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Financial health

30 April 2015

The article at a glance

Pariti, a finance startup founded by PGDE student, is a fintech competition winner. Pariti, a finance startup founded by a Postgraduate Diploma …

Pariti, a finance startup founded by PGDE student, is a fintech competition winner.

Financial health

Pariti, a finance startup founded by a Postgraduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship (PGDE) student at Cambridge Judge that helps people avoid financial difficulty, has reached the global finals of the SWIFT Innotribe fintech Startup Challenge competition in Singapore this October.

Matthew Ford
Matthew Ford

The company founded by Matthew Ford pitched at the London semi-finals on 22 April and was selected as one of the early stage company winners, thus advancing to the Singapore finals where it will compete for a prize of US$50,000.

Launched in August 2014, the business now has six people and has analysed more than £8 million in transaction data. It launched its first “Balance Checker” app to the UK app store, and was ranked in the top 100 most downloaded finance apps in Britain.

“We’re ecstatic to be selected as one of the finalists of the Innotribe competition,” says Matthew, the company’s founder and CEO. “It’s great to be recognised by industry experts as an innovation that can disrupt the industry and we’re already seeing signs that the competition can help open doors to partnerships with the larger financial institutions.”

He added:

The Postgraduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship has been extremely valuable, helping bring additional academic rigour to the Pariti development process.

Pariti’s technology combines detailed financial transaction data with behavioural analytics to take a more accurate view of a user’s current financial health, future risk and likely finance requirements. Users build their “Pariti score” by completing challenges, setting budgets and achieving financial goals. As users increase their score, they unlock access to rewards and lower rates.

The SWIFT Innotribe Startup Challenge aims to introduce startups from across the world to highly qualified industry experts, banks and VCs. This year it received almost 370 applications, and 60 semi-finalists were selected by 500 judges. The semi-finals were held in four locations across the world – London, Singapore, Cape Town and New York.