How the Partnerships ecosystem fuels innovation for fintechs and their clients

The fintech landscape is rapidly evolving, and collaboration is a key driver of this change. For companies like Lenvi, partnering with key players in the ecosystem isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s essential to unlocking innovation, scalability, and meeting lenders’ shifting needs.

The power of specialisation

Fintech companies are increasingly moving away from being "Jack of all trades" to focus on their areas of specialisation.

This allows them to deliver cutting-edge solutions in areas such as loan management, payments, or risk assessment. Specialisation has also fostered greater collaboration within the fintech ecosystem, enabling companies to leverage each other’s expertise and create more comprehensive solutions.

This is where partnerships come into play. By collaborating with complementary technology providers, fintech firms can offer flexible, client-centric, scalable solutions that drive customer experience and digital transformation. Lenders today seek solutions tailored to their unique needs, and partnerships are central to delivering these bespoke offerings.

The decision to specialise is also influenced by resource constraints and the growing complexity of fintech solutions in areas like AI, compliance, and risk management. Partnerships allow companies to scale without overstretching their resources. Instead of spreading talent across multiple disciplines, fintech companies can focus on their core offerings while leveraging partners’ expertise.

The evolving role of partnerships

Partnerships have evolved from basic integrations to strategic alliances that create new value. Today, companies collaborate deeply to innovate faster, recognising that competitive advantage is best achieved through partnerships that keep the client at the centre, than through an isolated race to the top.

At Lenvi, we adopt a dual approach to partnerships. In some cases, we work with other fintechs to enhance our own loan management platform, combining expertise to drive innovation. In others, such as with our Lenvi Riskfactor solution, we serve as the expert provider, integrating with core platforms to deliver enhanced value to their clients. These alliances have enabled faster innovation, quicker time-to-market, and the ability to offer clients bespoke, high-value solutions that keep them ahead.

Lenvi recently partnered with Jack Henry™ to offer Lenvi Riskfactor through their FactorSoft™ solution, enhancing risk management, streamlining workflows, and reducing servicing costs to improve customer experience. Lenvi had already shared several clients with Jack Henry, and one longstanding Lenvi client shared the following about the impact of this collaboration:

“As a leading independent Accounts Receivable funder, leveraging Jack Henry for our core operating platform alongside Lenvi Riskfactor for our Portfolio monitoring and reporting tool has been a game changer. With Jack Henry powering our day-to-day processes and Lenvi’s Riskfactor risk management software, we’ve experienced unparalleled efficiency and insight into our operations. The seamless integration enables us to make rapid decisions, adapt to changes in client performance and optimise our lending strategies. Thanks to the integration of Lenvi Riskfactor with Jack Henry’s FactorSoft Solution, our lending operations are more streamlined and effective, allowing us to better serve our clients and help support their growth and businesses.”

Emma Hart, Sallyport

What makes a partnership work?

Not all collaborations succeed. At Lenvi, we focus on three core criteria to ensure value:

• Complementary products and services: The partner must offer something that enhances our solution, such as functionality in payments or advanced credit decisioning tools, or they must bring knowledge and expertise that keeps their product ahead of the market demands.
• Problem-solving: The partner should address common client challenges, such as managing arrears, improving underwriting accuracy, or adapting to regulatory shifts.
• Strategic alignment: The partnership must align with our core offerings and provide tangible value to the solutions we offer.

Successful partnerships go beyond complementary services and strategic goals — and are built on a foundation of trust and collaboration. Crucially, partnerships must start and remain a win-win for all involved, with each party understanding the benefits they bring and receive. This mutual understanding fosters long-term success, driving innovation and growth for all.

Driving innovation with collaboration

Partnerships have paved the way for some of the most exciting innovations in fintech.

Payments – partnerships have driven significant progress in payment solutions. Collaborating with industry leaders like Acquired, we’ve developed data-driven payment collection strategies that enhance client and customer experiences, increasing payment completion rates and reducing defaults. Lenders can now offer diverse payment options—such as card payments, open banking, and Google Pay.

AI - continues to be an emerging force in fintech, improve credit scoring, fraud detection, and underwriting with quicker decision-making and improved accuracy. At Lenvi, we utilise the AI-as-agent model through the introduction of our AI document identification tool that was developed through harnessing the capabilities of several custom applications of Microsoft Azure and OpenAI’s GPT-4. Though in its early stages, the tool has established an 80%+ success rate in identifying customers and the documents they attach, freeing up agents to focus on more value-adding activities such as case processing.

However, there’s still some way to go before AI sees widespread adoption, particularly due to concerns around regulation and the need for transparent decision-making processes.

Open banking – Open banking offers universal benefits to lenders, while also enhancing the customer experience by improving accuracy and providing a more streamlined, low-friction loan application process.

Integrating real-time financial insights, open banking enhances lending decisions, particularly for underserved customers, offering a more accurate risk assessment than traditional credit scores. For instance, through open banking transaction categorisations lenders can assess transaction-level data quickly and efficiently; offering a deeper understanding of spending habits, income stability, and financial commitments to support workflow prioritisation and credit decisioning.

The opportunity is clear. Yet, low public trust and weakened demand remain. To unlock the full potential of open banking — and for LMS providers like Lenvi to harness the full value of the data that open banking specialists provide — more needs to be done by the Government together with lenders and industry bodies to improve public sentiment toward open banking.  

Helping startups scale through partnerships

Partnerships provide a critical platform for new entrants, offering access to markets, credibility, and established infrastructures. Meaning they can scale quicker, overcome compliance challenges easily, and build relationships with larger institutions.

Take our partnership with Credit Canary, a fintech startup focused on helping lenders engage with customers before they fall into arrears; a critical challenge for many lenders. This collaboration helps lenders tackle this challenge by proactively anticipating arrears risk and engaging with customers through personalised strategies to reduce missed payments and increase collection rates. By working with us, Credit Canary was able to integrate its technology into our platform, allowing our clients to access its innovative solution.

Partnerships like this enable startups to gain the support they need to grow, while larger companies can introduce new, innovative solutions to their clients.

Challenges of managing a diverse partnership ecosystem

Managing a diverse portfolio of partners can present challenges such as integration issues, inconsistent service quality, and potential conflicts over intellectual property (IP). Maintaining a consistent client experience across partner-provided services requires a clear governance framework, while IP ownership must be clearly defined in co-developed solutions.

Successfully navigating these challenges requires strong relationship management, clear contractual agreements, and a shared commitment to delivering value to the client. But the reward? - a robust, innovative solution that evolves with the needs of the market.

Concluding thoughts

As fintech matures, partnerships are becoming even more critical, as companies become increasingly comfortable with realising that they can’t be best-in-breed for everything.

Instead, partnerships encourage healthy competition and ongoing innovation, as each partner is incentivised to push the boundaries of their own offering. The beauty of the ecosystem it creates is that it keeps companies focused on what they do best, while still allowing them to offer comprehensive solutions to their clients.

Whether you’re an established player or a startup, partnerships offer a reliable way to stay ahead.

Interested in learning more about how our partnership ecosystem can benefit your business? Contact us today to discover how we can help you innovate, scale, and succeed through the power of collaboration.