An Interview with M. Nazri, MyFinB.com Founder and CEO “Going beyond Data, People want insights and recommendation, what better way to do this than through Analytics?

“We have grown into a diversified, string network present in more than 26 countries.”

Any system where humans interact with technology involves a tradeoff: security versus accessibility. The more secure the system, the more difficult it is to access. This poses a dilemma for any organization facing pressure to embrace anytime, anywhere accessibility, the mobile workplace and real-time interaction with customers and employees—and that describes almost every organization today.

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI)—and the millions of data points created by the Internet of Things—are starting to change the nature of this tradeoff, particularly where trust is part of the product or service. As AI systems learn more, they can be trained to suggest next best actions, automate some repetitive tasks and minimize the greatest risk: human error. With the growing intelligence of edge devices, capable of making real-time and near-real-time determinations, security can be built into every transaction.

In light of the above-mentioned platform, we’re thrilled to present MyFinB.com

MyFinB is a risk analytics platform that uses AI to conduct financial assessments and recommendations for enterprises and consumers on a web-to-mobile platform.

The company was incorporated in 2016 and is headquartered in Malaysia.

Nazri, MyFinB.com Founder/CEO, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Q. Why was the company set up? And how did you expand your company and its offerings over the years?

We started MyFinB in order to fill a big need — giving finance and business people a fast and simple way to understand financial data. We feel that today spending money sourcing and aggregating data, spreadsheets, and dashboards as mechanisms to understand data, simply aren’t value for money. People want the insights and recommendations that the data supports—about their operations, about their business, about their future. And, what better way to tell stories than through analytics?

I foresee that there is a high demand for financial literacy to be automated and democratized and MyFinB enables these organizations to spend less time crunching numbers and more time providing their management and other stakeholders with actionable information that, ultimately, helps them make better financial decisions.

Because there are more than 118m businesses and 26,000 banks worldwide that rely on financial statements, the potential is vast. We believe we can make a positive impact by helping organizations save costs with efficient planning; reducing risks through analysis, and improve financial outcomes. People can depend on smart technology like MyFinB’s A.I. to help them make better decisions through rapid processing of financial info, bringing them higher revenue and profitability.

The fact of the matter is; humans are prone to errors, fatigue, and biases whenever we are faced with a voluminous set of financial and business information over an extended period of time. Introducing machines into the equation help us overcome this and streamline our decision-making process by automatically evaluating the financial standing of any company and articulating the likely directions that the management should make or is likely to make.

The key to expanding MyFinB was in identifying the five key market segments with a strong demand for our services globally. These are financial institutions, enterprises, professional accounting firms, stock exchanges and government agencies responsible for SME development. We believe that such market segments need’s can be substantially met through the use of A.I and cognitive analytics that can drive higher revenues, lower risks and increase productivity.

Another critical factor is that we place a strong emphasis on our R&D. Part of our popular R&D initiative is the Digital AI Labs (DIAL) programme, whereby we encourage companies to harness their own data by building their personal digital assets and leasing our AI engine to them. This is part of our effort to ensure that now everyone can own AI.

Q. What do you feel are the reasons behind your company’s reputation?

Our reputation stems from our ability to launch and deliver a new innovative solution with accurate, timely and quality analysis. We extend this ability towards existing experiences but on a digital platform.

People find our commitment towards user experience and UI design commendable, which has helped spread the integration of our products into so many different companies across many different industries.

We don’t rest on our laurels; we continue to strive to improve MyFinB’s products and solutions by improving them consistently.

Q. A company’s behavior is as important as its economic performance or the quality of its products. How do you interpret this saying?

We believe in a strong set of principles and values that define who we are and what we bring to the market. MyFinB’s success was founded on the value system that identifies us and described as follows:

• We believe that our most important resource and our most significant competitive advantage is our pool of highly skilled, knowledgeable and diverse employees and partners
• We promote a culture of respect, fairness, and inclusion for all global MyFinB stakeholders. We believe that diverse thoughts and ideas should be shared and valued intending to achieve tangible results
• We believe our people should enjoy their challenging and exciting work. We promote programs that support recognition of achievement, competitive rewards and a safe work environment
• We encourage information to be shared regionally through multiple, open communication channels
• We believe in an accountable culture, in which we deliver on our commitments to each other, our customers, and our owners. We seek to maintain trust and credibility in order to manage our business with the appropriate oversight
• We promote a culture that is agile, anticipates change, and is committed to implementing that change

Q. Where do you see you and your company a couple of years from now?

There are five key priorities that MyFinB has set, namely – market expansion, mergers and acquisitions, new technology breakthroughs via R&D innovation, organic customer acquisition and achieving good profitability growth.

For market expansion, we have set our sights geographically in the major regions of the world (except South America) for the issuance of country master licenses to represent MyFinB and conduct operations locally.

We are doing these in phases and ensure that we do not rush into partnerships hastily. Rather, with our experience of conducting global partnerships in the last decade as a group, we are able to foster steady relationships based on trust, goodwill and mutual benefits. Most importantly, people must understand what we do and vice versa – that is key to a long-term relationship.

Concerning new breakthrough and innovation, we carry out a combination of developing in-house digital assets as well as acquiring established ones to ensure we have a good inventory of expert systems that we can commercialize as quickly as possible, i.e. go-to-market to meet customer needs.

We strive to achieve the optimal product-market fit all the time by sensing and ascertaining what the market needs and fill these with a broader set of solutions as quickly as possible.

M Nazri: A Brief Background

M Nazri, Founder, is the Chief Executive Officer of MyFinB Group. He specializes in finance and cognitive analytics – having spent more than two decades as a practitioner in these fields. He has more than 20 years of experience as an A.I. analytics practitioner with exposures in the public and private sectors – where he has successfully developed performance attribution models and impact measurement systems to uncover trends and insights. He is a regular contributor on A.I-related topics in business magazines, made a number of media appearances and spoke on the subject in various parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Previously, Mr. Nazri was part of the investment and research team of international asset management groups (Citigroup and Prudential) where he managed a portfolio of more than USD5 billion in Asia-Pacific (ex-Japan) – before joining a global rating agency(Fitch Ratings) where he covered regional financial institutions in Asia.

“Our ability to rapidly produce a prototype leading to commercialization has been a strong point; reducing the risk when presenting a new product, service or a feature to the market.”