US HQ French fintech Tinubu grows by 50% in Maitland, names new COO

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Paris-based Tinubu, a financial technology business with a local footprint, has promoted Scott Edwards from surety product director to chief operating officer over its surety division, which is run out of its U.S. headquarters in Maitland serving businesses throughout the U.S. 

Edwards started out as a software developer and gained over 25 years of experience leading startup and enterprise SaaS organizations. Initially focused on technology for learning, he transitioned to strategic product direction when IBM acquired the company that employed him. Since then, he has specialized in digital products for regulated industries.

In his new role, Edwards will oversee client services, product and engineering departments.

Tinubu has had a U.S. office since 2020, where staff for the surety business has grown by 50% to 58 employees in the past four months, with more tech, consulting and management hires on the way.

Orlando Business Journal caught up with Edwards to learn more about Tinubu and why Orlando is the right place for the company to be:

What is surety, exactly?

It's a very niche business in the insurance sector. A surety bond guarantees the performance of a party such as a principal contractor on a government contract or construction job. If the contractor falls through, the surety company covers financial losses or provides another contractor. Our platform connects everyone in the surety ecosystem: principals, obligees, agents, brokers, carriers, reinsurers and regulators. The platform provides an automated underwriting system for insurance carriers to distribute digital surety bonds and bond processing software that makes executing and managing surety bonds faster and less expensive.

What were agents and carriers doing before Tinubu launched?

They were doing everything with homegrown systems, spreadsheets and pen and paper. We don’t have data from their previous homegrown systems to precisely measure the increased efficiencies that result from using the platform. The data doesn’t exist. But we do see the adoption rates.

Tinubu houses sensitive data. How do you keep it safe?

Cybersecurity has been a focus of ours for the last couple of years. Some of it is driven by our customers as we get into a higher tier that has higher security requirements. Some of it is our own self-audits and infrastructure reviews. Recently we’ve done red team penetration testing. Penetration testing means, “Can I break your system? Can I hack it?” So we have people doing phishing campaigns trying to get secure information out of employees, for example. We also have signed higher terms of service contracts with Microsoft for disaster recovery.

What is Tinubu doing with AI? 

Our objective is to try to automate as much as possible. When someone requests a bond, how quickly can we turn it around so they can get on with their day? We have an innovation lab in France that's focused on some of this. Their last project involved bringing blockchain into the mix. Smart contracts executed on a blockchain can recommend actions, which makes the process more efficient. Using AI makes it faster to review all the details that determine a surety bond, such as the various situations that could arise given the specifics of the transaction. There are several required elements in a surety bond — this is a highly regulated industry — and ultimately AI can help with a lot of it.

With more hiring on the way, can you talk about Orlando talent in the tech space?

Orlando is a destination and a respected tech hub. We’ve grown the company primarily with local talent. In the past four months, I’ve focused our recruiting efforts on local talent. I've been impressed. My standpoint is I want the best person for the job, local or remote, but so far, we’ve been fortunate to find everyone in Central Florida.

How did a French company end up with an Orlando office?

The surety business really took off in the U.S. in about 2000 and has grown since then. Rather than build an in-house solution, the founders of Tinubu eventually decided to buy existing companies. One of those acquisitions was known as eSurety although the business name was Focus on Innovation. They were in Casselberry, and that’s how we ended up in Florida. The Casselberry office had about 12 people at the time, and now we’ve moved to Maitland and the U.S. headquarters is here. The acquisition was right before the pandemic, which made the integration challenging, but we did it.

Tinubu

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