Postcards from Europe: Case Study, Fastest Growing Top Ten!
Welcome to the content from our series "Postcards from Europe" that ran between the 14th - 19th of July 2014. On this page we showcase the top ten fastest growing start-ups in Europe. The data was collected from Deloitte Technology Fast 50 for Central Europe. Find out about our "Postcards" series HERE
#4: Comperia – there must be something in the water when it comes to Poland because all we can see are great and interesting start-up stories. Sitting at number four in our countdown is a business that has grown more than 1500% in recent years with a focus on the financial services sector. In fact the business is one of many that have grown up in western countries that focus on providing customers with options and reference points for everything from insurance to banking and mortgages to personal line and fixed line investments. Many call this type of service a form of brokerage or referral where the business will assess and publish the best rates on offer across the relevant sector.
In the case of Comparia they have a range of options such as Cash Loans, Mortgages, Bank Deposits and Savings accounts. What is really interesting about this sort of start-up is the fact it does not take a huge amount of initial start-up capital because, unlike the traditional lending institutions, the business is essentially an information and content organisations. That also means they don’t have to have the heavy compliance regime that many of the large institutions have to maintain which in turn keeps labour costs and overheads down. Of course, there are other sets of laws and regulations but, in the main, they are less cumbersome that say if you operated a bank more directly.
Where some of these business models start to evolve is when they turn the customer base into a collective and, instead of waiting for the institutions to state it rates when it comes to mortgages or savings accounts the opposite can occur. For example, let’s say you had 100,000 consumers in your data base – you email them and say if we join together for a preferential price on home and contents insurance we then turn around to an insurance company and say “we’ll give you the business of our clients but we want you to offer a discount + we will take a brokerage fee.
In other words the sky is the limit in turns of potential for Comperia and it is organisations like this that have well and truly disrupted the business models of many financial institutions. This is one business model that could diversify into everything from cluster purchasing to financial planning.
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Check them out online HERE
#4 Comperia (Poland), Financial Services sector
