It’s time for the FinTech Profile update and today we’re featuring Andrew Doyle, the Executive Chair and CEO of AML specialist, NorthRow.
Over to you Andrew:
Who are you and what’s your background?
I’m Andrew Doyle, Executive Chair and CEO of NorthRow. I’ve worked in the global tech sector for over 30 years, holding roles at Board level, C-Suite and various leadership roles in sales and marketing, finance, operations and product delivery. I’ve also worked for muti-national companies, as well as early stage and scale up companies so my experience is wide and varied in that sense. My passion is working with businesses that make a difference to the world we live in. I now specialise in working with scale up companies in the Cloud, SaaS and AI space and joined AML compliance software platform, NorthRow, in 2019 to supercharge its growth.
What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?
I’m Executive Chair and CEO, responsible for driving the growth of the company, while ensuring we have the best team in place to deliver that growth and the right culture in which everyone at NorthRow can thrive.
Can you give us an overview of your business?
Founded in 2012 to detect and prevent fraudulent activities in online markets, NorthRow has developed to become an end-to-end KYC, KYB and ID&V solution helping regulated companies across all markets meet complicated Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance regulations, enabling them to grow safely and effectively as a result.
Our technology helps businesses manage the increasingly complex nature of financial systems and the changing regulatory requirements that come with this. We facilitate and streamline regulatory compliance, ensuring that businesses have the tools to stay compliant, avoiding any hefty fines, potential legal costs and reputational damage that come with non-compliance.
We provide a suite of automated tools that facilitates the onboarding of customers and provide continuous due diligence thereafter. Our goal is to make that journey as quick, effortless and pleasant for both our customers and the end customer too.
Ultimately we protect our customers from the devastating effects that fraud, and other forms of economic crime, can have on individuals and companies.
What’s the origin story? Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?
NorthRow was founded over a decade ago to enable organisations to combat fraud and financial crime. NorthRow wasn’t just a business opportunity, but a chance to make a real difference to the catastrophic effects that fraud and other forms of financial crime can have on individuals and companies.
Put simply, we are leading the fight to reduce financial crime across all regulated industries. WorkStation, our comprehensive compliance platform, is used by our customers to help compliance teams make more informed, safer decisions and empower them to onboard customers safely and compliantly in a matter of seconds, not days.
Who are your target customers? What’s your revenue model?
We work with companies across regulated industries, including banks, lenders, payments providers and other financial service companies, legal practices, property firms, estate agents and many more.
In order to remain regulated (and, therefore, continue to operate legally), these businesses must continually track, monitor, and audit their AML and onboarding processes to ensure they are aligned with applicable regulatory, industry, and consumer legislation. Non-compliance can lead to fines, reputational damage and prosecution for the most serious offences.
Compliance teams often rely on time-consuming, manual processes; spending hours interpreting even the smallest of regulatory updates – to the detriment of their customer’s experience.
Industry heavyweights such as Open Banking, Hargreaves Lansdown, and Cloudpay are using NorthRow to support their AML and wider compliance processes, sharing glowing feedback:
“We’ve seen significantly shorter validation times – measured in seconds and minutes, rather than in days. We’ve also been able to support our own sales function to move through the AML gateway for quicker and more efficient contracting. This has generated positive feedback from sales and, most importantly, impressed prospective customers.” – MLRO at CloudPay
If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?
If I had a magic wand to wave over the UK banking and FinTech sector, I’d enhance the integration and use of Artificial Intelligence to personalise financial services and increase financial inclusion. The objective here would be to tailor financial advice and product offerings to individual needs more precisely, helping people manage their finances more effectively, regardless of their economic background or financial literacy.
I’d also want to ensure robust AI ethics and governance frameworks are in place to protect users’ data privacy and security, preventing biases in automated decisions.
I believe that these advances would democratise access to financial services, making them more accessible and beneficial for a broader segment of the population, fostering economic growth and reducing inequality.
What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?
Learn more from the challenger banks and disruptive fintechs entering the market. There is a need to embrace innovation and new technologies. Traditional finance and banking businesses must learn to adopt and embrace digital technology in order to improve the customer experience and their accessibility. This will be essential for their future growth and even their survival. The other thing to learn is the importance of being agile. Disruptors can quickly adapt to changing market needs and traditional firms can learn a lot from this approach in order to remain competitive.
Where do you get your Financial Services/FinTech industry news from?
Can you list 3 people you rate from the FinTech and/or Financial Services sector that we should be following on LinkedIn, and why?
They are probably all quite well-known already, but I think we should all be following:
- TS Anil, CEO of Monzo
- Matteo Rizzi of FinTech Stage
- Samantha Ku, COO of Square
- Anna Maj, Open Banking Expert
What FinTech services (and/or apps) do you personally use?
In a personal capacity, I use OpenBanking with most of my bank and credit accounts. I have also been a user of Wise, Revolut, PayPal & bolt for many years. Although I don’t use them any more, I have also used Monzo Bank and Starling Bank in the past as well.
What’s the best new FinTech product or service you’ve seen recently?
There are so many exciting new companies entering the market. My top 4 that really excite me would be:
- Fintech Farm, which helps traditional banks to create and run digital banks
- Super Payments, which offers businesses fee-free payments and customer refunds
- Bud, a company helping businesses access, enrich and transform financial data into actionable insights
- Upstart, a fintech dedicated to improving access to credit for all
Finally, let’s talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?
The first is embedded finance where financial services are integrated seamlessly into non-financial apps and websites. It’s forecast to grow significantly over the next few years meaning consumers will be able access financial products such as payments, lending or insurance directly within other non-financial services, such as retail platforms, ride-sharing apps, or social media.
Secondly is the expansion of decentralised finance. DeFi uses blockchain technology to offer financial services without traditional intermediaries like banks or brokers. While still in its early stages, DeFi has the potential to revolutionise how people invest, borrow, lend, and make payments.
And finally we can’t talk about the future without discussing advancements in AI and machine learning which are set to transform personalised finance over the next year or so. AI will become more sophisticated and widely applied across fintech and will also play a key role in enhancing fraud detection and risk management, making financial services safer and more reliable than ever before.
Thanks very much indeed for participating Andrew.
You can find out more about Andrew by visiting his LinkedIn profile and find out more about his company at http://www.northrow.com.
