NatWest Ventures help fintech businesses adopt a responsible and sustainable approach to continuity and resilience with Software Escrow.
Escode, part of NCC Group and NatWest Ventures are helping fintech businesses to innovate and grow with a responsible and sustainable approach to continuity and resilience.
NatWest’s Ventures team incubates ideas and scales up new digital solutions to support business customers.
Celebrating digital innovation, the bank uses the latest technologies to create new solutions by bringing together dynamic ideas and a passion for exploring.
The technology supply chain that supports NatWest’s suite of new ventures can often be complex and varied – as much reliance can be placed on global software suppliers as niche, smaller operators, so understanding how to future proof any dependence is key to building long term success.
NatWest Ventures required a risk mitigation solution to complement and not constrain its innovation mission
"We aim to ensure we have a rapid pace of development, and at the same time as encouraging and supporting our new digital businesses to innovate and grow, we have a duty of care to ensure that we manage any risk responsibly.”
NCC Group has worked with NatWest Group for over 20 years, providing software resilience and continuity solutions for a range of the Group companies and services.
Escode’s Software Escrow solutions software resilience solutions assure the long-term availability of business critical software and applications for customers while protecting the intellectual property rights (IPR) of software suppliers. A Software Escrow Agreement ensures that software source code is held securely and independently with both the customer’s and software supplier’s agreement, ensuring that the material can be accessed and released if needed.
Working closely together, NatWest and Escode have created a responsible and sustainable approach to continuity and risk management for several of NatWest’s Ventures, including Tyl by NatWest, Esme Loans and Mettle.
To ensure a consistent approach across all business areas, NatWest Ventures and Escode worked together to identify all key software and technology partners used across the Group and categorised risk depending on usage and criticality.
Software Escrow Agreements have been implemented to cover all business critical applications, with regular software verification exercises added to the programme to ensure that should the need arise, the knowledge and guidance to manage and maintain or indeed recreate the application from the original source code is available.
Ongoing collaboration between NatWest Ventures, Escode and the software vendors ensures that regular deposits of code are taken at key development stages so that the latest version is always available.
"Being proactive and placing security and resilience at the start of any development means that we can confidently explore ideas and push boundaries, safe in the knowledge that we are managing any risk associated with our software supply chain responsibly."
With the implementation of well thought out and relevant, robust risk management and resilience programmes, the bank can ensure compliance with sector regulations without compromising on the innovation of their new offerings.
Andy Ellis, Head of NatWest Ventures said: “Being proactive and placing security and resilience at the start of any development means that we can confidently explore ideas and push boundaries, safe in the knowledge that we are managing any risk associated with our software supply chain responsibly.”
Andrew Lemonofides, Global Managing Director, Escode, part of NCC Group: “Financial services is a key sector for us, and we are proud to be working with NatWest Ventures, adding a layer of resilience as it brings exciting and groundbreaking ideas to market.”
To start your journey with the best in software escrow, or for more information on how Escode solutions can support your business continuity and reduce risk contact our team of experts.
