Bio:
Javier Borkenztain
Co-founder and CEO of Fiter, an Apache Software Foundation Member and PMC member of the Apache Fineract Project.
Juan Esteban Saldarriaga:
Co-founder of RapiCredit, and Juancho Te Presta, two of the biggest online lenders in Colombia, CEO of Juancho Te Presta, Co-founder, president, and member of the board of the Colombian Fintech Association.
Uzoma Dozie
CEO of Diamond Bank, now merged with Access Bank to become the largest African bank with over 14 million customers.
One of the more exciting things about the Fineract community is to witness two successful FinTech startups located in two completely different regions of the world sharing the same Fineract core platform. Javier Borkenztain led the CEO Panel and spoke with Uzoma Dozie and Juan Esteban Saldarriaga to get their entrepreneurial perspective and insights on the Fineract open-source platform.
Here are the main takeaways from the panel:
1. Building a system around people
Juancho Te Presta is an online lender targeting gig economy workers, and specifically tailored for women down to the algorithm. The company believes in gender justice, offering women better terms based on their payment track records.
The business was founded in November 2019, so most of its operation has taken place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the challenging circumstances, the company has been seeing good results with support from Fiter through the Fineract and Mifos core banking software.
The Diamond/Access bank leveraged the merger to proactively build the service around what people were doing rather than reactively responding to market needs like traditional banking. It was all about finding partners that could help the bank start fresh and create a solution that increases inclusion by building the system around people.
2. Goodbye, brick-and-mortar!
Diamond Bank with Uzoma at the helm focused on small businesses, financial inclusion, and providing mobile banking services to the underbanked. The successful merger with Access Bank offered a great opportunity to go beyond the limits of brick and mortar.
The application was created from the ground up during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The open-source software model allowed building the system and collaborating remotely without relying on a physical office. It took a year to build the banking application. The application launched last year without any marketing and has been a success thus far. The application created precedence in Nigeria, including enabling small businesses to open business accounts without needing to visit to a physical location.
3. Support that goes with you
The bank application also provided business support services. Businesses managing their banking services on the mobile app could now carry their business around with them and enjoy both banking services and business support services. This could be achieved due to the platform supporting the API’s with minimum effort, and being completely cloud-based.
Why choose Fineract?
As a startup, cash flow is king. The motivation to scale up flow and to scale as you go translates to leveraging the technology and its capabilities to build a banking application that first and foremost enables maximizing raised capital.
The need for flexibility and the ability to work from anywhere meant opting for a cloud-based business rather than relying on servers. Project costs were also a major consideration. Flexibility, and the ability to customize the business as desired rather than a fixed solution that hinders brand and product positioning and time to market was important. But speed to market was the driving force that led to preferring open-source software.
With traditional applications, there is a need to wait for releases to get what you want. Fineract allows businesses to go as fast as they want to without any disruptions from future releases which is key.
The cost-effectiveness of the Fineract open-source platform versus proprietary core banking solution which is very expensive, cuts time to market dramatically. Having a platform that is ready for market with minimal customization, combined with the ability to own and to make the platform yours is a big plus.
Building on the core Fineract platform yields specifically customized products for each business. People are doing different things with their own version of Fineract.
Stay tuned for part 2 of the CEO panel to learn more about the power of open source.
To find out how to leverage Apache Fineract to expand your business, contact us at: https://fiter.io/contact-us
