10 Fintech Companies Revolutionizing Financial Services-2019

volume 11 | Issue 11 | 2019 Innovator of the Month

Stephen Kalayjian Chief Marketing Strategist & Co-founder, Ticker Tocker

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Fintech Companies Revolutionizing Financial Services-2019

Editor’s Desk Simplified than Before

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he financial landscape of the world has been changed evidently. The way people used to think about money, banking, value-exchange, and cash flow has been revolutionized, all thanks to the ultimate combination of Finance & Technology (FinTech). Financial sector is in the new age of transparency and efficiency.

The impact of technology in finance sector can be witnessed through the changes occurred in traditional methods of banking. Previously, banking was something that was conducted primarily offline and people would visit their local bank to transfer funds, pay bills or consult with a banker on various things regarding their personal finances.

But now, we can see how this traditional banking system has been evolved. Without stepping out to banks, people can now access their bank accounts through their computers or phones and conduct any activity online that they would normally go to a bank for. Similarly, the process of payments, lending, and trading have also become more simplified and efficient than before.

Whenever it came to shop online, people used to fear to buy goods there. But now, they find it safer and secure to go online without fear of being scammed or losing money, as companies like Stripe and PayPal are making it easier for people to make purchases without fear.

Long story short, basically, Fintech has been rapidly penetrating the financial markets by filling in the gaps left by the existing financial institutions and thus, significantly improving the user experience.

It is evident that changes in the finance sector are providing immense possibilities for economic development. After understanding the importance of fintech and how it’s changing the industry, many businesses and individuals are hugely investing in it.

FinTech is the next big thing that would shape the financial landscape of the world.

The study estimates that over the last five years, the FinTech sector has exploded to a point where it boasts of growing by a 45 percent annual growth margin. Moreover, the figures from CB Insights suggests that the sector got a whopping $13.7 billion in funding last year alone. From here, we can say that the Fintech market is rapidly becoming major and more competitive. Fintech companies are generally more flexible, have low costs, and are more open to new technologies. They seem to better understand human behavior and have a superior value proposition with which they are able to create real more value for their customers.

Taking this significance of FinTech into consideration, Insights Success has curated a list of “10 Fintech Companies Revolutionizing Financial Services-2019”, who are making the paradigm shift from traditional business systems to emerging fintech solutions.

Also, make sure to scroll through the articles written by our editorial team and CXO standpoints of some of the leading industry experts to have a brief knowledge of the sector.

Let’s start reading!

Hitesh Dhamani

INNOVATOR OF THE MONTH

12 10

KNOWLEDGE KEYS Be Smart – or Vanish why Utilities Need to Actively Develop Smart Micro-Grids ?

TICKER TOCKER On a Mission to Empower Traders

CONT ENTS

28 STELLAR’S VISION How VideoAmp Evolved the Company Culture and Process to Increase the Number of Engineers Employed ?

ARTICLES 16

18 SALMON SOFTWARE Delivering World-class Treasury Management System

22

SE2 Empowering Insurance with a Platform Led Eco-System Approach

32

VIPR Helping the Insurance Industry Generate Powerful Data

EDITORS’S CHOICE Cyber Security: Secure Your Network with Intelligence

24 GROWTH ASPECT Entrepreneurship Going Beyond the Comfort of Safety to Make Larger Impact

34 FUTURISTIC INSIGHTS Should Businesses Adopt Blockchain Technology?

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Managing Editor Anish Miller

Executive Editor

Assistant Editors

Hitesh Dhamani

Jenny Fernandes Rohit Chaturvedi

Visualizer

Art & Design Director

Associate Designer

David King

Amol Kamble

Kushagra Gupta

Co-designer Asha Bange

Senior Sales Manager

Business Development Manager

Kshitij S

Andy Mitter

Marketing Manager

Sales Executives

John Matthew

David, Kevin, Vishnu

Technical Head

Business Development Executives

Jacob Smile

Steve, Joe, Alan, Anup

Technical Specialist Aditya

Digital Marketing Manager Marry D'Souza

SME-SMO Executive Prashant Chevale

Research Analyst Frank Adams

Database Management Stella Andrew

Circulation Manager Robert Brown

Technology Consultant David Stokes

sales@insightssuccess.com November, 2019

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Ticker Tocker On a Mission to Empower Traders

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egistered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Ticker Tocker, LLC is an Intuitive Trading Platform Powered by a Community of Trading Leaders.

Empowering retail investors and traders to compete is Ticker Tocker’s mission. Ticker Tocker was designed to help novice, sophisticated, and institutional traders find, test, learn, share and execute trades in stocks, futures and foreign exchange.

Since its inception, Ticker Tocker has won numerous awards, including three Stevies® American Business Awards for Most Innovative Tech Company of the Year, Best FinTech Solution, and Best New Financial Product and Service in the 17th Annual American Business Awards®.

These awards are indicative of a simple fact that Ticker Tocker is the future of trading. With a novel, intuitive approach to improving trading, Ticker Tocker is revolutionizing the fintech industry by introducing new levels of technology and efficiency.

These accolades are also accompanied by strategic partnerships with almost all of the industries’ leading exchanges and brokers including: The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), CQG, Inc., Interactive Brokers, TD Ameritrade, Tradier, Fidelity Investments, ATC Brokers, TradeStation, Sage Trader, GarWood, MatrixEx, and many more.

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Groundbreaking Products Ticker Tocker provides many different products for the many different DNAs of traders by combining solutions that allow traders to get content that matches their level of expertise: Intuitive social charting tools provide novice traders the ability to easily copy trading leader’s trades in realtime to their existing broker accounts.

Intermediate traders can utilize a unique “Tocker Score” to easily visualize trends and end chart overload. A Tocker Score is a customizable, composite calculation of indicators that helps traders identify when significant events occur that might indicate upward or downward trends in momentum.

Advanced traders can utilize a drag-and-drop codeless algorithm creator to design strategies in a way that’s easy to understand, provides instant visual feedback, requires no coding, and offers charting integration.

Verified trading leaders host live-room sessions, offering a high-level of transparency of their trading strategies and providing targeted education for novice and advanced traders alike.

The Immensely Experienced Leader With over 35 years of industry experience trading stocks, futures, commodities and currencies, Stephen Kalayjian, is the Chief Marketing Strategist and Co-founder of Ticker Tocker. Stephen began his career at the American Stock Exchange in 1983 and moved on to a position at the New York Stock Exchange in 1984, where he remained until 1989. Stephen also held positions in the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange and at the Chicago Board of Trade. Stephen traded his own capital and that of various family offices becoming a successful day trader

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trading a significant amount of volume. In 2007, Stephen co-founded a firm to research and develop predictive analytics in order to identify trends, reversals, patterns, and divergences in the marketplace for all asset classes and time intervals. Stephen seeks to generate short term and long term trade ideas using his predictive analytics throughout the day. In 2016, the company built Ticker Tocker, an intuitive marketplace trading platform. Ticker Tocker includes an order management system, an API connected to multiple member and technology firms, and a patented code-less algorithm builder. As a Leader on Ticker Tocker, Stephen provides education, strategies, market commentary, trade ideas, trade signals, and a live trading room for his subscribers. Ticker Tocker has contracted with Bloomberg to offer an application that provides predictive analytics to institutional traders through the Bloomberg App portal.

Additionally, Steve will be hosting Ticker Tocker Live; a live stream program broadcasting eight hours per day, five days a week, to teach trading analytics and the power of predictive analytics for generating trade ideas in equities, futures, ETFs, commodities, and currencies.

Active Trading, the Need of the Hour According to the organization, the global equity markets have been on a historic run leading investors to question if sophisticated trading tools are necessary when things are “always going up”. But as everyone knows, business cycles are entirely inevitable, and what goes up must go down. To preserve and grow wealth, active trading is crucial to take advantage of all volatility in a market whether it is occurring in bullish or bearish territory.

Ticker Tocker also believes retail investors and traders have bought into a “set it and forget it” mentality. Passive investing and trading tools like ETFs, new unsophisticated apps such as Wealthfront, and other managed portfolio services have given a false sense of “security” be removing what used to be an integral part of the trading ecosystem,

expertise and understanding. To combat this trend of complacency, Ticker Tocker provides tools and expert leader advice to allow traders to be active participants in trading.

Providing Institutional Level Tools Ticker Tocker specifically targets the trading niche in the FinTech space. In trading, issues plaguing the industry include shrinking commissions, reducing retail volume, and the rise of high frequency trading cutting into retail traders’ ability to generate a profit.

Ticker Tocker addresses these issues by providing institutional level tools and expert leader advice to traders to give them the capability to trade more and to compete with more sophisticated trading operations.

Standing Tall from the Crowd and Planning for a Better Future Ticker Tocker stands out from its competitors with patented technology developed over a decade and with partnerships with most major American exchanges and brokers. In addition, Ticker Tocker’s extensive regulatory licensing including being a RIA gives the company an advantage as the most heavily regulated platform to offer social trading services in the industry.

When it comes to the future, Ticker Tocker’s goal is to be the leading platform for retail trading for all major US brokers and exchanges by the end of 2020. Future goals beyond this include planned expansion to international markets including London/Europe, Israel/Middle East, and Singapore/South East Asia to name a few planned expansions.

Ticker Tocker provides access to a global network of trading Leaders to allow retail traders to gain insights through live trade ideas, live broadcasts, and verified Leader profiles.

Stephen Kalayjian Chief Marke ng Strategist & Co-founder

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November 2019 | 11

Be Smart – or Vanish Why Utilities need to Actively Develop Smart Micro-Grids ?

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he energy market is changing rapidly. This is true not only for the USA and Europe but on a global level. Possibly the most important change is the one towards more decentralized systems. This is challenging the utility industry.

Utilities historically have developed by integrating small microgrids which grew around mills and other small-scale generators (today we would say prosumers). This is why utilities developed along the entire value chain: They integrated these micro distribution grids in a more stable larger (Transport) grid and replaced decentralized generation by more cost-efficient central power plants. This highly efficient centralized system was allowing industrial development as we know it. At its time it was possibly the only way to serve large, strongly energy depending production like steel, paper or the upcoming chemical industry. The centralized energy system did not result from an oligopolistic market, but the industry structure derived from an efficient technical design.

There are several reasons why this formerly beneficiary system is challenged today. Not all apply in all markets but some of them do, so decentralization of energy markets is a global trend. Specifically, in most

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industrial markets the new energy regime is driven by politics favoring small scale, decentral renewable generation. Subsidies on renewables devalue existing large thermic power plants. Even large-scale hydropower plants do not easily pass strict environmental and social feasibility analysis. But independent of any political setting there is another more fundamental reason for the growing competitiveness of a decentralized energy design. While the first phase of industrial development is known for its industrial clusters (often grown close to energy sources like coal or water) which shaped many geographic areas for more than a century, later phases are much more dynamic and do less depend on geographic proximity. Within a dynamic industry setting where businesses are set up and closed or moved somewhere else on a regular basis a static centralized infrastructure loses competitiveness.

In many emerging markets this dynamism as well expands towards those areas which are today not connected to the central grid but offer inexpensive land or new agricultural products which can be sold abroad at high prices. Finally, the political will and the industrial demand for decentralized systems today encounter renewable generation even at small size at competitive costs

compared to large size thermic power plant. For the most prominent renewable technology photovoltaic in the North (with less radiation) this competitiveness is given only as grid parity, meaning central generation plus transport is as expensive as photovoltaic on site. In the Southern hemisphere photovoltaic is already a competitive source empowering decentralized energy infrastructure.

While decentralized generation has caught up with centralized generation plants, distribution systems with a large portion of decentralized renewable generation capacity are often inefficient. There are basically four reasons for this inefficiency: (1) Missing price mechanism supporting grid operations, (2) high costs to operate such a system stable, (3) large amount of excess energy (exported or not being used at all) and (4) sub-utilized interface between microgrid and its feeder system. These are basically the same reasons that in the last century supported the centralization of the grid system. What is needed is an intelligent or smart decentralized distribution system.

An intelligent distribution system with mainly decentralized generation requires more than smart meters and it is different from today popular so

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Knowledge Keys

About the Author Dr. Karl Kolmsee the CEO of Smart Hydro Power, studied agricultural and philosophy at the Universities of Hamburg and Goettingen, Germany. After his PhD he has spent most of his professional career in the energy business – first as consultant at A.T. Kearney later as manager at E.ON, Europe’s largest private utility, and member of the board at Schmack biogas, one of the pioneers of the biogas market in Europe. In 2009 Karl Kolmsee has been nominated professor for energy management at Applied University of Kufstein, Austria. His main areas of academic work are international energy markets and renewable energy. In 2010 he founded Smart Hydro Power to focus on design and commercialization of kinetic pico hydro power systems with main focus on rural electrification for emerging markets like India, Latin America and Eastern Africa. Today Smart Hydro Power offers complete solutions for off grid solutions and micro grids.

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November 2019 | 13

called smart home or home storage solutions. These offer photovoltaic, battery and basic load management for the individual household. Some providers of home storage solutions integrate customers in a community model to allow exchange of autogenerated electricity. But these communities are barely more than contract partners within a fixed price net metering model. Individual home solutions – even within sales-and-purchase communities – do not solve any inefficiency issues decentralization faces. These systems are either completely self-sufficient – in this case they are expensive – or they rely on central grid services like a parasite of its host. Sustainable decentralization requires an intelligent control and steering mechanism between the households which build a microgrid.

While there are possibly different steering mechanisms, establishing a local market with the price as variable that guides demand and supply according to the aggregated demand function and the aggregated cost functions seems promising. Technically this does require a dynamic forecasting and load management (at least for major loads which are used in a price-sensitive manner).

At first glance a market model would solve the four major issues shown above. It would set a price for photovoltaic and battery storage which would control demand and thereby reduce necessary installed reserve storage and generation capacity. This mechanism would

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as well be consistent with the functioning of the feeder grid and could therefore supply itself services to this grid which would be valued with the same “currency”.

Technically this steering mechanism might be completely decentralized based on individual processors in each household like the blockchain technology (once necessary processing capacity comes down to acceptable limits) or it might work between a central unit and individual processors. In either way it steers the local market place towards an efficient optimum given generation, demand and battery storage capacity at a defined point in time.

Micro grids do open (within a given legal framework) a possibility for traditional utilities to re-define their role using some of their traditional strengths. But new entrants can equally well enter this space and perform wherever the incumbent does not adapt. This gives room to numerous co-operations between new entrants or between new companies and the incumbent offering their services or developing new business models along the value chain. Incumbent utilities may be smart – or vanish.

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Salmon Software Delivering World-class Treasury Management System

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henever it comes to managing important financial operations, businesses always count on Treasury Management Systems (TMS).

Taking it as an inspiration, an Irish software firm, Salmon Software is providing world-class TMS solutions for three decades. The company operates its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, with its Central European headquarters in the Czech Republic. Its blue-chip customer base includes Airbus, Arqiva, Avolon, Ryanair, Securitas, FQM, Traxys, CRH, Serco and many more.

A One Stop Shop Salmon Software has achieved great success and coverage with its flagship product, Salmon Treasurer. Salmon Treasurer is a one stop shop for all aspects of treasury and has a very broad range of Financial Instrument Coverage across several markets including, Money Markets, Foreign Exchange, Debt, Derivatives, Facilities, Trade Finance, Commodities and others. It incorporates unrivalled rich functionality in Cash Management, Automated Electronic Payments, Forecasting, Intercompany Position Keeping, Multi-Lateral and Multi-Currency Intercompany Netting, Regulatory Reporting, Interactive Dashboards.

Additionally, it also has inbound and outbound integration with all market providers including banks, ERP Systems, Rates Vendors, Trading Platforms etc. and provides extended treasury management functionality enabling companies to centralize or decentralize treasury operations and manage unlimited accounts, facilities, books, funds, dealers and companies.

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Salmon Software is a disruptive force in the treasury management arena due to its flagship product. The company’s TMS has evolved to reflect the technological innovation and increasingly complex global financial systems making it one of the most sophisticated treasury tools in the world. The company has the same system for cloud and on-premise deployment. Being small and agile, the company has no third-party investment diluting its focus. It is therefore singularly focused on its clients and delivering a solution which represents a 100% fit to requirements.

In a world, where a recent Citibank survey has shown large dissatisfaction amongst Treasurers with their TMS, Salmon has no such complaints. The company offers 100% fit every time as it has the instrument coverage, the functionality, the integration services and most of all the “know-how” to deliver and implement a Treasury Management System.

Blazing the Trail An elite team of Salmon Software is led by its CEO, John Byrne. John is a business graduate of University College Dublin. Prior to setting up Salmon Software, in 1985, John researched the markets and created INTUITION, the first CBT system on the market. This was a hugely successful product and its offspring system is still in use today.

Following that, he set up Salmon Software in 1985 and for over three decades he has been a strong advocate of independence, specialization and innovation in the application side of Treasury Management Software. During

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this time, he has led the development and innovation of Salmon Treasurer to continuously incorporate new technology and new ideas to meet the demands of the increasingly complex nature of global financial markets.

of the data recording, eliminates the necessity to reconcile positions, and enables both entities to see the same data from opposing perspectives. It is also the first to introduce functionality to cater for SONIA as it replaces LIBOR.

Customer-centric Approach Salmon Software spends a lot of time with their potential clients to ensure that there is no disconnect between what they are expecting from their TMS and what the company is expected to deliver. “We know the system and the client knows their data. Marry those 2 together and you will be guaranteed a successful outcome,” says John.

Secondly, the company offers a single system which encompasses all markets and therefore fits easily into all business sectors. It is completely modular and licensed according to need with a singular deployment methodology and devoid of any potential for multi-tenant risk because each client enjoys their own dedicated environment and database.

Not only does Salmon Software listen to its clients, it also canvasses them regularly to ensure that the company is developing the system to meet their needs. They get to have a say and an input into the company’s development roadmap. After all, they are the ones who know what they want. Ignore them at your peril.

In order to bring efficiency, Salmon Software follows all technological advances in the market to upgrade itself with the volatile technological advancements. It adopts those that it feels will enhance its systems and incorporates them into its Salmon Treasurer application immediately.

Leading the Market Salmon Software has been first to market with a number of innovative creations. For example, it has Intercompany Position Keeping that doesn’t require the necessity to duplicate transactions between entities. This eliminates 50%

Continuously Developing When asked about future aspiration, Salmon Software intends to develop according to 3 influences, which includes its clients, technology, and third-party systems impacting on the Treasury community.

A functionally rich product supported by a longstanding, knowledgeable and professional team with a dedication to excellence and delivering solutions that clients expect.

John Byrne CEO

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November 2019 | 17

Cyber Security Secure Your Network with Intelligence

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Editors’s Choice

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t present, cyber security is playing a vital role in the digital world and it is also known as a standard technology use for the protection of cyber environment of an individual or any organization. It is mainly known for security culture which includes user network, drives, software process, information storage, application security and system support which is directly or indirectly connected to the network. The prime objective of cyber security is to reduce continuously growing cyber risks and cyber threats.

Cyber security technology consists of a collection of tools, policies, security concepts, risk management, actions, and training. The technology tracks protected networks, data security from data attack, along with cyber security and physical security.

The core functionality of cybersecurity is based on techniques involved protecting information and system from cyber threats.

How Cyber Security came into Existence?

As with the history, cyber security has huge network background with its own findings and technology aspects. In the early 1990s, a research on information security and policy was been introduced where information was in the form of accuracy and based on system awareness. Under 2016 survey, 70% of the organizations in the US were adopted by US Security survey which is comprised of NIFT (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Cyber-security framework.

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Design review is used as an application of threat model, and works before the code is written.

And Tooling is the technique which includes automated tools that test security flaws with higher positive rate.

Origins of Cyber Security Platform Cyber security is defined as a package of safety solutions which provides major security processes.

There are many sectors which are consuming cyber security platform as its major functionality for web service network. The fundamentals of cyber security process are, Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ

Application Security Information Security Network Security Operational Security

Ÿ

Application security is covered with technology that measures the feasibility of the application by finding, fixing and preventing security exposers. There are different techniques which are being used as security platform to emphasize safety at different stages of the application cycle.

Application cycle includes different segments such as design, development, deployment, upgrade, and maintenance. The standard of security process is consequently changing and application cycle has also a different process with different standardization.

Techniques used in application security are mainly focused on its exposer of the application security. Whitebox security is used for reviewing the source code and noticing security flaws of the application through manual functionality. Blackbox security audit is used for testing security functions where source code is not needed.

Ÿ

Information security is a core source of information which is confidential, integrated and easily available. The primary focus of this security process is to the stable data protection while maintaining a focus on efficient policy application. Risk management process is achieved by identifying assets, threat sources, and vulnerabilities and is also followed by the effectiveness of the risk management plan.

Information security mainly works on confidential information which is highly entitled to the process.

Ÿ

Network security sets a variety of computer networks, used in both public and private sector. It also includes conducting transactions and build communications among businesses, government agencies, and individuals. All networks are divided into two sections, private network and public network.

Private networking is used within the company and public network access relates to the open source network. This security culture is highly involved in most of the companies, enterprises, and other types of institutions. It is mainly used for protecting and overseeing the operations. The

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network resource is relatively protected by assigning a unique name and a corresponding password. The process is concerned with authentication of username and password which implements its security concept. Ÿ

Operational security is a process that identifies information which is critical and easy to determine by competitor intelligence. It protects individual piece of data that could be grouped together to give a proper set of information. It includes critical information essential for military commanders, senior leaders, and higher management. The whole process also includes technical and non-technical measures such as, use of email encryption software, taking precautions against spying data and securing confidential information not to be shared on social media platform.

Operational security is a five-step process which assists any organization to specify required information, Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ

Identification of critical information Analysis of threats Analysis of Vulnerabilities Assessment of Risk.

Securing Organization Processes Cyber security process plays a crucial role to impact information security of the organization. It also explores the “Relationship between Organization Culture and Information Security Culture” and contributes into the organization’s protection as well as maintains all kind of information. Security process is a never-ending process in which information is used as a resource tool to manage statistics security culture.

The security process served five-step processes including pre-evaluation, strategic planning, operative planning, and implementation. The pre-evaluation process identifies the awareness of information security within employees in the organization. Strategic Planning offers healthier awareness program where target gets sets according to the grouping of people. Operative Planning provides good security process which can be established based on internal communication, security awareness, and a training program. Implementation is four stage

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process used as security process to implement information. The process is used for management, communication with organizational members, and current employees.

Enhancing Future with Cyber Security Cyber security is aggressively contributing to the IT field concerned with reducing organization’s risk and data break. According to research in 2016, 46% of organizations carry “problematic shortage” of cyber security, and is increased by 28% compared to 2015.

Also, government, commercial and non-governmental organizations use cyber security for better and secure platform.

The demand for cyber security is increasing rapidly as professional security worker in all industries are managing the volume of consumer data of finance, healthcare, and retail. However, the use of the term “cyber security” is more popular in all industrial areas that will help organizations with security process culture.

Conclusion Cyber security is equally important for local, state, and central government as these organizations maintains a huge amount of confidential data and records concerning the country and its citizens. Yet there are many government and commercial organizations that face difficulties in protecting the confidential data due to lack of inadequate secured infrastructure, and lack of security awareness.

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SE2 Empowering Insurance with a Pla orm Led Eco-System Approach

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E2 is the best-in-class platform driven administration services provider to the US Life and Annuity Insurance Industry.

We transform our client’s operations by leveraging our industry leading SE2 Aurum® digital platform and capabilities allowing them to reduce and variabilize book of business administration costs while also gaining the ability to rapidly launch new products and propositions in the US L&A insurance market.

Carved out of a 125+ years old life insurance company, SE2 is a team of insurance experts, 100% dedicated to the life and annuity industry, who just like our clients live and breathe life and annuity insurance.

SE2 recently completed a large transformation program that saw the investing over USD $80M+ in modernizing its SE2 Aurum® platform to open up the architecture and build a complete ecosystem that provides its clients a best of breed operating model to run their operations, launch new digital channels and innovative products, and engage their policyholders. Some recently launched solutions equips its clients to build a launch direct to consumer solutions as well as to leapfrog into providing a digital age buying experience for existing channels.

SE2’s model is shifting the industry value curve by harnessing modern digital technologies and cloud to provide a better, more efficient customer service experience at an optimized, variable cost model.

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The Man Behind the Platform Vinod Kachroo is the Chief Information Officer of SE2. His influence towards the industry stems from success driving transformation efforts on the carrier side with companies like MetLife, AIG, and Prudential and more recently with SE2 where he spearheaded a massive three-year digitization initiative to create the SE2 Aurum® platform and the industry’s first fully functional life and annuity API. His approach for the platform was based on a 10x10 strategy, which required the platform to support 10x scale and be relevant at least 10 years out as technology evolves. The aggressive and fulfilling journey resulted in clear business outcomes and creation of the first end-to-end Life & Annuity digital platform with industry-leading digital architecture.

One of Vinod’s most groundbreaking innovations, made possible because of his initiative, was the ability for insurance carriers to issue a life insurance policy and deliver it to the consumers in approximately five minutes after the application is started as opposed to the industry average of more than 20 days. While there were many immediate innovative results, but the platform also was built in a way so that it can evolve and add new functionalities as technology continues to evolve. For example, SE2 is creating an AI engine, similar to Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, which can be used in an enterprise setting.

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Delivering a Future-Proofed Digital Platform Purpose built for life and annuity insurance carriers, SE2’s industry experts set out to provide the industry with the most modern, innovative technology platform and enhanced service delivery that will create an enhanced stakeholder experience throughout the entire policy lifecycle. Today, SE2 is the largest administrator of variable annuities in the United States and one of the most innovative third-party administration and technology companies serving the North American L&A insurance industry. As SE2 continues to help optimize insurance operations to future-proof insurance companies, it leads the industry in innovation solutions for areas such as RPA, blockchain, wearables, and machine learning. To achieve this leadership positioning in the marketplace, the company has undergone many transformations in terms of technology enhancements, services enhancements, and workforce development initiatives that have helped sustain its rapid and aggressive growth.

According to the company, their mission is to deliver a digital platform and a fully integrated eco-system that enables the industry to break away from legacy system and process challenges to embrace innovation. SE2

enables insurers to not just build products in an ondemand usage based model on the SE2 Aurum Platform but to offer a digital age life insurance buying experience to American consumers.

Tackling Challenges and Future Roadmap According to SE2, a combination of demonstrated need for life insurance in underexplored markets and segments and the availability of new and sophisticated digital technologies is bringing carriers more opportunities to grow their businesses than ever before. Organizations that get digital transformation right will be in a position to meet existing and prospective customers’ expectations for tailored products and service, empower agents to earn consumer trust and confidence and put themselves in a position to meet regulatory, economic, and market uncertainties now and into the future. SE2 intends to focus on growth and value creation over the next 36 months with a singular focus on delivering a superior customer experience to the carrier partners, their distribution network and the end customer. The future is bright for SE2 as they continue to transform the life and annuity insurance industry and leapfrog carriers into the digital age.

As customer expectations continue to increase and insurance carriers seek to deliver next-generation digital experiences and greater engagement levels for their distributors and endcustomers, SE2 is uniquely positioned to enable these owing to our industry ® leading SE2 Aurum Digital Platform.

Vinod Kachroo Chief Informa on Officer

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Growth Aspect

Entrepreneurship Going Beyond the Comfort of Safety to Make Larger Impact

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ntrepreneurship is the process of starting a new business that adds some value to the world by solving some specific problems.

Entrepreneurship is the capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit. Entrepreneurship combined with land, labor, natural resources and capital can make a profit. Those who create these businesses are called entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial spirit is characterized by innovation and risk taking and is an essential part of a nation’s ability to succeed in constantly changing and increasingly competitive global market place.

Entrepreneurship in its truest form is all about identifying a gap in the market and creating a product which can fill that hole. Entrepreneurship is not solely about making money- it is also about changing and enriching the lives for better. It is about improving people’s lives through creation of products or launching services that makes the lives of people easy. If one’s business does not add value to the lives of people then it is unlikely to survive.

The business that makes nothing but money can easily be considered as a poor business.

Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs act as managers and oversee the launch and growth of an enterprise. It is a process by which either an individual or a team identifies a business opportunity and

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acquires and deploys the necessary tools and resources required for its utilization.

Entrepreneurship is all about being ready to go beyond the comfort zone. It is about defining success on one’s own terms and achieving it by one’s own process and methodology. It is also about thinking outside the box or thinking like there is no box. True entrepreneurial spirit is about seeing challenges as opportunities.

Entrepreneurs should be able to shake off depression, laziness and should jump into the flowing stream of hard work in order to achieve their dream.

True Entrepreneurs understand that they can’t be great at everything they do, but they know that they can be great at something. They focus on that particular something in which they are good at with laser like focus and they are passionate to deliver the best solutions in their chosen work.

Entrepreneurs create something new, something different that solves some problems or adds value to the world.

An entrepreneur is a person who is willing and able to convert a new idea or invention into a successful innovation. Entrepreneurial journey is not always so easy. As Elon Musk quotes “Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.” Many people experience entrepreneurial journey as a rollercoaster ride filed with challenges and opportunities; ups and downs.

Entrepreneurship is about perseverance

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through all such ups and downs. The journey may be filled with crest and troughs but the journey is worth taking.

Entrepreneurs understand that seduction of safety is much more dangerous than the perception of the risk. Therefore they take calculated risks based on market trends and market estimation. Where common people see the problems entrepreneurs see the opportunities. Entrepreneurs are driven to create solutions to those problems. Entrepreneurs are not the part of problems but entrepreneurs are people who want to be part of the solution to those problems.

Entrepreneurs are innately programme to create solutions to the existing problems.

Entrepreneurs roll up their sleeves every day and work hard to create solutions to the existing problems in the world in order to make profit as well as to enrich the lives of people.

They are in the game to make a difference and impact in the lives of people through offering solutions to some of the biggest problems. Money is secondary to them but making valuable contribution and adding value to the world is what they focus on.

They understand that money is just a byproduct of serving as many people as possible with full efficiency.

Entrepreneurs plan their work and

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work their plan. Successful entrepreneurship requires entrepreneurs who take conscious, systematic, logical and thoughtful decisions. It is about thinking deliberately and acting on the conclusion of logical thought process.

Great entrepreneurs have the ability to think decisively even in indecisive environment also. Their conscience and intuition helps them to come up with some solutions that add glory to their business. Successful entrepreneurs are also very cautious of making use of the latest technology for creating more profitable solutions.

They know how to leverage everything to create glorious business that adds value to the larger portion of the world.

Entrepreneurs are here to make a valuable contribution to the world through their words and worthy actions; they just don’t want to occupy the space in the universe.

Entrepreneurs believe in making world a better place by creating something that customizes the lives of people for better. Great entrepreneurs walk their talk and talk their walk. Their lips and lives both make difference in the lives of people. They know that world rewards those who press on.

Entrepreneurship is about paying the price of dedication, commitment,

sacrifices, hard work and putting heart and soul into the business to create something different that makes lives of people easier. The words and actions of great entrepreneurs show that they know where they are going and the world has the habit of making room for such people.

Entrepreneurship is about knowing the way, going the way and showing the way. Entrepreneurs lead by example.

They use all the resources they have to make larger contribution to the world.

They think of changing the world through their skills, abilities, talents and making optimum utilization of all the resources they have. Entrepreneurs build a strong network of people in their organization. The great entrepreneurs understand that one’s network determines one’s net worth.

Therefore they choose smart and pragmatic people around them that are having the ability to come up with solutions to some of the toughest problems. They are very cautious of people they associate with.

Entrepreneurship is about building bridges of success instead of creating barriers to opportunity. It is about having talented people on-board to come up with great idea and to implement that idea to make a tangible difference in the lives of people.

www.insightssuccess.com

Dave Gullo

Co-founder & CTO VideoAmp

28 | November 2019

www.insightssuccess.com

Stellar's Vision

How VideoAmp Evolved the Company Culture and Process to Increase the Number of Engineers Employed

V

ideoAmp turns 4 years old this month. So many memories, and so much growth. Let’s reflect on some of the worst decisions and associated learnings that have been fundamental to our growth. Why the worst you say? Because when you accelerate your learning rate in a fail-fast environment, it then allows you to make fast decisions vs. the analysis paralysis predicament.

Ref lection One of my favorite wildcard interview questions for managers is: “Describe the failure you’re most proud of.”

This sometimes catches people off guard, so I’ll share mine first to get the conversation going. Inevitably it comes down to choosing because there are so many.

Ÿ

“Promoting out of hand” is another variation of this where you don’t put someone through the normal due diligence because they already present. In our case, individual contributor (IC) engineers don’t go through the rigorous reference checks that new managers do.

Ÿ

“Hiring under duress”, or lowering your bar simply to meet headcount goals. I strongly advise to hire fewer “full-full stack” senior engineers vs. a bunch of junior or mid-level career developers who require more time, nurturing and precious attention units from your senior staff.

Process You can’t talk about growth and success without talking about these failures. Unless you’re some kind of hybrid AIrobot-space-alien who’s absolutely perfect, there’s going to be mistakes. What’s important is that as a leader you own your mistakes and be transparent about them.

This is a moving target, and one which has definitely been an ongoing series of blogs. In the early stage, we “over prescribed scrum.” Something that a very early stage company can do, along with too much agile processes too soon.

Hiring Finding the right people is the single most important aspect of growing a startup. The biggest mistakes in hiring have been: Ÿ

“Hiring out of hand”, or short cutting the normal processes because the candidate is well known by other engineers in the group.

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For example, prototypes and proof of concepts should not have a rigorous definition of done, with endless unit, functional, and end-to-end tests because the product’s requirements will probably zig-zag wildly.

Conversely, having too little process when you are supporting enterprise customers can also be a problem. I spent my prior days as an IC and November 2019 | 29

contractor retrofitting and scaling CI/CD pipelines and training engineers how to write better tests.

The challenge is right-sizing this all along the way, and the trigger points on when to change may not be obvious. I say this because we grew headcount by 22 engineers from Oct 2017 to Feb 2018, and in the process we did not modify our simplified Kanban approach to a prescribed Scrum process quickly enough. Growing pains emerged, to say the least.

Now we’re in a spot where we can withstand a magnitude scale of growth with roughly the same squad and tribe-level process.

When doing initial contact with a candidate, I often ask “why are you in market?” I have seen countless folks who are looking because their current management does not have their growth and career pathing in mind. In extreme cases, they can do a day’s work in four hours, feel like they are under-challenged, and have not learned anything in years. They work in an environment like the movie Office Space.

Taking an opposite approach is to engage in the growth and pathing of every individual. We do this by: Ÿ

aligning the growth of the individual with the company’s growth.

Ÿ

having management check in frequently on the success of this, and

Ÿ

setting up formal quarterly check-ins on measuring these goals. Google adopted this early on from John Doerr in the form of OKRs, and there are great platforms out there which can formally measure and track these objectives.

Management Riffing off rapid growth of Brains in engineering, we didn’t scale management fast enough. Almost all startup engineering orgs start very flat, with all ICs and no management. You have “tech leads” who may split their time doing light managerial functions, but they all write code and dive into the operations.

The biggest fail here in scaling the ICs was not scaling the org and management structure to follow. At ~44 engineers and data scientists, we have a duty to deliver on our mission to provide an environment where they have the opportunity to do the best work of their lives and be worth more in the marketplace.

Without this vital management structure, there is a vacuum.

Do not bolt this on later, build it as you go. We took inspiration from Spotify’s model of engineering organizational scaling.

Growth & Career Pathing We’ve talked about all of these fails, how about something that has worked well for us?

Career pathing is a longer-term concern. I ask candidates from the start “so what’s the next job after VideoAmp?” This often catches them off guard, then after careful thought most reply with a role 1-2 levels beyond where they’re at now. It’s our goal to help steer them in whatever path they currently see.

Many earlier-career engineers think management is their ultimate path, but I have found that many will stay on a tract of engineering excellence. Whether it’s a Principal Engineer or a VP of Engineering, the goal is to orient the new challenges in a manner which grows them in that direction, even if we can’t fully realize their ultimate pathing goal while at the company.

By paying careful attention to these details, we have found our annual retention rate in the high 90%.

30 | November 2019

www.insightssuccess.com

VIPR Helping the Insurance Industry Generate Powerful Data

T

he insurance industry sometimes moves at a slow pace when it comes to technology. Traditionally, it has been common practice to use spreadsheets to record and manage data – a method that is not only time consuming, but also prone to error. Today, while the industry has embraced technology, it is often the case that the systems used do not deliver what the industry needs.

This is particularly evident where third parties (Coverholders/Brokers/Agents) are appointed to underwrite business on behalf of Insurers (called delegated authorities).

More often than not these third parties report back to the Insurers using Excel spreadsheets, which are of inconsistent structure and variable quality. The result is that the data is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile and interpret.

The solution? Cue VIPR, a UK leading software insurance provider. VIPR specializes in developing products that help the industry generate powerful data. Data that ultimately has a purpose. The company focuses on the end-to-end management of delegated underwriting, from initial third party approval through to the provision of rich management information (MI), to ensure the industry can make the best business decisions.

As a data and analytics solution provider, VIPR is now wildly recognized in the industry for its results-driven suite of software products. This influence has impacted the companies ever-growing client base, as well as its own expansion as it celebrates its 10th Anniversary.

Specialists in Delegated Authority The evolution of VIPR’s products, largely stem from its customers. As a customer centric company, VIPR

32 | November 2019

wholeheartedly engages with its clients, by listening to them and shaping software solutions based on their needs.

The majority of these clients work within delegated authority business, where the insurer devolves authority to third parties to accept risk and write policies on their behalf.

This creates a requirement for various software solutions to manage the relationship, the data created, i.e. policy information, and to enable comprehensive reports that can capture meaningful MI, as well as facilitate regulatory reporting.

Furthermore, with large amounts of disorganized and nonstandardized data being received by insurers it is almost impossible to analyze and report on this data without the right products. Working with its clients, VIPR has been able to develop solutions that resolve these issues. These include; Intarga, a third party workflow and management system, which provides a centralized process to allow underwriters to effectively control the approvals process, due diligence and monitoring, as well as audit and contract management. Ÿ Intrali, VIPR’s best-selling spreadsheet management solution, allows underwriters to take total control of their data, quickly, accurately, and with the ability to capture quality MI, ultimately supporting business decisions. Intrali allows underwriters to consolidate multiple data formats into a single standardized output.

The system also transforms and augments the data in addition to validating the data against the contract terms. This ensures that business is being written in accordance with the underlying contract. Once standardized, cleansed and validated the data is fed into Ÿ

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1$

Fintech Companies

Revolu onizing

Financial Services-2019

the data warehouse where it can be fully reported on using VIPR’s Active Reports product. Ÿ Active Reports provides over 50 out-of-the-box reports, with the facility to build further bespoke reports to turn the data captured by Intarga and Intrali into intelligent MI to support business decisions, as well as regulatory reporting. Ÿ

Future Ambitions As a business, VIPR truly believes in the mantra that the customer comes first and it looks to its User Group events to drive the development of its products. Looking towards the future and the next 10 years, VIPR is continuing to focus on solutions that enable its customers to understand and analyze their data and produce intelligent reports that will help them drive their business forwards.

Impressively, VIPR’s long-term ambition is working with AI to remove as much human interaction as possible, required to cleanse and analyze data. This includes the straight through processing of spreadsheet data so that it can be received and reported upon with minimal human intervention. The benefits will not only save on resource time, but will also allow carriers to focus their precious time on what matters most – delivering value to the business.

The Skipper Richard Brown is Co-founder and Director of VIPR who has helped establish the company as a leading provider of data management and analytics solutions within the Lloyd’s of London and wider International insurance market.

Richard is also a Parliamentary Review Member in the UK and frequently comments on industry developments. The Parliamentary Review is a UK publication which aims to share best practice amongst policymakers and business leaders and is chaired by Lord Pickles and Lord Blunkett.

Prior to founding VIPR, Richard, along with his brother and VIPR’s Co-Founder Bob Brown, successfully launched and

subsequently sold Moneynet.co.uk, the first personal finance comparison site in the UK. At VIPR he oversees management of the business and is fully involved in client relations, as well as product strategy and development.

Satisfied Clients “I have no hesitation in recommending VIPR. Purely for the reason that the solutions have met MRSL’s initial expectations, but also provided scope for us to develop further. Initially the solutions were to support the needs for the DUA sector of the company but have in fact provided the opportunity to be incorporated within our Open Market teams. It goes without saying the technical expertise of the people at VIPR have been hugely vital and it is clear the solutions reflect this to ensure it does what it says on the tin, so to speak! The support throughout the initial implementation and continual support reflects a good standard, professional, friendly and most of all flexible.

VIPR is reliable, professional and innovative, the company listens to its clients and works with them collectively or independently to help each party to be successful.”

-Paula Duplock, Director of Compliance, Business Operations and Binder Management at Meridian Risk Solutions Ltd “We wanted to standardise and modernise our bureau processing controls, using a digital option that would process data for all our UK and European operations. VIPR were very responsive to our needs, presenting exactly what we asked for in our brief. The products are easy to use, flexible for our requirements and offer in-depth reporting capabilities, which will greatly benefit our business.”

-Graham Hansen, Business Technology Solutions Manager at Tokio Marine HCC

We provide intuitive analytical solutions that are tried, tested and proven to work backed up by multiple clients, alongside exemplary customer service.

Richard Brown Co-founder & Director

www.insightssuccess.com

November 2019 | 33

Should

Businesses

Adopt

Blockchain

Technology?

C

entralized systems have treated us well for many years, but if we see the vulnerabilities: money and data is stored in one spot, this makes easy target for malicious activity. What if central banks shut downs or goes through software upgrade for whatever reason? It may halt the entire system and nobody will be able to access the information it possesses. Companies are starting to work with Blockchain technology; some of them are using it in the financial sector while others are trying to improve their bureaucratic systems.

Countries like Singapore, China, Canada, etc. are trying to offer a national digital currency based on Blockchain

34 | November 2019

technology and supporting the initiative. The intention is to provide decentralized solution and distributed ledger technology for financial market infrastructures. Although this does not mean that these countries will opt for fullfledged Blockchain, further analysis of the safety and efficiency of this technology is needed.

One of the most interesting and misunderstood concepts in Blockchain technology is transparency, some say it gives you privacy while according to few it is transparent.

However, this leads to some confusion about how privacy and transparency can effectively coexist. In this article we will clear how Blockchain balances the two concepts.

The identity of a user is concealed behind powerful cryptography (encrypting and decrypting), meaning that linking public addresses to private users is difficult to achieve. Transparency of Blockchain comes from the fact that the holdings and transactions of each public address are open for viewing. It is possible through Explorer, an online block chain browser which displays the content of individual Bitcoin blocks, transactions and balances of addresses.

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain are still relatively new technology; companies are likely to pick up the right Blockchain technology for the business. Blockchain companies: Steem is like YouTube on Blockchain and has attracted over 920,000 users who publish more than 1.5 million posts each month. Steem has also paid over $40 million in its digital asset via (cryptocurrency rewards) to content creators. Ripple, Intellectsoft, and Celsius Network, are some of the companies today, assured for success and will be popular soon.

www.insightssuccess.com

FUTURISTIC INSIGHTS

With the emergence of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Blockchain technology is disrupting almost all markets, changing the way we do our day to day business.

Bitcoins are digital coins you can send through the internet, its software is completely open source and you can trade your currency exchanges with dollars, euros and more. It’s very much still an experimental currency and a high risk for consumers and investors, but the Bitcoin design has been the inspiration for various other applications.

Effectiveness of Blockchain technology in the following areas in future: Smart Contracts- The most critical area where Blockchain helps is to guarantee the validity of a transaction through secure validation mechanism.

Contract is where consent of the parties is involved to agree and interact with each other. Industries and institutions are heavily reliant on contracts, such as insurance, financial institutions, real estate, construction, entertainment and law. A smart contract can formalize the relationships between people, institutions and the assets they own.

They eliminate the need for trusted third parties and are self-verifying, self-executing and Tamper resistant.

A smart contract is like a cryptographic box that contains value and only unlocks if certain conditions are met.

Once involved authorities and companies are on a Blockchain, a smart contract could be used to define the rules of a valid deal.

Supply chain management- A Blockchain is a digitalized, decentralized and incorruptible public ledger that can transform supply chains, industries and ecosystems. The following applications are now in use or can be implemented in supply chain using Blockchain technology:

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Automotive supplier payments- It is exciting to see cryptocurrency in the automotive industry. There are also suppliers and websites available for buying and selling cars with Bitcoin, which allows transfer of funds anywhere in the world without the need for traditional banking transactions, as transactions are made directly between payer and payee. It is also secure and rapid, transfers also incur lower fees. However, buying a car from a random individual is considered a bit risky.

Food Traceability- Satoshi Nakamoto, inventor of Blockchain technology aimed in creating decentralized ledger leaving behind open source software that the users would be able to update and improve. Companies can use distributed ledger systems to record product status at each stage of production. As the records are permanent and immutable, they make it possible to trace each product to its source.

Food volumes such as coffee, tea, oils, sugar and beans are almost impossible to track. Blockchain technology enables the tracking of food packages, by a unique identifier such as barcode, QR code or RFID transmitter. The benefit from using Blockchain is that no central party needs to be trusted in order to overlook the data, while still allowing volumes to be transparent for everyone in the chain. An area of concern within the food industry is that many food products are small and inexpensive; there is a risk that tracking of every package and seed can become expensive. Blockchain enables integration of simple hardware and cheap software and is ideally suited for managing the process.

Supply chains have already started using Blockchain in some areas of their operations like electric power micro grids and cold chain monitoring.

However, transformation of supply chains will not happen overnight, new doors may open to faster more intelligent and more secure process throughout the entire supply chain.

Criticisms and challenges: Huge electricity required- Remember all the power required to verify transactions demand electricity. In order to unleash the power of Blockchain technology, computer scientists need to solve this big problem.

Security about the private keyPrivate Key must remain secret at all times because revealing it to the third parties is same as giving them controls over Bitcoins secured by that key. Also the key must be backed up and protected from accidental loss, because if it is lost it cannot be recovered and the funds secured by it are forever lost, too.

Extremely volatile- Decentralized Blockchain technology and virtual currencies are extremely new to the market. Fluctuating prices of Bitcoin vary from day to day because companies, investors, and governments adopting or not adopting them greatly affect the volatility.

Blockchain will be an important part of our financial and technological digital future. It is one of the incredibly creative inventions that technology has ever seen. So how we use it is up to us.

Some companies such as Overstock.com and Telsa have already started accepting virtual currencies.

However, it is still not apparent what the retail leaders like Amazon and eBay would do with the cryptocurrency acceptance. But if they start accepting then it could indeed transform the global scenario.

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