Pedram Tadayon leads Emric on its expansion road-map

Born in Teheran, Iran, Tadayon’s family moved to Sweden when he was only a child. He attended school in Stockholm and then went on to the city’s Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) where he studied mechanical engineering.

“A big attraction of working in Sweden,” he told Asset Finance International, “is the nearness to a range of car and aeroplane manufacturers. To a young man it seemed a ‘cool’ thing to be involved with the process of building cars and planes.”

Applied technology

But the reality turned out to be different. Notwithstanding gaining a Master’s degree he found that by moving into banking he could utilise his aptitude for engineering more profitably in the field of applied technology.

Consequently in 1999 he joined Postgirot Bank as a product manager (developing online electronic payments), but he soon moved on to American Express in 2001 where, over a four-and-a-half year period, he rose to the position of Head of Network Services Nordic. During this time he was responsible for introducing Recurring Billing from its US origins to the European area.

In 2005 he was approached by EnterCard a Scandinavian finance company that created smart payment and financing solutions. Appointed as IT & Operations director he was tasked to build a new operating environment and consolidate the current IT infrastructure.  

Achieving that, in August 2007 he moved on to Nets Group (Northern European Transaction Services) the Nordic provider of payments, cards and information services. Nets had more than 2000 employees working in five countries with the head office located in Copenhagen and local commercial centres based in Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki and Tallinn. 

The customers of Nets were banks, businesses, merchants and the public sector and as country manager Tadayon was initially tasked with setting up and developing the business in Sweden.

He found that the subsequent business building skills he developed here complemented his previously-earned IT knowledge. This gained him promotion as senior vice president, card sales, in 2010, and senior vice president, business expansion, in 2011. 

Mergers & acquisitions

In the latter post he was involved in merging the Nets Danish, Norwegian and Swedish business. Later he was also involved in the acquisition process of the Finnish payment processor Luottokunta.

In July 2013 Tadayon was headhunted to his current position by Emric.

Originally established in 1999 and named after its founder, Emric Ohman Jr, of the Swedish Ohman banking group, the company initially developed as a mortgage processing provider. He explained: “For example, Emric was the first company in Sweden to include housing evaluations, create connections to the National Land Survey and the UC credit information agency, and integrate automatic credit regulations and household budgets using one single system. Using smart automation the company reduced the time required to process a manually-processed mortgage from five hours to three minutes.” 

Having sold the mortgage business to Danske Bank in 2000 Emric moved on as the provider of software solutions and consultancy to a range of banks, credit companies and system partners.

Prior to Tadayon’s appointment Emric had acquired three other businesses and his first task was to successfully integrate these into the corporate whole. Although the specialisms of lending and leasing were new to him, he said: “I had been working with complex value chains on previous occasions, so moving into lending and leasing seemed a logical step.”

An excellent record

“At the same time I moved into a company which had both an excellent record in the lending and leasing sectors and a fantastic selection of engineers and software experts in the field.

“In addition, in 2009 Emric had acquired a competitor, Financial Systems AB, which meant that Emric now become the largest technology company with focus on lending and leasing in the Nordic region and gave us much leverage in the leasing industry.”

Tadayon also built his management team with “a number of people with experience of integrating businesses” and segregated the consultancy side of the company so that “it became a platform for selling and implementing our own products”.

As a result Emric has an international business with more leasing clients than ever.

Looking forward Tadayon said: “There is currently a large movement amongst banks and larger lenders to upgrade their systems – a move which has been neglected during the recession but one that is being driven by the needs of increased compliance and regulation. Our challenge is to position ourselves to be able to take maximum advantage of the changes that are happening. 

“We are now seeing in the asset finance sector generally strong growth – comparable in fact to pre-recession levels.”

So what is Emric’s differentiator at this time of opportunity?

“I would describe us as being multi-local,” he stressed. “In a global world it’s becoming more and more important to be local. Being multi-local usually comes with additional cost, paper work, increased time-to-market and complex reporting. This is something, however, that we at Emric have been working hard to eliminate. Our product ProFinance has industry-unique capabilities to streamline for multinational asset finance companies – enabling them to act and grow in local market on local terms.”

Tadayon further describes multi-local asset finance as one that offers clients the ability to apply and adjust their leasing offering to their local requirements without compromising on their global standards. 

“ProFinance,” he explained, “enables local currency, language, asset, sales channel, reporting standards, business segments (multiple asset types from small to big tickets) and financial products without compromising on global and local deployment.” 

He added: “Any global asset finance company with subsidiaries around the globe and using our multi-local solution will be able to maximize working capital for the entire group, keep international trade risks to a minimum and minimize the effects of different payment terms in international sales.

“At the same time they will reduce time-to-market when expanding in to new countries, and find the harmonized process will enable the centralization of key process from contract administration, accounts receivable and accounts payable.

“In addition ProFinance has seamless integration capabilities to SAP, Oracle and other leading ERP systems.”

He stressed: “Emric has a great culture and record of delivering larger implementations – and we have never failed to deliver a project. Often implementations become something of a moving feast as client’s requirements evolve and change. That is where our consultancy expertise assists strongly – in helping clients to ‘build’ as they go along.”

A principal leasing customer is Deutsche Leasing – Germany’s largest asset lessor. Deutsche Leasing and Emric started their partnership in 2007 and currently the lessor is active with Emric in Nordic countries with focus on B2B assets such as construction, tooling and printing machines.

Göran Carlsson managing director at Deutsche Leasing Sweden explained: “No cars, no IT products and no office machinery. Our niche is equipment leasing where we work closely with German manufacturers offering both quality machines and good financing when the customer comes knocking.  

“This model is often appreciated by customers who feel secure in a ‘One Stop Shop’ where they get the desired product and advantageous financing at the same time.”

Meanwhile Tadayon faces the future with optimism and confidence. “The time has come to raise our profile in the marketplace,” he said. “We are investing heavily in our products and have a very clear road map of where we are going.”

However there is almost certainly no need for him to raise his profile at home where he and his wife are fully engaged with their two five- and seven-year old sons. Tadayon keeps himself fit and there was a time when he played volleyball in Sweden’s national league – but family and work commitments now limit this exercise to beach volleyball although he still finds time to run and work out at the gym.