KAL wants the UK to remain in the EU

EDINBURGH, Scotland - May 27, 2016 - PRLog -- In the run-up to the EU referendum, there has been a lot of coverage about escaping EU regulations and that smaller companies are in favour of Brexit. It has been reported that large companies that want to stay in the EU do so for narrow reasons that are not in the national interest. As an SME headquartered in the UK, we at KAL want to make it clear that we disagree with this assessment in the strongest possible terms.

First, a bit of background about who we are and what we do. KAL is one of the world's leading software providers for ATMs. We employ software engineers from around the world including from the EU. We have more than 30 nationalities, a physical presence in eight countries globally, and customers in 80 countries. We are a small company, but we are the world's number two in our chosen field. Our roots in the UK and the EU have been fundamental to our success.

Let us tackle the thorny subject of regulation to begin with - it is claimed that EU regulation holds back UK companies and adds unnecessary costs. We refute that completely. In 27 years of operation KAL has not seen a single EU regulation that has affected us negatively or has caused a regulatory burden on us. We can, however, list a large number of national regulations in EU countries and globally, where national authorities create significant costs for us when doing business in those countries.

We can also point to EU regulations that have reduced our costs dramatically. Some of these are well known - such as airline regulation that has brought us low cost airlines, telecoms regulation that has brought us low cost communications, and travel freedom that brought us visa free travel within the EU. KAL has customers in every EU country and we travel to, and communicate extensively with, those customers. Our current business structure would be unviable without these EU freedoms - we would have had to open an office in each EU country as was the case a few decades ago, instead of servicing the continent from two strategic locations. Let us emphasise that these are regulations that massively reduce our costs.

We would also like to give you examples of positive regulation from within our own industry. PSD2 is an EU regulation that came into force in January 2016 that opens-up retail banking to much more competition. KAL believes that PSD2 will have a similar impact on banking that open-skies had on airlines - it would be a calamity for the UK to exclude itself from PSD2. Indeed, it would be no different than if Easyjet and Ryanair had been forced to exclude themselves from the UK a decade ago when building their EU network - everyone would have lost out from that.

Many of the regulations affecting KAL in the EU in our chosen industry are national regulations - such as the differing certification regimes (DK, GIE, SIA etc) that add costs and bring little benefit in their diversity. In fact, more EU harmonisation is exactly what is needed rather than less.

EU membership affords KAL protection of its Intellectual Property (IP), which is vital for a software company like KAL - IP after all makes up most of the value of our company. As a small fish in a big pond, the EU puts us on a level playing field when it comes to legal matters. Not so long ago, we faced a lawsuit from a predatory competitor, and it was their fear of EU anti-trust law, when we made a formal complaint to the authorities, that finally won us the day.

For KAL, the UK exiting the EU would be disastrous. It would hinder our ability to recruit - we hire from across the EU and the world, and we need those language and cultural skills to be able to work with our customers in 80 countries. Brexit would additionally hinder our ability to do business across the European continent from the UK. It would take us out of PSD2 legislation which would be catastrophic for KAL. It would reduce protection for our IP.

So let us leave you with a final thought: would we continue to be headquartered in the UK after Brexit? Why would we? It would be a lot easier to do business from a different location in the EU.

For more information or to speak directly to Aravinda Korala, CEO, KAL ATM Software please contact Scot McRae, Head of Marketing at scot.mcrae@kal.com