The wealth management sector has changed dramatically over the past two decades as technology has democratised the space and opened the market to various opportunities. According to Vitaly Kudinov, Senior Vice President at Devexperts, the next stage of the evolution is breaking the barriers between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralised finance (DeFi).
The WealthTech sector is estimated to be valued at $7.7bn in 2025 and will grow to reach $37bn by 2035, according to research from Future Market Insights. With the market continuing to flourish, it has come a long way in just a few years.
Devexperts is one of the companies that was around in the sector’s nascent stages. Founded in 2002, the company develops software for the capital markets, with over 20 million traders using its technology every day.
Its founding team was a group of software developers who met at university. After gaining some recognition for their skills, entrepreneur Tom Sosnoff hired them to help with the development of Thinkorswim, a customisable trading platform that helped to transform the options market. Despite not knowing anything about the financial market, their work helped build one of the market’s first online options trading tools, which would eventually be absorbed by Charles Schwab and is still one of the most used retail platforms in the US.
Around the same time, Devexperts was asked by a global B2B Forex company to help with developing software to solve some of their digital challenges. These two projects equipped the Devexperts team with deep knowledge in traditional finance and OTC markets. This, coupled with the major success stories of its clients, spurred the team on to develop its own software that could be licensed to brokers. Its team now boasts over 1,000 people spread across 10 global offices.
Staying true to its roots, Devexperts opens offices near universities to find fresh talent as they are starting their careers and gives them the same opportunities its founders was once given.
Standing out from the crowd
While Devexperts is a WealthTech pioneer, the market has since boomed to become intensely competitive. Differentiators are essential to success.
Kudinov highlighted three of the core points that help to separate Devexperts from the competition: expertise, speed and customisability. Taking the first of these, the company’s deep industry expertise, Kudinov explained: If a firm chooses an outsourcer to build trading software for them, it is rare to find a team with advanced domain knowledge. It often results in bloated development cycles that cost millions of dollars and take years to finish.
In contrast, Devexperts’s off-the-shelf software has already been built, allowing for rapid implementation. Additionally, it has been created by experts, ensuring the tool supports all the intricacies of the market, rather than a generic tool built to solve a single, specific problem. Finally, Devexperts’ software can be fully customisable.
“Many platform providers say, ‘Take it or leave it. If you don’t like the software, sorry we cannot help you.’ So, they kind of dictate how the software looks. We say, if you like the basic software, you can take it, but if you want to customise, we can do it for you.”
An evolving offering
Another defining characteristic of Devexperts is its desire to innovate and stay relevant with market demands. Some of the milestones over the years include launching multi-asset trading platform DXtrade, advanced risk management tools, sub-100-microsecond latency matching engine, mobile trading solutions, cloud-native platforms and AI-powered analytics. Throughout its 20+ years of experience, the team has constantly sought new trends or markets where its software can make a difference and 2025 has proven to be a continuation of that trend. This year the team announced the launch of a number of significant new additions to Devexperts’ product offering, including:
- Its new futures trading platform, designed especially for US brokers and prop firms;
- DXwallet, a framework designed to provide brokers with their own digital asset wallet, enabling their clients to hold and transfer digital assets, as well as converting them to fiat currencies and traditional assets; and
- Acomotrade, a new AI powered data analysis and personalization solution, designed to drive customer engagement and retention.
Not only has the team released a series of new products, but it has also expanded its partnerships and international presence, having recently opened an office in Dubai.
Kudinov noted, “We need to follow all the innovations that happen in the market.” The wealth management sector is in a period of rapid change. WealthTech has helped democratise access, connecting more people to the space than ever before. Similarly, younger generations are changing the way people interact with software and as the generational wealth transfer continues, Gen Xs are quickly becoming the biggest market for wealth firms – and ignoring their needs now could cost them in the future.
As such, Devexperts keeps its finger on the pulse of change so that its clients can meet evolving demands, whether that is AI-powered customer care and personalisation or access to digital asset trading. “By applying our expertise and building innovative solutions, making these initially proofs of concept and then ready-to-market products, we keep our clients happy, ensuring they are always moving with change.”
As it looks to the future, Devexperts has a lot of plans for growth. In addition to expanding its asset class offerings with event-based contracts, decentralised finance and digital assets, the team will grow its global footprint. This will include attracting and growing its client based across markets like APAC, Australia, the Middle East and the US, to meet rising demand from retail investors.
Kudinov explained, “More people now want to invest themselves, not through pension funds or traditional asset managers. It’s not because they don’t trust templates, it’s because investing is fun. If you can have a trading app on your mobile phone, you just want to try it.” Devexperts’s software helps firms cater to this future.
One of the biggest areas of growth Kudinov predicts in the coming years will be the convergence of traditional finance and decentralised finance.
The rise of DeFi
Not long ago, decentralised finance was steeped in misconceptions. It was considered a rival to traditional finance and even as a place for illicit activity to flourish. However, these fears are being addressed, and DeFi is gaining popularity as an addition to TradFi, not its replacement.
One of the reasons this is starting to happen, is because disruptive technology companies have forced large financial institutions to take note of DeFI. Kudinov added, “This innovation was waiting for more than ten years to be adopted by traditional finance, but big corporations never innovate until they see the risk of losing the market share.”
This is not the first time disruption like this has happened in the finance world. Kudinov referred to the rise of the neobanks. A decade ago, companies like N26, Monzo and Revolut started to launch digital financial services, allowing users to access various payments and savings features through their mobile phone, without having to visit a branch or speak to a person. They gradually expanded their offerings and today offer full banking capabilities.
Kudinov added, “Now every bank has their mobile app, and you can’t imagine you could live without it. And you can’t remember when you last time were in their office.”
A similar situation happened with the wealth management sector as WealthTech companies, like Robinhood and WeBull, transformed the investing world with digital capabilities that are now commonplace.
“Now the same is happening with crypto and decentralised finance becoming a more general market. For example, many companies are launching on-chain stock trading – stocks can not only be traded on centralised exchanges but also tokenised through smart contracts and traded via decentralised exchanges. This opens the trading market to more opportunities.”
The coming together of TradFi and DeFi is already happening. A recent example of this to send shockwaves through the wealth management space was the acquisition of US retail futures trading platform NinjaTrader by Kraken, a crypto trading platform. This deal combines TradFi and DeFi under one roof, allowing clients of a crypto exchange to access a wide net of traditional assets and vice versa.
“Brokers need to understand this is the future, and the good news is that they don’t need to rebuild their software or operations from scratch. They don’t need to hire expensive outsourced companies or stuff their own IT teams with hundreds of software developers; they can come to Devexperts and expand their business to the DeFi leveraging with the existing product.”
Misconceptions surrounding DeFi
As noted, there are a lot of misconceptions around DeFi that are finally being broken. Three of the most common myths, Kudinov outlined, were the idea that DeFi is completely anonymous, it has greater protection and is truly decentralised.
“Obviously, DeFi is not anonymous, because no government will allow you to hold money that is not under their control, or to do international transfers of assets or funds without them watching.”
Secondly, there are a lot of financial scams and the nature of the blockchain is that you cannot reverse a transaction as a truly decentralised database would make it impossible, whereas a traditional financial system allows transactions to be reversed. This leads into the final myth that DeFi is always completely decentralised and transactions are impossible to track. There are always some links or forms of control over blockchain transactions, Kudinov explained. Institutions might leave time before transactions are settled on-chain and other times blockchains are centralised custodians where an institution holds the private keys. “We need to get rid of these misconceptions,” he added. “Still, the advantages of having the data on ownership of assets settled on a blockchain outweigh the disadvantages.”.
One of the best ways to support this is through regulators helping to control what is happening in the DeFi space and ensuring that consumers have greater protections, Kudinov noted. By implementing safeguards and removing misconceptions, TradFi and DeFi can operate together and bring benefits for both sides, such as increased transaction speeds, lower transaction and settlement fees, and more options for financial growth.
In the coming years, Kudinov believes the two spaces will become one. “They’re merging into one and there will be fewer distinctions between them, because DeFi is just a tool for TradFi.” In the future, decentralised exchanges, blockchain databases, tokenised assets and individual wallets will be the norm. Helping to make that future a reality is Devexperts. Kudinov concluded, “We’re making the world better by creating new-generation software, sharing our expertise with financial institutions, and ultimately improving the lives of individual investors.”
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