BusinessCloud’s inaugural UK Business Tech Awards are set for November and will recognise the individuals and businesses who are making the most impact in the world of technology.
Each day for a fortnight we are highlighting a different category ahead of a glitzy ceremony at London’s Montcalm Marble Arch on November 20.
There will be 18 gongs up for grabs including FinTech Innovator of the Year, with three finalists shortlisted by our stellar line-up of judges: Yobota, Wobbegong Technology and Invstr.
We profile them below. Tickets are available at the Business Tech Awards website while sponsors confirmed so far include Jumpstart and Touchscreen Rentals.
Anyone interested in sponsorship opportunities should contact [email protected].
The judging panel included David Hardman, MBE, managing director of Innovation Birmingham; Louize Clarke, co-founder, ConnectTVT; Elizabeth Clark, CEO, Dream Agility; former director of Tech North Richard Gregory; Tom Cheesewright, founder of Applied Futurism Practice; former Vodafone exec Rob Mukherjee, director of Greater Sport; Chris Dymond, director, Sheffield Digital; and Scott Henderson, managing director of Jumpstart.
FINTECH INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR SHORTLIST
Yobota has built a cloud-based operating platform for financial services providers including banks, carmakers and retailers. It supports highly bespoke financial products, including savings, lending and mortgages, and is designed in a modular way for a rapid set-up and flexibility.
Yobota launched in January 2018 and powers the flexible, fast and fair loans of new UK bank Chetwood Financial.
Chetwood’s LiveLend product is immediately able to let customers know whether or not they can take out a loan in a way that doesn’t impact their credit score, so they can get their quote and shop around for the best rate. It also transfers funds immediately so the money is in its customer’s account in under four hours.
With some banks and financial services companies hitting the headlines and losing millions of pounds over failed core banking migrations, a solution like Yobota’s could be the answer for those looking to be truly competitive in the market and also protect their customers.
Wobbegong Technology is a Software as a Service start-up which helps small firms process R&D tax credit claims.
Its WhisperClaims platform is the only system in the marketplace capable of generating comprehensive supporting documents and calculations for R&D tax relief claims without the involvement of a consultant.
Capable of handling complex claims, the application – developed using cutting edge technologies including React and JavaScript – requires no free text entry or manual intervention and reduces the time taken to produce a claim from weeks or months to one hour – reducing the cost from several thousand pounds to a fixed £500.
The accountancy industry is undergoing a massive cloud-based transformation and, in line with this trend, Wobbegong is enabling accountants and advisors to widen their offering.
Financial education and trading app Invstr gives its users access to market intelligence and live data, enabling them to start investing from as little as $1.
The app provides a smooth transition between a safe, realistic learning environment and first real investment experience: members learn about the markets by playing a risk-free game and learn from the investment decisions of other Invstrs. They can then open real trading accounts in the app through Invstr’s global broker partners and trade fractions of shares which allow investing without a big bank balance.
Founded by former Deutsche Bank MD Kerim Derhalli, it has an underlying layer of artificial intelligence that builds dynamic interest profiles for each member with personalised content and product recommendations.
The app has now been downloaded more than 500,000 times across 190-plus countries.