About Kalgera

Kalgera, a London-based RegTech, is the first line of defence for financial institutions who want to actively support its most vulnerable customers. By helping the finance sector identify customer vulnerability through transactional data, Kalgera creates better outcomes for the customer and the financial institution itself.

We are committed to working with banks through several avenues to comply with the FCA's Consumer Duty Act. Kalgera’s state-of-the-art technology uses 11 parallel AI models to pinpoint vulnerability to financial abuse and low financial resilience with greater precision.

Our Story

Finding the pain point

Dr Dexter Penn noticed a considerable proportion of those he looked after with cognitive or mental health problems were not supported by financial institutions. The right technology and internal processes did not exist to identify financially vulnerable people and prioritise them for support.

Identifying those at risk of harm early on will be crucial in mitigating risk. Many institutions are spending considerable money on billboards and marketing to say they are 'there to help' those suffering financially, yet for many people, it is too little, too late. Furthermore, the shame, guilt and embarrassment of approaching the bank for help means that only a few people are coming forward to get the support they need. Compare this to a world where the bank identifies vulnerable customers first, makes contact with them and is compelled to resolve the issue proactively and adequately. It results in a win/win for everyone involved.

Ultimately, Kalgera’s mission is to support financial institutions to protect its vulnerable customers at lower compliance costs.

Dr Penn's experience is unique to those in fintech, as he is a doctor actively researching issues around financial vulnerability and sees NHS patients at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology. His expertise places him at the heart of the challenge daily with a full 360-degree view from a mission standpoint. Coupled with the team’s decades-long expertise in financial services, the business benefits from a strong human-led backbone/approach.

Our Values

At Kalgera, we believe that strong values are the backbone of our company, guiding us in every endeavor we undertake.

Being socially driven

As a for profit socially driven organisation, we are committed to leveraging our financial technology to make a positive impact on vulnerable customers and society as a whole.

Working with integrity

Working with unwavering integrity, we ensure transparency and trust in all our interactions, both within our team and with our valued partners and clients.

Having compassion

Our team embraces a culture of compassion, recognising the importance of empathy and understanding in our approach to supporting vulnerable customers and building meaningful relationships.

Our culture

Creating a culture embraces diversity and empowers innovation

At Kalgera, our culture fosters an environment of continuous learning, collaboration, and inclusivity, where every team member's unique perspectives are valued and celebrated.

"Working at Kalgera has been an inspiring journey. Our remote setup brings together a community of passionate individuals from different backgrounds, and our shared commitment to making a positive impact on vulnerable customers truly makes it a remarkable and fulfilling experience."

Sash Margrie Hunt

CPO at Kalgera

Meet our team

We are only as good as the people we work with.

Each person on the Kalgera team truly believes in the mission and importance of a platform that puts vulnerable people on a fairer financial playing field as the rest of the population.

Recognising the serious issues facing vulnerable people, Dr Dexter Penn, a doctor and UCL dementia researcher, brought together like-minded professionals working in finance and technology to build Kalgera.

Dr. Dexter Penn, an MD since 2010 with expertise in Elderly Care and Neurology, founded Kalgera in 2017. A UCL MSc holder and Royal College of Physicians member, he's driven to equip financial institutions with tools to shield the vulnerable from financial abuse.

Dr. Dexter Penn

CEO and Founder

Sash Margrie Hunt harnesses his experience - a unique blend of creativity and results-oriented leadership - into building innovative human-led products and championing customer-centric solutions.

Sash Margrie Hunt

CPO

As an ex-commercial banker and fintech evangelist, Helene Panzarino has a deep understanding of the forces, threats and opportunities reshaping the global financial industry. As an educator, she has developed world-leading programmes exploring these forces and the most innovative responses to them.

Helene Panzarino

FinTech Advisor

Stylianos Kampakis utilises his wealth of knowledge in health data-modelling, leveraging from his previous experience as a data scientist and statistician across multiple domains including deep learning, NLP, recommender systems, statistical modelling and research design.

Stylianos Kampakis

Data Scientist

Armen Avetisyan’s passion for leading agile teams that build customer-centric products, has enabled him to have a decade-long career designing, developing, and implementing various SaaS products and enterprise solutions across different domains.

Armen Avetisyan

Lead Engineer

John works across Kalgera’s marketing and business development functions, researching and briefing on sales strategy, writing copy and working on Kalgera’s whitepapers. He’s graduating from Northeastern University with an MSc in AI, working on adversarial approaches to deep learning text classification.

John Hahn

Growth Analyst

Richard Zirps’ career spans over 25 years where he has covered debt capital markets and fixed income origination. Having worked at Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and NWM, his clients include banks in the commercial and public sector, and insurance and special credit institutions.

Richard Zirps

Senior Advisor

Ivona Wolff has enjoyed a career spanning 20 years leading commercial, product, pricing and partnership development teams across card payments (issuing and acquiring), retail bank benchmarking, and loyalty services within large matrix organisations and small start-ups.

Ivona Wolff

Partnerships Advisor

Chris Kelsall is CEO of Tokamak Energy, previously serving as CFI, following his appointment to the Board of Directors in 2020. Chris has 30 years’ of international experience in leadership roles across commercial, financial, legal, operational and business transformation roles.

Chris Kelsall

Financial Advisor

Karen is a BBC-trained journalist, global markets analyst and nuclear technology correspondent. With her background in healthcare, she has also worked overseas in international development supporting resource-poor academic institutions and for humanitarian relief agencies.