1. Can you tell us more about yourself? How did you get into entrepreneurship?
I’m Jordan Richards, founder and CEO of RCCO. I am also the founder of WILD and RAMP, two other agencies in the RCCO group.
My entrepreneurship journey began when I was around 11 years old. Instead of picking out sweets or a toy at the local pound shop, I chose to buy an invoice book so I could create invoices for friends and family for the jobs I would do for them.
At 13, I then started designing and selling phone cases at school before moving on to run a small design team throughout college, doing branding and websites for local businesses. A few years later and I am now the founder of a 7-figure agency.

2. Can you give us a brief of your career before RCCO?
Before RCCO, I worked for Google as an in-house designer for three years. I started at Google at 18, becoming one of their youngest apprentices and worked my way up to become a full-time creative lead. My background is in design with a passion in business, so getting to combine these through my roles at Google and now with RCCO is brilliant.

3. Could you tell us more about RCCO and how has the company evolved over the last couple of years?
RCCO is a small creative agency for tech pioneers, based in London. We support SaaS and tech companies with brand, web, and video that allows them to launch products, raise investments and increase revenue.
Over the last couple of years, our team has grown to work with over 50 tech brands, perfecting our understanding of each business’s needs depending on their goal. We have been lucky to have hired experts in digital with experience from brands like Tesla, Accenture Digital, and Google and now offer bolt-on monthly partnerships as well as project-based services.

4. What’s your favorite part about working in this industry?
I love that my job involves combining creativity with problem-solving. When we are presented with new scenarios and challenges, I love working to come up with a solution with my kick-ass team of designers and creatives. It’s a challenging but rewarding process! I think there is so much potential with SaaS products, and sometimes when you work on the tech it’s hard to communicate that true value. We are amplifying our client’s potential through creativity!

5. What makes RCCO unique? Why should enterprises choose RCCO?

At RCCO, we have the ability to understand and use our creativity to simplify complex products that allow us to support businesses through their toughest stages of growth.

We are able to bring deep tech experience having worked for global tech giants such as Google and enabled start-ups like Ad-Lib.io to sell for over $100M.
To create a more successful and efficient end result for our clients, we work on a partnership model that involves discovery and strategy sessions where the client can co-create their future. Using us as a bolt-on creative hub can help us scale your brand faster, or if you’d like to test us you can work on a project basis.

6. What are the products and solutions that RCCO offers?
At RCCO our three core pillars are brand, web and video. Within this, we support a business’s sales and marketing teams with everything from identity and design, to building websites, launching marketing campaigns with stand-out video and animation, and supporting pitches and investment rounds with presentation design. We aim to help businesses better communicate what they do and revolutionise the strategy of their brand.

7. Do payment gateways have major role to play in customer checkout experiences on ecommerce websites?
Every step in the journey is important for ecommerce, but I see it as definitely a funnel. The deeper you go in the funnel, the more people drop off, but the more commitment and desire people have. Therefore, with the payment being one of the later steps, people would have more patience at this stage in the purchase journey, than say the loading time of their first visit to the site. Nevertheless, customers have a lot of choice and are fickle, so improving every step of the journey is important to move your bottom line.

8. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced when trying to grow your business?
During periods of rapid growth, hiring can take up a lot of time and feel like a race to keep up with the demands of the business. It can be a challenge to continue delivering excellent service whilst ensuring we spend enough time finding the right people that will help to move the businesses forward and reach new targets.
Talent is just one side though. The balance of new business with being busy versus not having enough work is always a challenge. We love having a full pipeline but also want to ensure we are producing quality output. As we progress we are looking to deepen our relationships with key clients and not take on quantity but instead quality partnerships.

9. Can you give us a sneak peek into RCCO’s development plans?
Our goal for the future is to leverage our in-house skills and experience with building apps to create a small team that is dedicated to incubating app ideas. We would like to offer our skills and knowledge to people, at no cost, to joint venture with us and turn their ideas into a global success.
As our knowledge grows and we continue to expand our broad range of offerings, I hope to co-found further sister companies, alongside our two existing brands, WILD and RAMP. I want to create a group of companies that all work together to provide a bespoke and specialist experience for our clients.

10. What is the biggest piece of advice you would want to give to company leaders?
Think about where you want your business to be in 2-5 years’ time and put the processes and systems in place that will allow you to scale to where you want to be. Find ways to reduce your manual tasks and create something that will benefit the future of the business – don’t just build for the short term.
When making decisions, don’t rush and carefully assess whether they will benefit or harm the future brand and business because growing is about improving quality while scaling.

11. How do you stay motivated? What are your key learnings from your career so far?
It’s important, in my opinion, to not rely solely on one area of your life to give you a sense of purpose. Your job most likely won’t fulfil all of your needs so you should find things outside of this that bring you satisfaction and happiness, this could be a sport, art or cooking for example.
Finding something that you’re passionate about, outside of work, will not only give you a sense of satisfaction but will boost your health and well-being.
One of the key learnings I have taken from my career so far is to make sure I take breaks. And scheduling activities outside of work in my diary makes sure that I’m putting time into other things that give me a sense of purpose.

12. What movie/book has inspired you recently?
There are two books that have inspired me recently:
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle – Discusses how we could all be more present – were you truly listening or were you thinking about something else?
My Morning Routine by Benjamin Spall and Michael Xander – Insightful interviews discussing the morning and evening routines with successful people.

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1. Can you tell us more about yourself? How did you get into entrepreneurship?
a. I started my career as a software engineer at a variety of companies, including Instacart and Houseparty. Instacart is where I met Andrew Wynn, my now co-founder and co-CEO.
b. In 2019, we founded our first company, Sheltr. Sheltr was a home maintenance startup that provides homeowners with routine preventative maintenance service and diagnostics to offer data-driven proactive care to catch issues before they become costly repairs. We were inspired to take this first step into entrepreneurship because XXX. A couple years later, and it became the first acquisition made by insurtech unicorn Hippo because of its intuitive and technological approach to building an insurance product that went beyond the customer interaction.
c. This first step into entrepreneurship taught me a lot, but most importantly, it set myself and Andrew up for success with our next endeavor: Ascend.

2. What was the inspiration behind designing Ascend services?
a. At Sheltr, Andrew and I witnessed firsthand while working on the distributor side of insurance, the challenges that existed on the back end for insurance sellers and how it impacted building strong customer experiences. We decided to start Ascend to fix this pain point for insurance sellers as well as customers, contributing to the much needed modernization of the insurance industry’s financial infrastructure.

3. Were there any challenges while tapping into the fintech markets considering the competition?
a. Insurance is an incredibly old and antiquated industry, and I think that a common challenge/misunderstanding that many people have when entering the space is thinking that they’re going to come in and turn the place upside down with their ground-breaking innovations. Ultimately, it’s important to remember that insurance is a very old and established product, and at its core, that’s not going to change. Insurance as a risk-sharing mechanism will still be the core offering. What will change is what we’re protecting (eg. hacks), how we’re protecting it (telematics), and how we’re interacting with our insurance providers.
b. Because of this, a big challenge is simply the nature of the space itself – there are these huge, bureaucratic, companies that have existed for a long time. And every single insurtech on the market is trying to outdo them – a massive and oftentimes impossible undertaking. I think what we’ve learned works best is to co-exist. Don’t fight to dethrone the legacies and incumbents, work with them instead.

4. Could you tell us more about Ascend and how has the company evolved over the last couple of years?
a. Ascend is the first modern insurance payments platform that provides automated all-in-one financing, collections, and payables. It saves distributors from labor intensive, expensive processes while providing customers with the great online checkout and financing experience they’ve come to expect. Ascend was built on the premise that, as the insurance industry moves from offline to online, insurance distributors–from brokers to MGAs to carriers–will need to provide a modern seamless customer experience with a payment infrastructure in order to keep pace with the increasing demand for high quality customer experiences. Ascend’s API provides distributors with the technology to sell more policies and increase customer experience. By using Ascend, customers can pay the full amount for the year upfront in full or with flexible financing that best fits their needs. It’s an online payments solution and a “buy now-pay later” model custom-built for insurance.
b. Since starting Ascend, we’ve seen immense growth that we only dreamed could be possible. Currently, we’re operating nationally in all 50 states working with industry-leading customers. Ascend customers have seen increases in policy purchase conversion due to the reduced friction when given the option of monthly flexible payments at point of sale. In some cases, customer adoption of financing has more than doubled from less than 40% (pre-Ascend) to 80% (post-Ascend). Additionally, millions of dollars of policies have been transacted through Ascend with the average value of each being nearly $10k, 61% of transactions are premium finance loans, the remaining 39% are policies paid in full while 33% of checkouts created convert to a transaction and 30% of all conversions are on the same day the checkout is created.
c. This year, my partner and I have been focused on forging partnerships with agency networks, insurtechs, MGAs, and AMSs to complement innovations being made across the insurance industry. Ascend recently announced its first AMS integration with NowCerts to provide agencies with a comprehensive solution that combines workflow management with the best of both payments and premium financing. They also announced an integration with HawkSoft’s insurance management platform designed for independent agencies. Additionally, The Agency Collective (The AC), Independent Insurance Agents of North Carolina (IIANC), Veruna, and Professional Independent Insurance Agents of Colorado (PIIAC) have endorsed Ascend as their preferred payments and financing platform for their vast member networks. Furthermore, we partnered with Stere to provide existing brokers, MGAs, and carriers with the best-in-class digital experiences.
d. Also this year, we announced that Ascend has raised $30M Series A in equity funding, bringing our total funding raised to $39M along with a $250M lending commitment to finance insurance premium loans through its platform facilitated by Hudson Structured Capital Management Ltd.

5. What’s your favorite part about working in this industry?
a. My favorite thing, which is also probably one of the most challenging parts of the job, is how quickly everything changes.

Technology is developing at a rate like never before, and almost every moment there’s a new company making headlines.

Yes, it can be intimidating to see the up-and-comers, and yes, there is a nagging pressure to always keep up with the latest tech so that your own doesn’t get outdated. But this also is what makes things exciting. I love seeing what the newest trend is, what companies are doing, and interacting with the growing community. It keeps you on your toes and encourages you to never stop. I am always on a quest to keep growing and developing our product, making it better and better, and making it more accessible and applicable to people everywhere. And this constant change in the industry helps keep that fire lit.

6. What makes Ascend unique? How does it stand apart from the competition?
a. Ascend puts user experience top of mind for all parties in the insurance payments process. For insurance customers, we provide an easy to use purchase flow with flexible payment options. For our insurance sellers, we are a single paperless solution that handles financing, collections, and payables.
b. Additionally, our API eliminates the need for digital brokerage, online sellers and distributors of commercial insurance to build their own payment infrastructure. Ascend integrates with the systems you already use to power a checkout flow that handles all forms of customer payment — from credit card and ACH to premium financing — and programmatically distributes funds for commissions and carrier payables

7. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced when trying to grow your business?
a. Something that took me by surprise was just how much fundraising takes out of you! It’s a challenge mentally and physically. Moreover, it comes at an opportunity cost to the business – when you are fundraising you can’t spend time working on all the other critical functions like sales, hiring, and product development.

8. How do you see the current fintech scenario and its evolving possibilities to meet the growing customer demand?
a. In the past, we’ve seen the most convenient insurance distribution and acquisition mechanisms be wildly successful at customer acquisition even if the products aren’t as good, or the products are more expensive. Conversely, there are great insurance products out there that are fairly priced and cover the most real risks that people actually face. There’s probably a bunch of them out there that are hard to find. Even agents and brokers who do it all day have a hard time finding those sorts of diamonds in the rough. I think these two scenarios need to go in parallel because humans take the path of least resistance. If you have a good insurance product and business, you need to ensure that the distribution and experience around that product is convenient, or people simply won’t take advantage of it.

9. Can you give us a sneak peek into Ascend’s development plans?
a. Our biggest focus right now is still on forging partnerships with agency networks, insurtechs, MGAs, and AMSs to complement innovations being made across the insurance industry. While we’ve announced several over the past year, we still have quite a few up our sleeve that people can expect to hear in the upcoming months.

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1. You’ve had an illustrious career in finance. Can you tell us a bit about your background?
Sure. I got my start with a large bank in finance and accounting, where I volunteered for a big system implementation project. That was a turning point where I learned that my passion and natural ability was really at the intersection of finance and technology.
That’s the direction I pursued, and a few years later, I joined a VC firm to help revamp their technology and analytics approach. Once I experienced the technology challenges of private capital, I was inspired to go out and build solutions. Suddenly I was co-founding TopQ Software, which was at the forefront of the current digital transformation of how private market firms collect, analyze, and share data. TopQ was later acquired by a Nasdaq subsidiary called eVestment. I stayed on to help lead their push into private markets data and analytics. From there, I came to join Anduin.

2. What led you to join Anduin?
A fortunate combination. I really missed the dynamics and excitement of a small startup. Also, it was a chance to tackle the emerging big challenge for the private markets—namely how to carry out the due diligence and onboard investors for a better experience through automation. Once I got to know the Anduin executive team, we had clear chemistry and we aligned on the vision. I really feel that I’m in the right place, given my experience and what I am best at doing.

3. What excites you about financial services technologies, specifically as it relates to private market transformation?
Easy anwer: balancing the private part of private equity with the reporting transparency that LPs need, which they’ve come to expect in the public markets. It’s also about enabling the managers to keep the actual recipe secret while giving the investor the detailed data they need. Right now managers spend too much time and resources distilling granular data into PDF reports only to have their investors spend similar time and resources to extract the end data. This can be fixed.
Lying ahead are potential expansion and elevation of this entire industry once information is handled consistently, flows efficiently, and is ready for investors to make analysis and comparisons easily. At the same time, security and privacy are paramount and must be handled rigorously.

4. What are the latest developments at Anduin?
Anduin has become, for many, their first and trusted source of truth for essential investor and fund commitment data. Our goal is to make that data seamlessly usable across our customers’ full technology stack. We’re continually expanding our partnerships, which already include leading law firms, fund administrators, and large technology providers. By making Anduin an essential part of our clients’ technology ecosystem, we give them the best of two opposing polarities: the ease of use of an end-to-end platform with the functionality and depth of a best of breed approach. The result that we provide is a seamless and highly effective end-to-end solution for investor engagement.

5. What are some of the big shifts in private market investing today?
Market competition is intensifying, number one. As you’d expect, given that smaller independent investors are keenly interested in alternative investments. Some people call this democratization—I agree with that, and it’s also an exciting extension of our market. The new individual LPs have smaller portfolios, but there will be great numbers of them arriving within a short span of time. The competition for their business will be fierce.
These new participants change the game. All the funds have to contend with new regulations, technology gaps, and possible conflicts of interest. Some of these new investors will not know very much about alternative investments, or lock-up periods. Their registered advisors may have knowledge gaps. It will be an exciting time also with new types of investments in the alternative space.
We expect to see more publicly traded private funds, too. In other words, more private managers going public and that will increase their requirements to have their data processing and IT infrastructure—and workflows—ready for public scrutiny.
On the fundraising side, there will be more funds forming and the speed of fundraising has to jump to keep pace with new investors. Overall, the fundraising is getting more complex, too.
Another big shift is underway. Alternative investments are becoming less of a people business, with less networking, fewer meetups at conferences where you get to know people and build trust over months or years.
Overall, the pressure is mounting on managers to differentiate what they offer investors—for example, the investor experience they provide. Democratization also means voting, and fund managers know this new investor class will vote by bailing out if they don’t like the due diligence experience.
All these factors have really accelerated the digital transformation in private markets, and one result is that their technology environment becomes larger and more complex.

6. How do you think technology can help advance these shifts?
The demand for IR-focused technology is happening for a reason, and more than 100 vendors now have a footprint in the private market technology space. Some of them help to solve issues around data flows and the complexity of system integrations, which is key as the funds deploy more systems and handle more data.

Survival depends on being an essential part of the flow of information, and a robust ecosystem has sprung up for private markets.

The whole industry is looking at self-service options for LPs, for example replacing travel and the big annual meeting with video interviews of CEOs of the portfolio companies.
The technology should carry as much as possible of the interaction with investors through one channel. It’s unlikely to be all one vendor, but this industry is in the phase where best of breed solutions are integrated with each other.

7. How does Anduin’s culture stand out from your previous companies?
Every fast-growing startup has to balance empowering employees to be dynamic and incredibly productive—against the procedures and processes to grow efficiently. In many companies, those are mutually exclusive, but with the right culture and leader they can thrive together. I’ve been very impressed with how the Anduin team provides constant encouragement to each other, and brings a “we’re all in this together” attitude to each challenge.

8. What are Anduin’s plans for expansion and growth? Top priorities for 2023?
We’ll continue to expand our best-in-class fund subscription product. That means finding the white space around our current functionality where Anduin can very effectively solve problems that hinder growth and investor experience. I can’t get into specifics of our product roadmap, but the problems are well known, like scaling due diligence and securing money flows between investors and funds, bringing consistency to data formats. We expect to integrate with leaders in specific roles like Know-Your-Customer and anti-ML requirements.

9. What motivates you each day?
Finding creative ways to solve problems. Anduin is part of a massive change that will sweep across a really important investment arena. To be successful, we have to continue supplying private funds with what they need to overcome all the big challenges coming at the industry–so they can succeed in a very different business environment they will inhabit.

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1. Can you tell us more about yourself? How did you get into entrepreneurship?

I’ve spent more than 20 years in senior roles at multinational banks, dealing with risk calculation. Hopefully, without bragging, I can call myself a seasoned executive and risk manager. Risk management is my ‘home base,’ and I think working in that industry for so long has certainly coloured the way I approach business decisions. What drives me is the ability to deliver successful results in difficult situations and the belief that our financial systems can be more inclusive and profitable. 

2. Can you give us a brief of your career before credolab?

Before launching this fintech startup in 2016, I held senior roles in leading banks, including BNP, Citibank, Intesa Sanpaolo Group, and Platinum Bank. At some point, I realised I did not have enough data to make the right decisions about credit risk. So almost ten years ago, I started testing different data that was alternative even for that time, such as telco or social media. That’s how the idea of credolab technology came about, designed to help any lender and bank improve operations, reduce unit economics and reduce the cost of their risk.

3. Could you tell us more about credolab and how the company has evolved over the last couple of years?

Credolab is the largest developer of bank-grade digital scorecards and data enrichment solutions built from smartphone and web behavioural metadata. Our pay-per-use solutions work with all unsecured lending products and are available to banks and neobanks, digital lenders, BNPL players, and any industry at the intersection with financial services. Historically, we have worked predominantly, but not exclusively, with the financial sector. We have recently evolved our platform focused on mitigating risk and detecting fraud to improve marketing campaigns’ performance, decrease customer acquisition costs (CAC), and target the right audiences. As a result, we now have a growing number of clients interested in our outcome-based marketing and data enrichment solutions.

Credolab analyses over 70,000 data points with a proprietary embedded tech and a scoring engine routed in machine learning algorithms that convert digital footprints and behavioural metadata into highly predictive intent scores (i.e. the probability of accepting a loan offer or applying for a credit card) and very granular customer personas that make buying audiences a lot more accurate than before. What used to be a solution catered mainly to risk and fraud officers is now available to marketing officers too. What is unique and what sets us apart from competitors is that we don’t process any personal data, not even cookies. 

When chatting with potential clients and partners, they are often surprised that we are a startup. Many people get the impression that credolab is already a big corporation. I guess we are on our way to it. Our team has raised $8,1 million to date, most recently in a $7 million Series A round led by GBG in August 2020. Other investors include Access Ventures, Walden International, Fintonia Group, and FORUM. We have successfully deployed part of the Series A funds by implementing a GTM which puts boots on the ground in the selected priority markets. Credolab now has 120+ clients, including well-known fintech companies and unicorns, in over 30+ countries in Europe, SE Asia, Africa, and North and South America. 

4. What excites you most about working in this industry? 

I am a person who is used to working with numbers, not texts. I am endlessly fascinated by how dry data in skilful hands turns into true masterpieces that, among other things, help solve major social problems.

When we started working with financial institutions as clients, we realised that credolab promotes a greater scope of financial inclusion and makes lenders more profitable by helping them understand their customers better. As it turns out, most lenders rely on out-of-date data offered by credit reporting agencies (CRAs) or bureaus as part of the creditworthiness assessment of borrowers. However, the bureaus can only provide scores for applicants with an existing credit history, usually those in the middle to upper-income groups. Without that same data, many people have remained financially excluded. With credolab technology, we are helping lenders reach more people and fulfil one of any financial institution’s key goals: providing financial services to foster the socio-economic development of the country in which they operate. We’re also working with credit bureaus as clients, so we see a commitment to inclusion throughout the industry.

As for the people in marketing, there are many problems we can help solve. With better data, marketers can improve the outcome of their marketing campaigns. Imagine if you could target 1,000 customers with a credit card offer knowing that 900 are highly likely to convert rather than targeting 1,000, hoping that at least 50 accept the offer. Imagine if you could improve the way you buy audiences based on a technographic segmentation and a detailed app ownership view of your users because you know what tech, device, and apps your best customers already use. Imagine if you could improve your return on ads spend (ROAS) by displaying your ads to people that are highly probable to click and if you could display ads only to new people even in the absence of cookies to know if that is a returning customer or not.

5. Can you shed some light on your product suite?

Credolab adds value at the meeting point of risk, fraud and marketing. Our proprietary data modelling pipeline, rooted in machine learning algorithms, develops customised digital scorecards trained on credit risk, fraud, and marketing outcome data. These solutions increase approval rates, decrease the cost of risk, and help lenders to make better decisions across the entire funnel, not just individual silos. Our deep expertise in fintech enables credolab clients to market to new segments of customers and deliver increased business value that improves the overall bottom line.

A lower marketing cost of acquisition (CAC) comes with a higher approval rate. With lower fraud and a decreased cost of risk comes higher unit economics, more inadequate provisions, and more capital that can be deployed to fuel further growth.

As for how it all works, we made it very easy for our clients to integrate with our platform. Without being too technical, our technology requires to be embedded in the front end of clients, mobile apps or website on both and to connect with our API. The main effort required by our clients is simply the prioritisation of the integration. The “IT heavy lifting” is done by credolab. 

6. Tell us a bit about your culture. What makes credolab’s culture unique?

The сredolab team is in the technology business, but we’re really about the people. We want to do everything we can to make the world a little better for everyone. Most of us have worked in banks and consumer credit organisations and understand very well the needs, pain points and specific problems of our clients. We all speak the fintech language fluently. Also, our culture is primarily defined by the fact that we are a multinational team. In addition to the Singapore office, credolab has offices in Miami and London, as well as a distributed team in Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Dubai, Jakarta, Manila, Bangalore, Sydney and Nairobi. Despite such long distances, we are absolutely on the same page in our working goals and drive to grow our business. 

7. In your opinion, what are the most exciting topics in FinTech right now? How do you keep up with the constantly changing landscape?

The fintech landscape is changing rapidly. Previously, innovation might have taken years, but we are now talking about days. I understand the pressure that CEOs, marketing specialists, and risk officers are under today when deciding to introduce new technologies. Especially against the economic crisis, it’s more important than ever to understand customers. 

Plenty of companies we were talking to declared that they use alternative data. When we start looking deeper, it turns out that they are not even close. A significant BNPL player in the US thought they were already collecting a digital footprint. After analysing their actual data, we realised that they contained only 8% of the data credolab collects. Not only that, they were collecting some preliminary information that, based on our experience, was not even useful for risk analysis or fraud detection. Most marketers are still focused on enriching their data with whatever can be found elsewhere without realising they are already sitting on a wealth of information about their customers. With the right tech tools and expertise, credolab can help mine deep behavioural insights of the existing users that can be leveraged to improve the way how new users are originated, arguably at a cheaper cost.  

So, using customers analysed through the lenses of alternative data as a proxy for those without enough data, credolab proprietary Machine Learning algorithms help identify pockets of opportunities within the same user base that were thus far ignored. 

8. How do you see the future of Credit Scoring with AI?

I dream of a marketer being able to pre-screen and pre-score customers at the programmatic ads level. Imagine if a marketer could use different bidding strategies optimised to drive conversions, not just clicks, combined with an automated media buying process focusing exclusively on the most valuable and relevant audience members. We have done this for credit scoring and fraud detection. And now we are doing it for marketing optimisation too.

Audiences selected in this way will not only be the ones with a high intent to accept the offer or a high probability of applying for a credit card but will also be automatically scored for their probability of defaulting on their first payment. It’s not science-fiction. It is already here.

9. What are credolab’s plans for expansion and growth? Where do you see it in the coming years?

We are clearly focused on strengthening our leadership position in Asia, accelerating growth in Latam and Africa, and expanding our presence in the US and Europe. Moreover, we are on track to deliver positive EBITDA in the year’s final months. Customer acquisition has been strong and growing.

10. How do you stay motivated? What are your key learnings from your career so far?

I stay motivated, knowing that my subsequent decisions are informed by the lessons and life experiences I have gained so far. I believe in leading by example, and these very lessons are also the ones I share with my children to strengthen their characters and build strong foundations to conduct their lives on and make their own decisions.

11. What movie/book has inspired you recently?

“Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting” by Ronald Bailey and Marian L. Tupy. Since I believe that you can’t fix what is wrong if you don’t know what’s actually happening, this book was essential for me to see current issues from a much larger perspective and to see them more clearly, almost the stone-cold truth about our civilisation. I liked this book because it was also very optimistic!

12. What is the most significant piece of advice you would want to give to company leaders?

The most important advice I could give them is to surround themselves with the best people they can find. These people don’t need to come from Ivy League schools or necessarily have super high IQs. They need to understand your business, like it and feel part of something bigger. They must also fit well with the culture you have created and be agents of change. You want them to work for you not because they need a job but because they want to work for you and make your company better, more extensive, and more successful.

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1. Can you give us a brief of your career before Xceedance?
Servicing and developing relationships with large corporates have always been key drivers for me throughout my career. Before joining Xceedance, I spent nearly 25 years in Corporate Insurance working with large global insurers in various operations related, relationship management, distribution management, and leadership roles in Paris, London, and Milan.

2. How did you get your start in the field of Finance?
I was initially keen to work in the insurance and risk management field, which led me to my first role working for a large insurer in Paris, and things just happened from then. Insurance is a great industry opening so many opportunities around the world. Corporate insurance allowed me to interact with clients in very diverse industries around the world.

3. Could you tell us more about Xceedance and your role as VP, Client Executive – Southern Europe at the company?
Xceedance is a great success story, and this is one of the reasons I was attracted to the company. Xceedance was created almost 10 years ago by a small team of entrepreneurs and forward-thinking individuals including our CEO, Arun Balakrishnan. The company provides strategic operations support, technology, and data services to drive efficiencies for insurance organizations worldwide. We work with insurers, reinsurers, agents, brokers, and program administrators to boost operational efficiency. There is deep insurance expertise within the company as insurance is our only vertical. We leverage our vast insurance and technology expertise to facilitate, automate, and optimize insurance lifecycle functions, including exposure management, actuarial requirements, underwriting, policy management, claims handling, and finance.
My focus is to make the Xceedance brand known to the insurance ecosystem across the region and to partner with re/insurers, brokers, MGAs, and other industry players to support their growth, facilitate their digital transformation, help them work through their pain points, and improve operational efficiency. It is extremely varied.

4. What’s your favorite part about working in the industry?
As mentioned before, the variety of industries, countries/regions, and people I have had the chance to meet is something I am very grateful for. This is still happening today as I work across more market segments.

5. You have many offerings. Can you break out your technological solutions for our audience?
This could be a very long answer, but I will try to keep it short! Our technology services span across the entire insurance value chain to help businesses digitize and reinforce end-to-end processes, future-proofing their core operations. We help insurance organizations move up the digital maturity curve leveraging proven technology frameworks, proprietary tools, leading commercial-off-the-shelf platforms, and expert services. Our technology services include architecture services, automation services, custom application development, data management and insights, infrastructure services, system integration, testing COE. We also develop digital tools such as chatbot, workflow management, data extraction tools and many more!

6. What makes Xceedance unique? How does it stand out from its competitors?
To me, there are 3 key elements that make Xceedance unique. The first one is that insurance is what we know and all we do, every day. The insurance ecosystem is the only one we serve. The second one is that our approach combines people, technology, and data. This was the vision of our founders and they have been very successful at it. And finally, we support our clients throughout the entire value chain. I think there are very few companies that do it the way we do at Xceedance.

7. How is global inflation driving the need to cut costs and digitalize- which has been accelerated during the pandemic?
The level of inflation we are experiencing (around 9% in the Eurozone) is something that most people in the insurance market have never experienced in their working lives. This makes it difficult for any of us to predict what will happen and how companies will react. This challenging economic environment is not the time for insurers and reinsurers to cut digital investments. It is even more critical to focus on efficiency in terms of processes and capital deployment to achieve their targeted combined ratios, hit underwriting profit targets, and reduce expenses. Inflation can be considered an accelerator of the digitization of insurance. What insurers and reinsurers have done to date to enhance the digital experience for their clients is certainly very positive, however, to limit the impact of inflation on their own bottom lines, they need to pay more attention internally to what they are doing, and how. There still appear to be too many inefficiencies for many market players who use multiple systems which require manual inputs. We need to address the imbalance between the digitization of marketing and distribution, and the internal processes such as policy management, pricing, underwriting, and claims, which are at an earlier stage on the digital journey.

8. Xceedance is powering insurance transformation. Why according to you do so many tech transformations fail?
There seem to be a few common pitfalls and challenges when it comes to tech transformation. Time is one of them. Some of these projects take years, some over a decade. Think about how the world has changed in 10 years. I think it’s fair to question how adequate some transformation projects that started 10 years really are now.

Technology is moving so fast that any project that is not digitally nimble enough is unlikely to be successful.

Also, a tech transformation cannot be a standalone project. It needs to be driven by business needs and looking at technology must come once the underlying process is optimized for it to succeed.
Finally, picking the right tech transformation partner is key: a partner that will be there for the long-term, that has deep industry expertise, and speaks the same language to truly understand industry issues.

9. Can you shed some light on the severe shortage of actuaries? What’s driving it and what can carriers do to overcome it?
First of all, the insurance industry as a whole is facing a talent crisis – and it got worse during the pandemic when many people reassessed their careers and left the industry. This already challenging environment is combined with an increase in complex regulatory-driven and compliance-related projects. And a growing demand to generate better insights for the business.
To the actuarial question specifically – much of it is simply a question of perception. Many young professionals that would traditionally have gone down the actuarial career path are now moving towards data science and computer science. Consequently, there are not enough people young people being trained on the basics of actuarial services.
Overcoming this growing challenge is two-fold: outsourcing some of the actuarial work and automation. Outsourcing to experienced partners is becoming increasingly attractive to carriers. A hybrid model is attractive – we are seeing more of this with our clients as they partner with us to do the heavy lifting on the actuarial work, then pass their analysis on to the client’s in-house actuary team.
Actuarial automation should also be considered as it provides an opportunity to keep up with demand, reduce costs and properly leverage the actuarial resource carriers already have.
Choosing to partner with a company like Xceedance on both aspects highly benefits companies as they enable their actuaries to contribute to higher-value, commercially-focused work that directly benefits the company’s strategy and decision-making.

10. Could you give a sneak peek into the recent developments at Xceedance?
Well, there have been many. For one, we have been growing our actuarial and analytics team and offerings, which as you can anticipate is valued by our clients in light of the actuarial shortage we just discussed. We are also continuing to enhance our production of digital services such as the Xceedance Virtual Assistant and the Xceedance Digital Workflow Management solution. On the claims side of the industry, our digital-first claims third-party administrator (TPA) service provides full-service claims operations services to insurance companies worldwide, with a focus on advanced and intelligent automation to close claims faster and improve visibility into claim handling and status.

11. What are Xceedance’s plans for expansion and growth? Where do you see it in the coming years?
Our roadmap is to continue product development to enhance the company’s overall value proposition and expand our portfolio in service of our global client base. We are also focused on expanding our vast data services so our clients can better plan and execute their goals when working with us. We are also expanding our geographical footprint in new regions, such as Continental Europe.

12. Where do your passions lie? What do you think defines you as a person?
I am passionate about travel, discovering new places and new people. This means that I am always on the go. As to what defines me as a person, I would like to think kindness, listening skills, and the ability to enjoy what life brings, big or small.

13. What is the most significant piece of advice you would want to give to company leaders?
There may be different ways of driving transformation, so pause and challenge the status quo…. That and kindness of course!

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1. Can you tell us more about yourself? How did you get into entrepreneurship?
It’s hard to explain how I got into entrepreneurship, but it has always felt like the natural path for me since I was a child. I have always been an inquirer, questioning how things worked and how I could make them better. I was not particularly good at taking directions in school, and my curiosity led to starting my first business at the age of 16 —building PCs for family and friends out of my parent’s house. I would buy odd parts and build computers from scratch, which was incredibly fulfilling. From there, I lived and worked in Dubai for many years in the IT sector before moving to Canada and starting my first Canadian venture over 20 years ago.

While entrepreneurship is often glamourized, the truth is that it can be a very difficult journey. It requires a lot of sacrifice and perseverance that sometimes fails.

However, it’s a risk worth taking because it’s the only way I know to operate.

2. Can you give us a brief of your career before VoPay?
I founded two other successful ventures before VoPay. The most recent was a telecommunications company offering VOIP to legacy telcos. In less than five years, I grew that venture to over $2 billion dollars in sales and a team of 160 employees. Since then, I’ve been focused on my current venture, VoPay.

3. Could you tell us more about VoPay and how has the company evolved over the last couple of years?
During the time spent at my previous venture, it became very apparent that there was a major disconnect between how money was moved and the time it took to manage account payables and receivables. The long processing times and zero visibility were quite frustrating, but the knowledge that finances could make or break a business added another layer of urgency to the pain point.
Eventually, I became eager to dig into the financial landscape and understand how the cycle of money moved, and how it could improve. Payments are extremely complex, and the industry has many pain points; however, I knew I wanted to create a solution that improved on the existing procedures and create innovative products to help businesses overcome these issues.
Six years ago, I started VoPay as a money remittance business before pivoting into the B2B landscape, where we have been for the past 4-5 years. In a nutshell, we offer fintech-in-a-box to businesses. We provide secure, data-driven financial services and payment integration to enterprises across North America. By integrating a single API, businesses can instantly connect to all major payment rails securely and offer innovative financial solutions to their customers. For example, traditionally, software companies did not offer payments, and their customers would be redirected to another payment portal, causing a lot of friction. Using a payment technology component like VoPay, software companies can integrate payment into their existing offering for additional add-on services resulting in customer stickiness. Our goal is to enable businesses to be more efficient and streamline the movement of money. The pandemic has highlighted a strong need for innovation, and businesses need to update legacy software and innovate their processes, or they will get left behind in this period of digital transformation.

4. What excites you most about working in this industry?
When I worked in the global telecommunications industry, it was at a pivotal moment of transformation. Now in the financial industry, I am seeing a similar transformation that I am excited to be a part of. Fintech companies are revolutionizing the industry, and the relationship between fintech companies and banks is maturing, with a transition from competitors to collaborators and partners.
Additionally, as today’s consumers demand more — faster and easier access to services, we need to create solutions that work for today, while also thinking ahead for the next 5-10 years and how the technology will evolve once again.
Right now in Canada, there is also a lot of excitement around open banking and real-time payments, as both will be transformative for the payments industry and businesses alike over the next couple of years. Our goal at VoPay is to leverage evolving technology to help companies adapt alongside their consumers.

5. How according to you will AITech impact how financial technology solutions for global payments will evolve in the coming years?
Artificial intelligence is already applied in various aspects of financial services from AI-powered trading tools in the capital markets to AI-powered wealth management applications. Fraud and compliance are other areas that AI has a major impact on. If successfully executed, two major barriers will be eliminated, further propelling and streamlining global payments.

6. What are some of the biggest challenges in fintech that innovators and other startups often face?
Right now, regulation is one of the main challenges facing the financial industry, and fintechs need to take that into account before launching a product or service. As payment technology is expensive to build and complex to maintain, I would encourage any startup founder to do their due diligence before making an investment of their time, money, or energy into a fintech product.
It’s also important for fintech founders to surround themselves with a driven team with diverse skill sets to help them navigate the many nuisances and roadblocks to building a fintech solution for the financial services industry. This makes finding and retaining top talent critical to a company’s growth

7. Could you give a sneak peek into the recent developments at VoPay?
We have many exciting developments in our roadmap, including new partnership announcements, product developments and enhancements to our existing solutions. Later this month, we will announce our latest product, enabling real-time data portability between VoPay and various accounting software applications. We are aiming to further streamline financial operations by applying robotic process automation.

8. Tell us a bit about your culture. What makes VoPay’s culture unique?
As a company, we want to ensure that our main values and core mission are centred around innovation and building cutting-edge solutions to solve major problems. We want to transform how people transact, and we believe in digital finance for all. Our team is involved in every aspect of building our products from the ground up and bringing them to market. We have a collaborative and creative approach to what we do and encourage our team to work together and share ideas.
VoPay is growing at a significant pace and we will continue to maintain our core values of building payment technology that empowers any person or business to transact with each other regardless of their technical capability, location, resources or how they transact. We have a very inclusive, fast-paced and passionate culture, and our team embodies this on a daily basis. We take pride in our retention rate and are proud to have a good portion of our “day one” team still with us today.

9. In your opinion, what are the most exciting trends in FinTech right now?
Open banking technology will be the next wave of innovation in the banking and financial services industry. Open banking removes the friction and eliminates the need for multiple disparate systems to transact. Businesses will have full visibility into the transactions and have access to data intelligence to help them improve their offerings and manage risk. Consumers will have a safer and faster experience with access to alternative payment methods, but most importantly, they will have control over their financial data. Open banking alongside real-time payments will propel the Canadian financial services industry into the future, and we look forward to being at the forefront of the transformation.

10. What are VoPay’s plans for expansion and growth? Where do you see it in the coming years?
There are a lot of exciting things happening at VoPay right now, as well as many developments in the works for the near future. Since launching in 2014, we’ve been hyper-focused Canadian market, and while we will continue on that path for the remainder of the calendar year, we have major expansion plans into the US market for 2023.
Our team is also rapidly growing and we expect to continue growing our team and talent base by 200% in the next six months. We will also have exciting news about VoPay HQ2 in March 2023!

11.Which motivational quote drives you to achieve more at work? How do you manage to stay relevant in such a fast-paced industry?
I live by and am constantly guided by the following quotes:
“If you don’t love it, you’re going to fail” – Steve Jobs
“Measure twice, cut once” – Unknown
We are consistently reinventing ourselves. While we consider ourselves futuristic and build cutting-edge financial services, we always listen to our customer’s voices and watch. That is the key to staying relevant in such a fast-paced industry as customers are truly the ones disrupting industries and using VoPay as an underlying infrastructure for financial products and services. When they succeed and grow, we succeed and grow.

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1. Can you give us a brief of your career before DMI?
I joined DMI 2 years ago. I graduated from Oxford University with a Masters in Engineering Science. I then embarked on a career in management consulting. I worked for PA Consulting and then just prior to DMI I was a Director in the CIO Advisory practice of KPMG. During my consulting career, I was lucky enough to work for some of the biggest companies in the world, helping them extract more value from technology.

2. Could you tell us more about your role at DMI?
The two years at DMI have been a whirlwind. In that time, I have been responsible for growing our European geography and now I am responsible for running a number of our industry verticals. As the SVP for those verticals, I am responsible for making sure that DMI is providing excellence to our customers. I am also responsible for making sure we grow our capability and footprint in those industries.

3. Which industries do you mainly cater to?
The industry verticals I look after for DMI are Healthcare and Fintech.

4. Which pain points do your customers approach you with?
The biggest pain points we are trying to help our customers with at the moment are:
o Extracting the flexibility and value from low code applications on platforms like 0365 and Salesforce
o Delivering more certainty and flexibility into agile application development
o Improving customer experience through the use of digital
o Creating high quality and cost-efficient managed services
o Creating next generation digital commerce solutions

5. What are the challenges that you face while leading DMI’s Healthcare & Emerging Markets industry vertical?
The biggest challenges in my role are:
Building customer intimacy – for my teams to be successful we really need to understand what is driving our customer needs. This requires time, investment and commitment from my teams to make sure we understand and ideally predict their requirements.
Building our internal capability – as DMI continues its significant growth journey, we continue to focus on our people, as well as attracting the best talent to work with us. We believe that continuous learning is the catalyst for growth and innovation, and we are committed to providing the training, career flexibility, and growth opportunities our employees need to take their lives and careers to new places. This is something I prioritize every day in my work.

6. How do you build a digital transformation strategy for the clients and solve business problems?
Building a digital transformation strategy is one of the hardest things for companies to get right. My experience has shown that there is no one size fits for all approach when thinking about a digital transformation strategy.

Each company needs to spend time in defining their strategy and, even more importantly, communicating it broadly across the organisation.

From my experience, a good digital transformation strategy has a number of attributes:
• It should be outside in. The strategy should talk about what the company is trying to achieve for its customers.
• It should balance pragmatism with ambition. Make it realistic but also make sure it is bold enough.
• It should leverage market capabilities. A good strategy is built of extracting value from the considerable amount of technology, products and solutions that are available.

7. For the 7th consequent year, DMI has been recognized as a Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Managed Mobility Services. Can you brief us more about it?

We are proud to be continually recognized as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Managed Mobility Services. DMI also has scored highest across all seven use cases in Gartner’s Critical Capabilities Report for the global MMS market. Gartner’s coverage of MMS focuses on a provider taking over the responsibility for device acquisition, day-to-day IT management administration and support routines for mobile devices. We currently manage over 4M mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, ruggedized devices and field devices) for our customers and have a footprint in over 78 countries. This has been possible because of our strong focus on customer centricity which is supplemented by our own service centres across 15 locations and four continents.
Our market strategy is built on providing an end-to-end experience that combines security, automation, analytics, ROI, and process paired with vertical solutions and extensive consulting capabilities aimed at satisfying our customers’ biggest, most demanding challenges. Investment levels are high around experience automation, workflows, monitoring, analytics, and customer experience leveraging AI and robotic process automation (RPA).

8. Recently, DMI joined the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI). Can you brief us about this membership?
MOBI is a global, member-led consortium focused on creating the standards and collaboration necessary to enable Web3 digital infrastructure for connected vehicles and IOT commerce. With a team of senior advisors in DMI who have been living and breathing connectivity since its infancy, this membership will provide us with the opportunity to collaborate within its alliance of the world’s largest vehicle manufacturers along with start-ups, non-governmental organizations, transit agencies, insurers, toll road providers, smart city leaders and blockchain technology companies to pioneer the future of mobility collaboratively through cutting-edge digital technologies. We are excited to contribute through our offerings that span the entire connected ecosystem from device to the cloud and include AI and analytics; blockchain and distributed ledger; and Smart Contract technology for industries ranging from automotive, government, healthcare, logistics, transportation and more.

9. What is the biggest piece of advice you could provide to company leaders about helping them fulfil the needs of their team?
My biggest advice is to listen to your teams. Effective two-way communication between leaders and their people is a very important thing to get right. With big, global teams this is not as easy as it sounds. But getting it right, in my opinion, is fundamental to our collective success.

10. Where do your passions lie? What do you think defines you as a person?
At work, my passions lie in our customers and our DMI team. Luckily these can often be the same thing. If you can deliver excellence for your customers, you will have a growing business, which in turn leads to growth for your people.

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