An Interview with Rui Vicente, Dixtior Consulting CEO/Founding Partner: ‘We Combine Business Consultancy with Latest-Generation Technologies to Create Solutions Shaped to your World’

“We want to bring a splash of colour into a seemingly grey world and become a global leader in consultancy and fintech services.”

The economic and societal changes occasioned by technological developments are shaped, not just by the availability of new technologies and their features, but also by ideologies, power structures, and human aspirations and agendas. Technologies are not exogenous forces that roll over societies like tsunamis with predetermined results. Rather, our skills, organizations, institutions, and values shape how we develop technologies and how we deploy them once created, along with their final impact.

In light of the foregoing, we’re thrilled to present Dixtior Consulting.

Dixtior is a Portuguese consultancy company. It develops and implements global concepts and sophisticated software solutions, always tailored to the needs of its customers. The company complements the ability of its customers, through the strengthening of its project teams with qualified professionals, equipped with the necessary functional and technical assets to the nature of the projects to be implemented.

Dixtior was incorporated in 2013 and is headquartered in Lisbon.

Rui Vicente, Dixtior Consulting CEO/Founding Partner, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Rewind: Getting Off to a Flying Start

The idea of creating Dixtior started to grow in our minds due to a feeling the three (myself, Sónia Silva, COO; and Mário Oliveira, CTO) of us had. Later, as a matter of fact, we were able to develop and deliver better solutions based on what we had learnt working with our former employers. That’s how Dixtior Consulting was set up.

We started by developing DCS, our AML/CTF solution, from scratch, and after six months we hit the market. We decided to go to Angola due to the growing need for AML solutions in the banking sector. After closing our first deal, we invested the revenue from that business in more people to join our development team. Since then, we have been developing and innovating DCS. The current release of DCS, version-3, was developed on two different platforms.

DCS has grown from an AML/CTF solution to a Financial Crime Suit, implemented in 13 banks across three continents; Europe, Africa, and Asia.

First Project Roll-On: A Bumpy but Successful Ride

The first project was with Caixa Angola in Luanda, at the beginning of 2014, and it was a success. Although the project was a road full of obstacles that we needed to overcome and with the commitment of our team and the cooperation of the compliance team from Caixa Angola, we all managed to achieve the project goals.

At that time everything was new and difficult, I remember, for example, the complexity of integrating our system with the core banking system. We were the first supplier of an AML solution to implement software to perform transaction analysis in real-time and giving a response to all the obligations in only one solution. Even today, major banks across the world use variety of software to do what we do only with DCS.

Elements: That Make Dixtior Consulting Stand Out

Fortunately, we have been able to establish relationships with all of our clients. We always try to understand their specific needs and transform those needs in functionalities of DCS. This approach together with our permanent monitoring of the new legislation, obligations, and recommendations of the supervisors is what makes us able to having DCS permanently up-to-date.

Moreover, our market is changing every single day. The new legislation is produced by the financial supervisors that must be reflected in our software. New typologies of financial crime are discovered, and once again we must study them and develop and introduce mechanisms to detect and prevent these cases in our DCS software.

Reasons: Behind Dixtior’s Reputation

Innovation, the quality of services, and the commitment that we share with our clients – make the difference and have supported the continuous improvement of our reputation.

Products: Ready to be Launched

We have launched this year DCS Lite, an AML solution for clients that have a different profile from banks or insurance companies. The product was built for real estate and jewellery businesses.

Until the end of this year, we also have plans for launching Credit Workflow system that has the capability of transforming the full process of credit acquisition, management, and credit recovery through a full automatization and usage of machine learning and assisted machine learning.

Future Arrangements: Sky’s the Limit

I see Dixtior as a global provider of Financial Crime Prevention software, and one of the most recognized ones.

Leadership: Dixtior Consulting

Rui Vicente, CEO/Founding Partner: Prior to Dixtior, Rui Vicente was the director of risk management consultancy in several companies in Portugal and Spain, and Information Officer in the Portuguese government. He holds a Degree in Economics and a Post-Graduation in Financial Crime Compliance.

Sónia Silva, COO/Founding Partner: Before working with Dixtior, Sónia Silva performed as head of the department in several companies for the management of implementation teams of software projects related to credit area. She has a degree in Computer Management.

Mário Oliveira, CTO/Founding Partner: Mário is a Computer Engineer and expert in Outsystems development. Prior to Dixtior, he worked as a director of software development in various companies.

“We seamlessly merge two key components – economics and information technology. This is the main factor that sets us apart from our competition and allows us to deliver a specialist business consultancy service that truly makes a difference, through the crafting of latest-generation technological solutions.”