DirectID appointed as Fintech Champion for Nations

The Department for International Trade (DIT) has announced the Fintech Champions for Scotland and Wales at the Board of Trade meeting in Wales today.

DirectID have been appointed as the Fintech Champions for Scotland, with Yoello selected as the Welsh Fintech Champion. They join the previously announced Northern Ireland Fintech Champion FinTru, meaning that a Champion is now in place across each of the devolved nations.

The Fintech Champions scheme was established by DIT last year as a way of better supporting the UK Fintech industry. Each Fintech Champion will be tasked with working alongside other industry leaders to elevate the UK’s status as a global Fintech hub.

They’ll also be asked to help promote expansion around the world and help businesses scale-up and up-skill by providing one-to-one sector-specific advice.

Minister for Exports Andrew Bowie said: 

“Fintech is already worth billions to the UK economy, and we’re keen to see the industry continue to grow over the coming years.

“With these two companies joining the Fintech Champions programme, we now have expertise supporting businesses across all four nations who want to scale up their operations.

“Both are leaders in the industry and will do a fantastic job promoting the UK’s place as a global Fintech hub.”

The UK is already a world leader in Fintech, owning more than 10% of the global market share and is forecast to grow dramatically to £380 billion by 2030.  

The UK also secures 11% of all global investment into the sector, attracting nearly half of all investment in Europe. Innovate Finance estimate total investment into British fintechs jumped more than 217% to $11.6bn in 2021.

With an increasing number of Fintech firms exporting globally from the UK, DIT is helping the sector take advantage of our global trade links, ultimately creating more jobs and driving further investment into all corners of the country.

The new Scottish Fintech Champion, DirectID, was the earliest open banking pioneer, and provides advanced open banking data for credit & risk decision makers in 46 countries.

James Varga, CEO & Founder at DirectID said:

“I was incredibly humbled and excited when I was invited to help champion exporting in the Fintech sector.

“DirectID now powers some of the world’s biggest brands in North America, Europe and Asia to scale, drive efficiencies, manage risk, and create fairer outcomes for their customers.

“Whether it’s working with other industry figures to promote the UK as a place to do business, or sharing knowledge of our experience exporting to multi-national organisations, I’m proud to be supporting the growth of the £11 billion UK fintech economy.”

Lightning Reach and Inbest partner with Fair4All Finance to deliver comprehensive access to financial support

Tech for Good start-up Lightning Reach and benefits platform Inbest have partnered with Fair4All Finance to broaden their coverage of support for individuals on both platforms.

Over 15m people in the UK are in financial hardship with the cost-of-living crisis plunging millions more into poverty. However, whilst there is a vast array of support available, the landscape is fragmented and confusing to navigate resulting in people not knowing what support is available or assuming they are not entitled to any support. This lack of awareness and the complexity of application processes means struggling households miss out on over £15 billion in benefits, discretionary payments and grants.

Lightning Reach and Inbest are excited to start a partnership where they will integrate their respective platforms, broadening their combined coverage of support. This integration will allow Lightning Reach to include benefits, grants and discounted tariffs covered by Inbest in its one-stop support portal, while Inbest will add discretionary schemes and grants available on the Lightning Reach portal to its benefits calculator.

The partnership is being supported by financial inclusion not-for-profit Fair4All Finance which is making the portal available to the community finance sector as part of its programs to expand the provision of affordable credit and the pilot for the No Interest Loan Scheme.

Senthan Balachandiran, Programme Manager at Fair4All Finance, said:

“One of the core initiatives in our cost of living response is to make available in as many customer journeys as possible a benefit and grant check because we know that awareness is one of the biggest barriers to claiming entitlement. In addition to the No Interest Loan Scheme pilot journey, we are working with credit reference agencies, price comparison websites, loan management systems, and community and mainstream finance to ensure these checks are provided to all their customers.  

Ren Hooi, CEO of Lightning Reach, said:

“With over 8 million people estimated to be missing out on benefits, we are keen to help people seeking support through our portal access all the benefits they are entitled to. We’re also delighted to work with Inbest to enable multiple customer journey options for an embedded and seamless experience.”

Manu Peleteiro, CEO of Inbest, said:

“ The Lightning Reach portal is already one of the most popular features in our benefits calculator. Integrating Lightning’s grants engine into our benefits calculator will further increase our leading coverage of benefits and grants, and will also create a seamless signposting experience for customers.”

Got Capital selects directID To Digitise SME Funding Process

Scottish fintech and global credit risk platform DirectID, have just announced a partnership with SME capital provider Got Capital.

From now on, SMEs applying for financing will be able to use the power of Open Banking within the application journey, letting agents at Got Capital quickly categorise and determine businesses’ true revenue without the need for PDF or paper bank statements. This new solution will allow for a much faster and accurate process, de-risking the financing whilst providing a better experience for SMEs.

Nicola Dunn, Business Development Manager, DirectID said:

“Small businesses are the backbone of any economy, they are continuously struggling to get access to affordable financing. Traditional lenders find it difficult to ensure fast and safe underwriting processes for SMEs. Existing and traditional credit reports lack sufficient credit history information such as bank account information or bank statement data. On the other hand, SMEs often cannot provide any collateral to mitigate this information gap and ensure financing.

This information gap can be filled by open banking data which is highly in demand in the market. DirectID are delighted to be the chosen open banking partner of Got Capital and we are very much and looking forward to working with Got Capital on a variety of use cases in the future.”

Mr. Alex Afek, Managing Director, Got Capital Officer said: 

“We are very excited to get on board the DirectID platform. Got Capital is funding businesses across the UK and we require a very good e-banking coverage. It simplifies the process for our applicants and customers and reduces the time to funding decisioning. Got Capital’s Royalties based investment is a timely instrument and”¯is used by many different types of businesses when they need cash at hand yesterday.”

Mansfield Building Society partners with DirectID

To help mortgage applicants to provide digital bank statement, Mansfield Building Society has partnered with Scottish open banking platform DirectID.

Applicants can now allow their bank to share their statements online with The Mansfield, hence speeding up the income and expenditure check and help prevent brokers from having to use PDFs or paper.

Mansfield Building Society Commercial Development Executive, Richard Crisp, said:

“Brokers and borrowers regularly tell us that they value our individual lending approach in providing flexible solutions to slightly unusual or niche circumstances. At the same, they need an increasingly swift and efficient service and, as a result, we’re delighted to be launching this service with DirectID.

This new service is a safe and convenient way for borrowers to provide their bank statements online via DirectID’s open banking platform. This improvement can help brokers reduce the amount of chasing around they do for their clients and help us deliver a faster speed to offer.

Combined with our robotics developments, not only can we continue to commit to our flexible underwriting approach, we can do it with the modern service that brokers and borrowers need.”

DirectID Soars To The Top Of The Credit & Risk Space, Unveiling A Slick New Visual Identity

UK ”“ 21 July, 2022 – DirectID takes another leap forward in their year-on-year growth, launching a new website and unveiling a refreshed visual identity.

Scotland-born fintech, DirectID, has always been at the forefront of open banking technology and are the earliest pioneers in the space. They rallied to the UK government for the launch of PSD2 – the world’s first open banking programme. The fintech then went on to build the first open banking integration in the world. Now, DirectID has attained super-aggregator status with 13,000+ connections in 45+ countries across the globe ”“ providing the highest coverage in the market.

The leadership team have been working with credit & risk data for over a decade and have more than 100 years of combined experience in senior roles at organisations such as FICO, Experian & TransUnion.

DirectID have brought open banking technology to some of the world’s biggest brands. Their partnership wall hosts logos from the likes of Deliveroo, XE, Nasdaq, Target, and many more. The new visual identity reflects their status as the leading provider of open banking data to the credit & risk space.

DirectID recruited Edinburgh-based maclean creative agency to launch an exciting, fresh technology brand that pays homage to the experience and specialist knowledge contained within the team.

The branding, visuals & messaging can be found on the new website at direct.id.

The rebrand launch is another marker of the growth of open banking technology in the credit & risk space.

James Varga, Founder & CEO, said:

“In the last few years we have seen an exponential growth in the use of open banking data

“With the current economic pressures, we are seeing demand for alternative data continue to grow and DirectID is set to reach a new peak in terms of revenues and market share. I am proud of our accomplishments, our new visual identity, and of our role in driving open banking data in to a global trend – putting our data at the heart of advanced credit & risk decisioning.”

and I, personally, am proud to be at the forefront of this movement having lobbied to the government for PSD2. The last few years have been a real catalyst for change and highlighted how essential real-time credit and risk data is to decision makers.

Clare McCaffery, Chief Commercial Officer, said:

“Having worked in credit & risk for > 20 years, and with alternative data for the past 12, I immediately recognised the potential within DirectID.

“Open banking fills a critical gap for decision makers who struggle to risk assess consumers with limited credit history and is proven to provide significant uplift to predictive models in both consumer and SME risk. This visual refresh and new website reflects DirectID’s focus on providing advanced data for risk decisioning, data for a new generation of consumers.”

DirectID Announce Partnership With Payments firm Shieldpay

Scottish fintech and global credit and risk specialists DirectID just announced a partnership with Shieldpay, the secure digital payments market leader.

the partnership will see Shieldpay payments engine use DirectID’s open banking-powered bank account verification.

Customers will be able to transfer funds online with digital escrow and trust services benefiting from seamless identity verification during transfers, streamlining the Shieldpay customer experience without sacrificing any measure of security, bringing customers a frictionless payments journey at every step.

The professional services firms relying on Shieldpay to safely transfer millions of pounds in client fees and project finances, to the marketplaces bringing more security and digital escrow (fund holding) services to their buyers and sellers, can now benefit from DirectID’s 13,000+ bank connections.

James Stubbs, Financial Crime Systems, SPG, comments:

We’re excited and intrigued by the possibilities of what DirectID and Shieldpay can bring to the table for our customers. Blending frictionless account verification in a customers’ own banking environment with safer online payment solutions for marketplaces will only help us on our mission to facilitate a new era of trust online.

Clare McCaffery, Chief Commercial Officer, DirectID comments:

Verifying that the bank account details provided match those on file is one of the most proven and effective use-cases for Open Banking. I’m delighted Shieldpay have chosen DirectID to safely verify account ownership for digital escrow and trust services. We’re delighted to launch and look forward to working with Shieldpay on a variety of use cases in the future.

DirectID grows commercial team