Enterprise, Trade and Investment Minister Arlene Foster today announced that London-based ieDigital is setting up a software engineering operation in Belfast, creating 50 highly skilled jobs.
Intelligent Environments provides mobile and online software to providers of financial services, such as retail banks, card providers and car finance companies.
Arlene Foster said: “Once again Northern Ireland has been chosen as the optimum location by an internationally successful IT company looking to expand. This is due to our cost-competitive, business-friendly environment, our pool of skilled IT graduates and professionals, and the support offered by Invest Northern Ireland.
“Intelligent Environments is a high growth company and, over the next three years, it aims to create a world-class software engineering team in Belfast serving digital financial services. The investment is creating up to 50 highly skilled jobs that will generate over £2.1million annually to the local economy. The company is also investing in training and this will introduce new technical skills into Northern Ireland.
“Intelligent Environments’ digital financial services platform is viewed as a leading technology in the industry and the company is a welcome addition to our growing ICT sector.”
Intelligent Environments Europe Ltd’s highly successful Interact® product provides a ‘front end’ to information systems enabling financial institutions to engage with their customers via any digital device such as PCs, laptops, tablets and mobile phones.
The key role of the new Belfast operation will be product development to deliver new software features for Interact®. The Belfast team will be working as an integral part of the UK team.
Invest NI has offered the company a £500,000 employment grant as well as training support of over £76,000 through its Skills Growth Programme. Seven of the new jobs are already in place.
David Webber, Intelligent Environments’ Managing Director, said: “Digital access is a necessity for financial services organisations and we believe we have the opportunity over the next few years to significantly grow our business globally. To do this we need additional software research and development resources, as continuous product development is crucial for the future of the company.
“We were first alerted to the benefits of locating in Northern Ireland by Invest NI’s London team and after comparing it to a number of other sites in the UK, Ireland, India and Europe we concluded that Belfast offers the best location for our new product development centre.”
Intelligent Environments is based in Kingston-upon-Thames and currently employs 115 people. Its customers include leading retail banks and supermarkets.
