In this week's Newcomers article, we introduce Bankerlinks, a company specialized in creating collaboration and information management tools for financial institutions and finance professionalsd. We had a conversation with Miguel Oliveira, Founder of Bankerlinks, who shared insights about the company's origins, unique features, and plans for the future.

1 - Please introduce your company and the products/services it offers.

BankerLinks is a company that specializes in creating collaboration and information management tools for financial institutions and finance professionals in general. Our intelligent web platform serves as a connection hub for the finance community. Specifically designed for financial institutions, our user-friendly platform helps teams streamlines processes and improves efficiency.

By using our platform, teams can collaborate in real-time and efficiently share crucial information necessary for seamless transaction processing. The platform ensures that crucial data such as counterparts or market information remain constantly updated so that financial institutions can focus on added-value tasks rather than spending time and resources on keeping operational information up-to-date. In a nutshell, our company helps institutions increase their operational efficiency and reduce operational risks.

2 - What led to the creation of your company?

During my professional career, I gained a significant experience in financial transaction management. However, the teams I worked with consistently faced the same challenges. Operational information that is crucial in managing financial transactions where not always up-to-date or inexistent. This translated into increased processing times and sometimes in the worst case operational losses. As there is no system out there that allows teams to solve these issues I decided, a couple of years ago and with the help of some friends, to design a solution that would solve these problems. Following some research, we conducted during the first year and the proof of concept the following year,  we dedicated to designing the first version of our platform and launching our company. 

3 - What is the most difficult or unexpected thing you've had to overcome on your journey?

It's hard to say which was the most difficult thing so far. Our journey was a constant challenge, every time we thought we solved a very difficult problem, the next difficult one showed up. Unexpected things occur all the time. Creating a startup and building a product from scratch is really a hard thing to do. Setting up the company is easy if you know the right people or let professionals do it for you. It's the implementation of your idea that is challenging, making sure you do good market research and come up with the right product and design, and choosing and learning new technologies. During our journey we had lots of ups and downs, confronted with our own doubts, dealing with internal problems, it's a daily challenge. Honestly, I wouldn't truly know how to rank all the challenges or unexpected problems we faced, it's just you have to deal with them one by one. 

4 - How is your offering different from your competitors and other market players?

Currently, there are no solutions out there that solve the problems operational teams face daily. There are some players that deal with one or the other problem. However, our solution benefits from long experience in transaction management, we tried to create a set of features that will, not only solve these problems but increase dramatically the process's efficiency. Moreover, we built the platform in such a user-friendly way that operational teams can seamlessly access information in a fast and secure way. Finally, by combining all the different data sets, powerful algorithms will be able to detect potential issues in transactions and inform the relevant people on time before they actually occur, reducing the operational risk linked to these issues. All this makes BankerLinks really different from other market players.

5 - What did you find at LHoFT / What did LHoFT bring you?

The LHoFT is the leading Fintech incubator in Luxembourg. For us, it was important to be part of their ecosystem as it allows us to gain access to their rich network of industry experts and investors providing invaluable guidance and support. Being part of such a network is also very important for our visibility and credibility. As a startup, we have to surround ourselves with a network of professionals helping us to accelerate our growth and achieve our goals, and that's what the LHoFT brings us. 

6 - What's next?

We just launched our first beta version of the BankerLinks platform. In the upcoming months, we will face numerous challenges. Our primary goal is to grow our user base and collaborate with clients to test, enhance existing features and develop new ones. This requires us to consistently innovate and provide state-of-the-art functionalities and integrations. Additionally, our roadmap includes forging strategic partnerships with influential entities in the financial sector such as regulators, central banks, CSD, and major financial institutions. By doing so, we aim to further enhance our services and establish BankerLinks as a central hub for collaboration and transaction management within the financial industry.