Alyne
Alyne’s software-as-a-service solution uses machine learning and AI to understand relevant rules and identify risks, to allow more effective collaboration.
Alyne
A constant concern for financial institutions is meeting their governance, risk and compliance (GRC) requirements with confidence. Alyne’s software-as-a-service solution uses machine learning and AI to understand relevant rules and identify risks, as well as increase compliance efficiency and allow more effective collaboration across an enterprise.
A familiar problem
In the past, legacy software solutions were available – but they were expensive, required months of implementation and configuration, and were neither user friendly nor particularly helpful to customers once implemented. Another pain point, which most security and risk professionals can relate to, is the tedious, inefficient and manual spreadsheet-based method of GRC. This process goes right from deciphering new laws and regulations, to expensive professionals handling large amounts of data on spreadsheets, and ineffective assessment results in which decisions are rarely made objectively.
Alyne’s solution
Alyne takes overly complicated global regulations, laws and standards, and simplifies them into a library of pre-defined controls. It does this by analysing the requirements of over 60 major regulations and breaking them down into controls financial institutions should consider putting in place. The company’s technology is an advanced regulatory-technology product, as it harnesses the power of AI and machine learning to address compliance requirements, while also saving costs. Its regulatory intelligence capabilities automate operational processes and minimise errors, allowing organisations to ensure operational resilience and obtain a maturity overview at scale while freeing up internal resources.
Unlike traditional compliance software, Alyne’s platform focuses on the user. Its interface is simple, modular, and mimics the user experience of social media to help increase adoption. It’s a cloud-native system and its ready-to-go content means firms can begin using it immediately without time-consuming set-up procedures.
Alyne’s platform offers pre-defined control frameworks, highly scalable risk assessments, intuitive risk identification, scenario analysis, portfolio aggregation with lightning-fast Monte Carlo Simulations, and quantitative and qualitative risk analysis that places a monetary figure on an organisation’s true value at risk. As such, it helps decision-makers in the financial services industry transform their GRC processes through qualitative and quantitative methods, increasing efficiency by up to 40% and reducing costs by up to 60%.
The company is currently working with more than 90 enterprises around the world. Specifically in the financial services industry, Alyne has helped many organisations, ranging from major insurance groups to trading platforms and banks. Among Alyne’s successes, its solution has helped one insurance group transform its operational risk-management processes across more than 500 subsidiaries around the world. Alyne’s solution has also helped an automotive bank create an IT compliance capability that significantly reduces effort in maintenance and creates a current view on compliance maturity and new requirements for individual parts of the business; thereby significantly reducing cost and increasing risk transparency.
Impressive achievements so far
Alyne has grown rapidly and consistently since its foundation in 2015. During the first quarter of 2021 alone, it acquired six major new customers. In spite of the pandemic, the company has almost doubled in size, from 27 team members at the end of 2019 to a total headcount of 45 from 17 different nationalities today – all working in a highly inclusive and collaborative environment in offices in Germany, the US, UK and Australia.
Alyne was part of the Barclays Techstars Accelerator Program in 2017 and was awarded the UBS Future of Finance Award in 2017. It’s a founding member of the International RegTech Association and was also granted the GRC 20/20 User Experience Award. This year, Alyne won the Santander X Global Challenge in the scale-up category as an innovative organisation that assists SMEs in their risk-management transformation.
Future plans
As environmental, social and governance (ESG) management and reporting become increasingly important in the financial services industry, Alyne has recently introduced an innovative ESG Risk Framework, consisting of 16 ESG megatrends, broken down into 95 sub-trends, which help guide organisations through the ESG landscape and determine a quantified ESG risk.
Alyne’s Continuous Controls capability focuses on shifting the approach from analysing issues after they occur, to real-time monitoring of assurance. The company has already integrated leading security data sources into the Alyne platform, and will be adding even more information to enable an automated, preventative and AI-driven assurance engine.
How being part of Rise has helped
Alyne joined the Barclays Rise community in 2017 when the London office was still under construction; it has been the company’s home in London ever since. When the first New York-based team members joined Alyne, it was clear that its offices in the US would be in Rise too. The company has found it a highly beneficial community to be part of – and, now that restrictions are easing, the team hopes to spend more time there.
Influences
When asked about powerful influences in his entrepreneurial journey, Alyne’s CEO, Karl Viertel, said: “I had many great managers in my career and I tried to learn from all of them. A business is all about starting – making assumptions, reviewing, improving and repeating. Be bold – go out, speak to people, ask the right questions and clearly state your ambition. Be open to listening and walking in your team members’ or customers’ shoes... all lessons I have tried to embrace in my own journey as an entrepreneur.”