07 Oct Member Spotlight: Topicus
Topicus is a full-service strategic tech firm founded in 1999 and headquartered in Deventer. Although for most consumers the name Topicus may not ring a bell immediately, their products have been affecting many lives for years. The team of Topicus even calculated that citizens of the Netherlands are somehow connected with their solutions approximately 11 times a year. Wouter Pollmann, CMO at Topicus reveals the story behind this surprising achievement: “Above all, we are a technology company. We have 650 employees working in five different offices in the country, 440 of them are engineers and developers. We deliver innovative SaaS-solutions in the segments of local government, education, healthcare, finance and legal. However, before deploying pure technology we carefully look to really make a positive impact at society, citizens, patients, students and consumers.
Our clients in the finance industry are mainly large organisations with well-established IT systems. Therefore, our software applications always are an attempt to serve as a bridge between existing infrastructure and brand new applications. We create back-office as well as front-end applications. In the financial industry we have advise-platforms for mortgage brokers, accountants and consumers. But we also enable our products to evolve on their own and become an independent start-up. Jungo for example, a recently launched peer-to-peer mortgage platform (also a member of Holland FinTech), was founded by Topicus and acts as a whole subsidiary. We see that the financial services sector is currently ripe for innovation, traditional parties are looking to collaborate but consumers also allow completely new market concepts to flourish. Besides the mortgage market, we created solutions for alternative financing of SME’s, individuals and pension market.
Now that the FinTech ecosystem has proven itself it is time to think about the proper use of data and other compliance issues. Three weeks ago we celebrated the result of a unique combination between 20 large law firms where we drastically improved the legal services chain. It is a software platform we named Instrumenti which enables a completely digital litigation process connecting law firms with the administration of justice. Our strategy is driven by our expertise but at the same time we receive a lot of input from our clients and market actors. We believe a winning combination. People are always capable of changing; we like to see ourselves as ‘the engine’ behind that change by allowing individuals and organisations to change in the right direction at the right moment. And to enable this change from an existing organisation, with a large legacy and for the new kid on the block.
Nonetheless, seizing the right opportunity does not come easy, sometimes it happens when a new law is accepted and sometimes just by listening. We put a lot of effort in obtaining inspiration from the right actors and foster future collaboration, like at our annual Inspiration Day, this year with Blendle. We also listen to our own frustrations as a consumer, patient or citizen. How can we really make our society more efficient? We already are established and active in the five pillars of local government, education, healthcare, finance and legal but we ultimately are aiming at improving additional sectors. During our innovative quest the last two decades we came across Holland FinTech at several occasions and after sharing similar thoughts a membership became the next logical step. We have a broad track record in the financial industry, both as technology provider but also as a FinTech enabler. We are definitely not done with our journey and will keep surprising everyone with the tricks we still have left up in our sleeve!” So it turns to you.
