Make your difference
your advantage

Brand, Product and Distribution strategy
for the financial industry

our approach

H-Ideas helps asset managers, wealth managers and private banks build distinctive strategies that create business value.

We help financial firms answer three fundamental questions:

What makes you different?
Clarify your identity, purpose and strategic positioning. Identify the strengths, beliefs and capabilities that genuinely set you apart.

Why should clients choose you?
Develop compelling product and investment propositions that address your clients' needs and make your competitive advantages clear and meaningful.

How do you turn your strengths into business growth?
Design effective marketing and distribution strategies that connect your capabilities with the right clients, strengthen engagement and support sustainable business development.

Our approach combines deep financial-industry experience, strategic marketing expertise and proprietary market intelligence. It brings clarity and alignment to corporate strategy, product positioning and distribution, helping financial firms make better-informed decisions and translate their strengths into commercial success.

Because when a financial firm is clear about who it is, what it offers and the value it brings to its clients, it can communicate more consistently, engage more meaningfully and build stronger relationships. We believe this clarity and alignment are among the foundations for strengthening trust in the financial world.

our pledge

« We pledge to provide advice that is in the best interest of our clients, of the financial system’s fair functioning and of society’s sustainable development. We require our employees and partners to commit to this Pledge. We encourage our clients to care profoundly about their societal responsibility and act accordingly. »

This pledge is supported by our Corporate Social Responsibility Policy.
H-Ideas is the only European financial marketing consultancy to sign the Principles for Responsible Investment:

Principles for Responsible Investment

our added value

What H-Ideas brings you

A unique combination of expertise in marketing, branding and finance.

You benefit from the best practices of the most advanced marketing sectors, as well as our knowledge of your business.

Decades of combined experience in financial companies. We have been in your business before.

You get concrete, pragmatic solutions that are in tune with the realities of your business.

A partner on a human scale.

Your budget pays for the experience and time of senior consultants, nothing else.

Our Market Intelligence Solutions

H-Ideas is the co-creator and co-editor of a family of proprietary indices that enable financial leaders to make strategic brand decisions based on objective data.
RIBI 2026 Report

Responsible Investment Brand Index – RIBI™

600+ Asset Managers.
Global Universe.
8th edition.

www.ri-brandindex.org

SPBIx 2025 Report

Swiss Private Banking Identity Index – SPBIx™

59+ Swiss Private Banks.
Switzerland.
2nd edition.

www.spbix.ch

Swiss External Asset Managers Identity Index

Swiss External Asset Managers Identity Index – SEAMIX™

220 Swiss External Asset Managers.
1st edition.

www.seamix.ch

Our experts

H-Ideas works with a network of experts and calls on the best skills to solve your specific issues. We have already worked several times with each of these experts and we take full responsibility for the quality of their delivery. They all have between 15 to 25 years experience in each of their specialty and therefore have an immediate impact on your project.
Laurent Auchlin
Click to see the profile
Katharine Foda
Click to see the profile
Markus Kramer
Click to see the profile
Christophe Orly
Click to see the profile
Jean-François Hirschel
Click to see the profile
CEO & Founder
Jean-François Hirschel
Jean-François Hirschel
Click to see the profile
CEO & Founder

TRUSTED BY

SHARING OUR THOUGHTS

What does an IT engineer have to do with marketing? More than you might think.

Jean-François Hirschel I trained as an IT engineer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL). More than 30 years later, after a career that has taken me from technology to finance and then to marketing, two questions still come up regularly: how does an IT graduate become a financial professional? And perhaps even more […]

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Swiss wealth managers seek private edge

Elliot Smither at Professional Wealth Management (PWM) writes an in-depth coverage of the 2026 edition of the Swiss External Asset Managers Identity Index (SEAMIx™)
SEAMIx shows that in a sector under significant pressure from standardisation and commoditisation, brand is an under-exploited strategic asset for differentiating, attracting and retaining clients, protecting margins, and attracting talent and partners.

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Switzerland's independent wealth managers are easy to find and hard to tell apart

A new index measures, for the first time, what Switzerland’s largest independent wealth managers stand for and how visibly they say it. Three quarters have no consistent claim about themselves. In a sector consolidating under regulatory cost and rapid standardisation, that is a strategic exposure rather than a marketing detail. Zurich and Geneva, 7 September […]

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Turning Identity into Advantage

A new index measures, for the first time, the quality of the brand architecture of Switzerland’s independent asset managers and the extent to which they communicate it effectively. Three-quarters of them lack a coherent message. In a sector undergoing rapid consolidation, subject to regulatory costs and rapid standardisation, this is a strategic issue rather than […]

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AI Panel Fund Forum 2026

Is ChatGPT really replacing fund selectors? A year ago, the answer seemed straightforward: AI was an impressive assistant, but no substitute for experienced fund selectors. Twelve months later, that answer is becoming much harder to give. At Fund Forum 2026, Laurent Auchlin (Anglo Swiss Advisors), Pierre Bonart (Edmond de Rothschild) and Amparo Sampedro (Generali Asset […]

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No US managers make top 10 for ESG legitimacy in 2026

The Responsible Investment Brand Index says the top performers are the ones that are being clear about who they are, and consistent in proving it.

Read the article

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