AutoRek nominated for duo of awards

AutoRek, the leading software provider to global financial service firms, has been shortlisted for the Best CASS Solution’ and Best Wealth Management Solution’ categories at the Systems in the City Financial Technology Awards 2021.

This isn’t the first time AutoRek has won the Best CASS Solution award, after winning the title last year – the first time the award ceremony has been held virtually in its 18-year history.

Lyn Canavan, Head of Marketing at AutoRek, commented, “We are delighted to be recognised again as a provider of the Best CASS Solution’, and also in the Best Wealth Management Solution’ category by the Systems in the City Financial Technology Awards judging panel ”“ this is testimony to the team’s continued hard work in consistently striving to offer superior solutions.”

Goodacre, a specialist business and technology consultancy, organised the awards as an endorsement for suppliers of systems and services to the regulated financial services sector, with three independent judges overseeing the selection prciess.

The Awards provide an important point of reference for user firms assessing the suitability of their operational infrastructure

Q&A Lynne Darcey Quigley, CEO of Know-it

Lynne thank you for your time. Could you introduce yourself to our readers?

Of course. Having worked across several credit management roles for over 25 years, I have gained a wealth of knowledge and completely understand the importance of a healthy cash flow for businesses and the implications late payers and bad debtors can have on businesses of all sizes and industries.

Over the years working across many different industries, I realised a gap in the market for a professional, result-driven debt recovery partner”¦.14 years ago, I set up my first company, Darcey Quigley & Co, focused on recovering overdue B2B invoices across the UK and internationally.

Darcey Quigley & Co was founded in 2007 on the belief debt recovery could be delivered differently. Specialising solely in the commercial market, we act as an extension of a company’s credit control department whenever internal processes have been exhausted. October 2018 saw me dive into my latest business venture, founding Know-it acting as the company’s CEO. The goal was to create a financial services company that makes credit management simple and easy.

Can you please give our readers an introduction to Know-it and what is the inspiration behind the platform?

Having worked within the debt recovery industry for over 25 years, I understand what the implications of late payers and bed debtors can mean for a business. Know-it has been designed to bring a fresh perspective on the credit management process. We have created an innovative, cloud-based credit management platform that seamlessly integrates with all leading accountancy packages including Xero, Sage, and more.

The inspiration behind the platform was to enable users to instantaneously credit check companies, get live data and real-time updates to monitor customer’s credit behaviour and mitigate potential credit risks. The platform also provides finance teams and business owners with a simple way to check your customers’ creditworthiness, ensure customers pay on time through scheduled reminders and customisable chaser emails, letters and SMS, helping reduce debtor days and increasing cash flow. Users can also get instant quotes to collect unpaid invoices quickly and efficiently, as well as monitoring and acquiring reports on commercial debts. The platform will make help businesses and finance teams, no matter the size, operate much more efficiently with it comes to debtors.

What challenges do you think it will address within credit management?

Know-it aims to make credit management as easy as possible. The market can be overly complicated for users and very time-consuming. Know-it addresses this problem through three core principles of Check-it, Chase-it, Collect-it.

Our pick and mix subscription option let users practice these concepts independently, giving businesses what they need when they need it most.

Check-it is a credit reporting tool that allows you to check the credit health of any business. It provides access to real-time data on prospective and current customers to help inform future business decisions. Chase-it streamlines your credit control process, and handles all the time-consuming chaser emails, freeing up time whilst keeping Know-it customers on top of invoicing. It also allows you to send customised emails, letters and SMS to customers reminding them of when they need to make a payment. Finally, Collect-it is there when customer payments don’t go to plan. Supported by Darcey Quigley & Co, Collect-it will help recover unpaid debt while maintaining your customer relationships.

I fully believe introducing these three principles into credit management will address the gaps in the market and change the way we view the industry as a whole. I pride myself on being a student of the game, I have always studied the credit management market to see what t users are being denied. I am fully confident that Know-it fills these gaps.

It’s an interesting time to be launching a start-up, why now?

When launching any new venture there are risks involved. It certainly wasn’t my intention to launch during a global pandemic and every business needs a slice of fortune! Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity and there was a timely opening for the platform to provide an additional level of support for vulnerable businesses at a point when they needed it most.

Help from automated credit management systems has conventionally been out of reach for many businesses until now. I have complete confidence Know-it will offer organisations a complete and all-inclusive solution enabling them to work smarter. As the pandemic continues to rip through the business community, now is a crucial time for technology to step in and offer a helping hand to those businesses most in need.

The launch of Know-it reinforces the strength of Scotland’s tech sector, what is your perception of the market?

Scotland’s tech sector continues to go from strength to strength, celebrating a proud tradition of producing creative and forwarding thinking minds.

As a nation, we have always prided ourselves on being open and vibrant, while still maintaining a strong sense of identity. A key attraction to Scotland is the unique and energetic culture, as each city boasts its own identity reflecting the pride of those who live there. Also, the living costs are substantially cheaper than other tech hubs such as London ”“ this is a huge factor for those relocating. Afterall, who doesn’t want a few more pounds in the bank every month!

Tech giants such as Google, Twitter and Microsoft have recently stated they are open to staff continuing to work from home for the future. As a result, the country has access to more fantastic talent who would otherwise have to relocate for the roles. The Scottish tech market in my opinion is in a very strong and healthy place currently and will only continue to get stronger as we move forward which is very exciting.

What do you think makes Scotland so different to other tech hubs around the world?

Scotland thrives on its strong sense of community and the tech scene up here is no different. Scotland has separated itself from the strong competition across the world by continually sharing ideas and challenging the status quo. We pride ourselves on being creative and not afraid to tackle new challenges. This is one of the key reasons for the monumental progression in the Scottish tech scene in recent years.

A second factor is an access to a highly skilled workforce. From world-class universities to magnificent third level institutions, Scotland continues to see a torrent of new talent being every year. Scotland also has CodeBase, the biggest tech incubator in the UK. This means our country is situated perfectly to continually cultivating the latest start-ups in the technology industry. The relentless development of flair and talent into the workforce in my opinion separates the Scottish tech scene from those across the world.

For someone looking to take up a career in tech, what advice would you give?

Technology is a playing field that is always transforming, and that transformation is happening quicker than ever. As an industry, a day’s work is never dull, and two days are nearly never the same. You will be given new and exciting ideas and projects to work on regularly, so you need to be ready and have an excellent mind for problem-solving. Keeping up to date with the latest trends and updates is very important and will benefit you ten-fold as you go on throughout your career. Familiarise yourself with all announcements within the market, so if you’re working on a new project that involves the latest industry innovations you can put your best foot forward. Technology is a very exciting and rewarding career, it is filled with so much opportunity and scope. The best advice I can give to anyone thinking of a career in tech is to go for it!

What is needed for Scotland to continue succeeding on the world tech scene?

The Scottish tech scene is in a wonderful place, however, with all industries, there are areas that need strengthening if we are to continue progressing.

The greatest asset the tech scene boasts is its people. These are individuals with creativity, flair and passion that have the ability to turn concepts written down on paper into reality.

Scotland has to continue producing the finest tech talent on our home soil through our universities, colleges and other initiatives, as well as attracting the best talent from overseas. The Tech Nation Global Talent Visa remains an important resource for drawing some of the sharpest minds in the tech world to Scotland and the rest of the UK. Nearly a third of individuals endorsed for the visa that is located in Scotland is a tech founder. It is clear the industry structure, combined with the strength of the community has excelled us to be a market leader. The challenge moving forward is enticing more talent from outside the United Kingdom into the market.

Crypto Wallet and Zumo Launches B2B Offering

Zumo, the crypto wallet and payments Fintech, has announced its Zumokit; crypto as a service platform.

This new B2B product targets Fintechs and other financial institutions that aim to compliantly offer cryptocurrencies to meet the demand of customers to access digital assets.

ZumoKit is a blockchain agnostic, thus enabling companies to connect to any blockchain by adopting any cryptocurrency or using their own stablecoin. This provides businesses to integrate a digital currency, allowing their customers to buy and sell digital currencies as an investment.

Commercial Director at Zumo, Eddie Robb, states that this gives businesses the tools necessary to build cryptocurrency solutions into their platforms, saving them thousands of hours of work.

“We’re working with a number of savings, remittance, and share trading apps to allow them to offer crypto to their customers. ZumoKit is a ready-to-roll solution for fintech companies and other financial institutions that want to bring the benefits of crypto to their customers. It’s a plug and play product that makes it easy to get going with crypto in a safe, secure and compliant way.”

Robb added that such a solution can be beneficial to companies, as it allows them to provide customers with the ability to trade crytocurrencies whilst also shielding the wider business from the ups and downs of the markets.

Founded in Edinburgh in 2018 by Nick Jones and Paul Roach, Zumo is available for download on both iOS and Android app stores.

Tindeco: One of the top 100 WealthTechs

For the second year in a row, Tindeco has been announced as one of the world’s 100 most innovative WealthTech companies. Tindeco VISION enables investment managers to efficiently provide customised investment solutions through the execution of highly scalable operating models.

Their featured article teaches you how they can help when it comes to implementing your investment process, as well as providing you with customised solutions just for your clients.

Soar integrates Inbest to help loan applicants access their benefits

Today Soar announced a new feature to alert loan applicants of potential benefits and help them to track their entitlements.

In the UK in 2018/19, almost 8m low-income households were missing £16bn in means-tested benefits. The DWP estimates that 44% of those eligible for means-tested Job Seekers Allowance, 16% of those eligible for means-tested Employment and Support Allowance, and 23% of those eligible for Housing Benefit did not claim them.

Soar has integrated Inbest benefits calculator into its banking platform to compare the actual benefits that customers receive with the benefits they are entitled to due to their specific circumstances and financial situation. The service notifies customers about any unclaimed benefit and guides them on their benefits applications. This new feature will help loan applicants to top-up their salaries with their benefits entitlement, reduce their bills, repay their loans more comfortably, and build savings in the future.

Soar is offering this new feature on its Automated Lending solution to notify clients about their potential benefits entitlement when they make a loan application. Soar is also embedding the benefits calculator on its Banking Apps to help customers manage their benefits and ensure they are always claiming the right amount.

Andrew Duncan, CEO of Soar, said: “Soar’s platform reaches a wide range of consumers and we see Inbest as providing a fantastic opportunity for our clients to offer additional support to those not making the most of their benefits entitlement. We are helping our clients, often credit unions, provide additional ways to improve their customers’ financial well-being and there’s no doubt that this is one of them.”

Manu Peleteiro, CEO of Inbest, said: “We believe that partnering with companies that offer complimentary financial services is the most efficient way to reach people that are missing out on their benefits. We are delighted to partner with Soar to enable easier ways for people to learn about their benefits entitlements and access affordable loans”.

About Soar

Soar makes credit unions and community banks accessible and convenient for consumers with our white-labelled mobile banking platform that automates the handling of loan applications and makes access to affordable credit easy for everyone.

It’s a modern cloud banking platform for the fair finance market which reduces the cost of operations and includes mobile, web and cloud apps. It is connected to an ecosystem of other fintechs giving users access to secure digital messaging, payments, credit checks and open banking.

About Inbest

Inbest is a software platform that helps unemployed individuals or those in low paid or insecure roles to access their benefits entitlement. Inbest offers the widest benefits coverage in the UK and partners with FS institutions and welfare advisers to embed benefits advice into personalised customer journeys.

New Advisory Appointments at Ionburst

Retired Royal Navy Rear Admiral Steve Brunton CBE and Steve Wilkinson, a global data privacy leader, have joined Edinburgh-based advanced cybersecurity startup, Ionburst, as UK advisors.

Rear Admiral Steven Brunton and Steve Wilkinson have just been announced by Ionburst as two high-profile advisor appointments. Rear Admiral, now operating as an Independent Advisor to a number of government and industry organisations, joins Wilkinson, the Data Protection Subject Matter Expert at the UK Cabinet Office Government Digital Service (GDS).

Both join Ionburst whilst it experiences a significant growth period, as it builds theUK and overseas business.

Commenting on the appointments, Ionburst Founder, Dr David Lanc said: “The Cloud needs a new philosophy for protecting the privacy of mission critical information and workloads. We have developed a best-in-class data protection solution to empower this, and its relevance is supported by these powerful industry leaders strengthening our advisory team.”

Rear Admiral Steve Brunton CBE said: “I’m excited to join the Ionburst journey. I believe Ionburst has the ability to help protect us and our way of life in the digital world. I look forward to working with the Ionburst team to help engage with Government and the Defence sector, and to help navigate the next phase of the company’s growth.”

Steve Wilkinson commented: “Ionburst is at the forefront of data security, privacy and sovereignty. In my experience, it’s unique in solving the well-known issues of data privacy compliance and protection from unwanted surveillance in one solution. This is vital to preserve the privacy of sensitive information, which has been made more critical with the EU Court of Justice recently invalidating the EU-US data privacy shield and Brexit.”

Lanc added: “We have big ambitions to help industry and government protect citizen and sensitive data in a world that also demands carbon efficiency. Welcoming Steve and Steve as distinguished advisors demonstrates our aspirations.”

Ionburst has developed a paradigm shift in data protection, through its innovations in privacy by default and data defence in depth.

Omnio selects AutoRek’s reconciliation solution

AutoRek, the Scottish fintech and leading software provider to global financial services firms, has announced Omnio as the latest addition to its ever-expanding list of digital banking/payment clients.

Omnio, a high-growth financial services infrastructure provider, provides a singular platform that combines the best of banking capabilities and customer engagement/loyalty. With operations in the UK and Europe, and headquartered in London, it supports many of the leading corporates and financial institutions in providing innovative and effective banking, payment and loyalty solutions.

AutoRek will provide the core reconciliation solution, including internal and external reconciliations between Omnio’s payment processors, bank accounts and ledger system. AutoRek’s solution seeks to replace its existing manual Excel process by providing end-to-end automation and will facilitate increased efficiency and control, as well as provide automated reporting and real-time Management Information to ensure the team’s business users and management are provided with quality MI through a variety of dashboards to fulfil their daily activities at the optimal level.

Laurence Sproston, Head of Reconciliations and Settlements at Omnio, commented, “We approached AutoRek to provide us with a solution to help automate our reconciliation processes. Our main goal in pursuing this partnership is to save time, costs and ensure operational resilience as we move forward to a new way of working. The AutoRek team adopts a collaborative approach for implementation and have provided us with an automated solution ensuring our regulatory, data integrity, workflow and management information needs are met.”

Gordon McHarg, CEO at AutoRek, added, “We are pleased to welcome Omnio to our increasingly growing client portfolio. The payments industry is evolving rapidly and we are proud that AutoRek’s capabilities meet the challenges facing the industry including volume of data. We are looking forward to establishing a good relationship with Omnio and building upon it over the years.”

Nick Botha, Banking and Payments Lead at AutoRek, who led the deal commented, “We are delighted to be working with the Omnio team. Following the turbulent year defined by COVID-19 and with the constant changes taking place in the digital banking and payments world, we are extremely proud that Omnio has selected the AutoRek solution to be the glue between their internal and external systems.”

Ionburst Cloud Continues Expansion into UK

The advanced data protection startup, Ionburst Cloud, has launched its ultra-secure object storage platform this week in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) London region. Based in Edinburgh, the startup has created the solution of addressing the data protection gap that exists in the Cloud shared responsibility model.

Stating that data privacy is ‘a human right’, the founders of Ionburst Cloud bakes security into the Cloud so that the high bar for protecting data on entry is removed for British businesses of all sizes.

With a very promising initial traction in both the Technology and Fintech sectors, Ionburst Cloud met stringent data privacy regulations like GDPR and the invalidation of the EU-US Data Privacy Shield.

“We are proud to announce that we are expanding the Ionburst Cloud platform into the UK. Going live in the UK is another exciting step forward in our journey of providing data privacy compliance and protection as part of the Cloud. We believe making this part of the Cloud means that customers will never unexpectedly share data again.

We are delighted to be able to offer this service to UK businesses from this week.” – says Anne Lanc, former International Treasury Director of BlackRock.

As a celebration to mark its UK launch, Ionburst Cloud is helping startups and developers by launching a 5GB free tier.

“The sheer scale of the data leaks we’re continuing to see in the Cloud shows there’s a fundamental security gap. This issue isn’t just a concern for smaller businesses, or those without cloud security expertise. Larger, more technical organisations have also been on the receiving end of Cloud data exposure and storage misconfiguration.

We’ve built Ionburst Cloud to fill the missing data security need for organisations storing information in the Cloud, and to always keep it safe and protected.” Josh Fraser ”“ Chief Cybersecurity Engineer.

Ionburst Cloud’s approach has been used by customers in the EU and proven at Cloud scale.

“It is now available to try on the AWS Marketplace from the UK today, and is the first step toward establishing the Cloud we deserve.” says Ms Lanc, CEO (US) and CFO at Ionburst.

Inbest free white-labelled benefits calculator

Welfare advisers, affordable lenders and money charities have been at the forefront helping people to deal with the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in many cases, their capacity to support people is restricted by their limited resources to build or purchase data & digital solutions to identify, reach and serve financially vulnerable customers.

At Inbest we are passionate about financial inclusion and we develop data & digital money management solutions that meet the specific needs of financially vulnerable people. For example, helping them to access their benefits, understand the level of support that disabled people need, or find the best debt solutions according to their personal circumstances and financial situation.

We believe that collaboration between companies with complementary skills is the only way to drive financial inclusion and ensure an inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. That is why we are excited to offer our white-labelled benefits calculator free of charge to support welfare advisers, affordable lenders and money charities in their data & digital journeys.

Our offer

Welfare advisers, affordable lenders and money charities will be able to use our free benefits calculator to:

Help customers: They can embed our benefits calculator across their digital assets (e.g. webpage, mobile apps, social media, blog posts) to help customers to access the support available to them with a simple, quick and user-friendly user journey.
Understands customers: They will be able to use our data analytics application to unlock the full power of customers’ data to better understand their needs and behaviours.

Our free white-labelled benefits calculator also includes the following features and services:

Widest benefits coverage of national, regional and local benefits in the UK – you can see here the benefits and grants we currently calculate.
Data analytics application where you will be able to monitor the application usage and visualise the personal circumstances, financial situation and benefits entitlement of your customers.
We will customise the benefits calculator according to your branding and will co-create content to help your customers to understand how they can make the most of their benefits.

You can check how Advice Direct Scotland and Capital Credit Union are already using our free white-labelled benefits calculator.

Email us at info@inbest.ai to explore this offer in more detail and discuss how we can help you to deliver data & digital solutions to drive financial inclusion.

About Inbest

Level E Research closes seed funding round.

Level E Research, a leader in artificial intelligence (AI) investment solutions, has raised £1.2m from a group of private investors all through a seed funding round.

Founded in 2018 by Dr Sonia Schulenburg, the business combines data science, machine learning and behavioural economics to facilitate institutional investors in developing, testing and implementing smart investment strategies at the highest levels of automation. Their selling point? They offer it at a significantly lower cost than traditional investment management business models.

CEO Schulenburg stated,

“This very successful fundraising backed by well-known industry leaders is a huge vote of confidence in our technology and business model, enabling us to scale up our business development efforts as well as continue to invest in cutting edge research and attract the most talented people. Our hedge fund clients have been quick to realise the benefits that our unique machine learning platform can provide, and we are in discussions with asset managers who are keen to integrate our AI into their investment process or seeking to launch the next generation of AI-driven funds. Our modular SaaS platform readily integrates into existing infrastructure making it easy to adopt.”

Nicola Anderson (CEO of FinTech Scotland)

“I am delighted to hear that Level E Research has secured a significant amount of seed funding. This is a testament to the strength of its innovation and capability and will lead to the creation of more highly skilled jobs in Scotland. The fact that it is mainly Scottish backers who are investing in Sonia’s vision and leadership, supporting a woman fintech founder, also demonstrates the strength of Scotland’s commitment to fintech, diversity and inclusion.”

For further information, please contact Philip Rothfield: phil@levele.ai