Anthony Rafferty marks Origo’s 35th year as a fintech
Anthony Rafferty
Chief Executive
Origo
This year Origo is celebrating its 35th anniversary. The industry’s original fintech, we continue to deliver industry-critical technologies used by hundreds of platforms and providers, and tens of thousands of financial advisers and industry professionals.
Origo has been through the Dotcom Boom and Bust, the Financial Crisis and Covid amongst many other market impacting events – none of which have thrown us off course.
Fintech – and technology in general – can often be a fast paced, come-and-gone sector. So how have we survived for so long?
I put it down to three main reasons.
First, we focus on the end goal and outcome for those using our products and services. We look to create technologies that are going to have an impact on the market – boosting the performance of companies we serve, and helping them deliver better service to their own clients and customers.
In this way, we work for the benefit of everyone, providers, platforms, software houses, financial advisers, and the end consumer.
Second, we have always been able to take a long-term view. We know from experience that in a highly regulated industry like ours, organisations quite rightly proceed with caution on the technology they deploy – as well as having many regulatory, legislative and commercial demands on their technology spends.
And third, is our experience of working collaboratively with the industry. We work with the end users across all our projects. This has been a major factor in how we have developed the technology that works for our partners and ensured we continue to deliver what the industry wants and needs.
So, where do we go from here? This is one of the most exciting times to be in the fintech space, as the world embraces the potential of artificial intelligence as a tool to increase efficiencies and productivity.
As you might expect, Origo is using new ways to create even better fintech for the industry. There is much that can be achieved for the benefit of everyone. I am excited when I talk to our teams to see how we are progressing. You can be sure Origo will be at the forefront in helping the industry to build greater efficiencies into its processes and help deliver even better products and services to customers.
Examples of Origo’s technologies that have helped change the market
• Origo Transfer Service: By automating pension, ISA and GIA transfers, since 2008 we have helped reduce processing times from an average of 50+ days to as little as 45 minutes. Last year we handled over 1.2 million transfers and we are set to exceed that figure in 2024.
• Unipass Identity celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. This development from Origo’s Unipass Certificate, which the industry has been using en masse for over 20 years, provides one online account which enables authorised users to quickly and securely log in to multiple financial services websites. In the 10 years, we have enabled 30,947,896 successful authentications.
• Origo Integration Hub: Launched in 2016, the Hub has done away with the need for costly individual integrations for key processes like account opening, valuations, bulk valuations, bulk transaction history and remuneration feeds and helped level the playing field for new and smaller players in the market.
• Unipass Letter of Authority: Our latest technology is helping to bring this previously highly manual, slow process into the 21st century.
• Pensions Dashboard central digital architecture: In 2017 Origo built the prototype of this technology, which helped us win the final build for the project. The Dashboard has the potential to significantly change the financial lives of so many pension holders in the UK.