Banking transactions and financial services in Germany fall under the supervision of BaFin. When we founded neoFIN AG, it quickly became clear to us that instead of trying to obtain a licence ourselves, we would take advantage of the opportunity to act as a tied agent under a liability umbrella. Why always reinvent the wheel when there are partners who are experts in this field. We have found our partner with CONCEDUS. Why? Read for yourself what founder and CEO Marius Grieseler has to say in the interview. In it, you will learn why the CONCEDUS offer goes beyond the mere provision of a liability umbrella and how it came to specialise in FinTechs.
neoFIN: Dear Marius, thank you for answering our questions. Could you first give us some information about yourself as a person? Who are you and what do you do?
Marius Grieseler (MG): With pleasure. I am Marius Grieseler and I founded CONCEDUS GmbH together with COO Johannes Zeiß and CTO Marcel Lacroze. As Managing Director, I am responsible for the general development and monitoring of our securities institute. In addition, I make decisions about strategic partnerships and am the first point of contact for our new clients.
neoFIN: What does CONCEDUS do exactly and what is the background of the digital liability umbrella?
MG: Financial services, such as investment brokerage for the distribution and trading of security tokens, are subject to supervision and authorisation. As a young financial company, obtaining such a licence from Bafin requires a lot of time as well as personnel and organisational effort. Also maintaining your own authorisation is not something that can be done casually.
CONCEDUS provides FinTechs as well as established companies with efficient, secure and scalable access to the world of digital financial services. We provide our licences in the form of a digital liability umbrella, which means that our partners do not need their own licences.
In practice, it usually looks like our clients connect to our systems via our API interface in order to quickly and securely transmit the data and information relevant to us.
neoFIN: How did the idea of CONCEDUS and the specialisation in new and digital business models come about?
MG: The founders of CONCEDUS originally come from the field of software development or from the banking world and have already developed various solutions for the tokenisation of securities here – always with a focus on optimising the processes of financial companies and funds. We have retained this technical focus.
CONCEDUS is equipped with its own team of developers, so that – unlike many of our market participants – we can tailor our service to the plans of our partner companies and develop new products and processes quickly and internally. In addition, our team always has tips on how to optimise the technologies and processes that our partners use, thanks to the experience we have already gained, as we ourselves have often been in this position.
neoFIN: Of course, your orientation suits us very well, because for our digital business model we need partners who have internalised digital processes. We’ve been in the same boat for a while now; how do you feel about the cooperation?
MG: Right from the start, the cooperation with neoFIN was extremely professional and personal at the same time. We knew you beforehand because we always look at and analyse the latest companies in the industry. We were all the more pleased when a mutual acquaintance put us in touch with you.
Since then, we have enjoyed communicating with you a lot and are very convinced of the upcoming projects and the professionalism of your team in implementing them – both from a technical point of view and in structuring and selecting the projects.
neoFIN: You have a classical banking background. When and how did you become interested in distributed ledger technology (DLT)?
MG: I have been interested in this field from the very beginning. Many years ago, I already developed a small mining setup and looked into blockchain solutions. Then one day the first project came about. We brainstormed in the founding team at the time on how to make crowdfunding more attractive and individual, so that you don’t have to rely exclusively on asset investments, but at the same time you don’t have to accept the disadvantages of traditional securities. So personal interest turned into professional interest.
neoFIN: In addition to your expertise, you also offer comprehensive support in all digital processes. Can you briefly explain what all this entails? Is further expansion planned and if so, what for?
MG: CONCEDUS is more than “just” a liability umbrella. We are always happy to receive individual and innovative new projects from our partner companies, which we can also support technologically. So this also involves more than “just” providing the licence. This may sound a bit trite, but we see our clients as real partners with whom we want to develop something together. Because we can only be successful if you are successful. That’s why we put a lot of emphasis on networking with, for example, the right lawyers, technological providers, payment service providers, as well as making our experience available around these topics.
We are happy to share our knowledge and experience – whether it’s about the right underwriting route or choosing the right service provider. Therefore, our tech team can always provide feedback when it comes to experiences with technical integrations of other service providers, but also our API. However, like most of our clients, we are still a FinTech. This means that we are still learning and integrating new offers into our portfolio.
neoFIN: Speaking of technical integrations: Which digital tools makes your daily work easier?
MG: I can’t think of a specific tool… We actually use many tools and solutions. As a completely cloud-based company we ensure the most efficient, digital and location-independent work possible. There are a lot of brains at CONCEDUS. They are constantly developing or setting up new tools and solutions that make our work a bit more digital every day.
neoFIN: That’s a point we will benefit from! Give us a brief outlook: Where do you want to be in five years?
MG: To be honest, we’re not looking that far into the future at the moment. Due to the fast pace of our industry, we tend to look from year to year. We are currently very happy that we have many new exciting topics on the table for 2022. However, the vision is of course to become the digital provider for FinTech licences with CONCEDUS. To achieve this, we expand our range of services from investment advice and brokerage to various other types of licences. We want to offer our customers holistic services for all aspects of securities services.
Therefore, we also have other innovative solutions planned for the future that can be used via our APIs. But I can’t talk about that at the moment. Maybe next time… (laughs).
