Treasury Innovator Award finalist: Akoni
At last week's Treasury Leaders Summit, we spoke to each of the Treasury Innovator Award finalists about their history, the thinking behind their proposition, and their plans for the future.
At last week's Treasury Leaders Summit, we spoke to each of the Treasury Innovator Award finalists about their history, the thinking behind their proposition, and their plans for the future.
Akoni is an Open Banking innovator providing solutions to businesses for better financial planning. Specifically, Akoni’s platform helps businesses with cash management and export planning by leveraging a wide range of data sources, accounting integrations and Open Banking. Akoni does this by providing a one-stop shop for actively monitoring and managing company cash deposits and overlays this with sector, trade, risk and accounting data to create deep insights and clear actions tailored to the company’s needs.
How did the idea behind your service originate?
After previously being frustrated with the lack of resources available to SMEs when she was managing over £50m in cash, our co-founder and CEO Felicia Meyerowitz Singh decided to take a DIY approach and set up Akoni to addresses this inequality by providing a digital cash management tool designed specifically for midsize businesses and investors. Our vision is to “democratise” financial product access and management of multi banks, as previously treasury tools were only available for large multinationals and this has now changed in large parts due to innovations in Open Banking.
What is your customer base?
Akoni has over 750 midsize businesses and high-net-worth individuals on the platform.
What differentiates you from competitors?
Akoni provides solutions bespoke to business size, sector and stage of business cycle based on live financial data. It differs from the market, providing the following:
How does your product make treasurers’ lives easier?
We help treasurers maximize the return on their cash deposits, quickly, easily and securely by allowing them to find the best interest for deposits, and giving them a single, easy-to-use place to manage their money. Our platform also provides personalized cash management tips and guidance, and benchmarks reflecting similarly sized companies with the simple aim of helping businesses improve and increase the bottom line. This saves treasurers time, effort and worry, and helps businesses earn more.
What are your plans for the future?
Akoni’s vision is to provide financial solutions bespoke to businesses across their business life cycle. In terms of cash management, we are constantly developing the platform to add new currency features, increasing our number of panel banks, as well as working alongside large banks to white label the tool for their requirements. In addition, Akoni is expanding its offering and has just launched a trade intelligence export platform to help businesses along the export journey, syncing with Open Banking data to make the international trade process and associated financial demands (from insurance to funding) seamless.