Australian FinTech company profile #180 – Fortiro
1. Company Name: Fortiro
2. Website: www.fortiro.com
3. Key Staff & Titles: Sean Quagliani – CEO | David Weber – CFO/COO | Amir Vahid – CTO
4. Location(s): Melbourne/Sydney, Australia
5. In one sentence, what does your fintech do?:
Fortiro automates financial document reviews and fraud checks.
6. How / why did you start your fintech company?:
We first created Fortiro Protect while solving live client problems while working at a large consulting firm. We saw first-hand the gap in the market and the impact such a solution could have in areas such as banking and lending, insurance, and other areas. While digitisation has impacted many areas of these industries, document reviews remained manual and time-consuming, while fraud tactics were evolving. We looked to machine-learning to solve the document fraud detection issue in a way that could be integrated into existing customer workflows. Since then, we’ve listened to customer feedback and built complementary verification and redaction solutions.
7. What is the best thing your company has achieved or learnt along the way (this can include awards, capital raising etc)?:
This year we won the Australian FinTech Award for the ‘Best use of AI in FinTech’, which was an exciting validation for the work that our team have invested into the machine-learning technology that powers Fortiro Protect.
8. What’s some advice you’d give to an aspiring start-up?:
Look for a need in the market. Listen to customer feedback and consistently build that into your product.
9. What’s next for your company? And are you looking to expand overseas or stay focussed on Australia?:
We have grown substantially in Australia in the 2.5 years since our launch. We are working with some of Australia’s biggest and most trusted banks as well as many other lenders, and last year started to work with global insurers. More recently, we have been working on supporting document types in North America and are starting to support new clients in that region.
10. What other fintechs or companies do you admire?:
Some of our own customers are FinTechs, who have built impressive businesses in the lending space. One of the ways they got there was to be both agile and digital, while not closing the door on documents, which many of their end-customers prefer as proof of income. Rather, embracing and automating documents to bring them into the 21st century has allowed them to grow much faster than the digital-only lenders in the market. And we’re proud to have played a part in enabling some of that.
11. What’s the most interesting or funniest moment that’s happened in your company’s lifetime?:
Every day we see fascinating document fraud cases. We often see advanced fraud techniques that only technology can catch. But sometimes, the fraud is pretty obvious. We picked up a payslip where the fraudster left “<<insert name>>” and “<<insert income>>” on the payslip, which was clearly a template that they forgot to update!
