Beyond borders

Europeans move to different countries for myriad reasons, and each move requires an element of starting over—for example, finding a place to live, purchasing a vehicle or setting up a new mobile phone. Often, these types of transactions require applicants to demonstrate their creditworthiness.

However, there are no credit reporting agencies that cover Europe as a whole, so companies would benefit greatly by assessing potential customers using transactional data. Unfortunately, that type of assessment does not exist today, which can make it extraordinarily difficult for them to secure even their most basic necessities.

When Giokas started Finclude in 2018, he had a lot to consider. “One of the biggest challenges as a regulated entity is managing very sensitive private information,” he says. When he and Co-Founder and Chief Risk Officer Ioanna Stanegloudi met with the team from the IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator program, they knew immediately that they were in the right hands.

“During the very first call, once we understood how Hyper Protect works, we saw that it would be like outsourcing security, privacy and compliance,” he continues. “We were a very small team, so having access to IBM experts who could handle all of those things was very nice,” he says.

Together with the Hyper Protect Accelerator team, Finclude’s founders developed a robust security posture for the new company. The IBM Cloud® Hyper Protect Crypto Services product protects Finclude’s data encryption keys. This cloud-based hardware security module (HSM) is the first of its kind to be FIPS 140-2 Level 4 certified, which means keys are encrypted using the most stringent and up-to-date technology available. “Not even IBM can get access to what’s held in the HSM,” explains Giokas.

The solution also uses the IBM Cloud Hyper Protect DBaaS for Postgre SQL service, housed in three separate data centers near Frankfort, Germany. “The fact that it is a fully isolated database that is constantly monitored and geographically distributed gives us the redundancy that we are required by law to have for the data we use,” says Giokas.

The solution also makes use of the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, which enables Finclude to scale its usage up and down through quarter-end closings, while the IBM Cloud Object Storage offering supplies Finclude with a security-rich repository for raw data from financial institutions.

Together, the IBM products helped Finclude demonstrate its commitment to privacy and security to its local bank, the Central Bank of Ireland. “They scrutinized us. They were expecting us to have internal audits, external audits and security audits like we were a team of 300 people. But at that time, we were only two people,” says Giokas.

After careful scrutiny, the Central Bank of Ireland granted Finclude the license and approval it required, thereby opening the door to associations with other banks throughout the European Union. Similarly, the company’s association with IBM lent a particular gravitas to its endeavors. “When we say that our data are monitored by IBM, all of the big financial institutions know that we’re more than just two people talking about an idea,” says Giokas.