IAM1408 – CEO Innovates to Improve the Identification Verification in the Space

Victor is a FinTech innovator with more than 10 years of industry experience and is serving as the CEO of Shufti Pro, an award-winning AI-driven identity verification service provider. Victor Fredung has provided strategic directions for the growth of the company and its employees and has leveraged his services to improve IDV for the financial world.

• CEO Story: Having encountered a problem with the payment space cost. Victor co-founded his Fintech company specializing in Identification compliance. To make the customers, especially in Asia and Africa make the verification to a faster turnaround time. Operating globally, Victor’s company uses AI technology making them the leader in space identification.
• Business Service: Serving financial solutions like banks, forex companies, etc. When companies need to collect funds they always need KYC from their clients.
• Secret Sauce: Automated global verification provided in the space. Inhouse library of documents extracted from the data.
• CEO Hack: Taking power naps during the day. In between meetings have 15-20 minutes of naps to recharge.
• CEO Nugget: Don’t be afraid to fail. It gives us the most benefit as well. Trying, to evaluate what's really working for you.
• CEO Defined: It forces you to be with the most knowledge in the company. The person has the highest responsibility, understanding all the information to make a better decision.

Website: shuftipro.com

LinkedIn: Victor-Fredung , Shufti-pro

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00:24 – Intro

To learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs and CEO's without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share precisely the information you're searching for. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:51- Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Victor Fredung of Chef D Pro. Victor, it's great to have you on the show.

01:00 – Victor Fredung

Thank you for having me.

01:01 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, super excited to have you on as somebody has contributed to our site in the past. What I wanted to do, of course, is read a little bit more about Victor so you can hear about some of those awesome things that he's doing. And Victor is the CEO of Shufty Pro. He's a fintech innovator with more than ten years of industry experience and is serving as the CEO of Shufty Pro an award-winning AI-driven identity verification, service provider.

Victor has provided strategic directions for the growth of the company and its employees and has leveraged his services to improve IDV for the financial world. Victor, excited again to have you on the show, my friend. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:35 – Victor Fredung

Absolutely.

01:36 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's get started then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:44 – Victor Fredung

Perfect. So basically, our story began in 2017, to be precise. Prior to this, we've actually been both myself and another co-founder, who is also the CTO in the payment space. The cost is probably 15 years at the moment. Why we actually decided to create the company itself because we actually experienced the problem ourselves, which was the main reason we actually built the company. So what Shop Depro actually does is that we specialize in identity verification and compliance and just give the background story.

So when we were in the payment space, we operated different payment gateways. We actually saw the need to start verifying the customers. So we basically collect like it's usually called the KYC of the customers. The problem back then, and this is probably around 2012 to 2013, if I recall correctly, as well, the providers that were in the space were mainly focusing on the European market and perhaps the United States market to some extent as well. But it was still a very painful process from a customer's point of view as well. So if you had uploaded your, let's say, ID documents, you had done this selfie as well.

For the biometrics, you usually had to wait for at best a couple of hours, and in the worst case, after a couple of days time as well. So we immediately saw the problem with previous solutions in the market as well. Secondly, the other problem we also saw was that the solutions worked fairly well for the European and United States customers. But if we had customers coming from Asia or from some of the African countries or the Middle Eastern countries, there were always problems and the solutions didn't really work back then. So that was sort of like the idea that got us to create Shaft Pro as well. We always created it based on the idea that we wanted to give the customers the quickest and the most seamless verification you under is.

And secondly, we wanted it to be available globally as well. So as I mentioned, we created a company in 2017. We also built it based on artificial intelligence and machine learning as well, because the other competitors in the space, usually placed it under a manual review sort of thing as well. So once the customer had uploaded their id documents, you had one person, which was actually sitting in verifying the documents manually status.

While our CTO and other co-founders were like, he had tremendous experience when it came to working with artificial intelligence as well. So he actually thought to himself, what if I actually apply AI to do exactly what it is that a human is actually doing in this case? And that actually worked tremendously for us as well. Even when we built the company in the beginning as well, we'd already automated roughly 50% of the solution itself, and then it's just been a roller coaster from there as well. So flash forwarding to 2022, where at the moment, we are one of the leading providers in the space of identity verification. We help global clients, businesses, banks, and governments, to verify onboarded customers swiftly as well.

04:36 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Absolutely love that. I appreciate you kind of sharing that journey and the story as well. But one of the things that really kind of stuck out with me, in addition to it being quick and seamless, those are the words that you said, but also, too, you actually solved that problem you saw that there was a problem when you founded it. And I think so many times when we build organizations and businesses, sometimes we can lose sight of why we're doing what we're doing, and that's to solve a problem. So I love that. That sounds like that's the foundation of everything you've been building.

05:03- Victor Fredung

Yeah, definitely.

05:05 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So we went a little bit into how you serve your clients and how it works. Could you take us through a little bit more about that? And if you have what you like to call your secret sauce, what you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique.

05:17 – Victor Fredung

Absolutely. So when it comes to our clients, I would say that roughly 80% of the clients are financial solutions type of clients. So that includes banks, forex companies, gambling operators, and cryptocurrency clients as well. We do have some unique cases. We work with one of the world's biggest tax-free reclaimed providers in the space. Also, some governments are using it for different products as well. But the main thing for our clients is that if they're actually dealing with their customer's funds, they always need to collect the KYC from their customers as well. So those are our ideal clients as well when it comes to the secret sauce that we have.

So we are the world's first truly automated global verification provider in the space. So that's definitely one of our USP's within our solution. Some of the other things that also differentiate us is that a lot of providers in this space, when it comes to reading text from documents or extracting different information on the images or whatever it might be, usually rely on third-party providers. So when it comes to extracting text, which you usually refer to as OCR, a lot of companies are using Google to essentially extract this information.

What we did since the beginning of the days was that we actually wanted to develop everything in-house. Instead, we actually created our own library. When it comes to all the different documents that we verify, the same when it comes to the extraction of the data from the documents as well. And this has also helped us to be able to have one of the widest coverages supported in the space as well. Instead of listing the countries that we support, I usually tell all our clients as well. We support every country and every language available on any kind of document worldwide.

Another thing to highlight as well, when it comes to selecting differentiation between ourselves and some of the competitors, is that we quite early on as well, saw that different countries have different regulations and different regulations have different requirements. So if you are, for example, a cryptocurrency exchange located in Estonia versus in the United States. The regulations look different, so some of them might have differences like documents that you need to collect and verify.

Some of them want you to verify specific fields on the documents. And what this actually allowed us to do was to build what I call our configurable engine as well. So we actually allow our clients to decide which services they would like to use and the settings of the solutions themselves. That essentially helps us comply with different regulations worldwide as well.

07:39 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I imagine that especially from a client standpoint, there's probably a lot of work and manpower and women power you all have put into, understand all the regulations, understand what fits, what doesn't, and now it makes it easy for clients to just be able to, for lack of a better term, kind of plug and play, it sounds like.

07:58 – Victor Fredung

Exactly. And that's what we're aiming for as well. And what I know that some of our competitors are struggling with as well is that whenever they have this so like unique request, like we see some regulations which require like, let's say localized storage of the data as well, like they're usually struggling because then they need to customize their solution. So we actually fought one step ahead as well. What if I actually give the clients the configurable options in Stata?

08:21 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes sense. And I think we've seen it so often that things are moving towards the clients having the quote-unquote power control or being able to kind of create their own customized journey and experience. It sounds like you had the foresight, you all had a foresight in the very beginning to kind of build your own unique engine and build all those applications so that people will be able to make those decisions based on what they need.

08:45 – Victor Fredung

Exactly.

08:46 – Gresham Harkless

And let me ask you this. So one of the words that's kind of coming to my mind is when you mentioned being able to do it a lot quicker, you don't have the manual verification and things like that. Is the word scalable? It sounds like you're able to scale a lot, make a bigger impact, and serve on a global level like you said, largely because you had all those things in mind. It sounds like when you built.

09:07 – Victor Fredung

Yeah, that's absolutely true. So we always wanted to build a solution to be completely scalable as well, because even though we do serve like some startup companies in this space as well, which only processes, let's say 100 verifications annually as well, we still have on another side the super big enterprise clients which might actually process 10,000 verifications per minute in statum.

So that was something which we were always aiming for as well. And we already knew that from the beginning as well. If we want to offer the customers the quickest verification time, we can't have the reliance on human people actually verifying information because you can probably do the math like 10,000 verifications for 1 minute. It does require a lot of people to sit down and verify them if you want to beat the speed of verification as well.

09:53 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have. What's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:05 – Victor Fredung

Absolutely. I actually had a thought about this question as well. So what I can say from my side is that it's actually worked really well and it's actually based on fundamentals that one thing that we'll have in common is the hours that we have each day. Like we have 24 hours each day as well. If you want to get the most out of the day as well you need to compromise on the sleep that you're essentially getting as well. In my case, what I actually like to do during the day as well is that I like to work and then I also like to work out as well. So usually I spend like 1 hour at the gym every day as well.

That's also something that actually requires me to get more sleep as well. So I would say that the average sleeping cycle should be around eight to 9 hours per night if you want to get a good amount of sleep since I also want to spend time with my family as well. We just have a newborn back at the house as well. I need to make that compromise when it comes to sleep as well. So I usually only sleep for like 6 hours each night. And the thing that I've actually this is my hack is to take power naps during the day as well.

So that's the one thing which I try to do in between different meetings as well. I usually take like 15 to 20 minutes each day as well. And this completely recharges my batteries myself. So that's like the CEO hack that I can share from my end as well. I'm not sure if all the different workplaces actually allow this, but it's something which I've done wonders for myself.

11:24 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice, it might be something you would tell your favorite business client, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:37 – Victor Fredung

Yeah, so if I were to tell myself something like, if I'm looking back, let's say ten years as well, this is probably going to sound cliche, and I'm sure some other ones have said this before as well, but I would essentially be like, don't be afraid to fail as well, because this is such as something that gives us the most benefits from our point of view as well. I usually give examples, but if we have, let's say, new marketing chances forward in the team, let's say if we find three different ways for us to essentially obtain more customers as well, what we like to do within our organization is that we try all of them out as well, and then we evaluate the benefits or the downsides that all of them bring as well.

And this essentially helps us to find the best ways forward as well. Same when it comes to previous other stuff as well, like triple. I've had multiple different startups previously as well. Some of them have been successful, some of them have been not so successful, but, I wouldn't actually change a single thing of them as well because it has given me the experience for myself. And it's very easy for all those TikTokers and social media influencers as well, which are giving all the different devices as well. Same with people who are watching TV series or reading books as well. It can give you good advice as well. But if you don't actually try it yourself and see what works for you or what doesn't work for you, it's not a good experience, in my sense, at least.

12:57 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I would definitely agree with you there. And I think that, you know, actually trying it out and testing out, putting it out against the market sometimes allows us to test our hypotheses, our thoughts, our assumptions, just all of those things. And kind of the word that was, again, kind of coming to my mind is kind of alignment with everything you doing at Chef D Pro was building that engine. And I think we have our own engines that we're building. And when you're able to say, okay, this didn't work, that didn't work, it allows you to maybe have, quote-unquote failure, but it's really that knowledge that is built into your engine so that the next time and the time after that, and the time after that, you can do even bigger and better.

13:30 – Victor Fredung

Exactly.

13:31 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. So wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different, quote-unquote CEO's on the show. So, Victor, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:40 – Victor Fredung

Yeah, so being a CEO actually is, I would say more like a mindset for myself as well. You basically have the highest responsibility within any organization as well since. It basically forces me to be the person with the most knowledge within the company itself because of any questions, and I'm speaking now from both employees and from customers as well. Any questions, any complaints, or any legal issues, I'm always the person they're going to reach out to as well.

So I've gotten this question before as well, like what does my job actually include as well? And I usually consider myself being a jack of all trades as well. I know every bit and piece of the business itself, regardless of its marketing, which I don't have too much experience in previously as well. Whether it's sales, if it's design work on the website, or how I want to position our brand as well, I need to be the person who has all this knowledge so that I can make the decisions going forward as well. So, yeah, basically being a person with the highest responsibility, understanding all the information just so that we can make better decisions going forward. That's what the CEO means to me.

14:47 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love that last part especially that kind of brought everything together because I think it's not just knowing and being a quote-unquote jack of all trades or jane of all trades just for the sake of it. It's just so that you can understand the decisions that you're making. Because when you make a decision about marketing, understanding that it might affect HR, it might affect finance, it just, you start to see all those things. But the only way to do it is to have kind of the pulse of each of those aspects of the business.

15:12 – Victor Fredung

You explain it better than myself. That's exactly what I was trying to explain as well.

15:17 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, but you're doing so well. So that's, that's the important part is execution is always the most important thing. Like, like you said, so well, absolutely. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Victor, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

15:41 – Victor Fredung

Absolutely. So anybody that has any need for the solutions that we offer in the space, like feel free to contact well, and I'm sure one of my colleagues will give you a very helping hand as well and guide your decision going forward. If you would like to reach out to me personally, you can do so at Victor with cftpro.com. I might be a little bit slow in replying since I'm usually traveling all the time as well, but I'll try to do my best to get back to you in a very quick format as well.

16:07 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Ken Victor. To make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes. I appreciate your time again, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:14 – Victor Fredung

Thank you very much for having me.

16:16 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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