With thriving offices in Singapore, Dubai and India, Lighthouse Canton, a Singapore-based group, is turning heads in the globe’s fastest-growing wealth management markets.
This year, it wins Asiamoney’s rising star in Singapore award for its growing prowess in the industry, in particular its people-centric approach to linking key wealth centres around Asia.
The team at Lighthouse Canton, headed by CEO Shilpi Chowdhary, understands that there’s a wide gulf between people with interesting investment ideas and those who have the initiative to take the plunge. The team seeks to guide clients in executing their visions – acting as a lighthouse of sorts for those navigating wealth management across diverse regions.
In 2014, Chowdhary decided to launch the firm, after working for 20 years at big names such as Citibank and Credit Suisse. Lighthouse Canton is an employee-owned asset and wealth management firm.
The group provides more than 50 global investment strategies, in addition to the typical stock and bond plays that wealthy clients might seek. It all comes with a flat fee structure that aligns interests with clients and ensures basic transparency. Lighthouse Canton has an in-house team of international legal and tax experience to help with complex structuring needs.
Even as Lighthouse Canton grows rapidly, its creative and active risk management techniques have been highly effective in volatile markets in these last few years. They also have limited withdrawals.
In 2021, for example, Lighthouse Canton’s staff numbers swelled to 102 from 45 a year earlier.
Despite Covid-related turmoil, it partnered with Ivanhoe Cambridge, the real estate arm of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ). It was the first investment by a global pension fund in the life sciences real estate sector in south Asia and southeast Asia. After that, Lighthouse Canton launched its LC Nueva Alternative Investment Fund and expanded its Hyderabad office in India.
Lighthouse Canton launched its popular LC Venture Debt Fund in 2022 and developed an investment marketplace platform integrated with its end-to-end wealth management business. By the end of the year, assets under management had topped $3 billion, up from $1.4 billion in 2020. Last year alone, net new assets increased 22.6%.
The numbers show that Lighthouse Canton’s people-centric approach and the capabilities that generates, put together with infrastructure to find non-traditional solutions, are making a mark among Singapore’s wealthy.
The steadiness of Lighthouse Canton’s risk-adjusted returns in clients’ portfolios is also now well documented. There’s likely a lot more in store from the business.