Solidatus wins ‘Best ESG Regulatory Solution’

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“ESG is a data sourcing and governance challenge, requiring transparency and clear links to company objectives to drive it successfully. Investing in mapping and understanding data flows – and relating them to ESG priorities – will help companies make a positive impact.” – John Tobin, Data Architect and ESG specialist at Solidatus on the issues surrounding ESG and implementing a successful data strategy.

Because ESG data is dispersed and complex with little to no standardisation, many organisations are struggling to know exactly how to implement ESG initiatives and governance requirements – not only to meet the criteria of potential investors, but to make a positive impact environmentally and socially.  

Solidatus irons out these complexities and provides clarity for businesses to set out their ESG goals, with a clear, linear view of how these important goals will be achieved. This is why we have been recognised by A-Team Insights as the ‘Best ESG Regulatory Solution’ at the RegTech Insight Europe Awards 2021. 

These prestigious awards recognise innovation in highlighting RegTech solutions that have successfully improved firms’ ability to effectively respond to the evolving and ever complex regulatory requirements across the global financial services industry.

RegTech Insight Europe Awards Winners Report

We are elated to have won this award, having taken a huge leap into the world of ESG in order to understand how it works, its benefits and how we can apply our learnings and thought leadership to better serve our clients as they start out on their ESG journey.

The Solidatus solution maps disclosures, ‘standards’ and regulations to the people with responsibility for them, as well as to company priorities and the data required to fulfil them. This presents a unified, end-to-end view, both for setting out how a company will deliver on their ESG aims and tracking progress on filling data gaps.

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Solidatus has been named as one of the Most Influential FinTech Companies of 2021 by Harrington Starr’s The Financial Technologist. 

The Most Influential FinTech Companies list features the brightest and most dynamic companies in the industry, and is particularly poignant as we see and hear from businesses that have not only survived the pandemic, but come through stronger, bigger and even better than they were before.

After being named on this prestigious list, Solidatus Co-Founder Philip Miller caught up with Harrington Starr CEO Toby Babb for an episode of FinTech Focus TV where they talk through what Solidatus has been up to over the past year, how we have navigated through the pandemic during a time of massive growth and expansion for the business, and how we chose our new investors through the recent Series A fund raise.

Philip gives an exclusive look at the factors behind our success – from the importance of investors, to developing an incredible product – he sheds light on how we have capitalised on the opportunities arising in the FinTech space, as well as what is next for Solidatus.

Head over to FinTech Focus TV to watch the interview:

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After years of continuously encountering challenges within financial services, we wanted to not just address some of these problems but solve them. And we knew that this couldn’t be exclusive to finance – it was a very apparent and complex issue within every industry, in every country.

The larger the organisation, the more global-scale its presence, the bigger the problem. We wanted to be the ones to end decades of data mismanagement and create a landscape that enabled businesses to understand how their data was flowing through their organisation.

So, in 2011, Solidatus was born. Since then, every new client, partner and colleague has been momentous. Every day that we have grown, expanded into new industries, progressed our vision and welcomed new faces into our team has been as big a deal to us. And perhaps none more so than the recent announcement of our Series A fund raise.

It has not always been a smooth journey to get to where we are now.

Picture the scene – Singapore, on a hot, humid November day a few years ago we were hard at work at the UK Government Department for International Trade fintech trade mission to the Singapore Fintech Festival. We were talking to people we’d never met and telling them about their most expensive, boring, problem – how to describe and manage their data better, cheaper, disruptively, quicker…the phone rings, it is a colleague in London about to tell us that there was a problem getting an invoice paid, an invoice that had been correctly sent out against a legitimate PO.

At this point it would be appropriate to give some more narrative – there were staff who needed to get paid and not much money in the bank; we had good contracts and our clients needed our software. More money should have been coming in than going out. We did what most would do if wearing a suit on a hot tropical evening, we went for a beer and we worried. A week later we had the money in the bank. Needless to say, we managed to gather enough in savings to allow us to continue. We didn’t tell anyone how close we came to disaster. We survived.

This is not a new story; it is one faced by founders at many/most start-ups and often goes untold. However, our determination paid off. Each time we went to meet a potential client they were impressed. It was not always perfect timing, but when we left, we knew that we had touched a chord and hoped that they would be back. So, it has proven to be. The trend was clear, the research, the long hours, the grinding hard work and self-funding of the first few years, along with the faith shown in us by early adopters, was bearing fruit.

Now we were profitable and sustainably so…why take funding. Well, simply, we were being outgunned by others in our industry that had bigger budgets. It was not the case that we were incapable of competing with technology and vision (quite the opposite), it was a simple equation of getting ourselves out there quicker and front loading our development faster.

Solidatus started off as a data lineage discovery and visualisation tool and remains this at its core. But – thanks to the dedication and passion of our team, as well as the experiences of our clients – it has developed into so much more than that. It has evolved the paradigms of software engineering and data engineering to look at things in a different way.

Together, we have built a core solution and continue to iterate it to make it best in class for data lineage, management and complexity. It is simple, flexible and not designed to solve only one problem. Instead, it conceptualises an organisation’s world and connects all relationships, data, processes and obligations.

It has meant that, over the years, we have been able to accomplish so much in a remarkably short space of time. From being the only new entrant to the Gartner Magic Quadrant in Metadata Management, to joining the ranks of the RegTech 100, and winning Best Data Governance Solution at the Data Management Insight Awards. Every year has seen a plethora of new achievements, and new successes that have gone towards setting Solidatus apart from other players in our space. To look back on all we have done in the space of a few years has been both incredibly rewarding and humbling for us as founders.

It’s because of this, that Solidatus was spotted by some of the world’s best venture capital firms, thus beginning our journey with AlbionVC, with them sharing the same vision we have upheld from inception. With this funding and AlbionVC’s sector reach, we now have the opportunity to expand even further than we could ever have imagined. We had then, and have now, a vision about where the market should be and are convinced we will disrupt it to make it a better place.

The £14 million Series A investment means our growth plans will continue to accelerate as we move into new markets, new regions and build out our team globally. Whilst holding fast to the very reason we created Solidatus to start with. Something that our clients and partners can trust; something that can change the very fabric of an organisation. We will continue to innovate and revolutionise the face of data management and visualisation well into the future.

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“Having reported on Solidatus’ £14 million Series A funding last week, this week we go behind the scenes to talk to the company’s founders about their business philosophy, ambitions for Solidatus, and the challenges and opportunities of working with investors and growing the company through lockdown.”

Solidatus co-founders Philip Dutton and Philip Miller sat down with our friends over at A-Team Insight to chat about all things Solidatus and Series A following the announcement on 11 February 2021. They look back to the beginning of the Solidatus journey, their philosophies and aspirations for the business, and what the £14 million investment means for the future of the company. 

From the identification of a problem they knew could be solved, to building a team from scratch and expanding it through not one, but three lockdowns, to accelerating global growth plans, this article goes behind the scenes of Solidatus and our Series A announcement with Miller, Dutton and the A-Team:

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London, UK 11 February 2021 – Solidatus, the award-winning data lineage and metadata management company, is today announcing it has raised £14m ($19.2m+) in Series A funding to transform how organisations view, understand and manage data.

AlbionVC led the round, which also includes HSBC Ventures, and Citi, two of Solidatus’ global enterprise clients. The deal was led by Emil Gigov and Jay Wilson of AlbionVC with Jay Wilson joining the Solidatus’ Board of Directors following the investment.

Kate Platonova, Chief Data and Architecture Officer, HSBC said: “As a large global bank, we manage complex organisational metadata. Through our partnership with Solidatus we have dramatically improved some of our workflows, reducing both the risk and speed to market for some of our major international programmes. Their graph technology has been particularly instrumental in helping us to achieve this. As management of metadata becomes ever more critical to success, we believe Solidatus will play an increasingly strategic role for HSBC in the future.

Solidatus empowers organisations to effectively map, manage and monetise their key asset – data. Businesses across the world are dealing with complex data points and the lineage-first approach championed by Solidatus offers up to 90% efficiency savings over traditional methods. Clients, including top-tier global financial, pharmaceutical and consulting firms, are using the software to visualise and understand their data estate, taking advantage of the ability to track data through their enterprise to drive business intelligence, digital transformation and regulatory compliance.

Jay Wilson, investor at AlbionVC and Solidatus board member said: “The increasing complexity of an organisation’s data estates and the growing recognition of data as an asset combined with increasing regulatory demands is bringing data management into the limelight. Solidatus has built the best-in-class product to bear down on the industry’s pain points and we are delighted to lead the company’s first institutional capital raise to support the co-founders and the company in reshaping data lineage and the wider data management category.”

Last year marked the company’s most successful year to date, seeing Solidatus more than double in size, quadruple its revenue whilst maintaining profitability. As a result of this success, they also became the only new entrant to the Gartner Magic Quadrant in Metadata Management, one of the youngest companies to attain placement in the Quadrant’s history. The company expanded into several new sectors, including aerospace, manufacturing, telecommunications and government, and has four of the top 10 Globally Systemically Important Banks (GSIBs) in the European and US markets as clients. In addition, Solidatus was awarded the Best Data Governance Solution by Data Management Insights, and also joined the ranks of the RegTech 100.

The Series A investment sees growth partner, AlbionVC, and strategic partner, HSBC, join Citi to support Solidatus’ vision to revolutionise data engineering. The founders decided the time was now to capitalise on successes leading up to and including 2020 and accelerate the company’s growth to allow more organisations to solve their data challenges utilising Solidatus. The aim is to fast-track its planned global expansion, further extending into new territories including the US, Europe and Asia, as well as delivering best-in-class data management capabilities to new industry verticals.

Philip Dutton, co-founder of Solidatus said: “Solidatus was built to revolutionise the data economy. The completion of Series A is confirmation that we’ve engineered the right solution to meet the complex needs of data-rich and regulated organisations, delivering a modern, agile and scalable solution. We are looking forward to working alongside our investors to accelerate the delivery of organisational transformation and control to new markets and clients with the same level of commitment to the highest standards of service that are key to the Solidatus offering.”

Philip Miller, co-founder of Solidatus said: “To have two of the largest global banks as clients and investors in our first funding round speaks volumes about their belief in Solidatus’ ability to deliver value in financial services and beyond at an enterprise level. We look forward to working with all our investors to help us take Solidatus to the next growth stage and market-disrupting innovation.

The investment round comes shortly ahead of Solidatus’ participation in the UK Department of International Trade’s Virtual US RegTech Roadshow, taking place at the end of February 2021. The roadshow will connect a select group of leading UK RegTechs with key financial services stakeholders in the United States.

Alastair Lukies, CBE, Member of the Prime Minister’s Business Council and Chair of the Fintech Alliance, comments: “The UK’s tech sector is a great global success story, for FinTech and RegTech in particular. This US Roadshow will further reinforce the UK’s world-leading innovation in this space. I’ve known Solidatus as a business for some time and achieving this milestone in their growth, especially from such renowned investors and at such a significant level, is testament to both the business’ proposition, innovation and service to their customers. It signals a fantastic start to 2021 for British tech businesses and underlines how the country’s tech sector is making waves on a truly global scale.”

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For more information please contact:

Media enquiries: Franklin Rae PR · solidatus@franklinrae.com · 020 3011 1023
Solidatus Press Office: press@solidatus.com
Website: www.solidatus.com · LinkedIn · Twitter @Solidatus_com

About Solidatus

Award-winning Solidatus, the leader in metadata management, enables the world’s largest data-rich and regulated organisations to effectively manage their data, people and processes, reducing complexity and risk through transparency, automation and collaboration. We provide organisations with a solution that allows them to fundamentally redesign their organisational data culture and capabilities by enabling the creation of a holistic organisation-wide digital map that details all the relationships that interact and impact their data, accelerating modernisation and transformation.

The Solidatus methodology for digitally transforming organisations to be data-centric and lineage-enabled is changing the way organisations manage their data. Quickly being adopted by organisations across the globe, including top-tier global financial, pharmaceutical, utility and infrastructure firms and has been implemented by leading consulting and technology firms.

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About AlbionVC

AlbionVC helps build the future of enterprise and healthcare. With 20+ years’ experience in technology investments, the team focus on B2B software and healthcare at Series A. AlbionVC manages c.£500m of venture funds, currently invested in over 50 companies. AlbionVC is the technology investment arm of Albion Capital Group LLP, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
www.albion.vc

About HSBC Holdings plc

HSBC Holdings plc, the parent company of HSBC, is headquartered in London. HSBC serves customers worldwide from offices in 64 countries and territories in its geographical regions: Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, and Middle East and North Africa. With assets of $2,956bn at 30 September 2020, HSBC is one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organisations. The investment was made by HSBC Ventures, a corporate venture capital unit taking minority holdings in early-stage technology companies with a strategic relevance to HSBC. The team has made over 20 investments since their inception in 2014.

About Citi

Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.
www.citigroup.com

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London, UK – 18 AUGUST 2020 – Solidatus, the leading provider of innovative metadata management software, today announced a strategic investment from Citi, the leading global bank. Citi is also implementing the Solidatus platform internally, at a global enterprise level.

Citi is the first major investor in the enterprise data management company. The Bank’s support as an investor and strategic partner adds to Solidatus’ growing roster of Tier 1 banking clients. The funding will accelerate Solidatus’ growth plans, allowing the company to further its international expansion across the United States and APAC, increase its penetration across non-financial sectors and deliver key product enhancements to achieve their vision of modernising enterprise data management.

Solidatus enables the world’s largest data-rich and regulated organisations to effectively manage their data, people and processes, reducing complexity and risk through transparency, automation and collaboration. The platform delivers insight and enhances control of complex data across operational and technological ecosystems.

Data is critical to all modern organisations and Solidatus, using its cutting-edge graph database technology, is the first solution that allows organisations’ key asset to be efficiently mapped, managed and monetised. The platform plays a critical role across a growing number of client initiatives, including digital transformation, data governance, cloud migration and regulatory reporting.

Stuart Riley, Global Head of Operations and Technology for Citi’s Institutional Clients Group, said: “Our partnership with Solidatus will bring state-of-the-art technology to enhance our data ecosystem. It’s critical we understand our organisational data flow to enable us to deliver efficiently to our clients.”

Philip Dutton, co-founder of Solidatus, comments, “Securing investment from an organisation with the stature of Citi is a tremendous statement of intent for the business, especially at such a key point in our evolution. They are the first of our Tier 1 banking clients to see the potential for a closer strategic partnership. We are pleased to have them play a key role during this pivotal growth stage and look forward to continuing to be a vital component of their digital transformation journey and beyond.”

Chris Hayward, CDO at Citi, adds, “The Solidatus solution will support Citi’s ongoing commitment to change management, helping our global infrastructure to stay agile, efficient and robust. Data is our most valuable asset and it sits at the core of our organisation.

This significant investment in the metadata management solution follows a successful rollout of its latest software update, Version 4.0 featuring its integrated, elevated and enhanced industry-leading Data Catalog.

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For more information please contact:

Media enquiries:  Franklin Rae PR · solidatus@franklinrae.com · 020 3011 1023
Solidatus Press Office:  press@solidatus.com
Website:  www.solidatus.com · LinkedIn · Twitter @Solidatus_com

About Solidatus

Award-winning Solidatus, the leader in metadata management, enables the world’s largest data-rich and regulated organisations to effectively manage their data, people and processes, reducing complexity and risk through transparency, automation and collaboration. We provide organisations with a solution that allows them to fundamentally redesign their organisational data culture and capabilities by enabling the creation of a holistic organisation-wide digital map that details all the relationships that interact and impact their data, accelerating modernisation and transformation.

The Solidatus methodology for digitally transforming organisations to be data-centric and lineage-enabled is changing the way organisations manage their data. Quickly being adopted by organisations across the globe, including top-tier global financial, pharmaceutical, utility and infrastructure firms and has been implemented by leading consulting and technology firms.

About Citi

Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.

Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com · Twitter: @Citi
· YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi · Blog: http://blog.citigroup.com · Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi · LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi