FintechOS, a U.K. startup founded in 2017 by Romanian entrepreneurs, develops data-driven hyper-personalized products and services for traditional banks to enable them to compete with agile new market entrants.
The company, which just raised raised $14 million in a Series A venture capital round, counts Société Générale
, Orange Money, ERSTE, Vienna Insurance Group, and Hyperion Insurance Group among its customers.
FintechOS says it hopes to help banks and insurance companies become more customer-centric. “There are very few financial institutions that have the capability to offer a really personalized customer service, says Teodor Blidarus, the startup’s co-founder and CEO. FintechOS offers them different plug and play solutions.. “We call it technology as a service,” he says. “Depending on a bank’s size and strategy they are likely to use it differently.”
FintechOS’s marketplace includes more than 50 open source, ready-made apps for client onboarding, lending, savings, insurance, pensions and wealth management. The startup also provides technology through its innovation studio to help banks that want to build their own offering,
“We are not the only one in the market but what sets us apart also the way we do it,” says Blidarus. Unlike costly, closed systems developed by traditional vendors the startup’s solutions require little or no coding, allowing developers, product market marketers and product managers to use the technology tools to create customer journeys together. “This allows a culture of collaboration and avoids the traditional chasm of business versus technology people,” he says.
Existing partnerships with Microsoft, EY, Deloitte, Publicis Sapient and CapGemini allow FintechOS to quickly deploy in multiple markets. FintechOS has offices in London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Copenhagen and Bucharest, and is planning to expand operations to Asia and the United State sin 2020, says Blidarus. “We are getting a lot of traction in Southeast Asia,” he says. The company is also planning to open offices in New York and Boston and in Munich and Paris.
“There is a lot of talking about fintech and neobanks transforming the world and there are some great examples such as Monzo, Lemonade and Revolut,” says Blidarus. “These guys are pioneers and are doing a great job, showing everybody, especially customers, that financial services can be delivered differently.” But he says, in order for new, personalized customer-friendly financial services to go mainstream “you need to help the big guys ,the 98% of the market. The world will be transformed by helping the big guys.”
