AccessFintech’s Roy Saadon discusses the company’s role as a disruptor and how it has grown a community, both in-house and across the wider industry, since its inception in 2016
Fintech companies talk a lot about ‘ecosystems’, but less so about the idea of ‘community’. In the context of financial services, the word ‘ecosystem’ conveys a group of people who often have competing interests but sit in a similar practice area.
The word ‘community’ means something more; the sum of the parts is greater than the individual, with the consensus of a shared effort. A community is what we are trying to build at AccessFintech.
Companies that build networks have certain dynamics of their own. Critical mass is measured by the size of a community and its contributors, not just by its regular metrics, revenue or by the number of deals that it signs.
During the early days of a new ‘network’ company, the traditional ‘value’ of the network is dramatically less than other types of software companies. At this stage, the company is operating alone, yet to build a strong network. At this point in AccessFintech’s story, we were looking for core entrepreneurs at our clients’ firms and at various banks. We also wanted to know who had our shared, long- term vision for the network.
As we approached certain milestones, we realised we had made AccessFintech a ‘disruptive’ company. We were not initially looking to be a technological disruptor.
Our clients didn’t see added value immediately, but they still understood that investing in us was a worthwhile exercise.
In time, we started to become more than an initial disruptor and became a critical part of their operational infrastructure.
Upon becoming a ‘disruptive’ company, a company’s community becomes a shared entity to maintain.
When AccessFintech met this stage of its personal journey, we, as a company, started to feel that our community was operating as one, and the company was accepted as part of the wider infrastructure.
We are now at the stage where we are exponentially starting to bring products to the market.
The types of conversations that AccessFintech has with its customers no longer consist of concerns about how their data will be used, but more about what value they can derive from a shared community.
Broadly speaking, there are ‘early adopters’ and next in line are the ‘early majority’. Following these groups are laggards who are waiting to determine if a network will be a success — they would prefer not to take too much risk upfront. Eventually, the companies that are not part of the community could be penalised for not being part of a network.
Team-based community building
The presence of a community has helped AccessFintech gain major clients and participants that have now become part of our team. There comes a point where the founding team must take a bit of a backseat from being the face of the product, and must let the senior team speak about the product with confidence and credibility.
Those senior hires should be trusted by the buying community. AccessFintech has gotten to the stage where initial risks have been replaced by a level of credibility and scale, and there’s added value to be found when other industry experts are brought into the story.
We know there’s always an element of risk that those entering the world of fintechs must take on, as fintechs don’t have the same compensation structures and equity benefits of other sectors. Someone from within the capital markets ecosystem must have a clear vision when considering entrance into this industry. Our recent joiners, such as Chris Daur, Fabrice Carrier, and Craig Boardman certainly have this. As does our global head of buy-side customer experience Pardeep Cassells who came to the company at an early stage.
Community and scale
The best type of networks are the ones that don’t have to be continually built from scratch, but have some elements of repeatability in their processes. AccessFintech is particularly good at identifying and solving financial supply chain challenges.
If an issue is impossible to fix as a single firm, but the community — either a counterparty or an agent for settlement for the beneficial owner — shares the problem, that community is driving the problem-solving activity. If data is stitched together from all of the above parties, meaningful and useful intelligence can be gathered.
When AccessFintech started out in security settlements, it was solving these types of use cases by using data collaboration. From this starting point, we moved on to areas such as standard settlement instructions (SSI). Our Synergy Network now prevents transaction issues, such as breaks and repairs, in real time. It also improves operational efficiency and prevents fails and regulatory sanctions. Other products we’re now involved with include derivative payments. We are also operational in the syndicated and private credit loan space.
Data ownership and the community
We have always said, from day one, that data is the new gold. The evolution of AI is driven by a need for better quality data, more access to data and more intelligent data. It is definitely an asset. However, the ownership and responsibility for data has changed immensely. In the past, when there was less need for data, a lot of vendors were processing data that they just assumed to be theirs.
Now, we see AccessFintech as a guardian or custodian of data for the whole community. We are here to support the use of data in collaboration with others to extract value through intelligent mining that can be presented back to the community.
Although everyone understands the value of the data, and no one’s willing to give it up, our business model isn’t built on taking ownership of data.
On the contrary, it’s built to support infrastructure and ensure security and protection, all while applying a set of tools that allow for correlation and interaction.
Managing the data of the whole community must be done safely, speedily, efficiently and securely. There’s also a lot of industry effort to make data compatible, normalised and interoperable. Building data governance infrastructure allows firms to extract intelligence in a way that is seamless to them, while protecting each firm’s individual data.
The future and AI
For AccessFintech, AI is another collaboration tool. There are many different models of AI, from robotics to automated scripting. It can be complementary to a manual process, or in some cases replace that manual process. There is even AI that is capable of self-improvement.
With AI, you won’t always be able to type a query and get perfect answers — it’s not a magic solution. However, the more you understand it, the more you’ll realise how much training AI needs, and how much knowledge it already houses.
Bad data inputted into a workflow can lead to negative results, increasing the levels of course correction needed. We use AI to get from 99 per cent to 100 per cent efficiency.
However, getting from zero to 99 per cent efficiency takes a huge amount of infrastructure perspective.
Sometimes, that last 1 per cent of efficiency takes the longest time to achieve. AI can help a company achieve this through mass processing, common knowledge, scenario testing and statistical analysis. Those models can identify cases that were much harder to identify under a human device ruleset.
At the heart of the AccessFintech community is a shared vision to solve our problems collectively, whether it concerns balance sheets, transaction costs, operational or technological capacity. AccessFintech’s collective strength exceeds that of its individual members; we are independently motivated towards a shared objective.
