Finder
[00:00:00] Lucas: Jon, Welcome to the “Building and Growing Podcast”. We're delighted to have you here today.
[00:00:05] Jon: Hi. Thanks for having me. Nice to be here.
[00:00:07] Lucas: Welcome! Jon is the CEO of Finder, UK. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jon. I know you've been working in the digital arena for a very long time. Can you tell us about your story and how you came to Finder?
[00:00:25] Jon: Sure. Makes me sound terribly old, but I wind it back to 1997, I had actually just graduated from an engineering degree. I was sponsored by the Ministry of Defense at University and I went into my first job, which was military intelligence, which was fun. Interesting budgets and interesting work and do you know “Spooks” that old TV show?
[00:00:52] Jon: I was like the really geeky guy with a computer behind the scenes. That was me. I wasn't the cool guy with a gun.
[00:01:00] Lucas: Then a very important guy, I think.
[00:01:04] Jon: We had classified intranets back then. That's how we got into HTML and what was going on with the internet in general.
[00:01:14] Jon: I actually built a website back then for my wife's company she was working at. Just like at the weekend, a little bit of a side money project as a fresh graduate. They had got into that and then actually went backpacking, went to Australia and New Zealand.
[00:01:35] Jon: They were very nice times. Took me 15 years to come back. I ended up starting a number of businesses down there in the digital arena, in digital marketing and development and those sorts of companies and things evolved and then eventually
[00:01:58] Jon: did come back to the UK with a couple of kids that I had down there. Then got into Finder.
[00:02:05] Lucas: That's incredible! I mean starting off in military intelligence, I'm sure it was a different time back then in 1997 compared to now, but, we won't dive too much into that.
[00:02:19] Lucas: A lovely entrance into the world of the internet particularly as it was taking off. Great that you got to spend time out in Australia and New Zealand. So, you came back to the UK, how did you get involved in launching Finder in the UK?
[00:02:39] Jon: It was a funny story.
[00:02:41] Jon: I came back in 2014 and I actually set up a digital marketing agency here, before Finder, for some guy in Australia. Did that for a couple of years and then we sold that business. Then Fred, who's one of the founders of Finder, gave me a call, and asked me,
[00:03:00] Jon: Oh, would you like to launch Finder in the UK?
[00:03:02] Jon: So, Finder is the leading comparison site in Australia. We've been on a bit of a global expansion at that stage. They've launched into the US the year before. Fred and Frank, the founders knew me from back in 2007, when I'd sold my digital marketing agency
[00:03:25] Jon: to the same Australian business that they'd sold their digital web development business too. We'd worked together for maybe a year during our earnouts back in 2007. At the same time, Fred had started this blog, like a credit card student blog, back in the day. That was the seed that turned into Finder, which is now 400 plus people around the world,
[00:03:47] Jon: in 20+ countries. We knew each other which Fred gave me his trust to launch here and the rest is history.
[00:03:57] Lucas: Looks very interesting how a transaction in 2007 then led to you launching Finder in the UK. You mentioned trust there.
[00:04:13] Lucas: It'd be really good to explore how millions of people in the UK are using Finder in order to help them make complex decisions. How do you scale trust to all of those people?
[00:04:30] Jon: It's a very good point and I think, this day and age, you have to be authentic.
[00:04:36] Jon: I think people see through just marketing spin straight away. People are looking for authentic, trusted sources of information. That comes from our values. I think by having strong values as a company and then having structures that come from those empowering people is one of our values
[00:04:59] Jon: both internally and externally that we really live by. We have very strong editorial team and it's a bit of a church and state. So, you have the independence of the editorial team, which are a 100% objective and then we have our more commercial team
[00:05:16] Jon: which deals with the FinTechs and the providers that we might promote on across the website. But we definitely have a full market approach. We want to review in any one sector, if that's digital banking or if it's share trading, we want to review every provider
[00:05:33] Jon: in the UK, objectively, provide that information for people to find and use and then that builds an audience, that builds trust. Transparently we do work with those providers to bring them to an audience and explain what they're doing and why they're better at this,
[00:05:53] Jon: these guys are better at that and really finding the right customers for the right provider and the right provider for the right customers. So,
[00:06:00] Jon: it's a good balance.
[00:06:02] Lucas: Fantastic! You've alluded to some of those agreements that you might have with those FinTechs. Are you able to provide members of the audience, say for example, my parents, who might be listening; a bit of background or context as to what types of agreements they might be. How do FinTechs and Finder engage in commercial relationships?
[00:06:30] Jon: So, all of our relationships are pretty much on a performance basis.
[00:06:34] Jon: This means we only get paid if we deliver some valuable action to the provider, to the FinTech and that just makes it an easier decision for them to work with us, because it's shared risk, we’re not just going to take their money and then not deliver anything. We might get paid when someone clicks on a link;
[00:06:51] Jon: a bit like you get paid when you click on one of those links the top of Google, Google charges its advertisers a cost for every click. So, some of our deals might be like
[00:07:00] Jon: that. We might work with providers where we get paid when they acquire a new customer
[00:07:06] Jon: that we refer to them. We don't get paid for the click. But then if that customer likes what they see and they sign up and they transact with that business, if it's an insurance business or if it's a shared training business or a digital bank, then we would get paid a fee for that new customer.
[00:07:22] Jon: Those are the typical models, there's other models like revenue share, where we get a percentage of the customer's transactions if they're trading. Different types of models for different types of advertisers, just making it really easy for providers to work with us.
[00:07:38] Jon: That's how we pay for the free content, because the site's all free. Having some of the providers working more closely with us. Then that's how we can afford to hire all the writers and reviewers and editors that produce all the great content.
[00:07:56] Lucas: Fantastic! Thanks so much for that. Look,
[00:08:00] Lucas: many Fintechs use Finder as a key distribution channel. Are you able to talk about the ways that you supported them throughout the recent FinTech boom? You've alluded to different ways that you partner with them in a commercial way, but are there other ways that you support the FinTechs?
[00:08:22] Jon: We support them by educating the general public and the audience about the product might be about generically about the product. Like buy now, pay later. It's a new product. No one when it was launched, no one really understood what it was. So, we take on that sort of independent education.
[00:08:39] Jon: It's like when you should use it, when you shouldn't use it, what you should look out for, how it works, the pitfalls, the benefits. So very objective editorial about just the new product class. FinTechs are normally in a new line of business; they're trying to disrupt the market, they know what they do.
[00:08:56] Jon: They're explaining that to others in a way that's
[00:09:00] Jon: digestible is where we spend a lot of time. Then once we provided that information to our audience is you get down to the individual products. So that's where traditional comparison comes in. So, if there's fees, how do those fees compare to other providers?
[00:09:14] Jon: Making that kind of comparison objective. But we also do like best buy. Our editorial team, we'll have like 200 criteria and we'll go through all of the providers in a particular category. Then we'll write them for different things. So, some products are better for beginners
[00:09:31] Jon: like simple, easy to use, nice UX, but they might not have all the advanced features. Then some products might be great for experts or for the next stage, but they're not very easy to use if you are new to that category. So, we tend to have those sorts of best buys for different types of people based on what they're looking for so they can find the best product.
[00:09:50] Lucas: Okay, fantastic! Certainly, myself when browsing the website, I've seen different categories there. Particularly,
[00:10:00] Lucas: with business bank accounts, I know that you've got particular criteria around, if they're sending money overseas or in the personal finance section, the types of products people are looking for.
[00:10:13] Lucas: It's great that you guys have got them categorized.
[00:10:16] Jon: They often all look the same on the surface. Then it's only when you really get into a category you really understand there are actual big differences between companies that could look like they're offering the same product and
[00:10:27] Jon: it's really us doing all the hard work, because, you don't want to go out and test like 10 different banks to see which one works best for you. So, that's what we do for you.
[00:10:36] Lucas: Exactly. That would take a lot of time. Also, one of the other things which always surprises me is just how many different companies exist even within same niche, categories.
[00:10:47] Jon: Some categories get very quickly get quite crowded. Ultimately there'll be a consolidation phase. Some will make it, some won't make it, and those sorts of things. But we've definitely noticed that over the years in a lot of these new
[00:11:00] Jon: categories all the ones we've mentioned, business banking is becoming very crowded, very competitive.
[00:11:04] Jon: digital banking, crypto trading, all of these categories get full quite quickly and eventually, there'll be some consolidations and the best ones will kind of bubble to the top.
[00:11:17] Lucas: Yes, absolutely! I think we're seeing that now, particularly let's say in the Fintech space.
[00:11:22] Lucas: There were a lot of providers out there, particularly sort of pre-COVID. But I think there's been a bit of a flattening out of the market.
[00:11:33] Jon: I think there's just with the market's changed a lot as you alluded to earlier. We had COVID and we had what was quiet, what maybe what you wouldn't expect in that actually a lot of people had more to spendable income
[00:11:48] Jon: and more time because they were in lockdown, they weren't paying the for Tube, they weren't paying to commute, and they actually had this extra cash. That's so a lot of that went into people getting into
[00:12:00] Jon: share trading and married up the same time as these more user friendly like the kind of Robinhoods in the US and then the kind of the Freetrade and these types or
[00:12:08] Jon: offering those products. That was one of the big booms. Obviously, the crypto boom as well. It kind of happened at the same time, stirred up by Reddit and a lot of speculative investing. All straight bets! All straight bets! So that was huge. There was a lot of that very strange activity and we obviously spend a lot of time educating and it's great to have some play money
[00:12:34] Jon: and play around with some meme stocks or meme coins, whatever you want to do. That's fine. If you don't mind losing the money, that's awesome. But I guess, we found it introduced especially younger audience into investing and they might have lost some money on Dogecoin and hopefully only a little bit of pocket money but it got them into
[00:12:51] Jon: thinking about investing. I think that's really important is, then you can have conversations around their pension and if don't opt out, if you're auto
[00:13:00] Jon: involvement pension scheme. How much that would cost you over a lifetime if you did do that. So, it gets them in the game, gets them thinking more about those sorts of products and making their money work for them.
[00:13:09] Jon: I think that's the journey that we want to take our members on is help them out with their first purchase, but then educate and show them, give them other options and more options as they try to develop.
[00:13:21] Lucas: Absolutely! I think two points I'll touch upon from that.
[00:13:25] Lucas: The first one is because you mentioned pensions and that's not something that gets enough, let's say air time, I know that previously being a Trustee Director of a pension scheme myself, member engagement is a huge challenge for them. So, the fact that Finder is able to nudge people towards that when they might be looking at a credit card or an investment, is fantastic.
[00:13:51] Lucas: The second point, that I'd like to elaborate on, and it's the one that you mentioned earlier, was about consumer behavior during the
[00:14:00] Lucas: pandemic, you mentioned that people had more time due to the lockdowns and also more money, more disposable income, as a result of reduced spending. Fast forward a couple of years,
[00:14:14] Lucas: It's almost the opposite on fast forward and on steroids. We've got a high inflationary market, which is reducing people's effective disposable income because of the price of goods. We're also seeing people returned to the office and so they may have less time. In the current market
[00:14:46] Lucas: what sort of changes in consumer behavior are you seeing?
[00:14:51] Jon: It has been a full turn, a full 360°, hasn’t it? Or 180°, I should say and so we have
[00:15:00] Jon: seen people obviously concerned about maybe their mortgages. Obviously, we have interest rates going up and there's probably a little bit more to go on that.
[00:15:08] Jon: That's been a big concern for people and we've certainly seen lots of people researching if they can get a better rate or fixing rates. So, there's a bit less volatility down the road so that's been a big thing. Personal credit had the demand for that.
[00:15:26] Jon: I think it's just gone back to pre-pandemic levels. Actually, it dropped off a lot again because no one was spending money on holidays and those sorts of things. So new cars, you can't buy a new car because of the supply issues. There was a lot of people who were paying down debt and a lot of people weren't taking on debt. Obviously, with the cost of living.
[00:15:44] Jon: People commuting and people starting to get back into things desperately more strain on the cash flow certainly was seen. Levels which were quite high, pre-credit levels were quite high, probably too high and they've kind of returned to those levels.
[00:16:01] Jon: So obviously people are trying to find the best credit option for them. There's lots of different products these days as well and some of them are more complex than others. But it's certainly worth understanding all your options and which providers. Then also your credit score and how that impacts onto the deal you can get.
[00:16:18] Jon: That's one of the challenges that people might find is getting access to the best products can be quite difficult if you don't have a good credit history, that especially affects younger people that probably have more strain on their disposable income.
[00:16:33] Jon: To find it harder to get a good credit deal and often get short changed. So, helping consumers on that path and finding the best possible outcomes is what we're focused on at the moment.
[00:16:46] Lucas: I think very good points on mortgages and how their increase in interest rates will affect the amounts of money that people need to repay
[00:16:58] Lucas: credit. Just diving slightly away from things. You mentioned credit scoring and I think it's a very interesting piece because lower income individuals, who you refer to, let's say somebody who's just leaving University or at university, they might not be making mortgage payments on the house,
[00:17:21] Lucas: they might be paying rent. I know there have been a couple of providers that have entered the market previously, that say, look we're going to use rent payments as a credit scoring tool. You've been in this industry, around the Fintech industry for a while.
[00:17:44] Lucas: Do you see improvements in terms of credit scoring methods here in the UK or do you think overseas markets are doing it better?
[00:17:52] Jon: I think the UK's doing a pretty good job. But it takes time. I was talking to a lot of the open banking powered affordability kind of scoring of consumers and lenders have been taking that data for a couple of years now.
[00:18:09] Jon: They weren't necessarily giving any better rates back two years ago. But the idea is that by collecting that data and feeding into their models, they need time to see if it works. If those models actually work in reality, because the credit score is very well proven and the way they're risk averse, they're going to rely on that.
[00:18:28] Jon: But it does really help fin files. So that's people that don't have credit products, that don't have a history of paying off deb. So for those individuals most of them are probably good investments. They're either very employable, they've got very employable skills. They just haven't used credit before
[00:18:44] Jon: often because either they're new to the country or they're just young. A lot of credit providers don't want to turn away a big percentage of the potential customers. But they do have responsibilities and affordability and they need to make sure that they're
[00:19:01] Jon: checking all the boxes. Open banking has been helping in that regard. I think we'll see an acceleration. That was one of the benefits over COVID is there was a massive uptake in consumers connecting bank accounts to different types of open banking services.
[00:19:17] Jon: So, there is a lot more data around now. A lot more learnings. So, I think we probably won't notice this, like just the percentages or just widen as far as how many people now can get accepted for credit products but probably quite timely with cost of living.
[00:19:33] Jon: Hopefully that works out for some people.
[00:19:35] Lucas: Absolutely! I think the FinTechs or the lending providers using open banking will hopefully then be able to monitor their percentage of nonperforming loans or debt which they forecast not to be repaid in a much more real time manner
[00:19:53] Lucas: now, with that data. I know certainly from the business banking side of things
[00:20:00] Lucas: during COVID, the banks didn't necessarily have a real time view over which businesses were going to be affected. Whereas if you had that data through open banking, you would see which businesses have maintained or let's say they were a toilet pay for company increased the amount of revenue they were bringing in.
[00:20:19] Lucas: Very interesting! We've spoken a little bit about the inflationary market and the effect that would have on the credit side and mortgages side. Are you able to talk a little bit about, how that might affect people going to Finder and looking for investments?
[00:20:41] Jon: We've certainly seen people looking at different investment options. Obviously, it was very simple a couple of years ago on everything was going up to the right but, with the collapse of the Pound (£) in recent days,
[00:20:59] Jon: that makes investigate the US, quite risky on your exchange rate exposure. Obviously, the market's now being on downward trend for a little while and no one's super confident. Crypto sort of followed suit, with the on-risk kind of assets and has crashed out a little bit and how long that's going to be crypto winter number two, how long that will last for is a big question mark.
[00:21:29] Jon: That was one of the go to’s. So, it's there's a lot of by the dip sort of thing, but most people don't time the market. I always dollar cost averaging, so I just put a little in it every month, over a long period of time. You tend on average to perform better than trying to pick the market unless you're spending an awful lot of time and
[00:21:49] Jon: have a lot of knowledge of the area that you're are investing in. But, there's lots of other investments options, commodities, as a gold and those
[00:22:00] Jon: sorts of things are obviously always popular when there's uncertainty. Then I guess new asset classes, alternative investment, things are popping up.
[00:22:11] Jon: They have been around for a while, but, there's a lot of interest in them.
[00:22:14] Lucas: Yes. I saw that, there was a company called Mintus, which does fractionalized artwork. Finder has now opened up a page for investing in art. I know Mintus is the only provider on there at the moment.
[00:22:31] Lucas: But did you see demand from the audiences that you serve for alternative asset classes like art, like gold which has led Finder to start to publish pages on alternatives.
[00:22:50] Jon: I think Mintus is a good example of an alternative investment. There's been a few around. There's like Whiskey and Mintus with art.
[00:22:56] Jon: It's really interesting. No one's going to go and buy a 5
[00:23:00] Jon: million dollars painting themselves. But I think there's a lot of interest in how technology could help democratize investment. Obviously, that was only available to the one percenters
[00:23:14] Jon: in the past. That's been a lot of the movement over the last two years. Has it been making investments open to audience. The way we work is we're very much audience driven, which maybe differentiates Finder from some other sites out there, which maybe are more traditionally owned.
[00:23:35] Jon: We are more traditionally focused on just coming accounts and car insurance products and very traditional. Where we do a lot of crypto content, we do a lot of alternative finance content now and that's all based on trends.
[00:23:50] Jon: Google will tell us what's trending. You don't need to go far to find out what people are searching for and it's our job to do the
[00:24:00] Jon: research for them. If people are looking for alternate asset classes where we're like, oh, well, okay, so what are the different options?
[00:24:07] Jon: How would you compare your options? Should you put it into crypto or you should put it into US stocks or FTSE 100 or fine art or Whiskey, what appropriate for yourself and for your portfolio and you want try some new things out and spread some things out.
[00:24:27] Jon: Really interesting space you're dealing with a significant amount of money then or significant to you, definitely takes some financial, independent financial advice. Capital's always at risk. We've investments, but, I think we provide accessible, easy to digest information about options.
[00:24:48] Jon: Then our audience and our members can kind of review that and make their own decisions for us, what works for them.
[00:24:56] Lucas: In terms of, you mentioned there are other sites out there as
[00:25:00] Lucas: well. But I want to really focus on Finder and the traffic that it generates and how it serves the UK market?
[00:25:07] Lucas: When it comes to your traffic, where do you source that from and how do you build it up?
[00:25:12] Jon: We got; I'd say maybe free sources of traffic. Obviously, my background is in digital marketing and these days that means Google and Facebook, they own a lot of the internet and that's the point of origination.
[00:25:30] Jon: When people are on them in YouTube these days as well. When people are either on Google, or they're on YouTube and they're actually searching, they're thinking about something and they're trying to research and they're searching. We want to be found and we can be found there by the content we produce, which is tens of thousands of pages of reviews and comparisons
[00:25:49] Jon: and analysis. So that you'll find that on Google or being organically. We also produce videos as well, which is
[00:26:00] Jon: definitely with my case is a preference as far as observing information in video format rather than reading. Especially smartphones and stuff, it's just a massive channel for us.
[00:26:12] Jon: So that's really building our own audience. We've got YouTube channel and we've got experts that talk about different aspects of finance on there, which also links to our written articles and our comparison tools. They all work together.
[00:26:26] Jon: We originate a lot from Google and people like that we build our audience of subscribers to our Money Tips newsletter to our video channel and people will come back to that. Then we also have membership on the site as well, which is free, of course, where you can get your credit score.
[00:26:47] Jon: So, if you're interested in getting a mortgage or credit card or personal loan, then you need to know that, so you can do that. Then there's other kind of exclusive member benefits as well that we use to
[00:27:00] Jon: engage with an audience and build that relationship.
[00:27:03] Jon: We get that repeat business and we can tell them about new products and new things that are coming along in the marketplace.
[00:27:10] Lucas: Indeed, I hadn't realized that. You have a member section as well. So, definitely something that I've learned and I'm sure the audience will have learned as well, that we can take away from today.
[00:27:21] Lucas: Excellent. Jon, thank you so much for providing all of that overview of Finder; how you're building trust across the market with consumers, helping them to make difficult decisions. You're also helping Fintechs to access the market by explaining what they do in a very
[00:27:46] Lucas: objective manner and simplifying it for consumers so that they're able to choose products that best represent their personas. Are there any tips or
[00:28:00] Lucas: takeaways that you'd like to provide to founders and operators in the market based upon your experience as the CEO of Finder, UK or as a previous founder?
[00:28:13] Jon: Maybe I could throw a few out there. I think, the first one is to engage and talk. You don't get to talk to Google that much they just take the money and send you some clicks. I think obviously, we work with a lot of providers.
[00:28:31] Jon: We run technology driven business ourselves. So just talking, catching up human-to-human; it can be a great way of exploring. Well, we are a publisher, this is what we need. You are Fintech and this is your part of the curve where you are, what stage you're at
[00:28:51] Jon: and what you need and just having that conversation, I think is super valuable for both parties. Just being as open and as frank.
[00:29:00] Jon: We've been around and we would've heard it all and worked with companies and in lots of different circumstances.
[00:29:07] Jon: You might have a massive VC backer or you might be bootstrapping it with your own money. We work with the whole spectrum and so I think that's good to have that. Obviously, testing is an important thing as well. Just get some real-world data.
[00:29:25] Jon: Then there's a stage where you have to stop. Assuming what your model's going to look like and you just need to get out there and actually get some real-life customers signed up. See if you can get them to come back, what the metrics look like. I think, getting out there and getting real life campaigns out and testing is you are going to learn like 10 times and there's only so much you can learn in planning and you just
[00:29:49] Jon: need to be in market.
[00:29:49] Lucas: A forecast can be very sophisticated. But the market provides its reaction. You really don't know, whether it's going to fly or not.
[00:30:02] Jon: Exactly. Be customer focused. That's the most important thing, especially in a Fintech, because a lot of it is word
[00:30:10] Jon: of mouth. You do need to be investing in the product and investing in the user experience. That's how you're going to be able to get that model to work.
[00:30:21] Lucas: Absolutely! The word-of-mouth point really resonates because somebody asked me the other day, what Revolut’s viral factor was?
[00:30:32] Lucas: I couldn't tell you the number, but certainly I think it was, they only started doing paid marketing at around 3 million customers or so. Which is an extremely good viral factor whatever it was.
[00:30:49] Jon: Definitely. I mean, there's definitely some value proposition Revolut was a
[00:30:55] Jon: good example. There was the product, there was a lot of money spent on the product.
[00:31:00] Jon: Which I will say is well that's marketing because that was millions and millions of dollars of product and probably fee subsidies, which was very smart.
[00:31:09] Jon: I think a lot of people came and followed on and copied that exact model of it, exchange rate, subsidies and those sorts of things. That's a bit like Robin Hood and low-cost trading or free share trading. It's a good sell.
[00:31:24] Jon: But once you've got them in, that only gets them in. At that point actually have to impress them enough that they're going to tell five people, you have to get this, this new App or this new service. I think that works for customers that we deliver. Free Finder will access a different segment in the market,
[00:31:47] Jon: but you want to multiply that investment by getting referrals and so I think it's well understood. Hard to do.
[00:31:59] Lucas: It's hard to do! Then the other piece beyond referrals is cross selling, the client across different products or penetrating them across different services.
[00:32:12] Jon: Again, sounds easy! I think a lot of time it comes down to relevancy. I think then that's when we work with our audience and we interview Finder members that come back to the website and find out why they come to Finder, what they enjoyed, what they didn't like, and actually talking to the customers in those customer interviews.
[00:32:33] Jon: I think for any Fintech that's an awesome source of insight because you can end up in your own bubble, you talking to yourself. But why not talk to your customers? You'll be amazed sometimes, some of the insights you get from
[00:32:50] Jon: a real person then the product team.
[00:32:55] Lucas: That's very true. Jon, thank you for those insights. Number one ⎯ have conversations with different partners. Number two ⎯ follow the data, do tests, be data driven. Number three ⎯ really get to know the customer.
[00:33:15] Lucas: If these are the secrets to Finder, UK success, then I'm sure everybody should really have a thinking about them because you've done a fantastic job of scaling it to where it is.
[00:33:28] Jon: Thanks Lucas. Appreciate that.
[00:33:30] Lucas: No worries. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:33:33] Jon: Thanks for having us, excellent. Thanks.
[00:00:00] Lucas: Jon, Welcome to the “Building and Growing Podcast”. We're delighted to have you here today.
[00:00:05] Jon: Hi. Thanks for having me. Nice to be here.
[00:00:07] Lucas: Welcome! Jon is the CEO of Finder, UK. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jon. I know you've been working in the digital arena for a very long time. Can you tell us about your story and how you came to Finder?
[00:00:25] Jon: Sure. Makes me sound terribly old, but I wind it back to 1997, I had actually just graduated from an engineering degree. I was sponsored by the Ministry of Defense at University and I went into my first job, which was military intelligence, which was fun. Interesting budgets and interesting work and do you know “Spooks” that old TV show?
[00:00:52] Jon: I was like the really geeky guy with a computer behind the scenes. That was me. I wasn't the cool guy with a gun.
[00:01:00] Lucas: Then a very important guy, I think.
[00:01:04] Jon: We had classified intranets back then. That's how we got into HTML and what was going on with the internet in general.
[00:01:14] Jon: I actually built a website back then for my wife's company she was working at. Just like at the weekend, a little bit of a side money project as a fresh graduate. They had got into that and then actually went backpacking, went to Australia and New Zealand.
[00:01:35] Jon: They were very nice times. Took me 15 years to come back. I ended up starting a number of businesses down there in the digital arena, in digital marketing and development and those sorts of companies and things evolved and then eventually
[00:01:58] Jon: did come back to the UK with a couple of kids that I had down there. Then got into Finder.
[00:02:05] Lucas: That's incredible! I mean starting off in military intelligence, I'm sure it was a different time back then in 1997 compared to now, but, we won't dive too much into that.
[00:02:19] Lucas: A lovely entrance into the world of the internet particularly as it was taking off. Great that you got to spend time out in Australia and New Zealand. So, you came back to the UK, how did you get involved in launching Finder in the UK?
[00:02:39] Jon: It was a funny story.
[00:02:41] Jon: I came back in 2014 and I actually set up a digital marketing agency here, before Finder, for some guy in Australia. Did that for a couple of years and then we sold that business. Then Fred, who's one of the founders of Finder, gave me a call, and asked me,
[00:03:00] Jon: Oh, would you like to launch Finder in the UK?
[00:03:02] Jon: So, Finder is the leading comparison site in Australia. We've been on a bit of a global expansion at that stage. They've launched into the US the year before. Fred and Frank, the founders knew me from back in 2007, when I'd sold my digital marketing agency
[00:03:25] Jon: to the same Australian business that they'd sold their digital web development business too. We'd worked together for maybe a year during our earnouts back in 2007. At the same time, Fred had started this blog, like a credit card student blog, back in the day. That was the seed that turned into Finder, which is now 400 plus people around the world,
[00:03:47] Jon: in 20+ countries. We knew each other which Fred gave me his trust to launch here and the rest is history.
[00:03:57] Lucas: Looks very interesting how a transaction in 2007 then led to you launching Finder in the UK. You mentioned trust there.
[00:04:13] Lucas: It'd be really good to explore how millions of people in the UK are using Finder in order to help them make complex decisions. How do you scale trust to all of those people?
[00:04:30] Jon: It's a very good point and I think, this day and age, you have to be authentic.
[00:04:36] Jon: I think people see through just marketing spin straight away. People are looking for authentic, trusted sources of information. That comes from our values. I think by having strong values as a company and then having structures that come from those empowering people is one of our values
[00:04:59] Jon: both internally and externally that we really live by. We have very strong editorial team and it's a bit of a church and state. So, you have the independence of the editorial team, which are a 100% objective and then we have our more commercial team
[00:05:16] Jon: which deals with the FinTechs and the providers that we might promote on across the website. But we definitely have a full market approach. We want to review in any one sector, if that's digital banking or if it's share trading, we want to review every provider
[00:05:33] Jon: in the UK, objectively, provide that information for people to find and use and then that builds an audience, that builds trust. Transparently we do work with those providers to bring them to an audience and explain what they're doing and why they're better at this,
[00:05:53] Jon: these guys are better at that and really finding the right customers for the right provider and the right provider for the right customers. So,
[00:06:00] Jon: it's a good balance.
[00:06:02] Lucas: Fantastic! You've alluded to some of those agreements that you might have with those FinTechs. Are you able to provide members of the audience, say for example, my parents, who might be listening; a bit of background or context as to what types of agreements they might be. How do FinTechs and Finder engage in commercial relationships?
[00:06:30] Jon: So, all of our relationships are pretty much on a performance basis.
[00:06:34] Jon: This means we only get paid if we deliver some valuable action to the provider, to the FinTech and that just makes it an easier decision for them to work with us, because it's shared risk, we’re not just going to take their money and then not deliver anything. We might get paid when someone clicks on a link;
[00:06:51] Jon: a bit like you get paid when you click on one of those links the top of Google, Google charges its advertisers a cost for every click. So, some of our deals might be like
[00:07:00] Jon: that. We might work with providers where we get paid when they acquire a new customer
[00:07:06] Jon: that we refer to them. We don't get paid for the click. But then if that customer likes what they see and they sign up and they transact with that business, if it's an insurance business or if it's a shared training business or a digital bank, then we would get paid a fee for that new customer.
[00:07:22] Jon: Those are the typical models, there's other models like revenue share, where we get a percentage of the customer's transactions if they're trading. Different types of models for different types of advertisers, just making it really easy for providers to work with us.
[00:07:38] Jon: That's how we pay for the free content, because the site's all free. Having some of the providers working more closely with us. Then that's how we can afford to hire all the writers and reviewers and editors that produce all the great content.
[00:07:56] Lucas: Fantastic! Thanks so much for that. Look,
[00:08:00] Lucas: many Fintechs use Finder as a key distribution channel. Are you able to talk about the ways that you supported them throughout the recent FinTech boom? You've alluded to different ways that you partner with them in a commercial way, but are there other ways that you support the FinTechs?
[00:08:22] Jon: We support them by educating the general public and the audience about the product might be about generically about the product. Like buy now, pay later. It's a new product. No one when it was launched, no one really understood what it was. So, we take on that sort of independent education.
[00:08:39] Jon: It's like when you should use it, when you shouldn't use it, what you should look out for, how it works, the pitfalls, the benefits. So very objective editorial about just the new product class. FinTechs are normally in a new line of business; they're trying to disrupt the market, they know what they do.
[00:08:56] Jon: They're explaining that to others in a way that's
[00:09:00] Jon: digestible is where we spend a lot of time. Then once we provided that information to our audience is you get down to the individual products. So that's where traditional comparison comes in. So, if there's fees, how do those fees compare to other providers?
[00:09:14] Jon: Making that kind of comparison objective. But we also do like best buy. Our editorial team, we'll have like 200 criteria and we'll go through all of the providers in a particular category. Then we'll write them for different things. So, some products are better for beginners
[00:09:31] Jon: like simple, easy to use, nice UX, but they might not have all the advanced features. Then some products might be great for experts or for the next stage, but they're not very easy to use if you are new to that category. So, we tend to have those sorts of best buys for different types of people based on what they're looking for so they can find the best product.
[00:09:50] Lucas: Okay, fantastic! Certainly, myself when browsing the website, I've seen different categories there. Particularly,
[00:10:00] Lucas: with business bank accounts, I know that you've got particular criteria around, if they're sending money overseas or in the personal finance section, the types of products people are looking for.
[00:10:13] Lucas: It's great that you guys have got them categorized.
[00:10:16] Jon: They often all look the same on the surface. Then it's only when you really get into a category you really understand there are actual big differences between companies that could look like they're offering the same product and
[00:10:27] Jon: it's really us doing all the hard work, because, you don't want to go out and test like 10 different banks to see which one works best for you. So, that's what we do for you.
[00:10:36] Lucas: Exactly. That would take a lot of time. Also, one of the other things which always surprises me is just how many different companies exist even within same niche, categories.
[00:10:47] Jon: Some categories get very quickly get quite crowded. Ultimately there'll be a consolidation phase. Some will make it, some won't make it, and those sorts of things. But we've definitely noticed that over the years in a lot of these new
[00:11:00] Jon: categories all the ones we've mentioned, business banking is becoming very crowded, very competitive.
[00:11:04] Jon: digital banking, crypto trading, all of these categories get full quite quickly and eventually, there'll be some consolidations and the best ones will kind of bubble to the top.
[00:11:17] Lucas: Yes, absolutely! I think we're seeing that now, particularly let's say in the Fintech space.
[00:11:22] Lucas: There were a lot of providers out there, particularly sort of pre-COVID. But I think there's been a bit of a flattening out of the market.
[00:11:33] Jon: I think there's just with the market's changed a lot as you alluded to earlier. We had COVID and we had what was quiet, what maybe what you wouldn't expect in that actually a lot of people had more to spendable income
[00:11:48] Jon: and more time because they were in lockdown, they weren't paying the for Tube, they weren't paying to commute, and they actually had this extra cash. That's so a lot of that went into people getting into
[00:12:00] Jon: share trading and married up the same time as these more user friendly like the kind of Robinhoods in the US and then the kind of the Freetrade and these types or
[00:12:08] Jon: offering those products. That was one of the big booms. Obviously, the crypto boom as well. It kind of happened at the same time, stirred up by Reddit and a lot of speculative investing. All straight bets! All straight bets! So that was huge. There was a lot of that very strange activity and we obviously spend a lot of time educating and it's great to have some play money
[00:12:34] Jon: and play around with some meme stocks or meme coins, whatever you want to do. That's fine. If you don't mind losing the money, that's awesome. But I guess, we found it introduced especially younger audience into investing and they might have lost some money on Dogecoin and hopefully only a little bit of pocket money but it got them into
[00:12:51] Jon: thinking about investing. I think that's really important is, then you can have conversations around their pension and if don't opt out, if you're auto
[00:13:00] Jon: involvement pension scheme. How much that would cost you over a lifetime if you did do that. So, it gets them in the game, gets them thinking more about those sorts of products and making their money work for them.
[00:13:09] Jon: I think that's the journey that we want to take our members on is help them out with their first purchase, but then educate and show them, give them other options and more options as they try to develop.
[00:13:21] Lucas: Absolutely! I think two points I'll touch upon from that.
[00:13:25] Lucas: The first one is because you mentioned pensions and that's not something that gets enough, let's say air time, I know that previously being a Trustee Director of a pension scheme myself, member engagement is a huge challenge for them. So, the fact that Finder is able to nudge people towards that when they might be looking at a credit card or an investment, is fantastic.
[00:13:51] Lucas: The second point, that I'd like to elaborate on, and it's the one that you mentioned earlier, was about consumer behavior during the
[00:14:00] Lucas: pandemic, you mentioned that people had more time due to the lockdowns and also more money, more disposable income, as a result of reduced spending. Fast forward a couple of years,
[00:14:14] Lucas: It's almost the opposite on fast forward and on steroids. We've got a high inflationary market, which is reducing people's effective disposable income because of the price of goods. We're also seeing people returned to the office and so they may have less time. In the current market
[00:14:46] Lucas: what sort of changes in consumer behavior are you seeing?
[00:14:51] Jon: It has been a full turn, a full 360°, hasn’t it? Or 180°, I should say and so we have
[00:15:00] Jon: seen people obviously concerned about maybe their mortgages. Obviously, we have interest rates going up and there's probably a little bit more to go on that.
[00:15:08] Jon: That's been a big concern for people and we've certainly seen lots of people researching if they can get a better rate or fixing rates. So, there's a bit less volatility down the road so that's been a big thing. Personal credit had the demand for that.
[00:15:26] Jon: I think it's just gone back to pre-pandemic levels. Actually, it dropped off a lot again because no one was spending money on holidays and those sorts of things. So new cars, you can't buy a new car because of the supply issues. There was a lot of people who were paying down debt and a lot of people weren't taking on debt. Obviously, with the cost of living.
[00:15:44] Jon: People commuting and people starting to get back into things desperately more strain on the cash flow certainly was seen. Levels which were quite high, pre-credit levels were quite high, probably too high and they've kind of returned to those levels.
[00:16:01] Jon: So obviously people are trying to find the best credit option for them. There's lots of different products these days as well and some of them are more complex than others. But it's certainly worth understanding all your options and which providers. Then also your credit score and how that impacts onto the deal you can get.
[00:16:18] Jon: That's one of the challenges that people might find is getting access to the best products can be quite difficult if you don't have a good credit history, that especially affects younger people that probably have more strain on their disposable income.
[00:16:33] Jon: To find it harder to get a good credit deal and often get short changed. So, helping consumers on that path and finding the best possible outcomes is what we're focused on at the moment.
[00:16:46] Lucas: I think very good points on mortgages and how their increase in interest rates will affect the amounts of money that people need to repay
[00:16:58] Lucas: credit. Just diving slightly away from things. You mentioned credit scoring and I think it's a very interesting piece because lower income individuals, who you refer to, let's say somebody who's just leaving University or at university, they might not be making mortgage payments on the house,
[00:17:21] Lucas: they might be paying rent. I know there have been a couple of providers that have entered the market previously, that say, look we're going to use rent payments as a credit scoring tool. You've been in this industry, around the Fintech industry for a while.
[00:17:44] Lucas: Do you see improvements in terms of credit scoring methods here in the UK or do you think overseas markets are doing it better?
[00:17:52] Jon: I think the UK's doing a pretty good job. But it takes time. I was talking to a lot of the open banking powered affordability kind of scoring of consumers and lenders have been taking that data for a couple of years now.
[00:18:09] Jon: They weren't necessarily giving any better rates back two years ago. But the idea is that by collecting that data and feeding into their models, they need time to see if it works. If those models actually work in reality, because the credit score is very well proven and the way they're risk averse, they're going to rely on that.
[00:18:28] Jon: But it does really help fin files. So that's people that don't have credit products, that don't have a history of paying off deb. So for those individuals most of them are probably good investments. They're either very employable, they've got very employable skills. They just haven't used credit before
[00:18:44] Jon: often because either they're new to the country or they're just young. A lot of credit providers don't want to turn away a big percentage of the potential customers. But they do have responsibilities and affordability and they need to make sure that they're
[00:19:01] Jon: checking all the boxes. Open banking has been helping in that regard. I think we'll see an acceleration. That was one of the benefits over COVID is there was a massive uptake in consumers connecting bank accounts to different types of open banking services.
[00:19:17] Jon: So, there is a lot more data around now. A lot more learnings. So, I think we probably won't notice this, like just the percentages or just widen as far as how many people now can get accepted for credit products but probably quite timely with cost of living.
[00:19:33] Jon: Hopefully that works out for some people.
[00:19:35] Lucas: Absolutely! I think the FinTechs or the lending providers using open banking will hopefully then be able to monitor their percentage of nonperforming loans or debt which they forecast not to be repaid in a much more real time manner
[00:19:53] Lucas: now, with that data. I know certainly from the business banking side of things
[00:20:00] Lucas: during COVID, the banks didn't necessarily have a real time view over which businesses were going to be affected. Whereas if you had that data through open banking, you would see which businesses have maintained or let's say they were a toilet pay for company increased the amount of revenue they were bringing in.
[00:20:19] Lucas: Very interesting! We've spoken a little bit about the inflationary market and the effect that would have on the credit side and mortgages side. Are you able to talk a little bit about, how that might affect people going to Finder and looking for investments?
[00:20:41] Jon: We've certainly seen people looking at different investment options. Obviously, it was very simple a couple of years ago on everything was going up to the right but, with the collapse of the Pound (£) in recent days,
[00:20:59] Jon: that makes investigate the US, quite risky on your exchange rate exposure. Obviously, the market's now being on downward trend for a little while and no one's super confident. Crypto sort of followed suit, with the on-risk kind of assets and has crashed out a little bit and how long that's going to be crypto winter number two, how long that will last for is a big question mark.
[00:21:29] Jon: That was one of the go to’s. So, it's there's a lot of by the dip sort of thing, but most people don't time the market. I always dollar cost averaging, so I just put a little in it every month, over a long period of time. You tend on average to perform better than trying to pick the market unless you're spending an awful lot of time and
[00:21:49] Jon: have a lot of knowledge of the area that you're are investing in. But, there's lots of other investments options, commodities, as a gold and those
[00:22:00] Jon: sorts of things are obviously always popular when there's uncertainty. Then I guess new asset classes, alternative investment, things are popping up.
[00:22:11] Jon: They have been around for a while, but, there's a lot of interest in them.
[00:22:14] Lucas: Yes. I saw that, there was a company called Mintus, which does fractionalized artwork. Finder has now opened up a page for investing in art. I know Mintus is the only provider on there at the moment.
[00:22:31] Lucas: But did you see demand from the audiences that you serve for alternative asset classes like art, like gold which has led Finder to start to publish pages on alternatives.
[00:22:50] Jon: I think Mintus is a good example of an alternative investment. There's been a few around. There's like Whiskey and Mintus with art.
[00:22:56] Jon: It's really interesting. No one's going to go and buy a 5
[00:23:00] Jon: million dollars painting themselves. But I think there's a lot of interest in how technology could help democratize investment. Obviously, that was only available to the one percenters
[00:23:14] Jon: in the past. That's been a lot of the movement over the last two years. Has it been making investments open to audience. The way we work is we're very much audience driven, which maybe differentiates Finder from some other sites out there, which maybe are more traditionally owned.
[00:23:35] Jon: We are more traditionally focused on just coming accounts and car insurance products and very traditional. Where we do a lot of crypto content, we do a lot of alternative finance content now and that's all based on trends.
[00:23:50] Jon: Google will tell us what's trending. You don't need to go far to find out what people are searching for and it's our job to do the
[00:24:00] Jon: research for them. If people are looking for alternate asset classes where we're like, oh, well, okay, so what are the different options?
[00:24:07] Jon: How would you compare your options? Should you put it into crypto or you should put it into US stocks or FTSE 100 or fine art or Whiskey, what appropriate for yourself and for your portfolio and you want try some new things out and spread some things out.
[00:24:27] Jon: Really interesting space you're dealing with a significant amount of money then or significant to you, definitely takes some financial, independent financial advice. Capital's always at risk. We've investments, but, I think we provide accessible, easy to digest information about options.
[00:24:48] Jon: Then our audience and our members can kind of review that and make their own decisions for us, what works for them.
[00:24:56] Lucas: In terms of, you mentioned there are other sites out there as
[00:25:00] Lucas: well. But I want to really focus on Finder and the traffic that it generates and how it serves the UK market?
[00:25:07] Lucas: When it comes to your traffic, where do you source that from and how do you build it up?
[00:25:12] Jon: We got; I'd say maybe free sources of traffic. Obviously, my background is in digital marketing and these days that means Google and Facebook, they own a lot of the internet and that's the point of origination.
[00:25:30] Jon: When people are on them in YouTube these days as well. When people are either on Google, or they're on YouTube and they're actually searching, they're thinking about something and they're trying to research and they're searching. We want to be found and we can be found there by the content we produce, which is tens of thousands of pages of reviews and comparisons
[00:25:49] Jon: and analysis. So that you'll find that on Google or being organically. We also produce videos as well, which is
[00:26:00] Jon: definitely with my case is a preference as far as observing information in video format rather than reading. Especially smartphones and stuff, it's just a massive channel for us.
[00:26:12] Jon: So that's really building our own audience. We've got YouTube channel and we've got experts that talk about different aspects of finance on there, which also links to our written articles and our comparison tools. They all work together.
[00:26:26] Jon: We originate a lot from Google and people like that we build our audience of subscribers to our Money Tips newsletter to our video channel and people will come back to that. Then we also have membership on the site as well, which is free, of course, where you can get your credit score.
[00:26:47] Jon: So, if you're interested in getting a mortgage or credit card or personal loan, then you need to know that, so you can do that. Then there's other kind of exclusive member benefits as well that we use to
[00:27:00] Jon: engage with an audience and build that relationship.
[00:27:03] Jon: We get that repeat business and we can tell them about new products and new things that are coming along in the marketplace.
[00:27:10] Lucas: Indeed, I hadn't realized that. You have a member section as well. So, definitely something that I've learned and I'm sure the audience will have learned as well, that we can take away from today.
[00:27:21] Lucas: Excellent. Jon, thank you so much for providing all of that overview of Finder; how you're building trust across the market with consumers, helping them to make difficult decisions. You're also helping Fintechs to access the market by explaining what they do in a very
[00:27:46] Lucas: objective manner and simplifying it for consumers so that they're able to choose products that best represent their personas. Are there any tips or
[00:28:00] Lucas: takeaways that you'd like to provide to founders and operators in the market based upon your experience as the CEO of Finder, UK or as a previous founder?
[00:28:13] Jon: Maybe I could throw a few out there. I think, the first one is to engage and talk. You don't get to talk to Google that much they just take the money and send you some clicks. I think obviously, we work with a lot of providers.
[00:28:31] Jon: We run technology driven business ourselves. So just talking, catching up human-to-human; it can be a great way of exploring. Well, we are a publisher, this is what we need. You are Fintech and this is your part of the curve where you are, what stage you're at
[00:28:51] Jon: and what you need and just having that conversation, I think is super valuable for both parties. Just being as open and as frank.
[00:29:00] Jon: We've been around and we would've heard it all and worked with companies and in lots of different circumstances.
[00:29:07] Jon: You might have a massive VC backer or you might be bootstrapping it with your own money. We work with the whole spectrum and so I think that's good to have that. Obviously, testing is an important thing as well. Just get some real-world data.
[00:29:25] Jon: Then there's a stage where you have to stop. Assuming what your model's going to look like and you just need to get out there and actually get some real-life customers signed up. See if you can get them to come back, what the metrics look like. I think, getting out there and getting real life campaigns out and testing is you are going to learn like 10 times and there's only so much you can learn in planning and you just
[00:29:49] Jon: need to be in market.
[00:29:49] Lucas: A forecast can be very sophisticated. But the market provides its reaction. You really don't know, whether it's going to fly or not.
[00:30:02] Jon: Exactly. Be customer focused. That's the most important thing, especially in a Fintech, because a lot of it is word
[00:30:10] Jon: of mouth. You do need to be investing in the product and investing in the user experience. That's how you're going to be able to get that model to work.
[00:30:21] Lucas: Absolutely! The word-of-mouth point really resonates because somebody asked me the other day, what Revolut’s viral factor was?
[00:30:32] Lucas: I couldn't tell you the number, but certainly I think it was, they only started doing paid marketing at around 3 million customers or so. Which is an extremely good viral factor whatever it was.
[00:30:49] Jon: Definitely. I mean, there's definitely some value proposition Revolut was a
[00:30:55] Jon: good example. There was the product, there was a lot of money spent on the product.
[00:31:00] Jon: Which I will say is well that's marketing because that was millions and millions of dollars of product and probably fee subsidies, which was very smart.
[00:31:09] Jon: I think a lot of people came and followed on and copied that exact model of it, exchange rate, subsidies and those sorts of things. That's a bit like Robin Hood and low-cost trading or free share trading. It's a good sell.
[00:31:24] Jon: But once you've got them in, that only gets them in. At that point actually have to impress them enough that they're going to tell five people, you have to get this, this new App or this new service. I think that works for customers that we deliver. Free Finder will access a different segment in the market,
[00:31:47] Jon: but you want to multiply that investment by getting referrals and so I think it's well understood. Hard to do.
[00:31:59] Lucas: It's hard to do! Then the other piece beyond referrals is cross selling, the client across different products or penetrating them across different services.
[00:32:12] Jon: Again, sounds easy! I think a lot of time it comes down to relevancy. I think then that's when we work with our audience and we interview Finder members that come back to the website and find out why they come to Finder, what they enjoyed, what they didn't like, and actually talking to the customers in those customer interviews.
[00:32:33] Jon: I think for any Fintech that's an awesome source of insight because you can end up in your own bubble, you talking to yourself. But why not talk to your customers? You'll be amazed sometimes, some of the insights you get from
[00:32:50] Jon: a real person then the product team.
[00:32:55] Lucas: That's very true. Jon, thank you for those insights. Number one ⎯ have conversations with different partners. Number two ⎯ follow the data, do tests, be data driven. Number three ⎯ really get to know the customer.
[00:33:15] Lucas: If these are the secrets to Finder, UK success, then I'm sure everybody should really have a thinking about them because you've done a fantastic job of scaling it to where it is.
[00:33:28] Jon: Thanks Lucas. Appreciate that.
[00:33:30] Lucas: No worries. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:33:33] Jon: Thanks for having us, excellent. Thanks.