The global financial crisis of 2009, widely regarded as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression in 1930, had severely impacted the global financial landscape including Iceland. The crisis created havoc among the people and they were looking for solutions to manage their finances. Making the most of this opportunity, Georg Ludviksson co-founded Meniga with an aim to help people manage their finances in a better way.
In the early years of his professional career, Georg was involved in software development, where he did a lot of coding and engineering, and established two companies–Dimon Software and UpDown.com. However, alongside his passion for software development, he developed a strong interest in the fintech industry and was looking to establish his own finance management company. Consequently, as aforementioned when the crisis hit Iceland he did not miss the opportunity and incepted Meniga.
Being a CEO and Co-founder at Meniga, he has been instrumental in the company’s growth over the years. “It’s been a fantastic journey of ups and downs but I am immensely proud of the company that we have built over the past decade,” he adds. Headquartered in London, Meniga is on a mission to help people lead better financial lives by creating a mutually beneficial ecosystem for people, banks, and businesses. Presently, Meniga has offices in 7 cities across four continents and serves over 90 million digital banking users across 30 countries.
Multi-Faceted Solutions and Offerings
Meniga aims to enable people, businesses, and banks to benefit from the responsible and transparent use of transaction data through its solutions. Its solutions help banks to better leverage data in order to personalize their digital channels and increase user engagement. Moreover, Meniga’s product offering covers data aggregation technologies, personal and business finance management solutions, transaction-based carbon insights, and cashback rewards.
The cashback rewards platform is one of Meniga’s most popular and innovative solutions. Through this platform, banks can deliver personalized cashback offers to customers within their digital bank. This ultimately helps merchants as they can use the rewards platform as a marketing tool to communicate relevant offers and attract new customers. The customers too can use this offer and get cashback directly to their bank account. This indeed creates a win-win-win situation for banks, merchants, and the customers as—banks can generate a new source of revenue, merchants are able to attract new customers, and the customers save money.
Highest Standards of Security and Compliance
Alongside innovative solutions, ensuring strict security measures is also important for companies to thrive in this digital era. Emphasizing security, Meniga always works with the highest standards of security and compliance. The company makes sure to partner with consultancies that audit its risk processes and have strict compliance procedures.
Meniga has numerous certifications and licenses such as a PCI-DSS certification–signifying that all credit card data within the company is safe and secure. Besides, an alignment with ISO27001 suggests that Meniga follows an international standard on information security management. Earlier this year, Meniga also secured a license to be registered as an Account Information Service Provider (AISP) with the UK’s financial regulator–the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Staying Positive amid the Crisis
The pandemic has caused a shift in consumer behavior due to the new regulations. The increasing demand for personalized services is aiding challenger banks and other new players to gain ground as they are focusing their value proposition on the user experience and their digital banking offerings. Moreover, the introduction of PSD2 and Open banking has provided numerous opportunities for challenger banks and has increased the competition among them. However, Meniga is tackling this challenge with a positive approach.
“A healthy dose of competitiveness is always a good thing and with so many rising stars within the banking field, in particular, it puts pressure on us and our bank partners to ensure they remain competitive,” asserts Georg. As consumers are seeking world-class experience and tools that can help them manage their finances easily, Meniga is ensuring that its products and tools exceed the value proposition of its competitors and address consumer needs.
Furthermore, Meniga has been operating with a distributed team with offices across the world for many years. Thus, the transition to remote processes was not difficult for the company. With more people working remotely, Meniga regularly checked in with its employees to meet their needs and keep them motivated. Furthermore, due to the new impositions, the company has inhabited a strict ‘no travel’ policy which means that the employees have not met the clients face-to-face and have not attended any on-site workshops.
The Accelerating Competitive Intensity
As the fintech, neobanks, and big tech firms become much more robust, the competition between banks and fintech is expected to intensify thereby urging banks to adapt and become more agile. Moreover, the customers will also seek increasingly personalized, convenient, and transparent services with increased availability of options. Hence, both the banks and fintech providers will have to keep an eye on the changing customer needs and strive for digital excellence.
Talking about Meniga’s preparations for the future, Georg said, “In terms of these ongoing shifts in consumer behavior, I would argue that Meniga is very well equipped to deal with these changes, due to our core product offering of personal finance management.” To cope with the rigorous competition in the future, Meniga has recently raised a strategic investment of 8.5 M EUR, led by its customers Groupe BPCE, Grupo Credito Agricola, and UniCredit. The company is using this funding for continued investments in its R&D activities and promises to launch some amazing innovations in the near future.
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