Chief Operating Officer, Fred Becker, shares his reflections on a year of uncharted business change and progress at Aire.
As the evenings draw in and the season changes, it feels like the right opportunity to reflect a little on what has been a truly exceptional year for the world — and subsequently, for how we run our business operations here at Aire.
How we work
We’ve seen incredible change across the globe in how businesses must now operate. In a period of just months we’ve adapted in ways many of us would have doubted we would have achieved in more than a decade of ‘normal’ working life.
And like most businesses, we’ve made sweeping updates to reflect this new reality. In September, we took the decision to trial an extended remote-first way of working for our team as a result of the successes we’d seen over the last six months of working from home across the business.
We know this has had a tangible and immediate impact on our team — more time at home with families, more time to get out into the fresh air and more time to devote to those hobbies that commute times have for many of us gobbled up in the past.
More personally, I’ve been touched to see a new found openness in evidence across the business due to this way of operating. Our team has shared aspects of their home life through pictures and conversations that in the office go left unsaid or get told to just a few over a chance chat around the coffee machine. Our remote-first approach has undoubtedly brought us closer together as a business.
Industry recognition
As Chief Operating Officer at Aire, my role spans many functions and disciplines. In many ways, I gain privileged access to the engine room of our business — overseeing the huge array of team activity that keeps the show running. Finance, Compliance, Legal, Customer Success, Infrastructure and most recently the People function. These are intrinsic business teams that are crucial to the long-term success of the company we’re building.
And a feature that has defined the year has been Aire’s growing awareness and validation within the industry. To date, we’ve been shortlisted for ten awards, with three substantial wins already confirmed — and more, we hope, to be achieved before the year is over.
Here are some of the highlights:
- In May, we were recognised by Risk.net as Most Innovative Vendor in their annual technology awards. A global thought leader on all aspects of financial risk management, the publication went on to profile our technology more recently, here.
- We were also named winners of the Data Usage and Analytics award in the 2020 Awards for Product and Service Innovation. The judges commented that Aire had ‘clearly identified a business/consumer need and some initial results demonstrated value’ and that it was ‘powerful that the FCA would get on board with the approach, so clearly had a consumer benefit at its heart.’ We were also delighted to be highly commended in the Financial Inclusion and Diversity category (losing out only to Starling Bank) — a cause so intrinsic to our mission at Aire.
- Next up, it was our innovation which won praise via the Juniper Research Future Digital Awards. With these awards specifically tasked with seeking out organisations that are positioned to make a significant impact in the future, our Best AI Platform award was an obvious cause of celebration for the team at Aire.
The road ahead
We’re not quite done yet with a couple of important award ceremonies still to take place in 2020 — albeit virtually of course…
- In September, we achieved shortlistings in four categories in the Credit and Collections Technology Awards recognising Aire across credit and data categories as well as our Founder and CEO, Aneesh Varma, who is up for ‘Technology Innovator, Person of the Year’.
- The prestigious Credit Awards are also to follow. Run by Credit Strategy, this is a flagship event in the credit and financial services industries and one we’re delighted to be included in across two categories: ‘Best use of Technology’ and ‘Credit Information Provider of the Year’. We will await news from the awards ceremony taking place next month.
In many ways, the diversity of these awards reflect the very individual nature of the business we’re building at Aire. Financial inclusion, innovation and best in class product development are all core features to Aire’s DNA and to me entirely reflective of the team, and business, we continue to build.
With the deployment of our technology coming to major high street banks, we’re excited about taking our product to millions more people and are ready for the opportunities 2021 will bring us.
Since publication, Aire went on to win ‘Best use of Technology’ at the Credit Awards, and three of the four shortlisted awards at the Credit and Collections Technology Awards.
With a career scaling startups internationally, Fred Becker joined our Executive Team in November 2019. Discover more about his day-to-day activities here.
