The impact of the internet on the traditionally conservative financial community has created what Hampshire UK-based Neural Technologies Ltd sees as the opportunity to break into the US financial markets, which are currently dominated by more established software technologies.
With the arrival of online banking and e-commerce, the speed and accuracy of decisions on whether to give customers credit has become crucial. So the company has opened a New York office and is touting its Decider package to the financial community on the basis that the scorecards it builds to show the credit worthiness of a client outperforms those produced by rival companies such as Equifax and Experian.
Neural has just scored its first big win with Standard and Poor’s decision to incorporate Decider in its CreditModel, which claims to be the world’s first internet-accessible corporate scoring device. This enables organizations to rapidly work out the creditworthiness of companies.
Nonetheless, CEO Nick Ryman-Tubb believes he will have to contend with skepticism about new technologies. These markets have been burned by so many vendors saying that theirs is the magic bullet.
What Neural argues is that not only can its software examine the inter-relationships between all the factors involved in assessing creditworthiness, but can do it rapidly and in an automated manner, essential when customers expect speddy decisions on credit applications.
Neural Networks has been around since 1987 but spent its early years exploring the technology and coming up with headline-grabbing ideas such as a neural nose, for pinpointing smells. But three years ago, it decided to focus on two markets, financial and telecoms, and it recruited specialists from these sectors to tailor its software specifically for the markets.
Now with 60 staff and annual revenue of around $4.7m, which is doubling every year, the company has no intention of an immediate IPO. Instead, says Ryman-Tubb, it wants to build market share and have a big list of customers who love us.
Surprisingly, it has few direct competitors, though the most comparable company is San Diego, California-based HNC Software Inc, which offers predictive customer relationship management software for service industries.
