Quint: Leading International Online Fintech Businesses in the Consumer Credit Sector, with Uncompromised Security – Case Study

Speed, security, and availability—the ingredients for success when it comes to Quint Group’s IT operations.

Based in the United Kingdom, Quint Group answers the call for innovation and consumer-centric services in the rapidly evolving credit industry. As the fintech company continues its global expansion, Quint Group is keenly aware that a data breach or service outage that has an impact on its customers can significantly affect its reputation and disrupt its business. And that knowledge is driving its desire to maintain compliance and improve security and usability.

Quint Group was founded in 2009 and was the first business in its sector in the U.K. to receive full authorization with” Principal” status from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The group now operates 5 subsidiaries: Monevo, Money Guru, Credit Angel, Credit Perfect, and Infinian. Monevo, a B2B technology platform that enables consumers looking for loans to connect with providers, is one of its fastest-growing holdings.

When the company considered expanding in the United States, Monevo had already established itself as Europe’s largest lending marketplace and platform—more than 160 lenders have access to more than U.S. $8 billion of consumer credit applications annually. As the businesses grew, it was critical that the platforms supporting them were secure and scalable.

“If anything were to happen and we were to lose the confidence of the people using our platform, it would significantly impact our business,” explains Quint Group CIO Sam Colclough. “Clearly, that is one of the key reasons security is, and will always be, massively important to us.”

Initially however, it was scalability that drove Quint Group to consider leaving its previous hosting provider. As its businesses grew, the Quint Group needed more RAM, but could not get it without making other significant changes. At that point, the organization decided to look elsewhere for security services.

“We decided to use that as an opportunity to change the platform,” Colclough says. “Understanding the overhead of managing more servers without a dedicated InfoSec resource, we decided to move to a platform with security built into it rather than hire people. This meant as we got bigger, we wouldn’t have to worry about managing security personnel or processes; we could continue to focus on our core business goals.”

Toward the end of 2017, Quint Group began to move the infrastructure of Monevo to Armor. Centralized visibility and dedicated managed-security resources gave Monevo the confidence to significantly step up the overall migration. In the ensuing months, almost all of Quint Group’s infrastructure followed. Money Guru was the last platform migrated to Armor in 2018, while leaving some auxiliary support functions independent of Armor.

The migration was relatively seamless. The key part was to ensure continuity, as any downtime could have a significant impact, according to Colclough.

“We had a very small amount of downtime, so it was really well managed,” the CIO says. “We didn’t have any significant decrease in performance while doing the migration.

Choosing Armor has delivered dividends. After migrating the Monevo platform, the company saw a 10-15% improvement in performance, which Quint Group defines as the speed at which the platform can return results back to consumers. Speed is vital; if consumers are forced to wait too long for the platform to respond, they may give up and close their browser. This is classified as a failed redirect.

“We had a reduction in failed redirects because of the improved speed. We now provide a better level of service to more people,” Colclough says.

Credit Perfect experienced an improvement in the area of failed redirects as well.

In addition to performance improvements, Armor’s GDPR-ready infrastructure is important to the Quint Group. Armor’s security solution ticks many boxes for the company, ensuring it can protect customer data and comply with regulations. Working with Armor also creates a one-stop shop for security, meaning Quint Group does not have to manage separate security programs for each of its business environments.

“As a group we are always looking at future-proofing our efforts through technological innovation and having a proactive stance on data security and regulation,” says Colclough. “The growing threat to cybersecurity is of concern, especially as the brand of each subsidiary grows, both in the U.K. and the United States. Consumers have never been more aware of cybersecurity threats, and providing insight into the level of security we use aids in consumers trusting our service.”

According to IDG’s “2018 Cloud Computing Survey,” the top business goals driving cloud investments are: improving the speed of IT service delivery; greater flexibility to react to changing market conditions; enabling business continuity; improving customer support; and lowering the total cost of ownership. Among those respondents who have implemented infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solutions, scalability, flexibility, reliability, and increased agility were specifically cited as critical drivers.

Five data centers across the globe—located in the United States, the U.K., Europe, and Asia—enable Armor to meet the needs of companies such as Quint Group as it expands internationally and into regions where it must meet stringent local data sovereignty requirements to remain compliant. But it is Armor’s focus on security, performance, and customer service that makes it a perfect fit for Quint Group moving forward.

“We have to protect data, and also maintain availability, so that our customers can be quickly connected to the loan providers they need,” Colclough says. “Our businesses are only going to continue to grow. The information security requirements of the companies we work with are only going to get bigger, and we need to be able to deliver what big businesses need in terms of security for the platform—Armor does that.”