Magazine

Bitcoin; yea or nay?

Blockchain
Investment
Crypto
Opinion
2021-02-01

Bitcoin. Most people either hate it or love it. In the article, VI Company dives into the worldwide phenomenon that is Bitcoin. What is it? What are its pros and cons? And what will the future bring?

Founder

Fundamental research into low-code pt. 2

low-code
Process
innovation
research
2021-01-26

In this second part, I will continue to explain how we were able to gather information about each of our selected technologies in a comparable way. I will also explain more about the rapid prototyping we undertook and the results of the experiment. So, without further ado, let us continue where we left off!

Backend
Solution Engineer

Fundamental research into low-code pt. 1

low-code
Process
innovation
research
2021-01-14

Ongoing attempts to drive innovation in the financial markets have been undertaken both within and outside of VI Company. In this article, I share the details of our fundamental research into low-code. I'll provide you with insights into our approach, experiences, and the final results.

Backend
Solution Engineer

How to model Business Logic using Configuration

Development
Data
Process
2020-11-26

Representing a business’ domain in code is a common task for developers everywhere. Often the same approach is chosen: code everything. But what could be an alternative method to structure the technical side of things?

Backend

Why we built our very own virtual kudo card creator

Culture
Design
People
Projects
2020-11-12

At VI Company we foster a culture in which we take time and effort to recognize each other’s contributions and successes. On some occasions, it’s as simple as a face-to-face ‘thank you’ from one colleague to another. On other occasions, we write each other a ‘kudo card’. But what if that is no longer possible because of a pandemic?

Design
Art Director

How can we bring innovation and digital transformation to financial markets?

Development
innovation
low-code
2020-10-29

The world around us is constantly changing. Like any other healthy business that operates in the financial markets, we strive to keep up with the needs and desires of our clients. This motivates us to think about the products and services we offer, and the technologies we use. Our business development and operational teams do so by evaluating our existing products and services, while our innovation lab does so by experimenting with new technology.

Backend
Solution Engineer

How to reduce technical debt and avoid technical bankruptcy

Technical debt
Development
2020-10-23

Technical debt is like taking out a loan. But instead of money, you take a loan on quality. You choose an easy solution to rush things out of the door. Maybe because you want to get some real-world experience with a solution first, or maybe you are faced with a deadline. If you do not take the time to repay your technical debt, you eventually reach technical bankruptcy.

Alexander van Veelen

Backend

7 reasons why we love VI Company's culture

Culture
People
Organization
VI Company
2020-10-01

What is “it” that makes VI Company’s culture so beloved amongst colleagues? Check out our 7 reasons why we love our company’s culture!

Design
Art Director

Low-code, high-impact: From scratch to version 1.0 in two weeks.

Development
innovation
low-code
2020-09-03

Low-code, high-impact: From scratch to version 1.0 in two weeks.

Sjors Spoorendonk

Frontend

Working with FluentMigrator

FluentMigrator
Development
Database
2020-07-07

Why would you use FluentMigrator? Is it any good? Can it be used for your project? Read all about it, and learn from Casper Broeren's experiences!

Backend

A bar chart, how hard can it be?

Data visualization
Design
Development
2020-06-23

At VI, we deal with data visualizations a lot. A while back, when a client asked us to visualize some percentages, we said: sure! As always, we brainstormed about what kind of chart would make the most sense. We discussed a few options and eventually settled on a bar chart. This article describes how a chart perceived as very simple turned out to be far more complex.

Frontend

Quarantine Insights

Organization
People
2020-06-02

What was once a sudden societal upheaval that radically changed the way we work and interact, remote working is nowadays part of our daily routine. But how has this change affected our company’s culture and people? In order to find answers, we sent a survey to our colleagues. Their responses confirmed some of our initial assumptions, but others were swept off the table.

Design
Art Director

In layman's terms: ISO & ISAE

ISO
ISAE
Security
Organization
2020-04-17

Most of us understand ISO and ISAE are important. Yet, many of us have difficulty explaining why these things are important. To help you get a better understanding of these things we sat down for an interview with our Security Officer Roland van der Geer and asked him to explain it to us in layman's terms.

Design
Art Director

Why no-code-platforms are no-guaranteed-win solutions

#development
2020-01-10

Recently trends like no-code or low-code are coming into being. Slogans such as "Develop applications rapidly and intuitively through visual modeling" and "Making it surprisingly easy, fast, fun and impactful." As much as I like to see people taking part in the software building endeavor, I don't think that this trend is a guaranteed win solution. What is so alluring to no-code? Well, I think people have this misconception the only thing developers do, is generating code. By solving the code part, we can save time, money and frustration.

Backend

Why VI Company works with two environmentally-friendly data centers

2019-11-27

In today's world, sustainability is increasingly important. At VI Company, we want to contribute our bit to the environment, as we have always cared about it a lot. Therefore, we've worked hard to ensure our office is sustainable.

Founder

Quote experiment: VI Company's quest for a faster solution

Database
Development
2019-09-23

Time-series data requires an adequate database that remains fast, even when requesting information about multiple years. To meet our clients' needs in this regard, we embarked on a quote experiment to select a better, faster solution.

Backend

VI Company's retrospective: looking back to double down on improvement!

2019-09-04

What's the use of sitting down as a team to look back on every two-week sprint? Allow us to elaborate how you can benefit from our retrospective.

Kirsten Groenendijk

CFA®-fundamentals
Project lead

Keep the rhythm going: how VI Company 'oils the machine!'

2019-08-21

How we make sure VI Company remains a well-oiled machine? Simple: we've adopted a system called EOS. What is it and how do we use it?

Founder
CFA®-fundamentals
Management Team

New hardware for our hosting services: only the best is good enough!

Hosting
2019-08-05

VI Company invested in new hardware. What does this mean for you? And is on premise better than the cloud? Absolutely. Especially in this branch!

System administrator

Mastering the subtle art of unit testing

Development
2019-07-31

Accompanying your code with proper unit tests has numerous benefits. It provides protection against regression, provides documentation, and helps you to write better code. If you want to take full advantage of these benefits you need to have high-quality unit tests. This article tries to provide rules and guidelines which can help you to write better unit tests and eventually, better software.

Alexander van Veelen

Backend

Operations and Sales: how VI Company tackles the eternal 'epic battle!'

Process
2019-07-22

Operations and sales are eternally at odds. How can you solve the chicken-and-egg problem and ensure a healthy battle? VI Company shares its experience!

Marloes van Uffelen

Operations
CFA®-fundamentals
Management Team

GIT workshop Fronteers

GIT
2019-07-18

In May, Casper and a few other colleagues attended a Fronteers Git workshop "Getting to grips with GIT". Want to know what they learned and why they were the lead speakers worst nightmare? You can read on the website.

Backend

AI and machine learning: the 'what,' the 'how,' and your benefits explained!

Machinelearning
Development
2019-06-19

Who hasn’t heard the terms 'AI' and 'machine learning' by now? In this blog, we'll explain the technology as well as how it can work for you.

Founder

Proactive monitoring: how VI Company rolls up its sleeves for customers

Monitoring
2019-07-08

Our motto: 'Solve an issue before it's occurred.' What tools do we use to achieve that goal?

Jorrit van Giffen

FRT
Service manager
CFA®-fundamentals

Working with a remote team for an intercontinental client

Remote
2019-06-12

For almost two year, Sophia was the project lead of two blended teams in The Netherlands She was skeptical about it when she first started but now states "it's the most awesome team I've worked with".
In this article she shares her experiences and explains how she and her team managed to set up such a great collaboration.

Sophia van der Meijden

CFA®-fundamentals
Project lead

Off to DockerCon: our knowledge-packed trip to Barcelona!

DockerCon
Development
2019-06-05

In December, three of us packed their bags and hopped on a plane to attend DockerCon Europe in Barcelona. The result: lots of answers to burning Docker questions, which we instantly put to use.

Backend
Solution Engineer

Clean code: why you should prefer to 'keep it clean!'

Development
2019-05-22

Clean code is highly preferable in terms of quality and maintenance. Why is this the case, and how can you benefit from it?

Alexander van Veelen

Backend

What's the added value of domain-driven design?

domain-driven design
2019-05-08

Communication gaps between developers and clients are quite common in software development. How to bridge them? Through domain-driven design!

Niels van der Rest

Backend

Tackling increasing complexity: bring it on!

Projects
Process
2019-04-24

Complexity is a given in our field. The rapid succession of developments results in an ever-changing technological environment. Furthermore, our clients operate in the financial and investment management industries, which grow more and more complex due to market changes – such as new regulations that take effect on a regular basis.

Founder
Management Team

Why VI Company got ISO-certified... voluntarily!

ISO
2019-04-10

Getting ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certifications can be a hassle of sorts. Therefore, it's quite unusual for a relatively small fintech company with approximately 40 employees to embark on the ISO journey, voluntarily letting itself be vetted for a full year.

Founder
CFA®-fundamentals
Management Team

Composition over Inheritance and JavaScript

Development
2019-04-10

You might have heard of the “composition over inheritance” principle. It encourages developers to choose object composition over inheritance.

Frontend

Alloq Portfolio Management is live!

Strategy
Fintech
Development
2019-04-03

VI Company launches Alloq Portfolio Management with launching customer PGGM. A robust SaaS-platform for the investment management industry to replace sub-optimal stand-alone tooling. A product by VI Company and supported by KPMG.

Founder
Management Team

Guilds at VI

Development
Guilds
Organization
2019-01-02

Knowledge sharing between developers in a fun and effective manner can be a challenge. In 2018 we started to improve this within VI. Introducing: The Guild system.

Backend

What I liked and disliked about F#

Development
2018-09-03

This year I moved and while unpacking I found this book in my collection which I kind of forgot; 'Real World Functional Programming with examples in F# and C#' by Tomas Petricek and Jon Skeet.

Backend

Hey new dads, let's take a baby holiday!

People
2018-07-13

Last month my daughter was born and what a revelation it was. I decided to take a baby holiday after the birth of my daughter. I would like to share my experience and hope that it inspires you.

Backend

Three ways to protect your website users against CSRF attacks

Development
Security
2018-06-12

Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) is a widely exploited vulnerability in websites where malicious requests are transmitted from a user who is trusted by the web application. CSRF attacks target state changing requests, not theft of user data since the attacker has no way to see the result of the request.

Alexander van Veelen

Backend

From Christmas present in the blockchain to massive bug bounty

Responsible Disclosure
Blockchain
2018-03-21

Last year we discussed our Christmas present and how we created and distributed it. However, there was one more thing we were working on that we were not allowed to talk about until now. It was a system flaw we found for an online crypto currency exchange while working on our Christmas present.

Jesse Lakerveld

FRT
Backend

Our Christmas present in the Blockchain?

Blockchain
2017-12-18

By now, I guess you know what Bitcoin is. And maybe you even know the distributed ledger technology behind it: the Bitcoin Blockchain. The big competitor is the Ethereum Blockchain. This year we provide clients and colleagues with a Christmas present that is wrapped in the Ethereum Blockchain.

Founder
Management Team

Christmas Present in the Blockchain (technical approach)

Blockchain
2017-12-18

This year at VI Company we decided to do something different regarding the Christmas gifts we give to colleagues, relations and friends. Instead of the usual umbrella or chocolate we came up with the idea to give Ether, a cryptocurrency running on the Ethereum network. This article will shed some light on how we technically managed to register gifts in the blockchain and distribute them to the receivers.

Backend

GDPR: What it is and the steps VI Company is taking toward being compliant

Regulatory
2017-12-15

This article describes in a few simple steps how VI Company will become compliant with GDPR. Originally set up as an internal document, now an article that might be interesting for other service providers and as well clients, relations and anyone that deals with privacy sensitive data.

Founder
Management Team

Cryptocurrency - The Money of the Internet

Blockchain
2017-09-28

Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum. These are just three cryptocurrencies of the hundreds that are taking over as ways to pay online, all fighting to become the most popular. But what are cryptocurrencies and why do they exist?

Backend

Introducing our new shareholders

People
2017-08-02

For over 10 years we operated VI Company with a plain-vanilla shareholders set-up. As of last month, we have a third shareholder: our colleagues at VI Company. A brief explanation of why and how we did this.

Founder
Management Team

Accessibility, Why Bother?

Accessibility
Design
2017-07-12

Lately, accessibility is getting more awareness. That's a good thing if you ask me. But there are still plenty of misconceptions standing in the way of a truly accessible web.

Frontend

Our first dotNed meeting

.NET
2017-07-03

On Thursday 22nd of June, we held our first dotNed meeting at VI Company. DotNed is the Dutch user group of .Net This organization strives to spread the knowledge regarding the .Net platform.

Backend

Nice looking system emails with MJML

Design
Development
2017-05-09

Did you ever design and develop an email template? Chances are you spent a great deal of time on the compatibility of your email to make sure it renders good in every client.

Frontend

Something different from your usual line chart

Data visualization
Design
2017-05-02

Koningsdag is a Dutch holiday where we celebrate the King’s birthday with a drink or two. This national holiday was a day prior the data visualisation workshop and I was therefore divided about giving up the evening part of Koningsdag for a ...

Founder

Introduction to Nethereum Blockchain in dotNetCore

.NET
Development
Blockchain
Fintech
2017-03-21

This article describes the process of using a blockchain platform like Ethereum in dotNet core. The target audience are other dotNet developers who want to start with Ethereum. Understanding of blockchain is needed. In this article we construct a full example that ...

Backend

How to mitigate the risks of Robo advisors

Investment
Fintech
2016-11-18

A young affluent couple in their mid-twenties has cash to invest. These millennials are mistrusting of the traditional options available via the big banks and have been exposed to some pretty convincing marketing material from the alternative, a fintech offering robo advisor ...

Founder
CFA®-fundamentals
Management Team

Should I be worried about my DIY-Excel behaviour?

Process
2016-08-22

You love Excel. You can do everything with it. It's back testing a new asset mix, a prototype report automation or a new idea about real time calculations of fair values. But you feel apprehensive as well because you know that these ...

Founder
Management Team

How to code a pie? A designer’s adventure in C#

Data visualization
Development
2016-09-13

Last time, we looked at the maths of a pie chart and how to draw one with svg. Now that we know all that, we can start programming. For obvious reasons it's way more interesting to generate a pie chart with code ...

Frontend

How to code a pie? A designer’s adventure in maths and SVG

Data visualization
Development
2016-08-31

I always loved programming. In the days when Flash was all the rage, I spent hours and hours writing Actionscript: making page transitions as smooth as possible. But alas, all good things come to an end and Flash is no exception. After ...

Frontend

Why you shouldn’t let your manager judge you

Process
People
2016-08-18

It’s not that you’re not open to criticism, or don’t want to improve yourself. If you do your best all year, it’s strange to hear -out of the blue- what you haven’t done right afterwards. The performance review: We...

Founder

How to avoid prototyping pitfalls and maximize results

Design
Process
Testing
2016-07-22

Lately we receive a lot of requests for developing a prototype for online financial services. We notice that there seem to be many different understandings of what a prototype is, resulting in a lack of focus. In this blog we address the ...

Management Team
CCO

6 reasons to switch to .NET Core

.NET
Development
2016-07-11

At VI Company, we develop most of our software in .NET MVC (currently at version 4.6.1) and we prefer to keep our projects running on the latest technologies to be able to offer the best experience possible to our end users.

Alexander van Veelen

Backend

5 tips to become a great Product Owner!

Process
People
2016-06-06

The sprint is almost finished. Just two days before the demo. All stakeholders will be attending. Exciting! You know there is still a lot to be done and the budget is running low. Stressed out you ask the team: ‘Is it possible to...

Sophia van der Meijden

CFA®-fundamentals
Project lead

SRP Interview Kees de Koning Part II

Investment
People
2016-03-16

A few weeks ago Marc Wolterink from SRP, the leading online resource for the global structured products community interviewed our co-owner Kees de Koning. Their lengthy and lively conversation lead to not one but two articles published on SRP. Last week we've ...

Founder
Management Team

SRP Interview Kees de Koning Part I

Investment
People
2016-03-16

A few weeks ago Marc Wolterink from SRP, the leading online resource for the global structured products community interviewed our co-owner Kees de Koning. Their lengthy and lively conversation lead to not one but two articles published on SRP. Today we are ...

Founder
Management Team

Fintech: Resistance is futile – or is it?

Strategy
Fintech
Process
2016-03-10

The digital revolution has arrived in the financial services sector. In this article we examine the most important points set out by McKinsey in the light of their latest research, and we ask the question: What radical action is needed for banks ...

Founder
CFA®-fundamentals
Management Team

Seven lessons issuers can learn from CFD brokers

Strategy
Fintech
2016-03-24

Last month, I had a dinner with a client. My wife joined us as well and at one point she asked: “What is the difference between a CFD broker and a Turbo / Sprinter issuer?” – The client started laughing and answered: “Well, one of them ...

Founder
Management Team

Innovation that will improve your company in four steps

Strategy
Fintech
2016-02-09

Every company or department would like to innovate. The big question still remains how? The answer is actually quite simple: It’s in your people!

Founder

Why focusing on ROI for your business case could backfire

Process
Fintech
2015-11-16

Once upon a time there was a company. Said company had some bright minds who came up with great ideas. Some ideas were promoted to projects and some of these were successful.

Management Team
CCO

Getting ready for MiFID-II & MiFIR

Regulatory
Strategy
Fintech
Process
2015-09-25

Financials beware: MiFID-II & MiFIR is coming, and it’s coming fast! It’s complex, highly controversial and it will hurt the unprepared. The new directive for financial markets in all European Economic Area member states will come into force on January 1st, ...

Founder
Management Team

The persona is dead, long live the persona!

Process
Design
2016-01-21

Almost every marketing- or UX Research team has them, personas. They spend a lot of time and energy in creating them. Interview end-users, try to find out the demographic factors like age and income and write inspiring quotes that the personas could ...

Sophia van der Meijden

CFA®-fundamentals
Project lead

How to empathize with (y)our customer

Process
Design
2016-04-07

What is empathizing all about? Why is it really necessary, not just for the financial markets but for any business?

Founder
CFA®-fundamentals
Management Team

Vertical rhythm: the Holy Grail of front-end development

Design
Development
2016-01-21

Just like a horizontal grid, the vertical grid is used for structure and balance in design. Simply put: a vertical grid is the basis for good typography and harmonious alignment.

Founder

The EZPZ Flexbox Grid might be just the grid for you

Design
Development
2016-01-21

The EZPZ Flexbox Grid is easy peasy to setup and use! All you need to do is download the .SCSS file, add it to your project, configure it just the way you like it and compile. That's all. You can now leverage ...

Frontend

Automated testing with Entity Framework takes some Effort

Testing
Development
2016-01-21

Our goal at VI Company is to write quality software. We have several processes in place to achieve and monitor this quality; continuous integration, code reviews and automated tests to name a few. In this article I want to take a closer ...

Niels van der Rest

Backend

Why we use Backbone.js

Development
2015-10-02

At VI Company almost all of our projects use Backbone.js and while we regularly take a look at other, more popular frameworks, like AngularJS and React, Backbone.js is still our go to library. In this article I will explain why.

Founder

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