Oyster Bay Systems is on a steep growth trajectory. Its client base has risen significantly (and internationally) and, as a consequence, it is aiming to recruit a number of new staff with a range of specialisms to match the corporate expansion.

In addition, it is expanding its South Wales base by adding a new branch in Cardiff to its existing headquarters in Swansea, UK.

Michael Breach, Oyster Bay’s managing director (pictured above) explained that the new office will be part of the current RBS Entrepreneurial Spark Accelerator plan for early-stage and growing ventures. “We will,” he said, “be using it as a launch pad for international expansion.”

Oyster Bay was formed in 1983 by Michael and Louise Breach and they were joined some four years ago by their son Martin who is currently the company’s sales and operations director.

Martin Breach (pictured below) told Asset Finance International: “My remit is to grow the business. The new Cardiff branch will bring us closer to a source of potential new staff and we aim to grow our base from a current 32 employees to around 45 in the next two months.”

With this aim in mind the company has taken on a full-time recruitment specialist, Joanna Llewelyn, and also a new head of software development, Nick Bennett (pictured below). Extra staff is to be sourced, not only for those with a technology expertise, but the right sort of people from the consumer and automotive finance sectors.

Quest for Thought Leaders

“We are looking for Thought Leaders with some experience of the finance industry, with a passion for the business and with a will to join us in growing the business. If they have any technology experience also, that would be a plus – but it’s not essential.”

Oyster Bay’s prime software product is, of course, Vienna, a powerful enterprise lending system that manages the entire lifecycle from point of sale through to end of term.

It provides a single platform that supports multiple products, portfolios, brands, currencies and languages. It is used by a diverse customer base, throughout the UK and mainland Europe, ranging from SME lenders to global finance companies and banks.

Michael Breach explained: “We service a wide range of sectors within the lending market including consumer and retail finance, motor and asset finance, wholesale stock finance – and we have recently launched a new extension to Vienna, called M1, that is specifically for the fleet leasing segment.”

“Vienna is scalable and can process contracts ranging from 15 to 450,000 live agreements. Our ideal client is probably a ‘Challenger’ lender – set up to be agile and with an ambition to compete with the large established organisations.”

Self funding

Martin Breach added: “We especially enjoy working with clients who say ‘we want to be different, design us a piece of software than can help us achieve this’”.

Recently Oyster Bay has secured a sizeable European deal for an asset finance and leasing organisation. The implementation is to be rolled out in five European countries by Q4 2016 and constitutes the company’s largest contract to date.

The recently-introduced M1 fleet leasing software is now ready for use in the market, having been developed in conjunction with a fleet lessor partner who had found official support for its legacy system to be non existent.

Oyster Bay, which is proudly and totally self-funding, is also in the process of growing its management team. Martin Breach stressed: “As a vibrant company with a new outlook, we are broadening our management skills in accounting, human resourcing, and a whole range of support expertise that is need to successfully run a company with international growth aspirations.”

Looking ahead, the directors are unanimous in their ambition for growth and the aim is to attract the attention of those finance companies that are serious about improving their software. “We will never lose sight of our goal of continually developing our software,” Martin said. “We will always provide true value for money and this, I believe, is displayed by our extremely high customer retention rate.”

Oyster Bay already has vast experience in developing and delivering bespoke functionality as part of the Vienna system.  The company’s culture is imbued with the knowledge that all lenders have unique requirements and that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work in today’s environment.