After starting his career supporting various successful fintechs in Europe, Bertrand Jeannet finally decided in 2018 to join one of them: Budget Insight. Three years after joining the company, Bertrand Jeannet has been appointed CEO. His new challenges? Embody Budget Insight’s European ambitions. Discover his journey and motivations in this interview.

 

For those who do not know you yet, can you summarize your career up to now?

After business school and a university exchange year in the United States, I quickly decided to focus on the financial services sector. At the time, I sensed the beginnings of the revolution that we are currently experiencing.

For 4 years, I helped several innovative players (mainly FinTechs) in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany in setting their global strategy (business model, internal structure and organization, obtaining permits / approvals, …). This gave me a very good view of what makes an innovative company in the financial services sector a success.

I then met Clément and Romain, the founders of Budget Insight, and worked to help them understand the implications of the PSD2 directive and support them in obtaining approvals (AISP and PISP) from the ACPR.

Once the approvals were obtained, I joined the company as Risk and Compliance Officer, before moving quickly to the role of Secretary General, then CEO. 

 

Why did you join Budget Insight 4 years ago and what were your motivations for accepting your new responsibilities as CEO?

 

The company has all the ingredients required to be a success

I joined Budget Insight because I was simply won over by this company and the people who founded it. They had all the ingredients needed for success: technological excellence, a strong sense of belonging, a clear vision and audacity in ensuring customer satisfaction.

I am really proud to be CEO of this company and am looking forward to the very exciting challenges it entails. The presence of Romain at my side as Chairman is a real guarantee of continuity for the company.

 

Affirming our position as the leader in B2B Open Finance in Europe

The goal is to affirm, in a very competitive market, our position as a leader in B2B Open Finance in Europe. Our ambition is to further accelerate the financial services revolution by building on what makes us different: 

• A hybrid connection mode (API + web scraping);
• An unprecedented offer in the financial data market beyond PSD2 (wealth and bill products);
• Our B2B DNA and a team invested in the success of our customers’ projects.

 

Maximize customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is and will always be our priority. The obstacles induced in particular by PSD2 constantly lead us to reinvent ourselves and find new solutions to improve the quality of our services.

 

What is your vision of the Open Banking market and what are your ambitions in France and Europe?

The market is very dynamic and we are seeing very strong growth in the use of our technologies. Our strategy aims to consolidate our leadership in the Open Finance market in France and Europe.

 

European expansion is underway

The competition has largely focused on expanding its European coverage, a major strategic challenge. We are aware of the need to win over new markets in order to support our customers in their European deployment. Already present in France, Belgium and Luxembourg, we are extending our coverage to Italy and Spain this year. In early 2022, we plan to cover Germany and Portugal. This will be followed by other countries in the second half of the year.

 

Strengthen our leadership in Europe in the Open Finance market

In each country, our roadmap plans to link up PSD2 APIs as a priority. Then in the process, we will propose aggregating “other accounts” beyond PSD2, something that really makes us stand out from the rest on this market. Access to savings account data in particular opens up new innovation opportunities for financial players.

We also have major projects around data enhancement and are in the midst of redesigning our technical stack to better serve our customers.

 

As competition accelerates, and the market becomes more mature, how will you stand out?

We will stand out, as always, by the quality of our service. Our business is complex. It requires significant maintenance and rapid responsiveness to fix any bugs. Setting up a dedicated team has enabled us to achieve a synchronization success rate of 99.8%. This feat has a direct impact on our customers’ business and increases their satisfaction levels. We refuse to compromise on the quality of our service and maintain in parallel scraping and the API connector in order to avoid being dependent on the banks’ APIs. These are unfortunately still insufficiently functional today.

R&D and the central position it has at Budget Insight enables us to stand apart by offering our customers ever more innovative and relevant features. PSD2 APIs are only the tip of the iceberg, so much remains to be done and explored!

 

To achieve your hypergrowth goals you have an ambitious recruitment plan. What is your recipe for success to attract and retain the best?

The recipe is simple: tell them the truth. 

Today we are at the center of one of the biggest revolutions underway, that is financial services. Through our various products, we enable innovative services to be developed each more varied than the next: intelligent management of an individual’s or professional’s money (PFM and BFM), financial inclusion, and simplified access to credit (new generation credit), anticipating a company’s cash flow, loyalty and automatic cashback, payment by transfer. Our solutions are also at the heart of the transformation of the accounting profession and business management software. 

These different uses concern several million people and are made possible in part by players like us. Joining Budget Insight means participating very directly in this revolution!