Martin Daut is the CEO of quirion. The native of the Upper Palatinate has already led several companies over the course of his career. What brought him to digital asset management, the goals he pursues there, and why he so likes to wear sneakers at conferences and events.
Martin Daut closed his student account at Sparkasse Nürnberg early on. In the late 1980s, shortly before he started his first job, Daut opened an account with Norisbank. At the time, it was one of the first institutions in Germany to offer online banking. "Technology has always excited me, especially the ways you can apply it, less so the technical details," Daut explains. "Whenever something new came along, I liked to be among the first to try it."
Daut set the course for his career with a degree in business administration at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. His focus areas: information technology and marketing. He then started out in sales and marketing at Digital Equipment Corporation. The US company was a pioneer of the computer industry and, at the time, number two in the world market, right behind IBM. His experiences there decisively shaped some of his attitudes. Flat hierarchies, a relaxed tone, a focus on results, and no fear of leaving the beaten path: "I've deeply internalized the American 'just do it' mentality."
Unlocking business potential
Exploring the potential of technology for new business models and seeking a direct line to customers has driven Daut again and again throughout his career. As managing director of Sellbytel, for example, a company within the world's largest advertising agency, the BBDO Group. There, together with his team, he built up info and hotlines, telesales and data management services for large consumer goods companies, among other things. "Something like that had hardly existed here in Germany before," Daut recalls. "Anyone who wanted to get in touch took the indirect route via retailers, or wrote letters and waited for a reply in the mail."
In the 1990s, Daut won the online broker Consors as a client for Sellbytel. He got to know its founder, Karl Matthäus Schmidt, who would later found Quirin Privatbank and quirion. It was his first professional point of contact with the financial world. Daut quickly became enthusiastic about Schmidt's idea of giving as many people as possible simple, low-cost access to digital securities trading. In 2000, he moved there as the board member responsible for customers.
Building something new and growing it
At Consors, today Consorsbank, he brought to bear his experience at the intersection of technology, customer communication and marketing. He built structures that made it possible to use data more efficiently and to blaze new trails in customer communication. He rose to become CEO and stayed for a total of ten years. Then he went looking for new challenges. "I also wanted to be an entrepreneur myself at some point, just as my father had been," Daut says, looking back. For several years he was a co-owner and board member of a software company for data management, and afterward he founded his own consultancy.
In 2019, it was once again banking pioneer Schmidt who won him over as CEO of quirion. In a sense, it was the next logical step: "At Consors it was about democratizing securities trading; at quirion it's about democratizing asset management." Along the way, Daut and the quirion team have already reached important milestones. The platform runs entirely in the cloud, which makes its processes especially efficient. Since 2019, the number of customers has grown from around 7,500 to over 65,000, and assets under management from around €190 million to about €1.7 billion.
On the way to returns for everyone
Coming up with new ideas and seeing them through is his passion. "You often have to drill through thick boards and bring a lot of perseverance," Daut observes. The quirion gift cards were one such project. Daut had already made an attempt at this some 20 years earlier for Consors. "But back then the technology wasn't yet mature and the implementation was too complicated," Daut explains. Today, quirion gift cards are available not only in many Edeka supermarkets, but also online at Amazon, Payback and Wunschgutschein.
The idea behind the gift cards reveals more about what drives Daut in projects like these. "I'm always looking for new ways to give people an impetus toward better investing." In the motto "returns for everyone," he sees a task of real social importance. "For the younger generation in particular, there's simply no way around building private wealth for retirement," Daut emphasizes. "We want to remove the hurdles that keep everyone from getting started with investing, and then from sticking with it."
That's also why quirion has long offered savings plans. These are not to be confused with simple product savings plans, though: "Genuine asset management in a global portfolio with around 8,000 stocks plus, where applicable, thousands of bonds, starting at €25 a month. Ten years ago, few people would have thought such an offering was economically feasible."
Communication as a core task
Most ideas for new offerings mature for quite some time in the background before they can go "live." Some never make it at all. There are numerous regulatory requirements to meet, technological processes to set up, and questions of profitability and marketing concepts to think through. This part of his work is visible to only a few. But Daut is not a man for the "quiet back room." The door to his office at quirion's Berlin headquarters is usually open. He seeks contact and lends a hand in many places.
When you meet him at industry conferences, his white sneakers with the quirion logo catch the eye; he likes to wear them to events. He loves what he does. He isn't shy about openly championing it and "nailing his colors to the mast." In any case, Daut prefers things a little unconventional. When the seasoned manager is out and about in the capital in his Mini, Kiss FM blares from the radio. He used to be into hard rock; now he more often listens to hip-hop. The cliché of a seasoned manager in the financial industry looks rather different.
Once a month, Daut also takes part in quirion LIVE. There, customers and anyone interested can ask their questions about investing and about quirion. Not every CEO takes on tasks like these. When you ask him why he doesn't delegate it, he has to pause for a moment. "Communication is one of a CEO's core tasks," Daut stresses. "To me that's a given, and besides, I really enjoy it."
