Consultancy firms BDO Belgium, Van Havermaet and Vandelanotte start their own fintech company
AI-GUST will be the largest financial data pond in the country for advice based on artificial intelligence.
We have some great news for you. Today we can announce the foundation of a brand new and ambitious fintech company that we are proud to be part of. It’s called AI-GUST. We are doing this together with our sector peers BDO Belgium and Vandelanotte.
The new Belgian AI player aggregates data from all possible existing accounting software packages and other sources and uses artificial intelligence to automatically formulate financial advice, trends and benchmarks for the business world. AI-GUST, which will operate from the university city of Leuven, will hire a dozen computer scientists, data engineers, front-end developers and software engineers in the coming year.
In 2022, financial data processing and accounting is often already performed digitally. But the data is usually spread across different software packages and other systems. In addition, financial and accounting data is still rarely used as a basis for interesting insights into business operations or trends to make companies stronger for the future to come. AI-GUST will provide an answer to these problems. For example, the AI platform will be able to quickly calculate the impact of a new law or European rule on a company’s compliance management or find out if a company’s costs, such as energy for example, are in line with players in the same sector. AI-GUST thus makes the job of accountant more attractive.
“We are developing a new platform that bundles all possible accounting software packages and other sources such as wage data, detailed sales figures, energy consumption or customer data, and intelligent algorithms that can automatically detect trends from the large pool of financial data, formulate recommendations or make comparative studies for a sector or between sectors. This will free up more time for accountants to give better and personal advice.”
Tim Bottelbergs, CEO of AI-GUST
Standardising financial data management and mining it with AI
Companies that will use AI-GUST’s SaaS software are buying more than a software licence. They will be part of a larger community. The more accountants, software suppliers and financial experts join, the better the AI platform performs. That is why the heavyweights in financial services, BDO Belgium, Van Havermaet and Vandelanotte, decided to start AI-GUST together. The three partners are also open to allowing additional players to join. There is no danger of competition: shared data is anonymised and stored securely in the data warehouse.
AI-GUST has no intention of rebuilding existing fintech applications itself, even though the company has the expertise to do so. The fintech venture of BDO, Van Havermaet and Vandelanotte integrates them and offers them digitally in a neutral, independent way in an ever-growing ecosystem.
Leuven as a base for attracting talent
The registered office of AI-Gust will be in Leuven. Not coincidentally, because this way the company can take advantage of the presence of the university to attract computer scientists, data engineers, front-end developers and software engineers. Within the year AI-GUST counts on a dozen employees.
More information on the operation and applications of AI-GUST can be found on our website: www.ai-gust.io.
This step confirms that Van Havermaet is an innovative player in the market. We look to the future with confidence and are convinced that with this project, which will provide a wealth of information, we can assist you even better.