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First: this year’s Top Ten

This year, we asked our panel to identify their Top Ten European innovators ... and order them from 1 - 10. Why? Because businesses are at different stages of evolution and we did not want to band start-ups and super-scalers together under the umbrella term: Fintech. It’s no longer 2014.

We recognised this ten for their unstoppable innovation, expansion into new markets (new continents); for the value they bring to their customers, and for their indisputable skills in leading a high-growth business. As founders, they are a collective Masterclass of How to do Fintech.

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Congratulations to Onfido - again voted the panel’s #1 Fintech in Europe - and to Checkout.com - new to the 50 this year and debuting at #2.

See also The Hall of Fame

#1. Onfido Identity

Onfido is the new standard for digital access. The company uses AI to verify any photo ID and then compares it with the person’s facial biometrics. This use of AI means that businesses no longer need to compromise on customer experience, conversion, privacy or security. Recognised as a global leader in artificial intelligence for identity verification and authentication, Onfido is backed by TPG Growth, Crane Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, M12 - Microsoft’s venture fund, and others. With over 400 employees across 9 offices globally, Onfido has raised $200m in funding and powers over 1500 customers worldwide, including HSBC, Revolut and Zipcar. Founders: L-R: Eamon Jubbawy, Ruhul Amin, Husayn Kassai (CEO).

#2. Checkout.com Payments

Founded by Guillaume Pousaz in 2012, 2. Checkout Checkout.com is a Payments global payments solution provider that empowers and enables the world’s most dynamic and innovative enterprises such as Revolut, Klarna and Transferwise to manage their digital payments. As a result of ongoing strength in payments innovation, Checkout.com successfully closed its $150m Series B funding round in June. The Series B was one of the year’s biggest funding rounds and tripled the total valuation to $5.5bn, making it one of the world’s most valuable fintechs.

#3 Tink Open Banking

Sweden’s Tink offers tools that allow anyone – from big banks, fintechs to startups – to build the future of financial services across Europe. Tink now operates across 14 markets, has integrated 2500 banks and institutions and reaches 250m customers across Europe. 5000 developers use its PSD2 compliant platform which processes 10bn transactions each year. Through one API, Tink allows customers to access aggregated financial services, initiate payments, enrich transactions and build personal finance management tools. Founders: Daniel Kjellén, Fredrik Hedberg

#4 Revolut Financial Super app

It’s a while since Revolut launched as an essential travel companion saving us money when we shopped overseas or exchanged currencies. Revolut’s 12 million customers can still do that. But they can now also invest, save, trade stocks, commodities and crypto, buy insurance, give to charity, budget and track spending. Between them they make more than 100 million transactions a month. its peers, Revolut’s financials have been widely discussed. Meanwhile, the superapp continues to move its business forward: tripling revenue, opening in the US (March 2020); launching open banking (in partnership with Truelayer) in the UK and Ireland, and to its 100,000 French and 400,000 Italian customers. Officially launching in Australia (July), where it already had 30,000 Australians on its waiting list...and most recently in Japan. Founders: Nikolay Storonsky, Vlad Yatsenko

#5 Raisin Wealth

The leading pan-European online savings and investments marketplace, Raisin offers simple access at no charge to attractive and guaranteed deposit products from all over Europe, as well as globally diversified, cost-effective ETF portfolios and pension products (currently available in Germany). With one online registration, customers can choose from all available investments and subsequently manage their accounts. Since launch in 2013, Raisin has placed €26 bn for more than 280,000 customers in 28+ European countries and 98 partner banks. This year, Raisin U.S. launched a tailored business solution for banks and credit unions looking for cost-effective new deposits. Founders: Tamaz Georgadze (CEO), Frank Freund, Michael Stephan.

#6 OakNorth Business Lending

OakNorth Bank is achieving performance metrics that place it amongst the top 1% of banks globally – an ROE run-rate of 23%, an efficiency ratio run-rate of 26%, a borrower NPS of 80.5, and pre-tax profits that increased 95% in 2019 to £65.9m. It’s lent over £4.5bn to hundreds of businesses across the UK (without a single credit loss to date) and has continued lending throughout the COVID-19 period, approving an average of £150m in new loans every month since March. It’s participating in both CBILS and CLBILS and is currently seeing twice as many deals going to credit committee compared to this time last year. In addition, OakNorth is aiming to make its credit science platform the go-to enterprise software solution to help banks make faster and moreinformed credit decisions. Founders: Rishi Khosla (CEO), Joel Perlman.

#7 wefox Group Insurance

Berlin, Germany

Digital all-in-one insurance solution

European InsurTech wefox Group operates two businesses: wefox, a platform that connects insurance companies to brokers that manage and consult their customers completely digital. Wefox currently features more than 300 insurance companies on the marketplace and serves more than 450.000 consumers. The second - ONE - is a fully digital European insurance company with a vision is to create a single point of protection for all risks in life in real-time based on actual exposed risk. ONE is fully integrated into the wefox platform. WefoxGo, a slimmed-down version of the full-service Advisor portal which currently exists in wefox Group’s core markets of Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, allows insurance brokers to connect their calendars to schedule meetings and conduct consultations via the platform’s video conference functionality.

Julian Teicke (CEO), Dario Fazlic, Fabian Wesemann, Jonathan Seoane, Teodoro Martino

wefox.com

#8 Solarisbank Banking as a Service

Berlin, Germany

The technology company with a full German banking license

Solarisbank enables other companies to offer their own financial services. Via APIs, partners integrate Solarisbank’s modular banking services directly into their own product offering. The platform offers digital bank accounts and payment cards, identification and lending services, digital asset custody as well as services provided by integrated thirdparty providers.

The Berlin-based company employs more than 300 employees from over 50 nationalities and generated net revenues of €15.5 million in 2019.

In 2019 Solarisbank established the 100% subsidiary Solaris Digital Assets GmbH to offer a licensed custodial solution for digital assets.

To date, Solarisbank has raised more than EUR 160 million from a bluechip shareholder base, including ABN AMRO’s Digital Impact Fund, BBVA, finleap, Global Brain, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Lakestar, Samsung Catalyst Fund, SBI Group, Storm Ventures, Visa, Vulcan Capital, and yabeo Capital.

Roland Folz (CEO)

solarisbank.com

#9 Thought Machine Core Banking

London, UK

High-growth, cloud native core-banking technology

Thought Machine’s mission is to cure the banking industry’s reliance on outdated IT infrastructure - and the London fintech, founded by former Google engineer Paul Taylor, is in high demand. In recent months, the company has scaled internationally, adding 150 employees in 2020 across three regions. Thought Machine has also expanded product compatibility to all major cloud providers and will be making major client announcements in the coming months. With a new round of financing this year, Thought Machine will continue to invest in growing its business at international scale – hiring key roles in APAC, US and Australia - while continuing to develop new products and features, including its upcoming advanced payments solution.

Paul Taylor (Founder / CEO)

thoughtmachine.net

#10 ComplyAdvantage Financial Crime Detection

London, UK

Fighting financial crime and powering anti-money laundering

The sixth fastest-growing Fintech in Europe (2020), ComplyAdvantage is building the world’s only global AI-driven database of people and companies to power anti-money laundering and financial crime detection. With around $2 trillion laundered annually, its services are in demand worldwide and ComplyAdvantage now has over 500 clients.

ComplyAdvantage embraces data science and Machine Learning to analyze risk computationally, and actively identifies tens of thousands of risk events from millions of structured and unstructured data points every day. The company’s configurable cloud services help automate and reduce the frustration of complying with sanctions, anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-financing of terrorism (CFT) requirements.

At the core is a central database of known money launderers, human traffickers, terrorists and others who exploit financial rails to run illegal operations. ComplyAdvantage also tackles the illegal wildlife trade (the pangolin, the most trafficked animal in the world, is an unofficial mascot).

Comply Advantage now works for more than 500 enterprise clients in 75 countries.

Charles Delingpole (Founder / CEO) complyadvantage.com

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