A Chat with Kris Simpson, Country Manager at Freelancer Umbrella Platform: Cool Company UK

Cool Company Freelance UK is the fastest-growing umbrella company working to simplify and streamline administration for contractors. Providing freedom for contractors without the bureaucracy. While allowing businesses to benefit from access to niche talent without the need to take on new hires, or handle the admin associated with navigating IR35.

Using technology to revise and reinvigorate core contracting and payroll services, we support contractors throughout the UK and across the Nordics.

By facilitating simple timesheet recording, same-day payments, easy IR35 compliance, and hassle-free business relationship management, we make it easier for contractors and businesses to work together.
 
 

 

What do you think makes Cool Company unique?

 
Cool Company has always been distinguished by our use of technology. Not only the digital services that we provide to our customers. But the way that we use tech to operate high volume processes without impacting the solution delivery to contractors.

For us, technology has always held the power to make life not only simpler, but more secure for contractors. Umbrella companies didn’t always have a great name. Before they became regulated, and before accreditation bodies entered the market and made compliance possible, working with an umbrella company took great faith. We use tech to remove the room for bad practice and instil confidence in both contractors and the companies they work with.

Technology drives every process, enabling contractors to work whenever and wherever they choose, with whomever they choose, confident in the knowledge that they are fully compliant with the regulations of their country of origin. That their money is safe. And that their rights – holiday pay, sickness pay – are being observed. And we are always on hand to provide both tech and human support at every step of the way, if it should be required.

While all of that would theoretically be possible without the use of Fintech, it would require a round-the-clock workforce of hundreds to successfully manage the 70,000+ businesses and contractors who work with us. And processes would be slower. We use tech to provide instant reliability and support.
 

How has Cool Company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
The ethos of Cool Company has always been constant – to provide the best possible tech-led umbrella services in the world. But to achieve that end we have had to continuously develop our tech solutions to ensure efficiency, security, and useability.

Recently developed features include integration of payroll systems which link directly to the HMRC systems, automation of the right to work check process for all UK contractors and automatic batching of payment to remove delays in receiving payments. We are constantly building and innovating, and it is this approach that has made us a market leader.
 

What can we hope to see from Cool Company in the future?

 
Our ultimate goal for Cool Company is to provide more and better services for our contractors and clients. That’s what we’ve always aimed for. So, we will continue to develop the technology we use to support our clients and enhance our services. But we will also be rolling our products out to new regions, where our services can support local contractors and travelling contractors. And that will involve ensuring that we adhere to all the different compliance standards and regulations relating to each new territory.

We also have a number of new products under development. They are very much in the early stages, so I can’t give details here. But as a business, we are very excited for the future. And I look forward to discussing those projects and products with you again at a later date.