ING to launch analytics tool Katana as new fintech company
ING Group is spinning out its analytics tool Katana into a standalone company set to be based in London.
Katana was released in 2017 for the buy-side market
The bank will be providing a £1.5 million scale-up loan as part of a £3 million funding round, and aims to sell a majority stake in Katana to third-party investors.
Katana was developed and rolled out in 2017 by ING’s financial markets global credit trading team in London and the bank’s wholesale banking advanced analytics team.
In 2018 the bank released Katana Lens, which it claimed was an improved version of the trading analytics tool.
Developed by the buy-side of the bond market, Katana Lens uses an algorithm that learns from the history of “hundreds of thousands of trades” and identifies “the most promising ones”.
“In the past few years, Katana has managed to grow from an internal innovation project to a serious value proposition for bond investors,” says Annerie Vreugdenhil, head of innovation at ING wholesale banking.
“We attracted major clients who see the added value of this super smart AI-tool.”
Santiago Braje, CEO of Katana and former head of credit trading at ING, says that a growing number of the bank’s clients are discovering “the advantages of using advanced analytics in decision-making”.
“Supported by ING Labs, we developed, tested and validated the technology,” he adds. “Now it’s time to move to the next phase as an independent fintech.”
