How Fennech Financial simplifies the life of contracts
Business case SUMMER SERIES: «THESE FINTECH THAT CHANGE THE LIFE OF THE CFO»
All summer, “Les Echos Executives” offers you to discover these young startups that transform the daily life of corporate financiers. Today: the contractual platform, Fennech Financial, presented by its CEO and founder, Emmanuel de Rességuier.
What does Fennech Financial do?
Emmanuel de Rességuier: We offer a platform that allows companies to enter all their contracts (sales agreement, foreign exchange, insurance, leases, financial contracts, etc.) so that related payments, collections, reconciliation and accounting are automatically processed. It’s a bridge between business applications, accounting and the banking world. It is an off-the-shelf solution to really digitalise the processing of financial operations.
What is the impact?
E.R.: Today, finance managers spend a lot of time executing their contracts by entering fragmented information into various systems (ERP, accounting, purchasing, production, delivery, billing, cash, etc.). This results in loss and fragmentation of information. By allowing an automatic execution of the contracts, we have moved the prism from accounting towards the process, while ensuring, the reliability of the data upstream.
Once a contract is entered into the system, all the consequences are automatically identified and executed: we know what will happen, what to pay or receive, when, for what reason and to whom. Our solution optimizes processes, reduces operational costs and makes data more reliable. It allows the company to have a global view of its cash in real time, and optimise its working capital requirements, its financing and its exposure to risks.
For whom is this solution ?
E.R.:Essentially large corporate structures that must manage a complex contract universe: large international groups or financial institutions. But we are also listening to the needs of SMEs who would like to use our solution.
What is the cost for companies?
E.R.: It’s nothing compared to setting up an old-style ERP. Our solution is a “PaaS”, “platform as a service”: it takes a setup fee of the order of 150,000 to 300,000 euros, and sometimes some consultancy required to help the company to review its processes. Then, the license and fees are usually charged as “pay as you go”, that is to say per transaction, which allows the client to immediately be aware of its productivity gains: working with us costs five to seven times less than current processes, not to mention the gains in financial opportunities.
What is the story of your business?
ER: I founded the company two years ago, quickly joined by Max Pell, a specialist in the insurance industry and in particular the outsourcing of back-offices, and Philippe Laliberté, an expert in banking IT architecture. Our solution was launched last September. Today we are sixteen employees: eight are based in Britain and eight in Quebec, working on IT development.
What are the next developments?
ER: We are currently in a phase of deployment, but also listening to requests that are made to us by the market: our solution meets a range of needs, not all of which we initially anticipated, either to progress to set up a “in-house virtual bank”, or to meet regulatory reporting requirements. An evolution towards “RegTech” seems an interesting future development for us
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