19 Oct 2017 Spotlight on Agility Forex
This week’s Spotlight on Tech focuses on Agility Forex, a financial services company that provides you with a smarter, faster way to move your money around the world or between different accounts at the same bank. Learn more about their company culture and their special promotion for BC Tech members below.
Describe your company and your primary product(s) and/or service(s). Agility Forex is a fintech company that offers fully transparent currency pricing and international payments to all. Based in Vancouver, we’ve introduced a simpler, faster way for cross border or cross currency transfers with the best exchange rates, zero commission and no hidden charges no matter the size of the transaction. Since we started operations in 2015, we’ve made payments to over 50 different countries in amounts ranging from $1000s to millions, saving our customers a lot of money. Perhaps surprisingly, much of Agility’s business stays within Canada, simply moving money between customer accounts within the same bank branch and bypassing the bank’s egregious exchange rates.
How many employees currently work at your company? We’re pretty lean in terms of headcount currently numbering 8 but we are actively looking for new people.
Where are you located? We’re located right in the centre of downtown, on West Georgia opposite the Art Gallery (home to the one of the best café summer terraces around).
Describe the culture at your company. The ethos of our culture is all about the customer experience. At Agility Forex there is an organizational commitment to making life easier for our clients. If a client requests a new feature or a team member sees a better way of doing a task, because of our nimble approach and flat structure we can make that change very quickly. Our customers consistently rate us 5 stars on Trustpilot which bears testament that our ‘client first strategy’ is working. The hours can be erratic but when the work’s done we like to play and make the most of what Vancouver has to offer. Past examples include trying out new restaurants, bike tours of the craft breweries and a day up at Whistler on the slopes. We believe in continual learning and actively encourage our staff to take advantage of online courses to further their financial education with Agility picking up the cost.
What does your leadership team, and company as a whole, do to support/grow that culture? Our employees like our approach. We’re very flexible. As an example, we had one employee from Germany who went back this summer for 6 weeks and worked from there. Because of the way we operate we can make that work. Also there’s a real feeling of inclusion; everyone is involved in all aspects of the business so we’re always on the same page.
What is your company goal for the coming year? To make Agility Forex a name known across Canada and the go to site for international payments. To this end we will continually enhance our current offering and bring new products to market to make life even easier for our clients. For example we have just introduced same currency international payments, at a fraction of the cost that the banks charge.
Are you hiring? We currently have openings in a number of positions. We’re looking to add to our development team by hiring a dev/ops engineer and C# .NET programmer. On the client facing side, we are looking for a senior account manager to drive our penetration into the SME space and a digital marketing associate to work in strategic development and execution.
Who is the ideal employee for your company? As we are a young company about to enter a big year of scaling up, we are looking for energetic and passionate people who can take an idea and run with it. We offer a fun and flexible environment with exposure to every part of the business. The year ahead is going to be very exciting for Agility Forex. Please get in touch if you’d like to help make it happen. Agility Forex has teamed up with BC Tech to offer members a special promotion. We’re offering BC Tech members $150m of free transfers. No fees and transfers made at the interbank rate. A company with USD revenue and a CAD cost base can save tens of thousands of dollars versus using their bank! Check it out here.