Let us announce a great interview of Ivan Kovalenko, HES FinTech Co-Founder and CEO. Recently, he talked to The Baltic Times, an independent newspaper covering issues and events in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The interview goal was to discuss the fintech market landscape in Europe, expansion to the new regions, as well as HES FinTech’s largest customers and plans for the future.
About Ivan Kovalenko:
Entrepreneur in FinTech software engineering with solid 10+ years experience in IT projects and product assessment, development, and delivery. Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of HES FinTech and GiniMachine AI.
Key Parts of the Interview
Company’s before and after:
We covered the path from a small fintech software development company with a dozen developers and testers to a mature business providing 100+ workplaces and having 160+ completed and active projects in more than 30 countries worldwide.
About the fintech market landscape:
I see the only barrier for the fintech industry: compliance. This is especially true for the EU and the North American market. However, we can notice some balancing: there is a fantastic growth of fintechs in the number of deals, funding, and customer base growth.
About the competition of incumbents and neobanks:
Customers may be willing to try services of digital banks or alternative lenders due to various reasons. Either because of good experience with traditional financial institutions and a high level of trust (like in Scandinavian countries). Or because of unsatisfactory or insufficient experience with traditional institutions (like in South Eastern Asia).
About markets and top customers:
We approached the pandemic crisis as an opportunity to invest in our certificates, skills, and the development of new marketing and sales strategies.
As a result, in 2021 HES signed a contract with Wa’ed, the entrepreneurship arm of Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s largest companies by revenue. Our team started automating the company’s financial operations to fuel business growth and grant collateral-free loans. In addition to this major project in the Middle East, last year we opened up Africa and started our first project for the African market.
About fintech sector trends:
Top 6 Fintech Trends in 2022: What You Need to Know Inclusive finance and especially inclusive lending are on the hype. Technologies help borrowers become ‘visible’ for credit institutions. Lenders can accept loan applications even from thin-file borrowers with no credit history with the help of alternative lending data, such as telecom info or the information from utility services organizations about timely paid bills.
We research this topic while our startup – GiniMachine AI-based decision-making platform has a great potential to bring benefits both to lenders and borrowers.
About the team:
The best thing to notice in our corporate culture is how people communicate, cooperate and celebrate results with each other. Hiring a star with amazing leadership qualities is a great deal. However, we prefer hiring a team of stars able to support each other or take over a task, because it allows providing full-fledged vacations and leaves without compromising the team’s productivity. Just like I said before: people and their ideas are our greatest value.
Read the full interview and follow Ivan on LinkedIn to expand your network, receive more fintech industry updates and be the first to know about the company’s news.
