"When businesses need to do KYC and FICA, they need to collect proof of residence and identity. It’s a massive frustration for clients. The backends of banks are not agile enough to handle this process – and this is where Indox comes in,” says Gur Geva, CEO of Indox, a silver partner at the Finance Indaba Africa 2017 on 12 and 13 October 2017 at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg.
- Finance professionals and accountants register for the Finance Indaba for free with code FB2017!
Do you want to learn more about why Indox is the "Uber of document collection"? Do you want to be informed about the latest and greatest in finance? Then don't miss the Finance Indaba Africa 2017.
In the coming weeks, we will be chatting to all the Indaba partners, asking them why they are joining the event and what their most important message for finance professionals is.
How did you come to head up Indox?
"My business partners bought into an entity that was involved lead generation in the personal, unsecured debt space and they asked me to do the due diligence on the acquisition and be CEO of the business. A small part of the business did document collection. Credit providers wanted leads. They never needed to collect documents because this was ahead of the National Credit Act amendment.
"Two or three of these providers were risk averse and wanted to manage their bad debt and collect ID documents, pay slips and bank statements. In doing so, I learnt how to navigate the document collection space. When the National Credit Act affordability amendment came out in March 2015, I said to my partners that we had to act - we built the software and went to market. This was how Indox was founded."
You are a chartered accountant with natural marketing flair. This is quite unusual.
"I'm more of a technologist now, but I am a marketer at heart. I understand how to sell across the board, offline and online. When I was 18 years old, I had to make the decision to go into marketing or complement my natural skillset with things were at that time, less natural, such as financial statements. The chartered accountant path was always to support my business leadership role - I was never going to be an auditor. Now, my focus is almost on enabling technologies that help service our financial services clients."
Why have you chosen to partner with the Finance Indaba?
"We've got the business scaled very nicely from an organic perspective. We've got banks and listed retailers as clients and the business is highly profitable. We now want to scale it harder and faster and therefore, we are looking for high returns on investment in terms of marketing opportunities with the correct audience. This is what the Finance Indaba offers."
Is there anything specifically that you are looking to showcase at the event?
"We are able to digitally collect documents for banks, credit providers and insurers. If they can't collect documents, they can't disburse the loan or the financial product and profitability goes through the floor. We want to make it very clear to them that we can restore profitability. When businesses need to do KYC and FICA, they need to collect proof of residence and identity. It's a massive frustration for clients. The backends of banks are not agile enough to handle this process - and this is where Indox comes in."
What are you looking to accomplish over the next year?
"We will capitalise on our position of South Africa's leading Document Bureau and grow into the European territories where the Holding Companies of our local clients are. Further we want to expand into those territories on similar time zone and languages to those we currently support. This should yield the 10X growth on revenue and EBITDA we budget for the next three years."
How significant is technology and innovation to Indox operations?
"Technology is stitched into the fabric of every part of our business: the digital collection, the document repository, human capital management and the management information systems we maintain on behalf of clients. It is everything to us. We are deploying AI chatbots and were the first to deploy WhatsApp channels to collect documents in South Africa. Technology is in everything we do. We are the Uber of document collection."
How do you help clients keep pace with regulation?
"We were ahead of the implementation of the National Credit Act implementation because we were simply in the right place at the right time with our previous acquisition which was the predecessor of Indox.
"We knew every credit provider was going to need pay slips and bank statements and were proactive in approaching them and solving this challenge for them. We educated them from a legal perspective and on how to deploy the operation to ensure compliance. We are always on the front foot and use ENS Africa extensively for legal advice to ensure compliance with POPI, the National Credit Act and FIC Amendment Act. All our technology is signed off by ENS Africa and PwC - and companies of that caliber are very confident that we can deliver."
