Castlight – CaaS tool extended across the affordability spectrum

Blog written by Phil Grady, Chief Executive, Castlight

Over the last couple of years Castlight Financial has invested in the development of our CaaS (Categorisation as a Service) tool, to provide a range of affordability solutions.

The CaaS engine, powered by our own API, uses open banking technology to allow a customer to share his or her transactional information in real time. CaaS then categorises the transactions across any number of accounts into 155 categories of expenditure and 29 categories of income. Categories include credit commitments, essential costs and discretionary spending and then drills right down to all sorts of discretionary spending such as Costa coffees on the way to work, lottery tickets and haircuts.

Up until recently, the CaaS technology has primarily driven our popular Affordability Passport, used by lenders to get a full picture of a customer’s finances at the press of a button. Given that the Affordability Passport process also eliminates the need for lenders to trawl through bank statements and pay slips to review discretionary and non-discretionary spending, lenders are able to offer customers a transformative 10-minute mortgage process. When the market typically assumes an average consultation of around 3 hours with a mortgage broker to secure a loan, the Affordability Passport is truly shaking up the lending industry.

Leading UK banks and brokers have been quick to embrace the Affordability Passport and are currently rolling it out to their customer bases.

But we’re a team of disrupters and we like to keep making ripples in markets, so this summer we took the decision to extend the implementation of CaaS right across the affordability spectrum.

Let’s assume that most people using our Affordability Passport are looking for a mortgage or a loan to enhance their lifestyle. They use credit, but they don’t have problems with debt. They are somewhere in the middle of the affordability spectrum.

But what about the people who, at one extreme of the affordability spectrum are struggling with debt and at the other have income surplus to their current lifestyle requirements, which should be effectively invested and managed?

This summer we prioritised the development of The Big View, a fintech tool powered by CaaS, which empowers people with debt issues, by providing them with access to their own data. The pilot scheme was launched with the Big Issue Invest and Advice Direct Scotland (ADS) in June. Since then any client who requests a Big View analysis has had the opportunity to get an in-depth, 360-degree view of their finances and to work with ADS advisers to interpret the findings and develop highly individualised solutions.

And in the last few weeks, we have had a team working on CaaS for Wealth, a tool designed to help Asset Managers provide the best possible service for their customers. Using the functionality of the CaaS transactional categorisation powerhouse to conduct a wealth assessment, CaaS for Wealth will not only report on exactly what and when a customer spends but will also use its trained engine to identify risk, patterns, behaviours and appetites.

We’re talking to forward thinking asset management companies just now and working hard to bring this product to market. Another revolution is on the way.

We believe that no-one is average, so an affordability product can never be one size fits all. People are somewhere on an affordability spectrum so that’s where our financial affordability solutions haveto be too.

Scottish fintech Butterwire gives online traders the edge

LendingCrowd expands its team

Article written by Adrian Innes, Head of Origination at LendingCrowd

Festival season is in full swing, and Edinburgh is buzzing with tourists and performers from every corner of the globe. Some residents may grumble about the crowds and the blizzards of flyers, but this artistic extravaganza really shows the capital at its best.

Predictably, the arrival of the festivals means the heatwave has given way to some much-needed rain, but that hasn’t put a dampener on activities at LendingCrowd, the only peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform headquartered in Scotland.

We recently expanded our business development team with the appointment of Jordan Wright, who is working alongside Riley O’Dwyer and Thomas Boyd to forge closer links with our fantastic community of introducers and individual business owners.

Our loans origination reached record levels during the first half of the year, with total lending of £13.9 million for the six months to the end of June ”“ up from £4.9 million for the same period last year. Lending in Scotland trebled to £3.9 million as awareness of our brand and business model continues to grow.

These encouraging results coincided with another milestone ”“ it’s a year since I joined LendingCrowd as Head of Origination, following three decades in the banking sector.

I passionately believe that small businesses need ”“ and deserve ”“ access to a wide range of funding sources to continue to thrive in these uncertain times. SMEs are the powerhouse of our economy, accounting for more than 99% of the business population, but many still struggle to access the funds that allow them to grow and enter new markets.

Competitive rates and rapid loan turnaround times mean that more borrowers are turning to specialist P2P business lenders like LendingCrowd. Research from the British Business Bank in February showed that net bank lending was relatively flat last year, but P2P business lending volumes rose by 51% to almost £1.8 billion.

Since inception, we’ve helped hundreds of SMEs secure more than £41 million in funding and we’ve got a real ambition to make P2P lending mainstream as shown by our recent “Think Outside The Bank” campaign that you can see at www.lendingcrowd.com/borrower .

Nexves, a plucky FinTech startup exceeding all expectations of what your Bank Account is Capable of

Who is behind Nexves?

I am Chris Herd, founder of Nexves. I am an entrepreneur who believes the internet and technology should enable the world to be a far better place. I have led multi-million pound international refurbishment projects, startup growth across an entire nation, sat on the board of directors for a social enterprise managing £80m worth of housing stock and advised a number of businesses on their growth strategies and innovation initiatives. I am bootstrapping Nexves while continuing as a semi-pro footballer in the highland league.

Our principal engineer has seen first-hand what we are up against. A former senior developer at JP Morgan Chase, verteran of the US military cyber security space and a few personal startups, Trey is leading the charge on the implementation of our product vision.
Our investor is a veteran of disruption. The founder/CEO of, perhaps, the most disruptive Scottish unicorn of the last decade, we believe we have the right mix of expertise, passion and guile to leave a mark on the industry.

Why did you decide to launch your own fintech?

About a year ago I was in the process of deciding my next career move. While talking to Venture Capitalists, MBA Programmes, Large Startups and investors it became clear that my vision of the world was radically different than the future most of them saw. That inspired me to explore the things I was seeing in far more detail. I had the offer of investment in a few product ideas I had previously conceived but during further research phases with potential consumers it became clear that what I was trying to create was a feature of a platform and not the product itself. Those conversation helped crystallise the idea for Nexves in my mind.

At the same time, I was beginning to spot patterns of issues experienced by my family and friends. Why was my Grandmother paying 3X what my parents were for the same service from Sky, my brother paying 2X more than I was for the same mobile phone contract, or my sister paying more for her flat insurance than I was for my house? Fundamentally, I surmised, these were intelligence problems which could be solved by technology. Who had the information needed to fill these knowledge gaps? Our banks. Open banking in particular inspired me to dream of potential application, enabling innovation which was previously impossible.

Banks were facing their own problems. Interest rates have plummeted to levels which are borderline offensive while making us poorer (interest lower than inflation) and governments are overseeing legislation which ensures the wealth gap continues to widen. When I considered the implications of all these things it became clear that a financial platform could operate at the intersection of spending, saving, investing and tokenisation which would let us harness the power and influence of large-scale collaboration. Banks have hundreds of thousands of customers, imagine group purchasing on an industrial, national then global scale. All we require is technology which enables that collaboration or organisation of action and that is what we are creating.

So what is Nexves?

The future of money and the internet. We are innovating around existing products and services to provide ramp to participation in that future with as few obstacles as possible. We realise that the majority of the world is going to wake up tomorrow and begin using a cryptographically secure wallet or cryptocurrency, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t provide opportunities for them to be exposed to these things.

Phase 1 of that plan involves 3 parts

Part1 sees us tokenise interest on the money stored in your wallet, reinvesting that capital in asset classes reserved for the richest 1%. On your own you can’t personally invest in startup companies, commercial real estate, private equity or a number of other assets. Together we can not only invest in these things but actively influence their success while simultaneously growing our wealth. The tokens you receive will be equivalent to your proportion of funds on the platform as a whole. Have 10% of the money on it? You will receive 10% of the user distributed tokens equating to 10% of user ownership of the fund and any future returns. What this establishes is an asset-backed hard currency.

Part 2 see’s the establishment of a comparative data product. Where phase 1 enables us to create the digital currency, phase 2 lets us use it to purchase the data necessary to make it intelligent. Where you have sky TV we would pay you to reveal which packages you have. We will then benchmark your spending against every other user on the platform. Where you are paying more than someone else for the same thing we will tell you how much you could save and how to do it. This wouldn’t be true only for sky, but every recurring expense you have. Eventually this free service would give birth to a premium product which undertakes these negotiations automatically on your behalf.

Phase 3 creates an influence market place. Imagine 100,000 people sharing a similar message on their social media profile urging their follower to download an app we are invested in or 1m people embarking on their local supermarket to demand they stock a product they are invested in. By paying people to act in their own self-interest everyone else benefits and that is revolutionary.

We are currently working out the mechanics of the platform but anticipate a full launch of the service before Christmas.

One final thing, how would you like to earn free bitcoin? Use Nexves to purchase certain products and services online and we will literally give you free bitcoin as cashback. You get to begin using it without ever having to buy any.

So, what is Nexves? Everything you need from a bank, but more than you’d ever expect.

Discover MoneyMatix, a new fintech with a social purpose

Who is behind MoneyMatix?

I am Tynah Matembe, Co-founder of MoneyMatix, and a director for the high impact Scottish Charity, Passion4Fusion. I am an entrepreneur who believes that by earnestly seeking excellence, the world will be made a better place reaching heights unimagined.

Both ventures are due to my love for community, wealth and family. I am a Saltire fellow, a chartered banker and a lawyer by training, I have extensive corporate experience in financial services, and internationally working for organisations such as the United Nations. I have 2 beautiful children and a doting husband. I love traveling and own a scratch map which I intend to have scratched off a bit of each continent by the time I am grey.

Helene Rodger, my co-founder @MoneyMatiX is also a Saltire fellow and director at Passion4Fusion her background is in Project Management and Mental Health. She has worked with young people most of her life and her passion to see them succeed keeps her committed and inspired to make a difference. She is also a doting wife & mum to three beautiful children. She loves traveling, networking, dancing and listening to motivational audios.

With our combined experience we set out to create a children’s buddy that would help young people visualize the cause and effect of the choices they make with money.

Why did you decide to launch your own fintech?

Through our personal family lives and our work with Passion4fusion, we identified a gap in financial capability and enterprise education among people migrating to Scotland. We were especially concerned by the lack of good financial role models in these communities and we were already seeing patterns of how a lack of financial guidance was distorting young peoples assumptions about money and aspiration.

We are blessed with a proactive team @passion4fusion so when we shared our observations it became inevitable that we solve the problem. We created a project under passion4fusion which was the birth of MoneyMatiX.

When we created MoneyMatiX, our intention was to empower our immigrant community by raising a generation of children who would be mentored to become financially stable and independent. We quickly realized that financial illiteracy is a universal problem not unique to immigrants and with this, our vision for MoneyMatiX changed to create a sustainable & universal business solution that will impact global households and nurture generations of financially stable and responsible individuals.

Could you explain what you mean by financial illiteracy and how it’s a universal issue?

I and Helene are both originally from Uganda but met in Scotland a place that has become more than home to us.
Being from Uganda and moving to Scotland has given us a 2-sided view and perception of money. In Uganda, we were raised albeit in different households within an entrepreneurial and cash-driven environment. If you needed anything you had to have physical cash. So, you planned ahead and laid strategies for how to acquire money. It was a “CASH 1ST BUY AFTER” mindset.

To build our Family home my parents planned a phased build where they allocated and linked funds from specific business ventures towards the home building phases. The same happened with tuition & basic needs, my parents had a business whose profits were directly allocated to our school fees and needs. You can imagine the culture shock when I migrated to Scotland and received the 1st of hundreds of letters saying we could buy Sofas on credit. I thought it was a prank. And they didn’t stop coming, “YOU QUALIFY FOR A LOAN”, “BUY NOW, PAY LATER” and on and on.

So, when my then 7-year-old daughter Kaylah started asking to buy stuff, I knew I needed to do something about her mindset. Kaylah is a beautiful eloquent girl who believes her daddy is a Demi-God that can fail at nothing, (probably true if I am being honest, he is a fabulous guy) But our next issue arose therein, Kaylah’s daddy had this magic card that provided anything and everything from flights to any place in the world, to restaurant visits on a whim, daddy’s magic card was so special it bowed at daddy’s command. So, work and money in Kaylah’s mind were secondary in nature for people sired by ordinary men. In her case “luckily” they were under her daddy’s reign and she, therefore, would never have the need to plan for them.

To put this in perspective, ask yourself this, would you trust 2.7 billion pounds with someone who did not know what they were doing? According to the global service & finance review, Children in the UK receive 2.7 billion pounds in pocket money without financial guidance. This is the tip of the scale of the problem of financial illiteracy and how it becomes ingrained in young people. The money Advise Service reports that most financial habits are formed by the age of 7 years.

So what is MoneyMatiX?

MoneyMatiX is an integrated set of financial capability tools designed to teach young people the value of money and entrepreneurship. MoneyMatiX products enable communities to raise young people mentored to become financially stable and independent.

Via a Social Gaming platform, MoneyMatiX teaches young people key financial and entrepreneurial concepts and empowers them from key stages to take control of their character and money sense.

The platform applies gamification to decision making by mimicking real-life scenarios to teach children how the financial decisions they take would play out in the real world enabling them to understand financial choices with ease and confidence.

Further to this, we run MoneyMatiX kidpreneur hackathons. These are challenge competitions which give young people an opportunity to work collaboratively in small teams to identify and consider entrepreneurial solutions to current social and economic problems.

The programme draws on the latest research from the University of Edinburgh and is underpinned by MoneyMatix. The events are designed to provide a practical application for financial literacy and business skills and together with our mentors, we give young people an opportunity to meet role models they can aspire to.

We are intentional about where we run the hackathons and whom we partner with because for us everything about these events should be a wow example for children can take away and conceptualize for their future.
We believe that every child has a right to a secure financial future so our mission is to make financial security a reality for the next generation.

LendingCrowd hails record month for deals

Hot on the heels of its recent £2 million funding round, peer-to-peer (P2P) platform LendingCrowd is celebrating a record month of lending activity.

The Edinburgh-based fintech company, launched in 2014 by CEO Stuart Lunn and chairman Bill Dobbie, completed loan deals in May totalling more than £3 million for small businesses across Britain.

Head of Origination Adrian Innes said: “It was a great team effort to get to this milestone, helped by our improved processes and a fantastic working relationship with our community of introducers.”

He added: “Not only was May a record for us in terms of the total value of loans, the number of deals completed also hit a new high, up 40% compared with our previous best.”

In March, LendingCrowd announced that angel syndicate Equity Gap had led a £2m external funding round that also included the Scottish Investment Bank and private investors from Scotland’s entrepreneurial and finance scene.

The company, which is fully authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and launched its debut television advertising campaign in March, is now targeting total lending of about £40m for 2018 ”“ more than double last year’s figure.

Mr Lunn said: “The support from our investors highlights the progress we’ve made since our launch in late 2014 and the potential for us to scale significantly this year.

“I’m confident that, as we expand our sales and marketing activities, we’ll continue to grow our loan book as more small businesses turn to us for their funding needs.”

LendingCrowd was one of the first P2P platforms to launch an Innovative Finance ISA and all of its investment accounts can be held within this wrapper for tax-free returns*.

*Capital at risk. Tax treatment depends on the individual circumstances of each investor and may be subject to change in future.

Scottish fintech LendingCrowd raises £2m