1. Who are you?
My Name is Daniel Boedger [CEO & Founder of BankingCheck], 33, Dipl.-Ing. IT. After my studies I worked with Robert Bosch GmbH & SIEMENS as a project leader and development engineer for server systems in the process automation industry. Already in 2007 I have founded my first FinTech platform in the daily allowances and fixed deposit sector – with special comparison tables, calculators and apps.
With this 8 years of experience in the financial industry – we developed BankingCheck. Nowadays more than 370 banks and financial institutions with more than 650 products are supported by BankingCheck services.
2. Which product or service do you sell and who are your competitors?
BankingCheck is an independent rating and comparison platform for banks, insurance companies and financial service providers. The idea behind is simple – instead of using word-of-mouth, we are providing an automated customer review process. So customers are able to rate services such as account opening, credit card applications or interest rates – like it is already common in the travel and hotel industry. BankingCheck was founded in 2011 and up to now, more than 370 financial providers are using our service.
Basis features of BankingCheck are:
· customer review process for providers
· customer review process for products
· test seal integration
· rating stars (google)
The customer review process can be integrated in the CRM System of the bank, so that customers can be prompted to rate the service of the provider. The provider and product reviews will be exported to search engines like Google or Bing!, in order to display the ratings as stars in organic search and ads.
More than 50.000 customer reviews have been submitted so far on our platform. We are the only specialized evaluation portal for the financial industry. Due to the high amount of functions on the portal, we decided to provide a self-service account for companies in 2014.
Main features of the business account are:
· Edit provider profile
· Edit product profiles
· Read and comment customer reviews
· Social Media Integration
· Cutomer review process
· Test seal generator (SEO stars)
· Media Monitoring
· Integration in comparison tables / calculators
· News / press releases
In addition, the provider have the possibility to respond directly to the customer reviews with the business account. Thus, banks and financial institutions can enter into an active dialogue with their consumers and therefore can support them in prospective issues. With the recent function news / press releases provider are able to generate and to publish news articles / press releases.
3. How did you get your start-up idea and how did you finance your start-up?
In 2007 I started my first financial website Tagesgeld-News.de. Up to now Tagesgeld-News.de is an unique information portal which attempts to provide customers with meaningful additional value / information in terms of daily allowances. Since the portal start, we report regularly about daily allowances, e.g. new offers, product changes or changes in interest rates on the german market. In addition, we provide further product details of the different accounts on the portal. These updates will be submitted daily to the users via newsletter or app. The first App was developed in 2010 – it was one of the first finance apps with push notifications for news and interest rate changes.
At this point I realized that customer reviews of different products would enhance the customer decision process. So that customers can benefit from the experiences of other consumers. Especially in terms of mortgages and loans customer experiences are very important as these products involve a long customer-bank relationship. This was the starting shot of BankingCheck.
4. What were the biggest challenges in starting?
The foundation itself was no issue. Setting up the IT and building a fast and cool website with a lot of automatic functions is always challenging. Besides that, we always aim to respond to customer feedback in order to improve our services and our portal.
5. What areas within FinTech do you personally find most interesting and why?
As Dipl. Ing. IT and automated processes are my favorite part. In terms of reduction of costs these automated processes assist the daily workflow and enhance the performance. Especially the mobile and web-based banking processes are one of my favorite areas.
In addition, with BankingCheck we like to support the daily workflow of the financial industry e.g. with SEO content for their websites and automated customer processes.
6. What opportunities do you see for FinTech start-ups in the DACH region, and how can we help to accelerate it?
Many opportunities – the FinTech industry needs innovations and new ideas. Nowadays they have to compete with Google, Bing and other big digital competitors like Paypal.
My aim is to connect finance companies with their customers.
7. What tip would you like to give FinTech entrepreneurs?
Don’t wait, stand up, build a prototype, look for a partner and get started. In the FinTech sector are many investors which invest in good ideas.