2024 marks Origo’s 35th year – the industry’s original fintech – providing market-changing technology solutions to the financial services industry. In the following blog, Origo CEO, Anthony Rafferty, reflects on just some of the key initiatives and developments that have contributed to the fintech’s success to date.
We’ve been through the Dotcom boom and bust, the Financial Crisis and Covid amongst many other market impacting events – none of which have thrown us off course in delivering, developing and importantly, maintaining our industry-critical technology.
We’ve done this with a focus not just on the technology, but on the end goal and outcome for those using our products and services, working for the benefit of everyone, from providers, to advisers, through to the end consumer.
Importantly, in a market where companies and propositions can enter and exit in all too short a time, we have been able to take a long-term view for our offerings. We know from experience that in a highly regulated industry like ours, organisations quite rightly proceed with caution on the technology they deploy – as well as having many regulatory and other demands on their technology spends.
Equally important has been our experience of working collaboratively with the industry across our projects – a major factor in how we have developed the technology that works for our partners throughout our history.
This is an exciting time to be in the fintech space, as the world embraces the potential of artificial intelligence as a tool to increase efficiencies and productivity. I am excited when I talk to our teams to see how we are using new ways to create even better fintech for the industry. There is much that can be achieved for the benefit of everyone, and Origo will be at the forefront in helping the industry to achieve it.
Examples of Origo’s technologies that have helped change the market
• Origo Transfer Service: By automating pensions transfers the, since 2008 we have helped reduce processing times from an average of 50+ days to as little as 45 minutes. Last year we handled over 1.2 million transfers and we are set to exceed that figure in 2024.
• Unipass Identity, celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. It provides one secure online account which enables authorised users to quickly and securely log in to multiple financial services websites. In the 10 years, we have enabled 30,947,896 successful authentications.
• Origo Integration Hu: Launched in 2016, the Hub has done away with the need for costly individual integrations for key processes like account opening, valuations and remuneration feeds and helped level the playing field for new and smaller players in the market.
• Unipass Letter of Authority: Our latest technology is helping to bring this previously highly manual, slow process into the 21st century.
• Pensions Dashboard central digital architecture: In 2017 Origo built the prototype of this technology, which helped us win the final build for the project. The Dashboard h has the potential to significantly change the financial lives of so many pension holders in the UK.
