sell assets.
Many analysts in my community are forecasting greater global economic volatility as the US market bulls roar, which is music to the ears of capitalists – volatility is where we make money to deliver risk adjusted returns that investors trust us to deliver. Like most of us in the world, I would like to see a reduction in global political volatility and remain vigilant.
