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Downing: a Story of Success from an Investment Management Platform

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5 min read

The Downing investment platform is one of the most exciting projects DashDevs completed. At the time, it was a real challenge, and once we launched it, we’ve seen how good the results came out. Projects of this kind always motivate, bringing collateral value to our work as we see how our customers succeed with the platform.

So, this is a story of Downing from A to Z, how we started working on it and what this project achieved. Without further ado, let’s figure out what Downing’s investment management platform is first of all.

What is Downing

Downing is a dynamic and innovative investment management platform focusing on sustainable and impactful sectors such as renewable energy, infrastructure, property, and healthcare. Founded in 1986, the company has established itself as a prominent player in the financial industry, providing exceptional investment opportunities.

Downing is committed to driving positive change and has attracted a vast community of more than 25,000 investors who share the company’s vision of creating a more sustainable future. Through their investments, Downing has successfully raised an impressive £1.9 billion in assets under management.

As a testament to their dedication to sustainable practices, Downing is a certified B Corporation. This prestigious certification highlights the company’s commitment to meeting rigorous social and environmental performance standards, transparency, and accountability. By integrating their financial expertise with a sustainable and ethical approach, Downing strives to maximise financial returns for investors and positive societal impact.

Downing’s extensive experience, strategic vision, and unwavering commitment to sustainability make them a trusted partner for investors seeking financial returns and positive societal impact. The company’s diverse portfolio continues to pave the way for a greener, more resilient, and socially responsible future.

Visual represantation of Downing

Initial Customer Request

This software development project began with our expert guidance and support in selecting a modern architecture that would enable the seamless future expansion of Downing. They are successful as a business and have exceeded expectations in the fintech market since the previous century, so ensuring high quality, quick, and efficient migration from outdated architecture was imperative. Our concept prioritised user-friendly functionality while ensuring scalability to accommodate the evolving requirements of our client.

Apart from this initial request, we defined the scope of functionality for this renewed platform that catered to the target audience’s specific needsю. This scope was marked out by thoughtful market and competitor analysis and helped our client to achieve a higher customer retention rate.

To meet the stringent security standards of the financial industry, we conducted comprehensive market research. We diligently assessed the benefits and drawbacks from multiple perspectives, including business, technical, compliance, and security. Overcoming the challenge of integrating numerous components, we proposed a flexible architecture, leveraging optimal vendors, to deliver a stable solution.

Challenges We’ve Encountered in This Investment Management Platform Development

In our development journey, we faced some challenges that, whilst complex, never led us to a dead end. The ability to face and overcome challenges is honed as a skill, so let me share our experiences on how we fought them. No one is secured from obstacles; these are the most ponderable bottlenecks we’ve faced.

  1. Outdated and insufficient architecture: The existing system required a complete overhaul to meet the evolving needs of the business and ensure optimal performance. We needed to keep all the crucial data, and since the company’s presence on the market is quite lengthy, transferring vast amounts of data was challenging.
  2. The inability of the existing solution to scale with business growth: Previous platform needed to provide our customer with the desired scalability. So, we designed a new one to accommodate increasing data volumes and expanding user bases, allowing the business to scale the software as its customer base expands seamlessly.
  3. Shortage of in-house domain expertise and high technical debt: These factors can pose hurdles in implementing necessary upgrades and improvements. Our customer acquired the proper knowledge among DashDevs specialists to overcome this challenge. As a technical partner, we were able to help with compliances and post-release management and provide overall consultation when needed.
  4. Stringent security standards: Compliance with strict security standards applicable to the financial industry is paramount. So, we implemented robust security measures to protect sensitive financial data and mitigate potential risks. Among those measures were real-time transaction tracking, KYC, AML, and a secure customer authorisation system. Having a vast experience in vendor integration, we could evaluate fraud risk preemptively and thus enable the end customers to feel safe while using the Downing app.

Addressing these challenges required careful planning, strategic decision-making, and collaboration between domain experts and technical teams. By tackling these obstacles head-on, we’ve developed an investment management platform that delivers robust performance, scalability, and security.

What We’ve Achieved and How Long It Took Us

Twelve months it took us to develop a turnkey solution for Downing company. The investment management platform we’ve developed is pumped up with cutting-edge technologies, which allows them to gain efficient data structure.

This platform is capable of account management, real-time updates, investment monitoring, investment portfolio analysis, and optimised automatic investment plans. We’ve implemented an eWallet into the platform and integrated Downing with various payment systems to ensure comfort for the end customer.

This solution established a successful, mutually beneficial partnership for Downing and us. We’ve worked together for over three years and managed to release new features and mandatory updates, all with careful post-release maintenance and support.

Customer’s Current Results

So, after the Downing investment management platform was released, we kept a close eye on our customer’s successes. And here is the intel that we picked out:

  1. The platform doubled its annual revenue. The development itself was very budget-friendly and held an excellent cost-to-quality ratio. Upon the release, Downing’s revenue increased from £1.8M to £3.6M in just a year.
  2. This technical solution, due to its seamless integration and workflow, managed to help our customer raise nearly £13M in funds.
  3. The bottlenecks we removed helped Downing get better customer retention. Overall, their user base increased to 25K users due to the new data handling model.

Conclusion

Some projects are so significant and life-changing that saying goodbye is hard. Downing was precisely this.

Back in its time, it inspired confidence in us as it was one of the first turnkey large-scale projects our team worked on.

We loved everything about it, from the smooth processes we established to the crucial features we implemented. Seamless, efficient, and secure, Downing is one of the best investment management platforms in the fintech market.

They are widely renowned for their ability to simplify and break down complex processes in investing, making it understandable for everyone.

However, we have even more compelling cases on our sleeve, so brace up and stay tuned for updates!

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