The FinTech sector continues to enjoy success since its advent over a decade ago. However, when it comes to SME banking, this market remains largely untapped. In the UK, SME banking has not been properly digitised and compared to retail customers, SMEs have not benefited from the same innovation.
Advancing the future of SME banking in the UK
Historically, SMEs have struggled to manage investments properly where procedures more than the actual cash flow being a hindrance. Akoni sought to fundamentally change the way businesses bank and procure financial services, using multiple sources of business data and the power of innovation to deliver personalised and tailored experience for SMEs and small corporations.Today, Akoni delivers full cash treasury services to businesses and SMEs and has arguably contributed to the democratisation of the financial services for SMEs in the UK.
Selecting the right innovation and technology partner
It was imperative that Akoni get this right from the beginning. However, as a startup in the heart of London, finding the right talent with the requisite skills to deliver on a complex tech solution was very challenging for them. Akoni set out to find a nearshore team that could embed within their organisation as an extended team and with a good culture fit. More importantly, Akoni needed a development partner that could cover data science skills, backend development and frontend development.The outcome for Akoni was a permanently resourced team that understood its business objectives and was agile enough to meet the changing focus from time-to-time as the business grew. Today, our team of experts has remained engaged with Akoni and continues to deliver exceptional value on a daily basis. Akoni has been able to build more technology and deliver results faster to their banking clients and B2B users.
We leveraged AI’s potential to develop platform features for automating finance analysis, planning budgets and enhancing decision-making based on predictive analysis.
Sigoor had successfully developed a financial product recommendation engine where the AI tool suggests the best combination of bank deposit products given the user’s cash flow and goals. The model analyses the customer’s historic cash flow data and suggests the best plan of bank deposit products to maximise the return on investment.
Going above and beyond with proactive solution delivery
From the beginning of the collaboration, our team was able to deliver on a new product stream which was an export planning and trade intelligence tool. This allowed Akoni’s clients to identify the best markets for export and procure credit once they completed their planning. We built this solution from scratch, leveraging some of Akoni’s existing technology and allowing them to launch in a shorter time than they initially expected.
