Board Owl recently facilitated the appointment of a new Advisory Board member for Fencore, a Singapore-based Fintech start-up which just beat several hundred competitors to one of the 10 coveted places on the renowned Fintech accelerator program F10. We took a few moments to speak with James. Meet the man behind the startup on a mission to make data management easy and affordable for financial institutions.
James Crosby, founder and CEO of Fencore, is originally from the UK but spent most of his childhood in Switzerland. In 2015, he made the move from London to one of Asia’s biggest financial hubs – Singapore. And this is where he launched his Fintech startup in 2019. Spotting a big gap in the market for a more affordable and easier to implement data management platform, he built on his many years of experience in the Enterprise Data Management industry to develop a groundbreaking product. These efforts were recently recognised when Fencore won a place in the well-respected Fintech accelerator programme F10, which launched with its first Singaporean cohort earlier this month.
James, tell me a bit about your exciting new venture Fencore…
“My team and I have over 40 years of combined experience on data management projects, and during that time we spotted the same mistakes being made again and again. Financial institutions were asked to spend millions of dollars on data management projects and were often left with an unmaintainable mess that didn’t really fulfil their requirements. Managing your market, reference and price data should not cost you an arm and a leg, as you’re already paying enough for the data in the first place. So we’re here to make those tasks much easier and more affordable.”
What was the driving force behind your decision to start a new business?
“I have a strong technical background as a software developer, but also spent many years as a consultant where I was working side by side with clients every day. This allowed me to see both sides of the coin: witnessing the pain points that financial institutions still faced using the incumbent data management software, and also the ability to see how an improved technical solution could dramatically ease these pain points.”
Congratulations for winning one of 10 coveted F10 Incubator places, out of around 380 contenders. That’s huge. What do you think mainly contributed to your win?
“Thank you! We are very happy to have won a place in this incubator as it is highly regarded within the Fintech community. One of the corporate partners of F10 is SIX, and part of their business is providing financial data to banks and asset managers. I believe that they saw true value in our approach to simplifying the consumption of financial data and dramatically shortening implementation time periods. It is a great validation of our team and product.”
You also recently formed an advisory board with an appointment from Board Owl – what are your main objectives for the board / how do you hope they will influence the course of your business?
“That’s right, we felt that an advisory board consisting of professionals with a long track record in the financial services industry would be invaluable to us. The main objectives are to leverage their individual skill sets and experience to advise us in particular areas of need, to offer another opinion on key decisions as well as to provide an additional measure of gravitas to our business. A big thank you to Board Owl for making the matching process with our advisor so straightforward and easy.”
What 2 key nuggets of advice can you share with fellow entrepreneurs?
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“You really have to get out of your comfort zone to give your business the best chance of success. I love the saying – the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Try to remember that if you’re facing nerves before your next big pitch!”
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“Keep listening and learning every day. Be it from listening to feedback from prospects to reading books to listening to podcasts, there is an abundance of help out there and it’s just a case of tuning into it.”
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We look forward to following James’ success with Fencore. If you are interested in their solution, do look them up at https://fencore.com.sg/
