Gene Vayngrib (Tradle): “It’s time for customers to regain control over their data”
— 22 december 2015“There’s absolutely someone you should meet in London.” Startup Bootcamp mentor Jean-Stephane Gourevitch is eager to make sure the world gets to know his pupil: Gene Vayngrib, founder of Tradle. So we met, at Vayngrib’s work, at Startup Bootcamp – the heart of innovating London.
One can imagine anything disrupting coming from here. A glass cube where someone is calling, next to it a little conference room with a couple of young guys debating vividly, long tables with people from different companies sitting next to each other, and in the middle of it all a pantry where, of course, you share ideas while waiting for your coffee. Gene Vayngrib, CEO of Tradle, conquered a spot at startup Bootcamp London.
KYC
Tradle offers a Know Your Customer (KYC) solution for banks and insurance companies. Once customers have given their consent, the data is shareable with, for example, their insurance companies or telecom providers. And last but not least: customers get to access their data anytime, anywhere. “A secure and quick solutions for both banks and customers”, Vayngrib explains. “Nowadays customers have to fill in their personal information over and over again. If you want to close a mortgage and want to complete that with an insurance, you have to fill in your forms twice. That’s time consuming and leaves you with a lot of room for errors. And the customers has absolutely no control over the data. That has to change.”
Scandals
There are a lot of difficulties with digitalizing customer data. For instance, it’s hard to preserve history. “With digital bookkeeping it’s pretty easy to change the time line. Think about the accounting scandals at Enron and Worldcom. And checking authenticity of documents is also a challenge.” To tackle these problems, Tradle uses the Blockchain. “If a client sends you his driver’s license, you can’t guarantee the authenticity of the document. But the authority that releases the document, can. With our Blockchain-based technology we offer a way of sealing this kind of data in time.”
GDPR
Different governments and banks have shown interest in Tradle. This is not just happening in the UK: the Dutch Rabobank has started a pilot with Tradle. This success is no coincidence: the timing of Tradle is just perfect. With the upcoming new General Data Protection Regulation, financial institutions such as banks are forced to offer clients access to their own data. And also: information can only be shared with other institutions after the client’s consent. At the same time they must ensure the integrity of the data they keep on their clients’ behalf. “With Tradle we have all these things covered.”