• Steve FOGUE, Cofounder & CEO at Particeep


• 17.08.2017 12:46 pm

An interview with Steve FOGUE, Cofounder & CEO of Particeep.

Financial IT: Tell us more about Particeep and how did you come up with the idea to set up Particeep?

Steve FOGUE: David Dumont, Adrien Crovetto and I have created Particeep in 2013 to address a simple need: to reduce the gap between the supply and demand of digital financial services. We answer this problematic by offering financial institutions turnkey, modular and white-label platforms to bring their services and products offers online.

The three major facts of the creation of Particeep:

• Less than 10% of the supply of financial products and services is digital

• More than 70% of the population will use digital financial services in 2018

• 94% of financial companies are aware of the added value offered by the digital

Financial institutions now need to move from the traditional model to the online model by adopting modular and scalable technologies. This is exactly what Particeep offers through its turnkey financial services API (application Programming Interface).

Financial IT: What have been the major challenges for Particeep? How have you addressed them?

Steve: Like any BtoB startup, we have faced many marketing, financial and technological challenges.

First of all, it was mandatory for us to build a solid positioning by analyzing the market in terms of sales and competition. After a deep analyse, we’ve completely changed our offer to present it as a white label financial services platform that provides a quick answer to the digital transformation of financial institutions (banks, asset management companies and fintech).

After that, we had to build a solid marketing and technological roadmap to get convincing results and to gain the trust of more customers and investors.

Now, we position Particeep as a technological actor in a market of $ 240bn and growing by 5% / year.

Financial IT: What are the features that make Particeep unique compared to other solutions?

Steve: It’s a fact. Financial institutions need turnkey technologies that easily communicate with their traditional information systems. The main issues faced here are to rapidly innovate, to transform their customers experience and to build a 100% digital products and services offer.

Particeep offers a white label technology that aggregates more than 350 ready-to-use financial services developed by Particeep, but also aggregates high-value third-party applications such as payment services, online signature, blockchain, identity verification…

We also offer ready-to-use and customizable client journeys templates to quickly create any type of online financial services platform. Our customers can build in just a few clicks their customized financial services platforms.

Financial IT: How do you see the future trends and challenges of the industry? In which direction is Particeep reacting to the industry changes?

Steve: We are witnessing the emergence of financial offer, both digital and customer centric, pushing financial institutions to carry out their digital transformation very slowly.

So new technologies (Blockchain, IA…) and fintech (GAFA...) have deeply changed the financial services industry.

This disruption of the financial services industry had initially favoured collaboration between startups and banks under different models such as co-creation, coaching and funding. In this context, we have recently observed a market trend toward banktech.

This trend aims to combine the best of banking and fintech in order to create a modular architecture. It is mainly on this issue that Particeep is positioning itself by offering through its APIs white label financial services platforms.

Financial IT: What are the next milestones for Particeep?

Steve: Within the next five years, we want to multiply the company's turnover by 20. A very ambitious number, but we strongly believe in the added value of our solution that covers all the financial products and services.

We are currently strengthening our sales teams in order to meet the growing demand of banks and asset management companies.

We have the ambition to become a French and a European leader in the short term. Then, we think we have a medium-term development strategy to penetrate the US market.

Concerning some emerging markets such as Africa where we deploy our technology, we are witnessing the maturation of financial services.

Finally, major banks and financial institutions want to implement our solution, which proves that our white label financial services platforms meet a real need.

Steve FOGUE is the CEO of Particeep, a French fintech that creates white label financial services platforms.

Graduated from Ecole des Ponts Paris Tech, a top French engineering school, Steve is an investment technology specialist. He started his career as a financial engineer at HSBC France then joined Societe Generale where he creates custom solutions to invest and hedge risks on global financial markets

Since 2013, he leads Particeep development and innovation strategy in France and abroad.