Validis

The challenge

Validis needed to revitalise a brand identity that no longer matched the company’s trajectory. Founded in 2016, Validis had grown into the financial data platform of choice for major auditors, banks, and lenders – with clients including Deloitte, Grant Thornton, Barclays, Santander, and ABN AMRO, and strategic investment from both Citi and Barclays. Their platform connects to over 100 accounting systems via a single API, standardising granular financial data for audit, lending, and insurance workflows. But the existing visual identity was dated and out of step with the expectations of the institutional clients they serve.

This was a company whose technology saves auditors 8+ hours per engagement and reduces application and credit review time by 75% for commercial lenders. Over 90% of their customers are repeat users. The website needed to communicate that level of trust and capability to decision-makers at Big 4 firms, global banks, and specialist lenders – an audience that benchmarks everything against the platforms they already use from the likes of Thomson Reuters, Caseware, and nCino.

The approach

Freshly Brewed ran a Brand Discovery workshop with Validis’s senior leadership team, including CEO Michael Turner – formerly a Partner and Head of the London office at Oliver Wyman. From there, we conducted detailed market research, benchmarking Validis against industry peers and competitors across the financial data and audit technology landscape to establish the creative direction.

A series of mood boards, identity concepts, and mock-ups brought the new direction to life. This phase was highly collaborative, with multiple rounds of refinement to land on an identity that captured both Validis’s technical credibility and their forward-looking vision. The brand needed to work across multiple audiences: audit partners evaluating workflow integrations, lending heads assessing data standardisation platforms, and fintech CTOs exploring API partnerships.

With the brand identity finalised, we moved to the website. We developed a new sitemap aligned to Validis’s core objectives and calls to action – structured around their key verticals of audit, commercial lending, specialist lending, and M&A – then progressed through wireframing, UI/UX design, and into development of a custom WordPress site tailored to the company’s needs.

Before launch, we completed thorough technical checks: indexing, analytics integration, SEO tool configuration, and page speed optimisation. The launch was supported by a coordinated press release to maximise visibility. What began as a brand and website project has since evolved into a retained partnership in which Freshly Brewed manages Validis’s entire marketing function. This includes ongoing website development and content, product launch campaigns such as their Upload Functionality and Excel Add-in, LinkedIn and blog content, email marketing, sales enablement materials, and the communications strategy around their strategic investment from Citi and Barclays. Freshly Brewed operates as an embedded extension of the Validis team, with a dedicated weekly cadence and direct access to the senior leadership group.