Bill Safran’s Vizolution secures funding from Finance Wales and Notion Capital

Vizolution has raised over £750,000 of funding from investors, including a £500,000 investment from Finance Wales. Finance Wales becomes a major investor in the business set up and run by Bill Safran, the former CEO of Trigold. The new funding will be used to launch the business into the UK financial services market.

Vizolution also received a further £100,000 investment from Notion Capital, a leading European venture capital firm that helped the company to become established, plus further investment from the Vizolution management team. Additional funding has also come from a Peter Birch, ex-CEO of Abbey National and a Harvard Business School angel investor, leaving the company completely debt free.

Vizolution has developed and successfully piloted its first product vScreen with some of the largest financial services companies in the UK. vScreen, which launches this week, is a patented screen sharing technology. In the pilot, vScreen was proven to increase sales by over 20% while improving customer satisfaction with over 90% positive responses in customer surveys.

vScreen enables call centre staff and advisers to remotely demonstrate mortgages, insurance or other protection products on the client’s computer, thereby providing a visual element to what would otherwise be a plain verbal call. It generates better customer engagement as the visual element enables the customer to achieve a level of understanding and confidence that they don’t usually manage on a call alone.

vScreen provides considerable help with compliance; it was designed to reduce risk and meet the complex compliance needs of the financial services market. All vScreen sessions are recorded, time stamped and dated and all documents shared during the session are encrypted. vScreen also enables electronic signatures and secure file delivery. To add to the secure element, the customer only sees what the agent, or call centre staff want to show them – the customer has no access to the presenter’s system and the presenter has no access to the customer’s computer.

Bill Safran, CEO of Vizolution says, “We are very pleased to welcome Finance Wales as an investor. This support from Finance Wales and Notion Capital is a mark of confidence that reflects the success of our pilots and the very real benefits that we add to our financial services customers. This funding enables us to launch into the financial services market and develop more products and features. Initially these are aimed at large banks and insurance companies, but our future development will enable us to make vScreen available to intermediaries and advisers.”

Dr Melanie Goward, Deputy Fund Manager in Finance Wales’ technology venture investments team said: “Vizolution’s latest vScreen screen sharing technology has real potential to help major companies improve their customer service levels. It is already being piloted by some large financial services companies and we wish Bill and his team well with vScreen’s launch in the financial services sector. Finance Wales’ investment provides Vizolution with the capital it needs to continue developing its technology as well as to implement its sales and marketing strategy.”

Chris Tottman from Notion Capital says, “Vizolution has proven its technology and its service with some of the largest financial services companies in the UK and we are extremely confident of its wider launch across the market. As one of the top European venture capitalists, specialising in B2B software as a service, we review a large number of investment proposals and Vizolution is a most compelling proposition and we believe they will achieve significant success and will change the way that companies interact with their customers.”