Rollee enables worker’s to share their professional data, spread over one or more financial platforms.
Ali Hamriti, CEO and Co-Founder of Rollee, is on a mission to tackle the inequalities of financial service systems that were designed to serve ‘traditional’ customers who have only one job and one income to verify.
Now with an increasing number of independent workers who have multiple income streams, verifying data is more complex and requires a streamlined approach to data access to avoid the banks spending hours manually searching and analysing multiple data records. Plus, with data stored across multiple platforms and in documents, there is a risk of fraud and finding biased data through forged documents.
To solve this growing pain of fragmented data, Rollee enables worker’s to share their professional data, spread over one or more platforms, in a secure, single API platform to validate their financial situation. Financial institutions are then able to gain a global, complete and trusted vision of the worker’s situation, whether they are self-employed or employed.
Ali takes some time to share his thought process with Business Matters.
What products or services do you provide?
We’re a start-up that provides financial institutions with a gateway to securely access employment and income data of all European workers based on their consent. If a customer applies for a mortgage, housing, or loan, for example, financial institutions require the access to all employment data to verify the provision of that service. Often, this data is dispersed and stored in many different platforms. Our API platform enables financial institutions to gain access to the data to make decisions quicker and therefore be able to do more business with potential customers whilst at the same time empowering customers to be in control of their data.
What type of businesses do you work with?
We work with many businesses across different industries to help them access reliable and organised employment and income data. For example, we work with lenders and mortgage brokers to verify the employment and income of their users, accountants to automate their taxes computation, Neo banks to run their users direct deposit switch, as well as insurance and PCO fleet managers to monitor their user’s activity.
What is your USP?
We offer the only API platform which provides access to all workers’ employment and income data with valuable insights to understand them. Companies are already using the technology in the US; however, we are the first employment data platform to come onto the market in the EU that is helping to address systematic challenges to enable fair access to financial services.
What are your company values? Have you ever had them challenged and if so how have you dealt with it?
– Be transparent. Transparency means sharing all issues encountered, things to improve, and valuable information to your teammates. Our fully remote mode works thanks to the openness and professionalism of people who join us.
– Have a balanced life. Being committed to succeeding never meant working 12 hours per day and endangering your wellbeing. We have ambitious objectives but, above all, a long-term vision.
– Innovate. We consistently execute our plan but are always keen to innovate. Each project has a debrief session where employees can propose new improvements.
We may see them challenged in the future but for now we’ve only seen our start-up team embrace our culture and team spirit.
How do you ensure that you recruit a team that reflects your company values?
The interview process obviously plays a really important role. We assess people as a team player and consider their individual strengths to see if they align with the values of the company. We also like to check in with employees regularly during their first few months of employment so we can support them to settle into company culture.
Are you happy to offer a hybrid working model of home/office post-covid?
We operate fully remotely, and we have a global team. We are 120% happy with it. As an early-stage company, offering flexible working has been a game-changer to attract the best talent in the industry to help reach our business vision – no matter their location. That said, caring about the wellbeing of our team is very important to us, and is part of our core values. If an employee prefers to work in an office, we are happy to provide them with access to the closest co-working space in their home city. We believe a happy employee will produce the best work.
Do you have any tips for managing suppliers and customers effectively?
Collaboration is key to facilitating communication and working relationships. Consider opening a slack channel with all your suppliers so you can be agile and reactive in your communication with them. You may not have the answers to their questions instantly, however, creating a channel for them to reach you shows you care about their concerns and is proof of your commitment to them.
Any finance or cash-flow tips for new businesses starting out?
Make the savings in areas that are not related to your employee’s wellbeing. Also, write down different business plans based on your forecasts and be agile in making quick decisions to always align with them.
If you could ask one thing of the government to change for businesses what would it be?
Make it easier for self-employed workers to access mortgages. With the technology and innovation that has developed, it is now easier than before to make this a reality by empowering banks and financial institutions to access and verify employment and income data.
Any thoughts on the future of your company and your dreams?
Our dream is simple. We want to make sure that each worker’s income is an opportunity to improve their life, no matter what goal they may have. Everyone deserves to have fair access to the financial services they need or want, as a result of their hard work.
Read more:
Secrets of Success: Ali Hamriti, CEO and co-founder of Rollee