The vision and strategy of an Italian fintech and regtech leader, with expansion plans for the international market.
Irion is a business leader in Enterprise data Management and Data Quality with its product IrionDQ that has had a market presence over the the last 10 years. The founders, Alberto and Giovanni Scavino and Maura Sturaro, after gaining long-standing experience in financial solutions, decided to begin a new company.
“The sector that we address is ‘fintech and regtech’ otherwise known as technologies for finance, compliance issued by regulators and monitoring and supervision for the banking and financial sectors, in particular for all matters concerning data management. This is a very interesting field but it is also very delicate.” Explained Irion CEO, Alberto Scavino. One of the major challenges is aligning communication between business and IT and overcoming cultural barriers and application phases. At the technical level, banks and financial institutions must be able to deliver complete and accurate data to regulatory entities that corresponds to their accounting results. At the same time, the management team entrusted with making business decisions, must have updated and relevant information to steer business strategy.
“Our Solution, IrionDQ, offers unique and distinct features that sets up rule engines for control, storage, and derivation of data, in a way that satisfies the compliance business needs,” underlines Alberto Scavino. The characteristics of the system synthesized in three key words are performant, flexible, and agile. The platform has features like the ability to define business-oriented rules, a complete and documented rule dictionary, automatic traceability of the entire process, and the ability to elaborate large volumes of data. “IrionDQ automatically translates technical rules into natural language, and saves them with a business glossary. This is an important benefit for the documentation and traceability of every single step. The automatic documentation and audit functions only require one click”.
Alberto Scavino, Irion CEO
The solution, by using proprietary and innovative technologies (among these are DELT – Declarative Extract Load and Transform, EAsT – Everything As a Table) creates a technical infrastructure to achieve regulatory compliance quickly, combining scalability and enterprise class performance with a simple approach to data management. Irion works closely with customers to ensure the result is a personalized, customer centric service. The business has grown in recent years from a small operation with a few employees into one that today reaches throughout Italy and abroad, with further plans for international business. Some of Irion’s clients include The Intesa Sanpaolo group, Banco Popolare, State Street Bank, BNL-BNP Paribas, Ubi Bank, Mediobanca, Fideuram, Credito Valtellinese, Popolare di Sondrio, ICBPI, Banca Carige, Sparkasse, Banca Marche, Cattolica Assicurazioni, Ergo and Axpo.
“Irion has plans to expand into the insurance market and larger companies, but also has London and the UK market in sight. We want to continue to be an Italian firm, but more global”, commented Alberto Damiani, Marketing & International Partnership Manager. The company made 7 million euro last year with a 30% annual growth rate, developing new product features and investing in research, development, and new talent. Among the features of IrionDQ there are also services oriented to the mobile world, such as data results that are compatible with tables and smartphones. Irion will also soon come out with an app that uses Datazen-a Microsoft technology that is integrated with SQL Server- aimed precisely for mobile devices. “We focus on data quality and certification combined with the agility to adapt to regulations issued by regulatory entities. Our solutions can elaborate clearly on Big Data, through means of a Hadoop connection, and provide analysis tools according to criteria set by the user”, underlines the manager. In order to remain a strong market player it is necessary to “be proactive –concludes Scavino–, it’s not enough to just react to changes that happen, you have to be able to predict them when possible. The fintech and regtech sectors will always have a relevant role in the development of informatics, and our mission is offering the best innovation to our clients”.