Anachron - Building an Embedded Finance Platform

Product Manager

Low-Code/No-Code

UI Designer

Bubble

Figma

FlutterFlow

Anachron Technologies

Anachron Overview

In 2018, I was working as an investment advisor at a private bank in Lebanon. I quit my job to start my Fintech startup, Anachron. I wanted to build a platform that allows banks and financial institutions to launch products that help people invest and save easily. We raised three rounds of funding, acquired clients in Jordan, Mauritius, UAE, France, and London. We built and launched 3 main products: Roboadvisory APIs and app, Financial Planning APIs, and an AI Chatbot Builder. Let's dive in.

Note: All products mentioned below have been discontinued and are no longer available online. Screenshots and video links can be found at the end.

Title & Role:

CEO & Founder. We were a team of 6 people: CTO, Lead Developer, Junior No Code Developer, QA Tester, UX/UI Designer, and myself. I led the development of the No Code tech stack, taught and supported our junior developer on multiple no code platforms. I was also managing Product, Marketing, Sales, and Fundraising while overseeing design and working on a daily basis with our backend developers.

Problem Statement:

Every day users especially in the Middle East did not have access to affordable financial advisory. Most providers target high net worth individuals and do not have the capability to build technology in-house to make the B2C model feasible. The industry is also highly regulated requiring a license in every jurisdiction to operate from. A lot of money is left on the table because Fintechs with huge amount of users shy away from launching regulated products due to the cost and effort needed to maintain compliance.

Solution Overview

We wanted to build a tech platform that allows any company to launch regulated products without going through regulation themselves. The idea was we integrate with a licensed financial institution, help them launch their product, and then integrate that product as a white labeled solution into other Fintech products. All the infrastructure and heavy lifting from a compliance perspective will be done by the financial institution, all the tech heavy lifting is done by us, and the Fintechs can focus on user acquisition and expansion. Having licensed partners in multiple jurisdiction also meant that our clients in one country, can seamlessly launch new products in new countries without regulatory approval. If you'd like to read more about the business side of things and why we shut down, you can read my article here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/anachron-shutting-down-wael-khattar-vqvtf/

If you're interested in the product itself, continue reading.

Roboadvisory Features:

Risk Profiling Questionnaire. Our clients could build their own risk profiling logic and scoring system. They could set their own rules and triggers for alerts and notifications whenever the rules are triggered.

Asset Allocation. Portfolios are created automatically based on Portfolio Templates and rules set by the client.

Portfolio Recommendation: Our systems automatically match the right risk profile with the suitable portfolio with clear verifications.

Account Opening / KYC: The actual account opening will happen on our clients' side but through our frontend. We built however a simulated environment for our clients on Bubble which allowed us to simulate the whole experience.

Deposit / Withdrawal: We integrated with Alpaca for Brokerage related services on our Demo account. On live this would be handled by our clients' brokerage partner or through internal processes.

Portfolio Rebalance: All portfolios are continuously monitored and trigger rebalance alerts for users. Through one click, our APIs would calculate how much shares to buy and sell to meet your goals which are transferred to the brokerage for execution.

Blogs & Articles: Our clients could create and distribute their own content through the app.

We've built the Demo version of the app on Bubble, and the production version using Flutterflow with a simulated Middleware on Bubble. Our APIs built on Python handled the backend.

The client also had access to a dashboard that allowed them to manage their Roboadvisory & Financial Planning users with strict permissions and data access. Anachron never stored any personally identifiable information about the end-users.

Financial Planning Features:

Family-Oriented planning: You can build a family profile with segregated income, expenses, etc... and plan your future in a wholistic approach.

Location-based planning: All forecasts are done based on the location of the user allowing our clients to localize the experience and provide a better service

Financial Forecasts can be generated on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis using our APIs.

Our Financial Forecasts can be generated using labels/tags allowing the client to generate any chart based on their provided data

We also built some plugins and APIs that make the integration into Bubble much easier

We also built the first version of the frontend for our first Financial Planning client on Bubble (www.livada.app)

Lightning Chat Features:

Build your own customized chatbot using ChatGPT as an LLM

Upload your own files as a long term memory for your GPT

Integrate your ChatGPT seamlessly into your website using our chat popup or web banner

Fully customize your chat experience (Colors, Design, etc...) all through the platform itself

Set introductory messages when a user first opens a new conversation

Set suggested questions that help the users navigate the chatbot

Timeline

The first version of the company was built in Lebanon between 2018 and 2019. The economic crisis in Lebanon at 2019 meant we had to shut down as the local currency deteriorated massively in a short period of time and banks would not allow the withdrawal of any money in the bank. I restarted the company with a new team, investors, and technology in 2021. We shut down in September 2023. Roboadvisory & Financial Planning were built first and along the way. Lightning Chat was built in the last 3 months of Anachron's life as a last chance to generate some revenue. We also built several small MVPs/Internal Tools along the way such as a Chrome Trading Extension built on Bubble, Social Media Planning tool, Data Room for our investors, etc...

Design Process

We had an internal UX/UI designer at Anachron with whom I worked closely to make sure the designs met our requirements and that of our clients and regulators.

Development Approach

We took different development approaches as the company grew. At first we built a frontend with a simulated backend to show to customers. Throughout this period we started building the backend as we knew that it's a massive project considering the regulatory requirements as well. After acquiring our first customer the second phase started where building fast is no longer an option. We implemented strict QA processes and worked closely with the developers on a daily basis to make sure that the build meets the strict requirements of our clients and function properly giving correct advice consistently. We onboarded a dedicated QA tester after 18 months when we started getting close to deploying our software to live users. Our tech stack was diversified, using the best tool for the job. All core functionalities were built using Python or .Net and all frontend was built using No Code tools like Bubble, Flutterflow, and Webflow.

Performance, Documentation, and Maintenance

Everything we built was well-documented. We had fully documented 100+ APIs, every task was well documented and explained, all code and "no code" was clean and well documented. It made it easy for a team of 6 to work interchangeably on products with little reliance on each other. Everyone worked remotely at their own time. at some point we had 10h+ time zone different between our designer and our development team. It did not decrease productivity. Our software was also heavily tested to make sure that we can handle traffic coming in from major financial institutions and easily scale our systems.

Impact & Results

We raised 3 rounds of funding from angel investors and European institutional funds.

We acquired clients in Jordan, Dubai, London, Mauritius, and France.

Won multiple awards and competitions

Joined multiple startup programs in Saudi, Estonia, Romania, and Taiwan attending 150+ workshops personally on various topics related to startup building and product development/design.