UK-based Thought Machine—a fintech that builds cloud-based core banking platform—has been drawing great deal of attention recently for all the right reasons.
Established by former Google engineer, Paul Taylor in 2014, Thought Machine’s cloud-based core banking solution—Vault—aims to revolutionize banking.
TM is a result of Taylor’s existing entrepreneurial feats and works at Google. After witnessing customer's affinity towards voice banking and personalized services, the CEO decided to build and offer a platform for multiple third-party banking services under one umbrella. He says, “For the past six years, our purpose has been to offer banks a next-generation solution to liberate them from legacy systems which plague the financial services industry.”
This month, the company secured $83 million in series B, led by Dasper Espirit, the famous tech-based venture capital firm, with existing investors like IQ Capital, Backed, and Playfair Capital. A part of the funding, according to reports, will be used to expand TM’s presence to new markets, specifically the US.
Vault is a platform that controls multiple banking services singlehandedly like savings accounts, checking accounts, loans, etc. This product is offered to consumers indirectly through a B2B2C model. Smart contracts are used to enable these services, which allows TM and its consumers to personalize, modify, and segregate the terms bank-wise and possibly customer wise.
Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered, SEB, and Atom Bank are the current customers of Thought Machine products. Its team strength is now increased to 300 presently from the number of 50 in 2018. TM also has presence in Asia and has its branch opened in Singapore last year that conducts sales, marketing, and has a dedicated professional services body to monitor the deployment of Vault into the regional banks. TM also plans to launch its services in Australia, Japan, and North America by the completion of 2020.
Vinoth Jayakumar, Investment Director, Dasper Espirit, states, “We are delighted to be partnering with Thought Machine in this phase of their growth. Our investments in Revolut and N26 demonstrate how banking is undergoing a once in a generation transformation in the technology it uses and the benefit it confers to the customers of the bank."
As banks prepare the digital wave, overhauling their legacy systems is going to inevitable. Firms like Thought Machine are literally sitting on a gold mine.
