Tag Archives: Financial Advice

LFP165 – Relationship Banking – the Surprising Answer to the Needs of Growing Techs? Tom Butterworth MD Silicon Valley Bank

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

In a world ever-more focused on transactions and digitisation what place is there for relationship-banking? Apparently not a lot, yet the market-leader – SVB – wholly embraces this approach over the whole journey from Startup to FTSE. In this show we discuss what relationship banking means in the 21stC for one of the hottest sectors in the market.

SVB is the commercial bank for high growth companies and the biggest banker for PE/VC firms. In the UK they have 4,000 clients, over one thousand of which are pre-series A. As we heard in LFP163 SVB are also the world leaders in Venture Debt.

Tom Butterworth is the Head of Early Stage at SVB in London and joins us today to talk about the importance of relationship-banking, of looking after the customer and of viewing the financial aspect of the relationship across the whole life cycle of high growth companies.

We discuss how serving a vertical can enhance the clients in many ways as well as produce the deal flow to make the approach commercially viable – knowing a single sector in great depth leading to, inter alia, a much deeper understanding of credit-risk than simply putting numbers in a spreadsheet.

Topics discussed in this show include: Continue reading →

LFP145 – New Year Special! 2020 Hindsight – A Decade In Fintech

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

In this show we review a decade in Fintech. Although the earliest Fintechs were formed around 2004/5 (WorldFirst, Zopa) many big names formed around 2010 (Funding Circle, Ratesetter, MarketInvoice). The LFP formed started covering the scene in mid-2014, the year of the first London Fintech week and the year that the Fintech word first hit the broadsheets. Using the shownotes at the time as a diary I trace the evolution of the promises, the hopes, the disappointments, the old innovations and the new innovations. Where did it all go?

No long show notes this week – it is a podcast podcast and in listening you can draw your own conclusions – indeed that’s the point of using dozens of real world examples as seen at the time not as seen through the dark glass of memory.

Congratulations to everyone involved in the London Fintech scene and wider UK Fintech scene and to all listeners. Want to know what the next decade might hold? Check out the previous decade and join the dots…!

LFP139 – A Fintech That Is Globally The Largest Non-Bank In Its Sector – Global Trade & Supply Chain Finance w/ Peter Cook PrimeRevenue

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Not many Fintechs dominate their sector let alone in one of the biggest markets in the world. PrimeRevenue was formed in 2003 and is the largest non-bank supplied of Supply Chain Finance in the world (working capital finance for global trade). They facilitate more than $200bn of payments per annum for 20,000 clients. In this show we dive into what it is that such a Fintech does. What can other Fintechs learn from one of the global best in Fintech?

Peter Cook who is head of all non-US sales talks us through how global trade actually works and the staggering sums of money that can be released from working capital using the appropriate techniques and how this can be win:win for vendor and buyer.

Topics discussed include: Continue reading →

LFP126 – Can Fintech Fill the Financial Advice Gap? w/Max Rofagha CEO Finimize

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

As we heard in LFP069 Financial Advice costs a packet these days – for most folk it’s simply uneconomic. But FS is a complex topic for those who have spent a lifetime in it let alone those with no experience. We all have debts, assets, cashflow, pensions, and many tax complications swirling around in a landscape of ever-changing rules.

Can Fintech come to the rescue? Can an App help fill this gap?

Max Rofagha is the founder and CEO of Finimize a Fintech established to enable Financial Empowerment through content and community. Otherwise known as to help you manage your dough through educational means and the ability to crowdsource ideas/feedback/ratings.

As their website says:

““We live in an age where we can get all the information we want within a tap. Yet, when it comes to our finances, we remain stuck in an opaque world that few really understand. Finimize is a new beginning. We are building a suite of products that sets information free and puts valuable tools in the hands of the people. In a language we all understand.”

Topics discussed include: Continue reading →

LFP112 – FCA Proposes Undemocratisation: Taking the “P” Out of P2P with Ryan Weeks Editor AltFi News

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

You may not be rich, you may not be “sophisticated” but what kind of Stalinism is it that means The State can order you re what you can and cannot do with your money?!?

The entire ethos of “P2P” – the heart and most successful sector of Fintech – was connecting ordinary people, enabling lenders and borrowers to meet via the internet and both get a better deal than they would going through the megabanks.

Now if current FCA proposals go through this is all but dead – Ordinary Joe can keep borrowing (the system loves people being indebted) but the lending will only be unrestricted for Ingsoc Party members (“rich”, “sophisticated”) – Ordinary Joe will be capped at 10% of his investable assets.

It is also a constitutional outrage. The FCA’s job is to regulate platforms and ensure the bad/dodgy ones get shut down. The FCA is undemocratic and unelected – unlike our MPs we cannot vote them out of office – how dare they “regulate the people”? Regulating the people is something that ought to go through parliament not an office in Canary Wharf.

This topic undermines everything we have seen since the Magna Carta in 1215 became the first piece of legislation to limit the arbitrary power of the monarch.  Are we to return in this area to early Medieval Monarchical powers?

Ironically it was the UK’s Zopa that invented the UK globally. For a long time the UK State as a whole was highly supportive of Fintech and P2P. Now with government distracted, over a dozen years of success (&the records of the leading platforms have been far far better than bank returns for a diversified portfolio). Now only Party Members can fully avail themselves of these excellent returns. “To them that hath shall more be given”.

Ryan Weeks is the editor of AltFiNews the longest running AltFi news site, a real insider in this area. He is also the host of the successful Millennial Money Matters podcast and author of a best selling book as we shall come on to.

He joins us to discuss the Proposals in the round. Its a long document after a long consultation. Some proposals are sound, some so-so but this one is just plain wrong.

We all make mistakes and these are proposals. I call on the FCA to rethink this marketing restriction proposal. Already we have seen plenty of platforms changing from being P2Ps to avoid increasingly Draconian legislation. Already we have seen institutional money flooding into the sector. The whole purpose of the Fintech revolution was to make FS something of the people for the people. Let us keep it that way.

Topics discussed on the show include: Continue reading →

LFP105 – Execution-Only Stockbroking in the Digital Age with Adam Dodds CEO Freetrade

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

The ultimate disintermediation in FS is for folks to directly buy shares/binds directly and cut out the whole investment management industry as we know it.

Even better if it’s cost free to deal. This amazing proposition is becoming real as Freetrade’s core offering gets rolled out to its first users and we are joined today by founder and CEO Adam Dodds to dive into this whole world.

Freetrade is a member of the London Stock Exchange but at the same time a real Fintech, designed from the ground up for the digital age of Fintech.

Topics discussed include:  Continue reading →

LFP083 – Matchmaking Lending and Borrowing with Conrad Ford CEO Funding Options

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Conrad was on the show back in LFP020 since when he has built Funding Options (strapline “your free marketplace for business finance”) into one of the most successful London Fintechs. They were chosen as one of three UK government mandated SME Referral Portals, are the largest of those by an order of magnitude, increased revenue fourfold last year, are on target to triple again this year as well as being on target to be the UK’s largest introducer of working capital finance.

Funding Options essential task/service is lining up all the many SME borrowers out there with relevant sources of Finance. A task made all the harder by the plethora of lenders and the many types of lending finance available.

How has this task evolved over the past 2.5yrs?

How is lending right now?

How is borrowing?

Topics discussed on the show include:  Continue reading →

LFP073 – The Second Wave of Digital Wealth Managers with Adam French co-founder Scalable Capital

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Investment management – despite its known deficiencies – has been least disrupted perhaps so far by “Fintech”. The first wave of I.M. Fintechs (pre- & up to 2015) promised “democratisation” but have made relatively little headway. The awfully named “roboadvisers” are neither robo nor advisers but are ludicrously hyped.

There’s also the rather challenging question of what is there to be disrupted if ETFs (see LFP058) can be bought for roughly zero commission and have minimal fees.

Against this background I was delighted to come across Adam French – he and two other ex-Goldman Sachs colleagues launched Scalable Capital in both the UK and Germany a little over a year ago, and, as befits their background, really know of what they speak. They also have the advantage of befitting from V1.0 of the great “digitalisation of wealth management” experiment and can better design V2.0. They claim to be Europe’s fastest growing “online wealth manager” with around 4,000 clients, £150m of assets under management, and have a tie-up with ultra-blue-chip Siemens to power their employee benefits platform in Germany.

Topics discussed include:  Continue reading →

LFP070 – Fintech & the UK Mortgage Advice Market with Ishaan Malhi Founder & CEO Trussle

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Trussle are the UK’s first online mortgage broker, have just raised £4.5m in a Series A and have an exclusive partnership with the FTSE listed property search giant Zoopla. So they are doing well for a two year old startup 🙂

I am joined today by founder and CEO Ishaan Malhi to discuss why this sector is so important.

As often it’s the old-fashioned and unsexy stuff that is ripe for disruption. In the case of mortgage advice though there is another astounding nanny state regulatory change that has made it even more important to have a low cost Fintech solution.

In essence (FCA summary here) in the UK if you want to keep certain legal protections (not defined but being able to complain about mis-selling appears to be one) you must take mortgage advice :-!  And this advice can be quite expensive as we shall hear.

And if you want to talk about a world orientated around the 0.1% (corrupt state?) if you are part of the 0.1% – then like taxes you don’t need to bother! Golly gosh. And if you think I exaggerate check out the FCA’s webpage in re.

So can Fintech ride to the rescue?

Well apparently it can, although what is defined as “advice” is very fluid in a world spanning old-fashioned advice and more automated Fintechs.  In LFP069 we discussed advice on your asset side of the balance sheet. In this context LFP070 is about advice on the liabilities side of your balance sheet.

Trussle’s strapline is:

The hassle-free way to get a mortgage online. We search more than 11,000 deals from 90 lenders to find the perfect mortgage for you.

Not only that but you can enter your mortgage details at the moment and they will monitor all those deals on an ongoing basis and let you know

All this and more is discussed on the show, including: Continue reading →

LFP069 – IFAs, Fintech & Roboadvisers with Dan Kiernan Research Director Intelligent Partnership

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

IP banner for London Fintech Podcast“Everyone” frets over financial advice in the Fintech Age. Regulators set out to “protect the consumer”, worthy bodies talk no end about the need to protect “people” (never themselves oddly – generally they imply (/mean) folks of lesser education/wealth) and the rest of us are just confused over the labyrinthine rules around tax, savings and investments.

Needless to say a myriad on rules and regulations and the implicit costs of this suprastructure all act together in a Kafkaesque way to produce the opposite result – known as “the advice gap”.

In Fintechland breathless media and PR firms high on sugar, caffeine and other stimulants promise us a golden era of so-called “roboadvice”.

Dan KiernanHow to make sense of all this?

I am delighted to be joined today by Dan Kiernan Research Director at Intelligent Partnership “the UK’s leading provider of research, training and events on Alternative Investments” to cut through all this and to give us insights into why advisers are not recommending eg P2P to their clients when it has outperformed bank deposits for more than a decade.

On the show today we discuss all of the above and: Continue reading →