People, product and customers are Ideagen’s three pillars that have helped it become a tour de force in the compliance space, with it spanning 18 countries and 6,000 clients.
The RegTech company was founded in 2009 by David Hornsby – the now retiring executive chairman – as a vehicle to consolidate the regulatory and compliance marketplace. The aim was to build a one company culture. It was initially focused on small UK businesses, but thanks to the 20 acquisitions of companies in the UK and US it has made since 2009, Ideagen is now a truly global business. Its rapid acquisition efforts have twice earned Ideagen the title of Best Use of AIM, an award for performance strategy on the London Stock Exchange sub-market. These efforts have helped take Ideagen into North America, Europe and Asia.
Ideagen CEO Ben Dorks said, “I think what’s made Ideagen the success it has been, is our ability to remain agile and adapt to the ever-changing needs of our customers and the vertical markets we serve.” Despite having acquired 20 businesses, Ideagen has been very successful in integrating those businesses and their products seamlessly into the Ideagen family. The business is also engaged with a cloud unification programme that has enabled it to transition a large portion of its revenue to SaaS. This is helping it to continue to adapt to market changes and provide clients with exactly what they need.
The RegTech company has two approaches to acquiring companies. The first is about finding those which complement its existing services. Dorks said, “They may have a very similar product set to that which we already have, so it is where we feel that one plus one equals 2.2.” Its other route is scouring the market for new trends or markets where its team feels the complementary tools would enable Ideagen to upsell or cross sell into its existing customer pool and provide valuable new products.
So, what does Ideagen offer? The RegTech company has established a full suite of governance, risk management and compliance software. Its tools are used across the globe and in industries, including financial services, aviation, aerospace and defence, healthcare and many more. Clients leverage the platform to implement streamlined solutions for their compliance needs, all the way from document management and incident management through to SMCR and ISO standards compliance.
The company’s acquisitions have helped it to provide businesses with the tools they need to stay compliant. This has all been reflected in its success. The company has consistent compound annual growth rates, strong international expansion efforts, growth in its customer adoption rate and an impressive 95% gross customer retention rate. Commenting on this success, Dorks said, “I think now it’s really been a mixture of some very successful acquisitions that we’ve made in that time across our assurance piece, our compliance piece and our collaboration piece. Our underlying organic growth has been very strong in that time and we’ve consistently run a double-digit organic growth on our annual recurring revenues.”
What makes Ideagen special though is down to those aforementioned three pillars: people, products and customers. Dorks explained that Ideagen has excelled at developing usable software that provides high-value and excellent outcomes to a long range of organisations. This is coupled with a product team prided with in-depth market and domain knowledge on the space. Wrapping all of that off is its customer programme that enables clients to maintain flexibility to adapt to ever-changing business needs and macro-economic trends. He said, “Those three things, people, product and customers and as we call it internally, our three pillars, have enabled us to continue to grow and to continue to be ahead of the competition and execute successfully.”
It is well documented how slow to update technology financial institutions have been, but as more regulations enter the market and customers call for improved services, companies have started to accelerate their digital transformation. Covid-19 has only hastened this move. The pandemic might not have brought new formal regulations, but it has forced companies to adopt a more flexible and agile way of operating with remote working. It has been a tough year for companies to stabilise, but now is the time for businesses to bolster compliance and governance structures.
Ideagen’s head of product Gordon Mckeown concluded, “The past year has been somewhat of a pause – a moment of calm for regulations of financial services. Although some firms may have had a free pass last year, the pressures are back on and with a vengeance. Covid was a wakeup call for many firms and financial services that they weren’t necessarily as robust or as long term resilient as they felt they were, and there’s definitely been an upsurge of interest in operational risk solutions.”
To learn more about Ideagen click here to see how their individual accountability regime software can help financial services meet compliance with regulations, such as SMCR and IAC.
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