Fertile ground for fintech

This week Tech Tuesday welcomed Caroline Evans, the Senior Content and PR Manager of Moneyfarm - the exciting wealth management service. Originally, the Italian brainchild of two former Deutsche Bank employees, Paolo Galvani and Giovanni Dapra, Moneyfarm existed in Italy before “fintech was fintech” and has since gone on to become the number two wealth management service in the UK.

Caroline spoke of Moneyfarm’s growth, the challenges that a rapidly expanding headcount brings and the competition faced from established rivals Nutmeg and smaller challengers such as Moneybox. She then talked about the term ‘robo-advice’ and how it was actually coined by an embittered wealth manager who felt his livelihood was under threat. However, she explained that Moneyfarm goes beyond robo-advice and actively offers financial advice with human oversight over its algorithms.

She also took us through the evolution of Moneyfarm’s advertising. Their first iteration wanted to position them as market disrupters, using the quote “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad“ from the mistaken Horace Rackham, President of Michigan Savings Bank. The second design then changed to a lighter colour scheme and focussed on the different profile of savers using the line, ‘Invest from the comfort of your own comfort zone’. The most recent campaign focussed on users getting a potentially better rate of savings by using the clever line ‘Don’t bank on it’. Caroline also suggested that a rebrand could be on its way.

We then moved on to their innovative partnership with Uber, helping them to provide pensions to their drivers on a bespoke platform. It alluded to an interesting prospect of not-quite-employee-benefits for the gig economy. And as well as impressive performances on the ARC index, perhaps the greatest proof point of Moneyfarm’s success came from receiving investment from the corporate giant Allianz.

If you want to find out more, visit moneyfarm.com.