Fastcheck: a fast-scaling West Midlands FinTech, supercharged by SuperTech
When Amar Rana went to a car dealership to buy a new M3 BMW, he wanted to check out suitable finance options. What he didn’t know was that this was the start of his Founder journey, establishing Credicar, now rebranded as Fastcheck, a platform for providing consumers with instant pre-qualified finance quotes for retail purchases.
What problem does Fastcheck solve?
Getting an accurate finance quote, affordability and eligibility check with lenders working with car dealers previously meant undergoing a hard credit check – giving many cumbersome details, including employer’s name and address, bank details and having that credit check recorded on an individual’s credit report.
These significant barriers created a very poor customer experience and impacted sales, so in turn were problematic for the dealer, manufacturer and lender. And with no obvious commercially available way of soft-searching for an accurate quote, there was a clear market opportunity.
We spoke to Amar Rana, Founder and CEO of Fastcheck, to get an update on his company after its successful rebrand, and to find out what is next for the business.
Market validation from the off
Once I had the initial prototype, and through proactive social media engagement, Graham Wheeler, the former CEO of Volkswagen Financial Services, joined the fledgling company as a Non-exec Director. This helped us identify further pain points to address within the solution, enabled introductions for market testing and provided important validation from a highly-respected leader within the car finance space.
A big differentiator for us is that from the very start, we approached the problem without any preconceived ideas based on current processes. As result we’ve been able to build a sector-neutral, consumer-centric system that creates efficiencies for everyone involved in the process.
Supercharging the business with SuperTech
Through our relationship with SuperTech, which started with access to their incubator programme but continues to this day, we enjoy strengthened and new connections across the West Midlands FinTech and ProfTech ecosystem.
Initially, through the incubator programme, we had access to senior stakeholders within BNP Paribas Personal Finance as well as other banks which accelerated our journey and growth significantly- by at least 12 months, as we were able to refine our value proposition for strong market fit quickly and robustly.
“In terms of lessons learnt, particularly as a non-tech founder, it is so important to connect and work with trusted advisors who are experts in their field, as soon as possible. At the very beginning of founding my business, I spent some time with software developers who had approached the relationship from a commercial perspective as opposed to what was best for the business. If I was re-entering the market now as a non-tech founder, having the ability to engage with an independent organisation such as SuperTech, would have given me independent and neutral advice instead of somebody trying to charge me for something that I didn’t need. During my journey, having access to experts such as Hilary and Jof and the broader ecosystem, has been wonderful. Their focus is to support and help you succeed, and for me it helped me review and understand where I made mistakes and better ways to approach software development as a non-tech founder. ”
SuperTech also introduced us to a programme from the University of Oxford that has allowed us to build up a group of world-class mentors that are helping us to scale the business.
Our recent rebrand reflects how our product is now applicable to verticals outside of car finance, as our platform provides instant quote and eligibility checks to customers interested in purchasing a retail item on finance.
What piece of advice would I give to others starting off on their own Founder journey?
Engage with the ecosystem and partners like SuperTech that can connect you with like-minded entrepreneurs, established financial and professional services business, or as in our case, direct interventions that can help advance your business.
What is next for Fastcheck?
We are now rapidly scaling in the UK across other verticals and exploring opportunities to expand internationally, keeping ourselves rooted in the West Midlands region and its ever-growing ecosystem of opportunities.
Find out more