Why We Invested: Ophelos
Software and startups have transformed the world and revitalized nearly every industry on the planet. But nearly doesn’t mean all. Even with software’s limitless reach, a few sectors have remained hidden from transformation and still operate as they have for decades. Consumer debt collection is one such sector. Despite commanding an ungodly £1.7 trillion of personal debt, collection agencies run their businesses with the same predatory tactics reminiscent of The Wolf of Wall Street. Today we’re excited to announce Fly’s investment in Ophelos, the London-based fintech startup that is radically rethinking not just debt collection but financial health itself.
We met the Ophelos founders in mid 2020 and from our very first engagement it was clear that this was an all-star team. Amon Ghaiumy, a product-driven operator, had discovered the shocking status quo of debt collection through his work as the Head of EMEA at ASAPP. Thousands of call centre agents kept the system afloat and in Amon’s words, “broken was an understatement”. The complete vacuum of software, efficiency and customer focus was simply too much for him and the entrepreneurial fire was lit. ASAPP’s Head of International, Paul Chong (and former Head of IBM Watson), immediately saw the potential of Amon’s discovery and the two set out to build a better way. It was clear that cracking the collections market would require a next generation offering with machine learning at its core. Through their research the two discovered an academic research paper which applied machine learning to improved debt collection processes, which showed outstanding results:
- Paid 1.89 days faster
- 14% increase in avg. recovery rate
- 21% decrease in calls made
- 45% increase in the amount collected per call
Amon and Paul reached out to the paper’s author, Qinchen Wang, to learn more and their shared passion for the problem quickly convinced him to join the team as third co-founder.
Ophelos aims to transform the debt collection industry by radically rethinking what it means to be an agency. Incumbents today are mired in political fiefdoms and broken data systems. Their primary method of communication is mailing physical letters and landline phone calls. During our due diligence we were shocked to hear that the leading agencies of the day were excited about their newest feature rollout, one-way SMS notifications.
Ophelos has launched a category of their own with a mobile-first, transparent and empathetic debt recovery product. Already they offer customers a seamless digital user journey, flexible repayment plans influenced by behavioral science, open-banking enabled affordability assessments, vulnerability detection based on natural language understanding, AI-driven engagement strategies, automated dispute systems, real-time data visualisations and analytics, military-grade security. Ophelos’ clients (corporates that are owed money) are able to see recovery rates, A/B testing, conversation records and audit logs all in real time to ensure that their customers are being treated with the respect and values they instill in their own employees. They launched in June and are already live with one of the leading brands in UK energy. In an industry that for decades has treated those in debt as criminals, Ophelos puts customers at the heart of the debt resolution process.
The debt sector can get a bad rap and for good reason (payday loans, predatory interest rates, etc.) and from the outset of our evaluation we needed to be clear that the Ophelos team would never put profits above ethics. In addition to being FCA regulated and ISO27001 certified, Ophelos has filed and is a pending B-corp certified organization making them the first and only debt collection business in the world to do so. This legal commitment to a sustainable and inclusive economy speaks volumes to the moral compass of the founders and the broader team they’ll be building in the years to come.
If you’re a (pre)seed stage founder building a deeply technical, B2B-focused startup we would love to meet you. Please reach out to anyone from the Fly Ventures team.
