The first financial products comparison website for businesses opts for Marseille

First it was restaurants and travel bookings; now even financial products are getting appraised and compared online by consumers. Fin-Track, a start-up founded in September 2016, is bringing businesses a time-saving platform for comparing financing, currency exchange and factoring, thus offering them a way to escape dependency on their bankers. Persuaded by the Provence Promotion team of the region’s dynamism (especially where new technologies are concerned), the company's founders, Romain Amido and Adrien Tichoux, have opted to set up Fin-Track’s head office in Marseille.
 
Fin-Track is all set to shake up the French financial sector by giving businesses the chance to evaluate their bankers online. Based at the Pôle Média de la Belle de Mai and a member of Aix-Marseille French Tech, Fin-Track’s comparison website focuses on three products: Financial analysis (from banks and crowdlending firms), currency exchange and factoring. “Our platform makes it possible for business people to discuss amongst themselves, in a completely open and transparent manner, financial products and good and poor practices. The opportunity to share experiences is not available in the French financial sector. Our aim is to restore a degree of trust capital to a sector that's getting bad press”, explains Romain Amido, co-founder of the company.

Fin-Track intends to revamp the French market’s image, compare increasing numbers of financial products and ultimately expand into foreign markets. “We want to become the industry-standard tool for comparing all services on a single platform”, says Amido, who wants to recruit 20 people this year. Like Trip Advisor, Fin-Track is financed by selling advertising space.

Attracted by the digital dynamism of the Aix-Marseille Provence area

After spending five years in the City of London, Amido, a young thirty-something from Avignon, decided to return to the south of France. “Early on in the project I encountered Provence Promotion at the Mobile World Congress exhibition in Barcelona. The development agency emphasised the area’s dynamism, and especially the presence of a strong digital ecosystem, says Amido. With his extensive experience in the currency market, he then joined forces with his childhood friend Adrien Tichoux.
 
“I used to trade on the Forex on behalf of French importers and exporters. I learned about the way British companies go about things and their attitude to risk. In London, I handled financial transactions for managers, financial directors and accountants. I noticed French companies’ lack of visibility in the face of an ever-changing array of financial services,” he continues.

“When a company identifies a need, its first instinct is to contact its bankers, without really looking at what’s on offer elsewhere. But the advice can be biased by the banker’s commercial interests. How many companies are forced to close down because of late payments?”, adds the manager who focuses on company directors’ needs.

By moving to Marseille, Fin-Track is becoming a member of the Invest in Provence Community. At the next Mobile World Congress, the start-up will receive the Provence Promotion label, awarded to businesses that choose to develop and expand in the Aix-Marseille Provence area.

The Tracfin investigators may be giving the financial world the jitters, but the Fin-Track start-up has really got what it takes to conquer it!

Photo: Fin-Track founders Romain Amido and Adrien Tichoux. ©DR