Behind the Idea: Stratiphy | The Fintech Times

There is a big difference between the professional approach to investing that banks and hedge funds take, and what is attainable to everyday investors. 

Stratiphy, an investment strategy builder technology firm, aims to bridge this gap by offering an app that provides an accessible approach to personalised, systematic investing.

Earlier this month, Stratiphy was awarded a grant of £1million from Innovate UK, which it will use to to accelerate the development and adoption of trustworthy AI solutions within the financial services sector.

To find out more about the company and its future plans, we chatted to Daniel Gold, CEO and founder of Stratiphy.

Tell us more about your company and its offering

Stratiphy is a toolkit designed to enable everyday investors to easily manage their portfolios according to their unique requirements, principles and objectives.

Each portfolio is continuously rebalanced following a user-defined strategy and adheres to principles inspired by the investment banking industry, including sophisticated risk management and portfolio construction techniques. The technology offers a scalable solution for personal portfolio management.

Stratiphy’s current product is a mobile app providing a simple interface for retail investors to create bespoke investment strategies. Users can backtest scenarios in seconds and compare different investing hypotheses. As well as investing on a self-selection basis, users can automate their investments using the strategies they create and segregate their investments into different strategies.

What problem was your company set up to solve?

Every investor wants to stay on top of their investments their way but they typically don’t have the time to consistently check the market to make informed decisions.

The DIY investing market grew by 13 per cent in 2023 to over £391billion, according to Boring Money, with customer accounts growing by 8.3 per cent to 10.2 million. This is a fast growing market, yet the services offered are typically one-size-fits-all or based on self-service.

Professional investors, in contrast, have access to personalised systematic investment strategies. It is our ambition to bridge this divide and level up everyday investors, to improve their baseline performance and help them to invest with confidence.

Since launch, how has your company evolved?

I started Stratiphy by working on it from home, staying up until 2am most evenings developing the prototype as a side-project outside of the working hours of my banking day job.

Since then I have managed to persuade friends, family, banking colleagues and more recently even professional investors to buy into my vision. I’ve also built a team of diverse talents around me to make this vision a reality.

The team is very close-knit and I believe this is what has got us to this point, and will ultimately enable us to succeed. The camaraderie and common purpose is something I rarely experienced in the corporate world, and it is inspiring.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s all plain sailing, we have much fewer resources than a bank and we need to make do with what we have. This means we have to be a lot more resourceful, and everyone in the team needs to upskill to meet a broad range of requirements. Whilst this is challenging, I find this an extremely rewarding part of the job.

What has been the biggest challenge or most ‘tricky moment’ to overcome?

Obtaining authorisation was a particularly complex challenge. I knew this would be difficult at the outset, and I’d also been warned as much by professionals and investors, but I didn’t realise how challenging a task it would be.

Part of the challenge was that we were newbies from the FCA’s perspective, unlike most firms that apply for new permissions who are subsidiaries of established trading companies. The other significant challenge was the set of permissions we were asking for and their unique application within our business model.

We wanted to do more than anyone in the market, and for a good reason – because we believe it is in the customers best interests. We wanted to operate in the market also meant we needed to use the permissions in a new way, and this meant becoming familiar with the FCA’s perimeter guidance regarding the provision of advice.

To overcome these challenges, we brought skills and experience to be able to operate as an authorised firm and we adopted an uncompromising approach to compliance and the principles behind consumer duty, before it was the hot topic it is today.

We had to seek complex legal and compliance advice to present to the FCA in order to determine which side of the boundary our service lies on, and I believe we have charted new regulatory territory in obtaining our approvals.

What are your biggest achievements or ‘proudest moment’ so far?

It’s a close call but I’d have to say forming a team that is so dedicated to promoting a common vision, but also is confident enough to challenge ideas to improve that vision. This isn’t something that I knew I could do when embarking on this journey as I’ve had limited management experience in the past, but the team and the ways of working have grown organically and reached a point that is effective and efficient right now.

How would you describe the culture of your company?

We get stuff done. The team knows what the goal is and we support each other to get it done. Everyone works independently, takes pride in their job and puts in the effort to achieve the best outcome possible.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have fun at the same time, we very much have a startup culture and approach. We have a very casual, flexible and progressive approach to work – but we do understand we are operating in an industry with a lot of competition, and sharp competition. There is no room to slack off, we can be informal and enjoy our work, but we absolutely need to perform and achieve otherwise we’re the next big ‘good idea’ rather than the next big thing.

What’s in store for the future?

We have huge plans to keep introducing new features and to make Stratiphy the best investment solution for every investor.

First of all we will start to use the new FCA permissions we have obtained, by offering automated investing in our app this summer. Then we plan to keep expanding our product with an increased universe of stocks, improved analytics and to introduce tax wrappers such as ISAs.

We have also been selected as the lead consortium member in a £1million InnovateUK grant to enhance trustworthy AI solutions within financial services. This is a huge opportunity for us to enhance our product with AI and to turbocharge our B2B aspirations. So I think there will be a lot happening with us to do with AI and B2B, so just watch this space.