Fintech companies in the Thames Valley to watch out for
With Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire being known as 'The Thames Silicon Valley', it's no surprise that the area is a hotbed of fintech talent.
If you'd like to nominate a fintech company - or any tech organisation - for a Thames Valley Tech Award, you can do so on our website here.
Fintech (financial technology) is a fairly broad, catch-all term used to describe a wide range of innovative technologies which serve to improve - and often automate - financial services. Companies in the sector are constantly inventing and innovating new methods in which consumers and businesses can manage their monetary operations. Fintech helps refine processes and speeds up finance using a wide range of tools include algorithms, software, apps and AI.
It's all about the smooth integration of tech into finance in order to make financial transactions and systems work faster and smarter. Essentially improving their delivery.
With the 2022 Thames Valley Tech Awards on the horizon, we thought we'd take a look at just some of the Thames Valley's most envelope-pushing fintech companies:
Konsentus - Reading
Headquarted on Greyfriars Road, near Reading train station, Konsentus is an infrastructure platform that enables safe and secure data exchange within open finance and banking systems. It does so by using its very own cloud-based micro-services architecture.
Konsentus operates across Europe and the rest of the world, with a French Euro base. Their flagship and award-winning SaaS solution is Konsentus Verify, which 'provides identity and regulatory checking solutions to give financial institutions confidence that they are always providing safe and secure open banking services to their customers.'
HiFX - Bracknell
Berkshire's HiFX are a foreign exchange broker and payments provider that provides international money transfer services and a foreign exchange to both individuals and its corporate clients. One of its main specialist areas is in providing money transfer services for emigration and overseas property purchases.
They offer 'a hassle free way to transfer money around the world', have been trading since 1998 and now operates under the XE brand.
MortgageGym - Camberley
Just across the Berkshire/Surrey border but still just about in the Thames Valley is Camberley-HQ'd online mortgage brokers MortgageGym. The only regulated mortgage robo-adviser in the world allows UK homebuyers to complete their entire application online in just quarter of an hour thanks to a free hybrid advice website that matches borrowers' eligibility for mortgages in under a minute. It also provides access to live advisors as well as regulated advice.
It is also the first digital mortgage network in the world, enabling brokers to independently acquire clients, run a paperless operation and maintain MMR compliance using a business platform called MortgageGym Pro.
Entrepreneurs David Vertannes and John Ingram founded the company back in 2016.
Stockopedia - Oxford
Oxford-based Stockopedia provide their private investor customers with an award-winning stock analysis tool that allows them to make sound investment decisions with institutional-quality data and analysis.
It currently helps more than 10,000 users, having built up that customer base over the coruse of its ten year-long existence. 'Easy-to-use research tools that save you time, help you act decisively and improve your success rate.'
