By Vicky Jessop

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How do you go about finding your happily ever after? Maybe you download a dating app, or go to a speed dating event. Maybe it involves going to the pub on the off-chance your eyes might meet a stranger’s over a pint.

If you’re very wealthy, though, the answer might just be to hire Ivy Relations. Or more accurately, Inga Verbeeck, its founder and CEO.

Ivy Relations bills itself as a “discreet, global dating service for high-net-worth individuals,” that prides itself on finding the perfect match for its clientele. And the market for its services is growing.

Verbeeck set up the company after a career in finance. By her late 20s, she was the CEO of a steel business in Antwerp, but was introduced to the world of matchmaking by her friends, following a divorce. As she puts it, “I got curious, I started researching”; shortly afterwards, Ivy Relations was born.

It’s come at a good time too: as people increasingly turn off from dating apps, where do they go instead? If you’re willing to invest six-figure sums in finding your life partner, the answer might be Ivy Relations.

“In the last couple of years, there’s definitely been a negative trend in [using] dating apps,” Verbeeck says. “Society in general has become less approachable, less social. [People are] looking for more personalized options, looking for something authentic, something that’s verified.”

Her company offers all of that, and more: essentially, a curated dating service that takes care of finding the perfect match for their clients, organising first dates and everything in between.

Naturally, this doesn’t come cheap, and only high net-worth individuals tend to use the service. “The majority of clients will be entrepreneurs in all kinds of industries: finance, medical, tech, anything,” she says. “Then there’s a smaller percentage, which will be some celebrities, a little bit of royalty, but it’s a minority.”

How does a traditional Ivy Relations journey go? Usually, Verbeeck says, clients come to them. What follows is a series of detailed conversations establishing what exactly clients are looking for, and if the company is a good fit for them.

From there, the matchmaking team goes on to build a detailed profile of the kind of person those clients are looking for. “[Our clients] set very high standards for themselves, for everything in their world, they will do the same for a partner. And I think that starts with physical appearance.”

According to Verbeeck, that can include height, eye colour, hair colour, as well as specific traits and tastes: “I’m working with a client now who wants somebody, let’s say in their late 30s. Between 5’6” and 5’8” with a bit of a rock chick flair to her. Doesn’t like warm weather, because he’s a cold weather person. Things like that.”

How they go about finding prospective love matches is a trade secret, but she will say: it’s all about headhunting the right people, on the right databases.

“We know how to find people,” Verbeeck says. Once that’s done, “you reach out and you connect. We have a pretty good response rate of about 20 per cent, which I think is a lot for cold outreach. And then you start a conversation.”

Of the people who are picked, standards are high: “we do a full intake process. Then we profile them. We do a four page presentation, which has lots of information, photos, everything. Everybody signs privacy agreements.”

Has Verbeeck ever turned any clients down? Sometimes, she says, if they’re not right for the company. “I have declined some female clients because they had completely crazy expectations,” she says.

“I once had a very interesting conversation with a lady who had prepared two pages of everything that the guy had to be. He had to have a private plane, a house in Monaco, a flat in New York. And I was like, ‘I’m sorry, but that’s not what I do.’ Because you’re not shopping. Even though you want a lot of things, you’re still trying to find happiness.”

Once the right person is identified, Ivy Relations will go ahead and organise the first date. Often, Verbeeck says, it’s low-key: coffee or dinner. But of course, this being the world of the super rich, there can be excess: “there have been some private jets, [or] meeting at the heliport in Monaco. That has happened.”

The dates themselves vary, too. “Sometimes it’s just dinner, but sometimes it’s also a weekend,” she says. “Some of those [first dates] have taken place in some of the most beautiful hotels and places in the world. There’s been some shopping. Sometimes people spend quite a lot of money.”

As time as passed, what people are looking for has changed, too. Verbeeck says that she’s noticed a swing back to traditional relationship dynamics: “quite opposite from the the 90s and then in the 2000s where everything was going in the direction of women’s independence.”

“I think we still want to be independent, but I think a lot of women also want that balance, where they have a leading man in their life. That is a topic that comes up more, as well as with lots of very successful women.”

Another concern, she says, is children. “There was a time where we had a lot of women who were around 40 and prioritizing their career, then thinking, ‘Oh God, I still want to have kids.’ I actually do feel that people are starting to think about that sooner again.”

In an ideal world, once a pair has been matchmade, that should be the end of it. “We’ve been successful for just about every client,” Verbeeck says, though there have been one or two repeat clients. But she does have some pearls of wisdom to share for anybody wanting to get out there and date.

“There’s been so much going on that everybody is very sceptical about each other. Something that I will probably advise anybody to do, is give people a chance,” she says. “We’ve become so accustomed to discarding somebody for any reason — oh, they like this movie. I don’t like that movie — and swiping them away.

“I think that’s kind of influenced our decision making. We should all go back to finding out more about each other.”