How To Choose The Right Financial Technology Company? [Checklist]

Finding the right financial technology company is big step businesses take to innovate their solutions or build them from scratch. There are many scenarios when business leaders look for a financial technology company: they want to renovate solutions fast, focus on core business activities, or simply because they haven't got enough tech expertise to build fintech software in-house. In this article, we will dwell upon aspects that will help you differentiate between an experienced financial technology company from an average one. Keep reading and find out how to pick a perfect financial technology company by analyzing the talent, processes, and technologies.

People in financial technology companies: hiring, retention, education

People are the main asset of any company and the prerequisite for successful collaboration with the financial technology company. Knowing how the company searches for, hires, manages, and nurtures talent gives you a better understanding of future collaboration. For instance, financial technology companies with established employer brands can attract more mature tech experts and hire them faster. Yet, it is the employer retention process that keeps the brightest on board. An experienced financial technology company matches the criteria described below.

1. Strong grip on the local tech talent market

It is hard to overestimate how important it is for a financial technology company to have recruiters who know the talent market and has a pool of potential candidates. The hiring process can be reduced to an hour when the company has some engineers with experience in fintech app development on the bench.

And if that’s not the case, an experienced financial technology company should have a well-organized hiring process. At Binariks, we estimate each new specialist according to the following qualities:

• Interpersonal skills
• Communication
• Open-mindedness
• Good fit for the team dynamics

Only then does the candidate who passes all stages is then qualified for a customer interview.

2. Well-organized talent retention process

A smartly-constructed retention strategy is weaved throughout all collaboration experiences at any financial technology company. Even the most motivated specialists may drop out after an unpleasant introductory interview or even leave without finishing their probation period. Hence, it’s important that the employer has a smooth onboarding process, explains responsibilities clearly, tracks performance, provides competitive compensation and benefits packages and sustains positive relations with specialists even after breaking a contract.

Binariks has a learning and development department and a training center. We also pride ourselves in a well-established knowledge evaluation and performance appraisal process finalized with a Personal Development Plan (PDP). We encourage employees to develop their skills, acquire new ones, share knowledge, pass certifications, etc. We also support the following knowledge-boosting initiatives:

• Internal e-library
• Knowledge evaluation process
• Performance appraisal
• Promotional interview
• Individual development plan and mentorship program
• Tech talks
• The English language courses
• Cover online training and conference attendance
• Financially support employees who aspire to acquire technical certifications

3. Dedication to one project

Depending on the collaboration model a financial technology company offers, you can have fintech developers engaged on an hourly basis or have an entire team dedicated to your project. The dedicated development team model is most suitable for companies that want to accelerate product development.

Such financial technology companies as Binariks have a structure and processes that enable dedicated developers to clients from the fintech industry. Our agreement has a respective section stating that Binariks will not assign the personnel to competitive companies.

4. Ability to scale teams up and down

It’s extremely important to clarify whether the financial technology companies on your shortlist have a talent sourcing strategy when the demand increases. The ability to scale the team according to the client’s requirements predicts a multi-step process and factors that a financial technology company has to follow.

The recruitment team is the driving force behind the staffing process. One of the values we bring to our clients is the capability to rapidly scale the team since we have a good reputation in the local labor market, a strong recruiting team, and a list of previously screened candidates. Binariks is a financial technology company that follows a four-step hiring process:

1. Recruiters compile an initial shortlist based on the criteria received from a client
2. Execute pre-qualification call executed by Binariks HR team
3. Organize technical interviews executed by Binariks technical leaders
4. Set up interviews for selected candidates with the client

The shortlist of questions that you might want to use goes as follows:

✅How does the company find suitable candidates?

✅Do they have a good employer brand in the local talent market?

✅How does the company organize the hiring process?

✅Can clients participate in the selection process?

✅Can clients scale their team up and down when necessary?

✅How is the retention process organized?

✅Are team members dedicated to one or many projects?

Expertise and success cases of fintech solution companies

It’s hard to overestimate how important is to work with fintech solution companies that have hands-on experience in building versatile products for industry leaders. So we recommend asking each financial technology company to showcase their success stories. Make sure you request a presentation of cases where the company used either the tech stack, built similar products, or did both.

✅Can a financial technology company show successful cases in fintech?

✅Have they worked with your preferred technology stack?

✅Can they adjust to a technological stack of your product?

Web-based marketplace for investment

Binariks developed a digital network that allows investors to find qualified finance professionals. It helps them build profitable cooperation and ensure experience exchange. Read more about the success story .

Secure commercial messaging software for Swedish IT company

This company works primarily with a national electronic identification method that allows companies, banks, and government agencies to authenticate people online or over the phone. The client offers its services to all citizens of Sweden, regardless of their age and occupation. Learn more here .

There’s open information about a financial technology company you can find by simply googling but it’s more effective to take a look at specialized company listings like Clutch.co or Medium to read independent client reviews .

Processes, methodologies, and policies in financial technology companies

An experienced financial technology company has a structured approach to running its processes and, at the same time, leaves enough space to adjust to client requirements. So how do you differentiate a mature financial technology company from many others? Mature businesses have transparent planning and crisis management processes, track productivity, and regularly communicate with clients and within their team. The list goes on and on but here are the major green flags you may want to see.

✅How does a financial technology company organize the communication process?

✅Are there people on the side of the fintech solution companies responsible for following procedures?

✅Is there a single point of contact on the side of fintech solution companies?

Well-orchestrated communication and productivity tracking processes

Dedicated project managers. A mature financial technology company has a well-balanced structure with specialists who cover project assignment management. Ask if you will have a person on the side of the contractor who will keep the client posted.

At Binariks, we assign project managers or project coordinators, disregarding the team size. Depending on their involvement, they can cover different project management areas such as product communication , time, and people management, SCRUM master role.

Regular communication via secure channels. To keep everyone on the same page, mature financial technology companies use emails, Slack, Teams, and Skype for asynchronous and real-time communication with clients.

Versatile strategies of Agile methodology. The agile method provides more flexibility than traditional methods. In Binariks day-to-day work project managers use either Scrum or Kanban depending on the project specifics. They follow standard phases of software development as grooming, planning, daily standups, demo, and retrospective. Build product backlog and create burn-down charts to track team velocity. All this ensures transparency between you and the financial technology company.

The Business Continuity Management Policy

Covid-19 has destabilized the world and stimulated tech businesses to be more prepared in the face of unknown challenges. Mature financial technology companies such as Binariks secure the continuity of business processes by following Business Continuity Management Policy. This protocol is activated in the event of disaster caused by factors beyond our control (e.g., natural disasters, manmade events, cyber-attacks, etc.) and restore operations to the widest extent possible in a minimum timeframe.

Transparency in the development process

Many financial technology companies track progress in Jira, Asana, and Trello to support Agile, Scrum, Kanban, and Confluence for storing documentation. At Binariks, we also use GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket as version control tools.

As a rule, we implement CI/CD to ensure smooth deployment from development to testing and production environment. Clients receive a status report with a breakdown of the accomplished tasks along with hours spent every week. There’s still much space for adjusting to the client's internal processes.

And to ensure alignment and transparency through the software development life cycle (SDLC) we:

• Plan regular code reviews with the client’s team
• Conduct regular project status meetings
• Share Git repository will be with the team of the client
• Invite clients to visit any team meeting

Read Also: Secure SDLC: Why And How to Implement It

Tools, technologies, and certifications for fintech solution companies

Have your financial solution built with the latest technologies and follow the latest fintech trends . Here’s why: modern technologies enable more integrations, boost computing power, show faster performance, and reduce maintenance or innovation costs in a long-run perspective; it’s also easier and faster to gather a team of developers who use popular and trending technologies. Thus, financial technology companies need to use popular and up-to-date technology stacks.

✅Does the financial technology company follow industry-specific regulations?

✅What relevant certifications do financial technology companies have?

Tools and technologies

Each company has a core strength and knows how to maximize results using one or another technology. At Binariks, we pride ourselves on our skills in the following technologies:

• Back-end: .Net, Java, PHP, Node.js, Ruby on Rails, Elixir
• Front-end: Angular, React, and Vue.js
• Mobile: Android/Java/Kotlin, iOS/Swift, and React Native

And if you are looking for a financial technology company to renovate your solution, pay special attention to your approach and/or ability to align their solution with your existing technology, architecture, and development toolkit.

While working with renovations, the Binariks team conducts client platform review to clarify technological constraints and define the best-fit team composition. We always attempt to follow the technology stack of an existing platform and combine it with industry best practices.

Certifications

Check whether the shortlisted financial technology companies acquired internationally acknowledged certifications. It will help you make sure that your product follows security and legal regulations and can be used by clients all around the globe. For example, Binariks has acquired the following certifications:

• ISO 27001 and ISO 900 certifications
• Microsoft Gold Partner
• AWS Partner, Select Tier
• Google Cloud Partner
• SCRUM Alliance
• ISTQB Certified software test engineers

Instead of conclusion

Choosing the right financial technology company isn’t easy but with this comprehensive list of questions and explanation of best-possible scenarios, you can mitigate the risks of landing with the wrong partner. This article is based on the personal experience of our colleagues at Binariks and we hope it will help our peers establish fruitful and lasting relationships with financial technology companies all around the world. Drop us a line and our sales representatives will share information about our expertise.