Finbridge Global launches marketplace platform to reduce RFI effort

Challenge

The gap between fintech and financial institutions

Barbara Gottardi founded Finbridge Global in reaction to her own experience as CIO in HSBC, Vanguard Europe & Admiral Money, and to the government-commissioned Kalifa report. This report, led by the former CEO of Worldpay Ron Kalifa, provided recommendations to support the growth and competitiveness of the UK fintech sector.

“The fintech worldwide market is valued at £252 billion, which represents a great opportunity for startups, investors, and financial institutions,” explained Barbara. “However, there isn’t an easy way to search and compare fintechs based on their capabilities, which limits the number of potential collaborations. It’s not a leveled playing field and there’s a waste of money all around.”

So, Finbridge Global was set out to create a solution to bridge the gap between financial institutions and fintech. “We wanted to provide an online platform that assesses and scores fintech capabilities. For fintech, this means they’d understand how they’re performing as a company and product, giving them insights on how to improve accordingly via our partners. For financial institutions, they can easily search for the best partner for their business needs, knowing up front it is a match for their architecture and focus on the cultural match,” said Barbara.

Hence, Finbridge Global was founded.

Solution

Develop. Launch. Feedback. Repeat.

In the first attempt to build the platform, Finbridge used traditional high-code development but quickly realized it was taking too much time and was too expensive. The goal was to build a unique product that wasn’t yet available, so it was critical to have a development platform that allowed Finbridge Global to get to market quickly and refine the product iteratively.

That’s when Finbridge looked at low-code. Partnering with doddle, Finbridge chose OutSystems ODC—the OutSystems cloud-native offering. “We chose OutSystems due to the speed and agility it provided but also its enterprise resilience and security,” said Barbara.

Tom Ciullo, CEO and founder at doddle, highlighted OutSystems’ out-of-the-box security capabilities, such as encryption, web application firewalls, and intrusion detection, as well as the use of Infrastructure-as-Code and container technology.

“We’re talking about a highly data-sensitive industry, so security and compliance was one of the main concerns. OutSystems was the perfect choice because deployments are automated, consistent, and secure, minimizing vulnerabilities and ensuring compliance with security standards,” Tom concluded.

Results

Over 100 new fintech and 10 financial institutions with 250k investment

The company launched the Finbridge platform in 10 weeks.

The product targets both fintech and financial institutions. Fintech companies can assess their capabilities using an Assessment Engine. They get a score and a report with insights on how well they perform as a company and product.

As for financial institutions, they can use the platform’s AI and ML searching capabilities to find the fintech that best fits their needs. “Usually, an RFI process can take six to eight weeks and involves a bunch of spreadsheets with millions of questions,” described Barbara. “The platform already includes answers to standard RFI questions, so by registering, financial institutions can easily find the top fintech companies that are a match for their requirements.”

Since its launch, Finbridge has been adopted by over 100 organizations and generated an investment of £250k.