Being a woman entrepreneur in the fintech industry

To celebrate International Women's Day 2022, we met with Lynne Darcey Quigley, founder and CEO at Scottish fintech Know-it.

Lynne, when did you decide to become an entrepreneur and why?

From a young age I knew I wanted to run my own business.

I’ve always been hardworking and was a skilled credit management consultant so understood that I could build something great by helping businesses in need of recovering unpaid invoices and increasing their cashflow.

I founded Darcey Quigley & Co in 2007 offering commercial debt recovery and sales ledger management that has grown to be one of the UK’s leading commercial debt recovery specialists.

What led you to launch Know-it?

Working in the credit industry for over 25 years and running one of the UK’s leading commercial debt recovery specialists for 15 years I seen businesses make the same credit management mistakes time and time again.

The businesses I help day to day could avoid the need to use a debt recovery partner if they had implemented a robust credit control process. However, there’s a perceived barrier to this, mainly time and cost.

But the problem of late payments is massive, SMEs in the UK are currently chasing £61 billion in late payments, an increase of 22% since 2020!

Realising the size of the issue with late payments I founded Know-it to give business owners a complete automated end-to-end credit management process that is cost effective. Our automation will save businesses valuable time and help them get paid quicker and boost their cashflow.

How will Know-it help businesses avoid problems associated with late payments and improve their cashflow?”

Know-it provides businesses with all the tools and intelligence needed for a watertight credit control process all in one easy to use platform. Know-it brings together the 3 key elements of the credit control process, we like to call the 3 C’s, Check- it, Chase-it, Collect-it.

Check-it gives businesses the facility to credit check and automatically monitor companies from across the UK with real-time data from independent and reliable sources in just one click. This intelligence will allow businesses to make more informed credit decisions and mitigate credit risk.

Chase-it automatically chases unpaid invoices when they’re due through email, letter and SMS. Our smart integration with leading accountancy packages means Chase-it knows which invoices are due when and how much is owed.

Collect-it offers a much needed safety net by providing the services of leading commercial debt recovery specialists Darcey Quigley & Co to Know-it users with problematic late payers.

What is it like to be a woman entrepreneur in the fintech industry?

It’s been fantastic so far! The Scottish fintech community is so vibrant I feel women are very well represented.

I feel very supported in the Scottish fintech space. Schemes such as AccelerateHER and Business Women Scotland are helping female entrepreneurs thrive.

Do you feel like investors, potential clients or other stakeholders approach female entrepreneurs differently?

No, it’s never been something I’ve experienced during my fintech journey so far, certainly not with potential clients, partners or other stakeholders.

We’re just getting started with our big push for investment but so far I haven’t experienced any feelings of being treated differently so far.

According to you, what should be done to ensure more gender diversity in tech?

I believe there’s a lack of awareness of the variety of careers available to women within the IT industry.

It’s not just about coding. There are so many other exciting jobs in the tech sector such as Project Management, Business Analysis, Solutions Architects, as well as a myriad of roles in supporting business functions. We are in tech and big advocates for our industry, so we need to educate girls and women to the variety of careers now available to them.

What does the future look like for Know-it? Any exciting developments you can share with us?

Having launched our beta late last year we have aggressive growth plans for 2022.

We’re actively seeking investment now to help us fund these plans.

Our goal is to make Know-it the best credit management platform possible so we’re taking feedback from our users onboard and are always developing our product to meet the needs of our users.