Jersey-based Optifi has launched a pre-configured technology and operating model for trust and corporate services businesses, aiming to spare firms the cost and complexity of building their own.
After two years of development and testing with trust company clients, the proposition brings together ready-to-use workflows, integrated technology, client entity management and a white-labelled client portal. The company describes it as an industry first.
Optifi was founded by Stuart Richford, Alain Egre, Alex Steele and Cara Wright, who had long questioned why every trust company was having to build the same technology and operating model from scratch.
Testing the idea first
The turning point came when the team put early concepts through a client council process. Wright led more than 30 sessions with industry peers, which revealed a consistent pattern: firms had invested in technology, but staff were still moving between six or more systems to complete what should have been a simple service request. Optifi has since run more than 100 client sessions, which continue to shape the product.
Early results are encouraging, according to the company. In one client engagement, Optifi reports an 85 per cent reduction in compliance monitoring activity and a 32 per cent improvement in throughput time, with a process that took three days now completed in two.
Richford, CEO and co-founder, said: “Trust companies are being asked to operate like technology businesses, but most didn’t set out to become technology businesses. They shouldn’t have to spend their time designing workflows, joining systems together and building the infrastructure they need.”
Pre-configured, not bespoke
Traditionally, workflows and technology are designed around each individual business, which demands significant time and specialist expertise. Optifi instead configures the core technology, workflows, integrations and operating framework in advance, around the way trust and corporate services firms already work, while connecting to the systems and providers they use.
It does not remove implementation altogether, but it reduces the design, change management and integration work required from the client. The company is targeting SME and emerging trust companies in particular, for which building an operating model from the ground up is often out of reach.
The white-labelled portal lets firms offer clients and other stakeholders a digital experience under their own brand, sitting alongside the underlying workflows rather than as another standalone system.
Optifi is also pricing differently. Rather than charging for time or user numbers, it ties its fees to outcomes and measures performance against agreed improvements. “The whole point is that we’ve done the hard bit,” said Richford. “Businesses shouldn’t have to reinvent what we’ve already learned.”
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