Leveris August 2020

LEVERIS

REINVENTING BANKING T H R O U G H D I G I TA L TECHNOLOGY

DIGITAL REPORT 2020

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LEVERIS: REINVENTING BANKING THROUGH D I G I TA L TECHNOLOGY

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LEVERIS

Conor Fennelly, LEVERIS founder and CEO, discusses how the company is reinventing banking with its innovative, cloud-native platform

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EVERIS was born out of a single aim: to use the power of digital technology to build a better banking experience. The

complexity that is inherent in many legacy banking platforms and infrastructure is hindering evolu04

tion in the financial services industry. As a result, according to LEVERIS, those institutions are at a fundamental point of change where, rather than evolve, they must invent to remove the constraints imposed by existing technology.

Since its founding four years ago, the company – which is driven by more than 200 individuals with extensive banking and technology experience – has worked to solve this problem. It has done so by designing and building an innovative, cloud-native platform that is unencumbered by existing systems and enables banks and financial institutions the freedom to offer customers tailored experiences.

LEVERIS is led by CEO and founder Conor Fennelly, a highly experienced tech entrepreneur who, over the course of a career that includes a 20-year stint in Silicon Valley, has founded and led

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2016

Year incorporated

200+

Number of employees

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several high-growth internet startups.

Southeast Asia’s largest independent

The company, he says, is built on the

systems, integrations, and technol-

belief that “it’s not so much a case

ogy and software companies, where

of banks failing their customers, but

he worked on bank-to-bank systems

more a case of technology failing

integrations projects. “We used that

banks. The systemic problems fac-

experience to develop a micro-billing

ing banks can be addressed almost

software solution, which acted as a

entirely via technology.”

financial services layer between credit

This approach, says Fennelly, was

cards and gift cards and scaled very

cemented during his previous interac-

well,” he adds. “From there, I’ve also

tions with the financial services sector.

completed several core transforma-

This includes five years running one of

tion projects in the sector and, through

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“ We provide the platform to build what they want, to implement their strategy and achieve their version of success” — Conor Fennelly, Founder & CEO, LEVERIS

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that experience and over that time, we

resilient, and stood the test of time with

really understood what a banking plat-

no major issues until about five years

form was - all the existing peculiarities,

ago. The rise of fintech really changed

legacy issues and complexities.

things. It started disintermediating, and

“Each time you do an implementa-

showing banks that innovative technol-

tion of that kind, the result is always

ogy can be used to do things faster

suboptimal,” Fennelly continues. “We

and better, to operate in real-time and

reached the stage where we thought:

provide greater value to the customer.”

‘if we had the freedom to do it again,

The latter, Fennelly notes, is becom-

how would we do so differently and

ing increasingly important as a driver

in a way that eradicated all of those

for change. Customers want more

issues?’. Legacy systems have per-

control over their finances, as well

formed well - they’ve been robust and

as the convenience and value-added

service to exercise that control when they choose - this can be provided by the kind of data-focused technology that doesn’t exist in legacy systems.

“There are several key issues,” Fennelly explains. “In some respects, it’s not so much the technology itself as the organisational composition that sets everything in silos - you have deposits,

“ Banking isn’t radical, it just has to be better” — Conor Fennelly, Founder & CEO, LEVERIS

E X E C U T I V E P R OF IL E :

Conor Fennelly

Title: Founder & CEO

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Company: Leveris

Industry: Financial services Location: Dublin, Ireland Conor’s career has been defined by an ability to identify and solve practical problems by developing innovative digital solutions and delivering them at scale. His modus operandi is low profile, high impact.

Various ventures, including Nomad Software Solutions and eoBuy, have taken him from Ireland to Silicon Valley, South East Asia and many places in between.

Technologies he has conceived and built have been licenced and deployed by governments and Fortune 500 companies in areas such as systems integration, bank transformation, mobile phone networks and digital music distribution.

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LEVERIS

“ We set out to build a next-generation full services retail bank, and part of that was really about considering what the bank of 2030 looked like.”

— Conor Fennelly, Founder & CEO, LEVERIS

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checking or current accounts, access control and so on, and they all have their own databases, which can equate to anything from 500 to 1,000 subsystems. The holy grail of banking is to have one single view of the customer, but that doesn’t really work as the fundamental data model in legacy systems isn’t established to deliver that from the beginning.

“Similarly, existing technology is typically product oriented rather than being customer centric,” he adds.

“Any new system has to be entirely focused on the customer - everything you do, irrespective of the service should accrue in one area and that data is then used across everything.”

Fennelly also points to the high CapEx required to run a legacy system as a result of their complexity, adding that they are precarious to maintain and difficult to change due to their being non-homogenous. On the latter he explains “even the simplest of things can be overly complex; there are multiple vendors in a bank’s world and software written in different languages so that any change has to be coordinated through this complexity.” w w w.l eve r is . com

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LEVERIS

LEVERIS offers an alternative to these issues. The company has built a system from the ground up, using state-of-the-art, best-in-class technology that is service driven and changes the way that businesses deliver financial products. The LEVERIS platform is a cloud-native, real-time, non-legacy core banking system that is modular, flexible and secure. It leverages big data to streamline operations for banks and lenders, and increase their revenue, uses process automation to 12

reduce the need to manual intervention and is configurable to each customer’s specific requirements.

“Everything is automated end-toend and completed in real-time,” says Fennelly, “which are the major things in terms of how this changes the way in which banks operate. We set out to build a next-generation full services retail bank, and part of that was really about considering what the bank of 2030 looked like. We realised about a year into the build that, while we could build the technology stack, we couldn’t implement all the features on that stack unless we had a clear idea of what that bank looked like. From a customer

ANNOUNCEMENT

The LEVERIS platform is now live in the Dutch market, where it’s executing loans and servicing millions of euros for three clients of major financial services firm, Link Group.

The platform has helped deliver a 70% reduction in average application to drawdown, enabled the onboarding of additional lenders to the platform in less than four weeks and delivered a significant reduction in operational costs for Link Group.

perspective, that’s all about advocacy and building an effective transactional relationship through the greater use of data, for example. Banks haven’t always architected customer data in a way that’s useful, but that data has a massive residual value for customers.”

LEVERIS creates a single view of the customer by mapping all data to a unique customer ID. This gives a complete picture of the customer across the bank’s entire platform and allows the building of a personalised picture of the customer and their journey, thus enabling the building of an enhanced customer experience. The LEVERIS platform has a single customer view, is quick to market, has open APIs and connects the dots across a wide w w w.l eve r is . com

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LEVERIS

variety of data types, categories and systems; it is also scalable as their clients’ companies grow.

“Many bankers are acutely aware of what they want from their technology stack, they’re just missing the product to do it - they’re constrained by the tech,” says Fennelly. “The interesting thing is that we don’t have a revelation about how these changes are translated in the front end, the fundamental pivot points that will make the difference are actually quite subtle. Take 14

the heart of the bank, the current or savings account. It’s an idea that’s set in stone and that the consumers

“ It’s not so much a case of banks failing their customers, but more a case of technology failing banks” — Conor Fennelly, Founder & CEO, LEVERIS

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understand, but we have the notion of

about removing that complexity and

an ‘account’ with a set of attributes that

providing a technology that allows the

the bank can scale as it chooses.

building of any unique set of services

“The idea is that, if you look at bank-

for a consumer based on a very lim-

ing infrastructure of yesterday against

ited number of products in the back

that of the future, then you’ll see histor-

end. Adding a new card, a new per-

ically that banks have built thousands

son to the account or so on doesn’t

- even tens of thousands - of products,

increase the product complexity in

because any change or variation in

our world, and that’s a real revolution

things like different accounts has to be

in financial services. There’s no major

manufactured as a ‘new’ product,” he

technology required, it’s how you

continues. “The core of a transforma-

pose the pieces and, really, it’s about

tion and a platform like LEVERIS is

how far your imagination goes.” w w w.l eve r is . com

LEVERIS

Currently, the LEVERIS platform is available for banks, lenders and loan servicers. For the former, the system is delivered market ready and preintegrated with the essential banking services required to launch and run a modern digital bank. “Take a typical legacy bank that has a number of branches as an example,” says Fennelly. “We can operate our platform completely independently as an additional branch in the

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“ There’s no major technology required, it’s how you pose the pieces and, really, it’s about how far your imagination goes.”

— Conor Fennelly, Founder & CEO, LEVERIS

infrastructure, which lets our customers ‘plug LEVERIS in’ their world seamlessly as a starting point. Over time, we can then work on tactical strategic decisions of which legacy systems to take out and to migrate across to our platform. It becomes a natural evolution that leads to a greatly improved digital direction.”

Since it was established, LEVERIS has focused on developing a platform that can transform banking. Little has changed since that original vision was developed, Fennelly explains, but the business is now focused on going to market. “Banking isn’t radical, it just has to be better,” he states. “And it also has to be capable of incremental, organic improvement. We’ve a blank platform that is given to every client, it’s up to those banks how they use our configuration interfaces to build the products they want - we don’t give them the technology to succeed, we provide the platform to build what they want, to implement their strategy and achieve their version of success.”

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