Last week I had the pleasure of
attending Startup Bootcamp’s Fintech Demo Day in London. The place was buzzing
with all manner of sticky-beaks, from VCs to corporate sponsors, techies, early
adopters, and most importantly, the fintech startups themselves. The demo was
designed to give each of the 10 startups a 90 second speaking slot and subsequent
ten minutes of Q&A that took place simultaneously which, much to my
chagrin, meant I had to play favourites! 

Here are the 7 Fintech Companies from the UK that caught my attention (in
no particular order).      

DISCLAIMER: as with the rest of the
demo day participants, I do not have first-hand experience with any of these
services so this piece is more of a high-level summary of what is to come in
the following 12 months.
 

Enterprise Bot

my record was about 35 minutes
trying to get through to a long gone mobile phone provider before I slammed
down the phone in frustration (in all honesty it was a digital handset). Enter
Enterprise Bot, which seeks to disrupt customer service within the financial services
industry by using AI powered virtual assistants (VAs). Enterprise Bot provides
financial services companies with a robust, AI-powered VA to enhance customer
experience (how effectively the algorithm does this for more complex questions
is pure speculation at this point). The white-labelled solution can be deployed
on various platforms and answers a ‘broad range of customer queries’ which,
according to founder Ravina Mutha, cuts contact centre costs by 40% and end
user hold time by a staggering 90% (If that is indeed true, this is one robot
I’d gladly wine and dine)!

Europeone

As its name suggests, this is a Eurocentric
product that will spark little interest beyond the continent. Its target market
is the 30 million strong cohort of mobile Europeans currently being poorly
served by incumbent banks. Due to unnecessary friction, overseas clients suffer
exorbitant costs and long delays (I faced similar frustrations trying to open a
UK bank account when I moved to London from Melbourne).

Europeone claims to be the first bank
to empower its customers to manage their finances from any European location in
their native language. It aims to disrupt the existing money remittance
providers by combining the latest in app technology, 4G mobile networks and the
EEA’s passporting regulations which essentially creates a single European market
for financial services with banks able to ply their trade across the region without having to be
separately authorised in each country.  

Penta

Similarly, small businesses in Europe
get a raw deal from the banks, with lengthy sign-ups and clunky user interfaces
that you’d expect to see on a Commodore 64. The team at Penta claim to have a
solution by providing a simple and convenient business bank account with access
to third party APIs allowing customers to pick and choose which services they
need without incurring the habitual costs and rigid packages that come with
traditional small business banking.