Latest / The Payments Shed / Ep. 56 - Inside ANNA Money: AI, MTD, and the Future of Small Business Finance

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Ep. 56 - Inside ANNA Money: AI, MTD, and the Future of Small Business Finance · The Payments Shed

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Welcome to the Payment Shed. Podcast The weekly podcast that
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dives into the big topics, trends and people shaping the
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world's of payments, fintech and business.
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Leadership of your two Co hosts myself.
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Grant Evans and Justin Hannah. Welcome to another episode of
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the Payment Shed podcast. I'm Grant Evans.
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Today I am riding solo, no Justin Hannah beside me,
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unfortunately for the first time ever in Four Seasons.
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But I am very fortunately joined by Edouard and Boris, the Co
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founders and Co CE OS of Anna money.
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Welcome to the podcast, guys. Thank you.
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Can I please just so we always kick off with our guests, just
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getting a little bit of introduction to who we've got on
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the show and your journey into fintech, which I know can
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obviously be a long arch for some, but but where did it all
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start for you guys? Oh, it was.
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It was a long journey. Try to condense it in.
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The short version would be we started what we started off with
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the transformation of a regional bank into a digital bank and
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then we refocused it into being an SME focused digital kind of
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online bank. That's that's the very short
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version of it. And later we'll learn that that
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type of stuff is called fintechs.
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It's like my background is in development, and I was bored one
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day and thought, oh, why won't we add to a regular website a
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feature that people can actually manage their finances through
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the web without, you know, special apps or whatever.
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And then ten years down, down the road, people came up with a
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name for that, which is fintech. So yeah.
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Yeah, I think we'll talk about the name of fintech later on,
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but it's it's kind of becoming a more unpopular term I think now
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because it's such an established part of the ecosystem and it
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still may be seen as this, this new thing that really isn't new
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anymore, right. So yeah, I'll ask you your
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opinion on that like. And I wanted to talk.
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About the two CEO model, because it's not particularly common in
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business these days to have two CEOs but obviously Co founders.
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It makes complete sense when you break it down that way.
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How have you found kind of going on that journey together and and
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operating the kind of dual CEO model?
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No, it's your turn. Yeah.
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Well, we've been working together since 2008, I believe.
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Yes, but and doing stuff together several businesses, you
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know growing them, selling them. But it it is just in Anna that
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it was like officially officially Cosio model.
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It is taxing in a way that we have to be closely synced about
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stuff. But then you know, it just gives
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the benefit of bunch of prayers of eyes once you can be
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presented to meetings simultaneously, that type of
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stuff and. I guess after 18 years you'd
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probably know if you don't work well together by this point in
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time, right? Well, there's always new facets
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and new territories, etcetera, but we get along.
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We get along and we learned how to kind of do this together and
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how to discuss things and also things which we disagree on.
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But yeah, I mean, it's also quite exciting, to be honest.
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But both agreeable on not liking the word fintech, so that that's
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an interesting. One for me.
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That's your personal. One, because, you know, out of
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money could be seen as a fintech to some.
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I'm fine. I'm fine with me, you know.
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So why then Boris? Why?
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Why is the issue with Fintech as a term?
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Well. Labels are not always helpful.
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Then bunch of stuff is being called Fintechs and we've seen
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the evolution where something that started as a fintech and
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now is as boring as your couple 100 year old banks.
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Then I would also distinguish that, you know, Fintech
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innovation, it's kind of put at the same bucket, but then with
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many fintechs, there is not much innovation there except an ICU X
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and that's about it. So, so I, I think in that sense,
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the labels are, are not that helpful.
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And then in the end of the day, clients don't wake up with the
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thought, oh, I need a Fintech in my life.
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They just need their problem solved.
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And in that regard, it doesn't matter where there is something
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that does it without the licensing background or whether
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it's a traditional bank that does it or in ucommerce that
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does it. So how does that philosophy
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manifest in how you guys then design your own products for for
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small businesses in the financial ecosystem?
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Well, ideally what we want to achieve well and we are on the
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journey. We're not there yet, but that's
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what we want to build is a small business owner having an
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assistant, a companion, a partner, an employee.
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I don't know what the brain, the second brain, I don't know how
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to call it, but which is intelligent deals with the
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things money cards, bookkeeping, accounting, hiring, firing,
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sales and you know, things like that.
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So and you know, and it's just for £100 a month.
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That is kind of our vision. That's where we are trying to
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evolve gradually. And from that perspective, you
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know, yes, you need to be integrated with payment
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infrastructures and cards and you know, payments and payment
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acceptances, etcetera, etcetera. But it's more like a support
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stuff like, you know, so it's, I mean, if people prefer to call
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it fintechs, it's fine. But from my perspective, it's
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more about trying to build this assistant for a business owner
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who are very lonely and you know, and there's they're time
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poor and need to manage a lot of things.
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So having that at your disposal, I think that's what we want to
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to achieve. Yeah, it's.
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So we're not building a fintech, but we're building something
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that small businesses would not be able to live without.
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Yeah, it's really interesting because Lou Murray was on
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recently from from Rails or Equals Money and she put fintech
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on her shelf of shame at the end of our show because she felt as
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a term it was again being perceived the wrong way these
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days. So it's interesting that you
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guys also have to that same feeling.
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And Edward, you guys, I I think really are one of the first
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financial institutions in the UK to call itself Robot Ready.
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So let's dive into your your journey with AI as as a
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business. You know what does that really
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mean in practice? Well, we started off with a chat
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interface, but it's not only the the interface, but it's also
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the, the bus, the layer inside the tech architecture, which
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actually pulls the micro services it needs to perform a
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certain function. So it's actually was built that
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way from the very beginning. It was powered by our internal,
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you know, homemade ML powered kind of system chat.
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But right now the technology is much more advanced and you know,
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with LMS being so powerful and, you know, essentially what we're
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doing is we are replacing our homemade ML based chat with LLM.
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And that opens up a lot of, you know, horizons, which we have
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never kind of dreamed that that would come so fast.
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But it also, you know, from an architectural point of view,
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it's an interesting territory to explore.
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But essentially what you have, you have a reasoning layer
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inside of your architecture, which is actually, you know,
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reasoning can ask certain questions or pull certain
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information outside under the name to perform a certain goal.
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And it's goal oriented and it's inside your tech, not like a
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parallel feature or something, but it actually pulls all these
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services that needed to be kind of to execute a sort of certain
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function. And that is exciting.
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I mean that that is very powerful, sometimes too
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powerful. And we have to explore what the
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the applications of. That's an interesting term,
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isn't it? Too powerful.
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Powerful. And I guess that leads into my
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next question on how you maintain accuracy and control.
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Yeah, well, just just doing before that by being Robert
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Freddie, it's not only that we can and have become smarter
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behind the scenes while still keeping the same interface for
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the clients. It's also that popular LLMS like
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Chat GPD or Gemini or whatever, they can talk to Anna.
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So we actually had people that would form a company from Chat
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without leaving ChatGPT interface, but using Anna as a
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backhand. So that is also possible.
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We had people open an account with an from ChatGPT interface
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once you know, it has all your documents and stuff, you'll
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still have to do all the proper identification that's and the
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interface, but all the all the preparatory work might happen
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there. So there is also another layer
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of development where we all might end up there.
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And the question was about. Yeah, like accuracy and control
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from you like as you guys scale like do you feel like that gets
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jeopardized till by having that kind of LMM model in the
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background? Oh, that's, that's the bits
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where for example, I can ask ChatGPT to build my tax return
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for me, but it is not trained on my documents, it is not trained
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on the specific on my previous filing history.
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So it would make mistakes and actually I tried and it did.
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Now with what we're building in house, we have rigorous testing,
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we have kind of old school models that run on top of that
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and check it for accuracy. But most importantly, it's
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trained on proprietary data including customers own data
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that comes from previous filings, transactions, blah blah
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blah. That makes it way more accurate
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because it just specialized and it has all the data feeds that
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are not available to regular models, which improves the
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accuracy and the more quality info you have in there the
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baddest output. Yeah, I think that's a bit of a
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misconception with AI sometimes that it is this silver bullet as
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well that you have to be giving it the right data and the right
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information for it to to service what you need as a business,
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right? Well, and also the key question,
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like, is it better in comparison to what?
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And I've had accountants make like grave mistakes, just
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miswritten, missing the numbers and and it happens, you know,
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we're we're humans. So in that regard, Robert's
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actually better. And I, I want to reel off a
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couple of numbers here because, you know, these are massively
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impressive as well. So Edward also accountant within
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your system automates 88% of corporation tax, 54% of that
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returns. How do you get comfortable
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pushing that automation so far? I mean, obviously impressive
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numbers, but I mean that's, that's phenomenal data.
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Well, and it's, it's not the end of the journey, it's just the
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beginning. But look, we started with the,
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you know, applying machine learning technologies and we
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mustered those and not displacing those, but actually
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augmenting those where needed or replacing where needed with
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reasoning models. We're actually building on top
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of that and, and, but also these technologies enable us to
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process not just the data, but the architecture of the service
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itself. And that brings in quite, you
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know, new challenges as well. Like for example, when we talk
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about customer data and you know, previous filings and
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things like that, there's always how much do you need for a
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particular task to be performed? Like do you need all of it part
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of it? How do you process?
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Which part do you need? And you do it dynamically
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because you still maintain this conversation.
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So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's all this challenges which are
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quite new. But in answer to your question,
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the current technologies are capable of supporting that, but
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it's executing on it is a special task.
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For supporting the show. So it's it's it's, it's just
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applying this to particular domain, which makes it
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particularly kind of interesting.
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But the technologies are there to to support that.
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It's just that execution and application in particular domain
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is something that we're working on.
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Has it like redefined your recruitment processes as well?
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Because you're looking for people, I guess that that have a
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really innate knowledge in this area moving forward with it
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being such a core part of your proposition.
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It's so much so much the recruitment, but that did change
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a lot of things internally in terms of how we develop
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products, how we assess them. What kind of people do we need?
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How do we actually make sure that people we have really
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applied in a consistent manner. That is something that was also
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new. Like, you know, you've got back
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end developers and then suddenly you actually tell them well.
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From tomorrow you are full stack developers.
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Yeah, and, and you know, and they're using cloth.
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It doesn't make them better workers, right?
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It's made them more efficient. Yeah, sometimes it does, yeah.
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But it is, it is a shift in mentality because obviously
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there are people that want to keep doing that the old ways and
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we're saying, OK, but we won't be having just back end
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developers and front end developers separately anymore.
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Let's rewind like it was 15 years ago when there were only
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full stack developers. So back to basics.
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That's exciting. I like that.
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Let's talk about making tax digital then from April 850,000
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people must be filing digitally under MTD.
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How significant shift is that in the market?
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We think it's pretty significant and it's only the first wave
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that you're referring to because there's going to be two more
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ways. So in total, that's going to be
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3,000,000 businesses which would be affected by that.
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Are they quite fast follow ONS? It's a yearly shift.
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It's a yearly wave. So there's going to be 3 waves
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and the first one that you referred to is 850 or whatever
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the estimate number of those affected is going to be.
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And then the next one is going to be 1,000,000 and just under
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1,000,000 in the third year. But yeah, it's going to be a
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pretty significant shift. People would have to update
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their kind of filings on the quarterly basis and do it
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digitally. So yeah, it's going to be a big
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shift for many sole traders. And you guys have made a a
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pretty big decision internally that you're going to provide
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that service for free, the quarterly filing service
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forever, right? Is that is that?
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Correct. Yes, that's correct.
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That's like a bold commercial move to make as a business.
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What was the kind of Co founder, Co CEO chat that took place
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there to agree to that? That was pretty easy, by the
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way, That was pretty easy. That's one of the things we
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didn't fight over. But why the decision?
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I mean, that's, you know, surely that's something you could have
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commercialized if you wanted to. And we think that there will be
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opportunities to commercialize that, but I think that's the MTD
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part. This is the part which is, you
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know, digital filing and digital records should be free, but the
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conveniences on top of that might be something that you
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could commercialize going forward.
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Because the way the market is, people would be either forced to
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get an account subscription or worse yet, to get first year
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free of an outdated accountancy software that they would have to
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figure out how to use and do everything themselves.
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So what we're offering is a new type of a product, new type of a
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monetization from our end. But in the end, it's a very
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lucrative offer for for a client because I mean, the stuff that
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needs to be free, that's actually not a rocket science,
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just needs to be free. And the conveniences of having
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it all in one place, having the visibility, having your payments
19:14
linked to that, OK, that's different story.
19:17
And do you see MTD as a an opportunity or a burden for
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small businesses? I think it would feel like a
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burden in the kind of in the initial stages of roll out.
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Because they're used to what they're used to, and so.
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It's always the switching behaviors and you know, kind of
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paradigms and you know, habits, which is always uncomfortable.
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Going forward, we'll see. I mean the to some extent look
19:44
the years this year end, you know, couple of weekends spend
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on you know, putting the records together etcetera, etcetera,
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talking to an accountant and you know things like that and.
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Realizing that you just don't have enough cash to pay what you
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do, that's that's not healthy. Yeah, yeah.
20:03
So spreading it throughout the year probably would make it a
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little less stressful and painful at the end of the.
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Year and the theories is of just putting aside on a savings, you
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know, the money that you would need to pay anyways in the end
20:20
of the year just forecast. And that I think once once
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everybody's in the group with that, there would be way less
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stress and more convenience in a way.
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So you say because you still have to do the work.
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I mean, it's like just, you know, if you just take care of
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it step by step. But you say once everyone's in
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the groove, right, So we like to do this thing in financial
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services, don't we, Where we we announce new products, there's
20:46
going to be a better way forward.
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And then we launch it to market with a date.
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It was always a hard date. Sometimes that date shifts.
20:52
But do you think the market is ready for this or is there going
20:55
to be a lot of confusion and kerfuffle?
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Obviously you guys are ahead of the the curve in terms of
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helping. Yeah, you know, with with MTD.
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But are everyone else in the market ready or not?
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Or is it going to be a bit chaos like this year?
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I think it's going to be chaotic as it always is when some big
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things happen. There's going to be some cows
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involved. But I, I think it would settle
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down and you know, it's going to take maybe a couple of quarters
21:23
to settle down. But again, it is my kind of
21:26
personal view because I think that there's going to be a lot
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of, you know, messaging noise, marketing noise about like
21:36
people would try to kind of offer its products and services
21:41
using this kind of shifts. So it's going to be a bit
21:45
confusing as well for people. So I think it's going to be a
21:50
bit of chaotic transition. There's always opportunity in
21:54
the chaos, right. So I presume you guys are
21:57
building a good marketing campaign around this and?
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We'll see. We'll see.
22:01
We hope so. Yeah, we'll see.
22:04
Good stuff. So I wanted to talk about a
22:08
really interesting story of you guys as well.
22:10
See Wirecard is known very well to our listener network.
22:13
Now there's this this story about yourselves from 2020 and
22:17
and obviously previously, you know, working with Wirecard as
22:21
as you were, you decided to go live on YouTube.
22:26
Is that is that correct? Is this a true story?
22:28
It is a true story. Can you can you tell us the
22:30
story, what happened there and how it how it came about?
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The decision. I think we know.
22:39
How it was one of those situations when it was Friday
22:44
and we do have a demo day on Fridays where people kind of
22:48
present what they've been doing for a week or Sprint and we also
22:52
use this opportunity to announce things, etcetera.
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So it was one of those things when I started talking about the
22:58
new strategy, and then I was getting these text messages from
23:01
Boris saying that, OK, you know, there's something going on.
23:05
Like just look at. This finish the speech and.
23:08
I was like, you know, like I was annoyed honestly.
23:13
And I was like, why is he sending me these messages?
23:15
Like, you know, like, and then I followed the link and then there
23:20
was this FCA announcement and I just realized that, you know,
23:23
like just the screen says that, you know, we don't have a back
23:28
end anymore. We don't have a back end
23:30
anymore. And it's like, and it's in the
23:32
middle of this, you know? Company inspiring, yeah.
23:38
Strategy, strategy, speech and everything.
23:43
So I, I cut it short and you know, we went into this, you
23:49
know, damage liquidation exercise, but there's, you know,
23:52
like, how do you, I mean, it's total uncertainty and you know,
23:56
it's all blacked out. You, you know, you can't do
23:58
anything. You know, customers are crazy
24:01
for obvious reasons and some of them were kind of not even like
24:06
knowing they don't follow the FC news and you know, business
24:09
news, etcetera. They may come to their account
24:12
like at 5:00 PM and not knowing what happened.
24:14
And you know, so it was it was a mess, it was chaotic and and
24:22
people were asking, you know, very kind of simple questions
24:27
what happened? How am I affected?
24:30
What's going to be next? How can I get my money as simple
24:34
as that? So, and we just thought that
24:39
probably the best way to dress it is being, you know, honest,
24:43
transparent and you know, like accessible.
24:45
And so we decided, OK, what's the best way to to talk about
24:49
that? Then we said, OK, let's set up a
24:52
streaming session, and we started with streaming.
24:55
Because that wasn't like somewhere in the midst of the
24:58
lockdown or between the lockdown.
25:00
So I think that was still like have a lockdown.
25:03
It's still humanizes you guys as as leaders of the business,
25:06
right, Because it's easy to put out a statement in that moment
25:09
like a lot of companies would do.
25:11
So I think it's quite unique to have made that decision to kind
25:14
of. Oh, and we were taking questions
25:16
as they will come and you know. Yeah.
25:18
But it was also, you know, we did it on I, I don't remember
25:21
was it Saturday, on Sunday, but one of the weekend days.
25:25
But in between we were talking to some of our investors and you
25:30
know, shareholders at the time and we suggested to them that we
25:36
buy out all balances, customer balances, so essentially
25:41
unfreeze customer balances and instead would have claims
25:46
against, you know a safeguarded accounts with Wirecard.
25:52
So it took quite a lot of discussion internally like
25:56
because they. Were the legal counsel.
25:58
Because it's not as straightforward.
26:00
It's not straightforward to run an operation like that.
26:03
So we were talking to lawyers. We were talking to, you know,
26:06
our shareholders had their own lawyers and company lawyers and.
26:10
And we were trying to get some information from Wirecard like
26:14
do they actually have the money or not, You know, so it was
26:18
where, where is that money and that type of simple.
26:21
Question, don't we? But yeah, I mean, I mean, and
26:24
you know, how quickly did you manage to, I mean that's
26:27
obviously a big financial decision to to buy out those
26:30
balances like you talk about. But how quickly were you able to
26:33
go and find a new provider? And obviously how has that then
26:37
changed your strategy around like a single supplier setup?
26:40
Do you, did you, did you decide to go to a multi supplier setup
26:42
off the back of that build yourself?
26:44
Like what was the journey from that point of going, this can
26:47
never happen again. Like this has happened even in
26:50
early Isos in the card payment industry.
26:51
I know stories of acquirers that turned off Isos and stop paying
26:54
them Commission and nearly put them out of business overnight.
26:56
And then ISO started going to lots of different acquirers and
26:59
having 8 acquirers sitting behind their business, right?
27:01
So what was the next step from OK wire card doesn't exist
27:05
anymore. Where do we go from here?
27:08
Well, we, we were considering like contingency plans before
27:14
and one of those even prior to what happened to Wirecard was
27:18
the was Railser, we were playing in the sandbox etcetera.
27:23
So we just accelerated this route at that point in time.
27:28
And yeah, that was a decision to kind of to move to Railser.
27:34
But then, and that was before they actually made this deal
27:39
with some of the transfer of assets to from wild card to to
27:43
railser. So we ended up with two parallel
27:46
backends, 1 was migrated and the 11 was set up newly.
27:50
So we ended up with two sort codes, which was quite unusual
27:56
for an operation of our. Size at the time.
27:59
And yeah, to to cart back. And so it's, it was a bit
28:04
confusing. So we had like in a month's
28:07
time, many customers had two accounts essentially fair.
28:12
Enough and then you know from that experience and how you've
28:19
then gone down the rails the route obviously like you, you
28:24
stayed with a single supplier setup then or did you, did you
28:27
then get a contingency in place? And there is no true contingency
28:33
in this business there it just you either keep some of the
28:38
clients in one set up, another clients on another set up and
28:42
then another one is your ability to to switch fast.
28:46
Then it's also the choice between 8 bed supplies and one
28:51
good one. And managing multiple.
28:53
Relationships, yes. So it's, it's not about the
28:56
number of supplies, it's about managing the contingency risk as
29:00
a whole in the end of the day. And yes, we we are constantly
29:06
thinking about it. And then the next, so that's
29:10
that's looking to the past as we pivot towards the future, right?
29:14
You guys obviously have scale towards that or you're scaling
29:18
towards that 100 million plus turnover bracket, which is
29:21
always a really like poignant moment for businesses in their
29:23
their growth journey. You know, your ambition is to
29:26
become the platform businesses run everything from.
29:30
I guess this is a question for both of you, but what does that
29:33
practically mean to to earn the money?
29:38
You mean product wise or? Yeah, from, well, from a
29:41
business operational point of view, out of money could service
29:45
multiple things for businesses moving forward, right?
29:47
It can help them to strip out other platforms where they're,
29:50
they're utilizing different products and services.
29:53
That's the ambition for you guys, right?
29:55
Yes, the ambition is to essentially, you know, how do I
30:00
say this properly the, the assumption or you know, the,
30:04
the, the thinking is that people are using something, but the,
30:09
the, the type of customers we serve, the lower end of the
30:11
market, in most cases they don't use anything at all.
30:16
So essentially it's capture onboarding them on using US
30:20
versus going from something that they're using in the past.
30:24
There will be some people who would be switching etcetera, but
30:28
the majority would be, you know, they're just not using anything
30:33
at all. Like, you know, and for them, we
30:37
want to become a platform which is supporting them in, you know,
30:42
hiring, payroll, sales, support, money cards, spend management,
30:49
this So it's it's like one stop shop.
30:54
That's what we want to to and where it's not just
30:58
functionally, but it's also, you know, it's, it's not only the
31:02
functions that the actual jobs that you do, but the
31:05
orchestrations of these jobs like scenarios which are cross
31:09
functional. Like you hire someone, but the
31:12
next day you need to set up payroll for this person, right?
31:16
Like it's interconnected. So you can actually do it as one
31:21
single scenario, right? And or much more simple things
31:28
like, you know, if you have you're on the project, you sign
31:32
the contract and then somebody and you're waiting for down
31:35
payment or, you know, something like that or you know, first
31:38
payment and then you start paying your suppliers to do
31:42
this. So all these kind of cross
31:44
functional scenarios where you have contracts, you have
31:47
commercial relations, but also payments or accounting or
31:53
documentation or whatever you know and orchestration of these
31:57
scenarios is an important bit. And it can be difficult to be
32:01
best in class in all those things, right when you're when
32:04
you're running multiple product lines.
32:07
Yes. But with the type of customer in
32:11
mind, who is particular, you know, we define that our
32:16
customer is if a business owner uses our product themselves,
32:21
that's our customer. If they delegate someone to use
32:24
this product, probably not, not our customer.
32:27
Yeah. So it's typically less than 10
32:30
employees and people who actually, you know, do all these
32:35
jobs themselves. And for these people, simplicity
32:40
time it takes. And there's actually these will
32:42
sometimes have you talked about payroll, all these different
32:44
things like they'll have 5 or 6 different platforms sometimes
32:47
doing this. All these different things.
32:48
Exactly. And the way the platforms
32:50
develop or do you become a better platform?
32:52
You just keep adding features And what happens to a product
32:57
when there are a bunch of features and the menu becomes
33:00
complicated, it becomes unusable.
33:02
It's not simple anymore. You have to invest the time and
33:06
like, OK, where is that located? How do I do that?
33:09
How do I turn that on? How do I adjust it for my
33:12
particular use case? And then you have to marry all
33:15
the systems between them. Yeah.
33:17
Yeah, you have to integrate all of them.
33:19
So. So being best in class is not
33:21
being the most complicated. Yeah, it's being the most
33:24
integrated. I think sometimes there's
33:26
there's platforms that have added all of these different
33:28
products and services as well. And what the actual end user
33:31
really wants is to be shown the things that are relevant to
33:34
their business, right? Like do I need all 10 things on
33:37
that dashboard? Do you know that I only need
33:40
these four things because of the type of business I am, the
33:42
sector, I mean, and that's what you're there for going to
33:44
present and you can use AI probably to determine.
33:47
Most of the stuff could be prep populated, you know there could
33:50
be suggestions. We will know that, you know,
33:54
once you want to hire an employee, OK, you have a
33:57
contract and to register for the payee, but then you actually
34:01
have to pay a salary and sometimes it's like 3 different
34:04
products. Well, why?
34:06
But it's the same workflow. Yeah, yeah.
34:09
But also the other thing is that businesses only grow up in terms
34:14
of customers. They rarely if ever go to
34:19
smaller customers. We start very low, and that's on
34:25
purpose, because if we master that, we can always go up.
34:29
Yeah, they cannot go down. Yeah, I get that.
34:34
Makes a lot of sense. And therefore, you know, and
34:36
this cuts segment of customers the the nano businesses, the
34:41
kind of the beyond businesses, they're the most price
34:45
sensitive, they're most difficult to market.
34:47
And if you master that with profitable unit economics that
34:52
then skill and operating at skill like what we do up.
34:55
Yeah. And Australia, obviously you
34:58
guys have grown by our acquisition in Australia.
35:00
Why did you choose that particular market for the sort
35:03
of next step in your your new regional growth journey?
35:07
We just got a license there today as well.
35:09
Oh. Congratulations.
35:10
Thank you. Yeah.
35:11
Thank you. It's the most similar market to
35:15
the UKI mean in terms of regulatory frameworks, you know,
35:22
markets, infrastructures and you know, things like that.
35:26
They're very, very similar. Like for us, going into
35:29
Australia is much easier than going to France.
35:31
I mean, France would be different product, different
35:35
product team. Marketing will be completely
35:37
different. I mean everything is going to be
35:39
a kind of a fork in business whereas.
35:43
In Australia language, you know, yeah.
35:45
So for us it seemed like a, you know, easier targets, but also
35:53
that means that translates into time to time to market, cost to
35:56
market, but also it's a sizeable market, half of the UK.
36:01
So, you know, like in terms of risk, rewards costs and
36:05
everything. We thought that the only the
36:08
only downside is that we have now 7:00 AM sinkholes with them.
36:12
That's, that's, that's the world I know all too well.
36:15
My, my boss is in Melbourne, so I'm used to pretty early morning
36:18
calls as well myself. So OK.
36:21
And if we're looking beyond Australia, is there, is there
36:24
another potential market on the horizon or one you'd like to get
36:28
into in the future? Yeah, of course.
36:32
I mean we think, I mean that is something that we would decide
36:37
later. We still have some time to think
36:39
about it, but the aspiration is go to the US may not necessarily
36:44
be US as you know US, but maybe it's several states, yeah, more
36:49
specifically. Well, that's like going country
36:51
by country anyways. Exactly.
36:52
It's sort of the same, but a bit, yeah.
36:57
So, but that's not something very, very close, but something
37:02
maybe 2 years ahead. And what you expecting the the
37:04
biggest challenges to be as you guys approach that 100 million
37:08
mark and you you get, you know your growth journeys obviously
37:11
being rapid, one of the challenges that come with that
37:14
scale that you're operating at now.
37:18
You know company is is about relationship.
37:23
Relationships between people, how they interact between each
37:26
other, how they solve problems, and going makes these
37:34
relationships a bit more strained and complicated.
37:39
And managing all of that probably is the most difficult
37:44
part. Some people who were good at the
37:48
very start may not necessarily be the best in terms of taking
37:52
it forward and new people coming in and they need to get, you
37:59
know, on terms and you know, and there's an old guard kind of
38:04
people. So managing this transition as,
38:08
as you know as a set of relationship relationships is,
38:12
is is probably the one of the challenges.
38:16
I think it's good to hear that. I mean, we've talked about it on
38:18
the show in the past that businesses need different people
38:22
for different stages of their journey.
38:23
But I think there's also people that feel they're best suited to
38:27
a certain journey within an organization.
38:30
And I've seen, you know, friends, peers of mine that have
38:32
decided they want to be in that start up to scale up bit of the
38:36
journey or that scale up to enterprise bit, but they don't
38:38
want to be in that kind of enterprise level bit, right?
38:40
So we're also seeing people consciously make that decision
38:43
of do you know what? I've been on that that journey.
38:46
Now is the time for me to go and find the next project like that.
38:49
Well, it's about individual and company wide self-awareness, but
38:55
the magnitude of task is almost like starting a new company and
39:01
we had been through scale and journeys before.
39:04
It's it's yeah, the growth pains, but they do come with a
39:09
reward once you and go through them.
39:12
Yeah. And the other thing is that
39:13
people more focused on, you know, individuals like, you
39:16
know, like you need different people or things like that.
39:21
But one bit which is missing is the relationships between these
39:26
people and people who are, you know, in the company, which are
39:31
coming into the company, what they bring in, how they change
39:34
the dynamics. And this is, you know, it's,
39:38
it's about the relationships more than the individuals
39:42
themselves and how you make this is relationships productive,
39:48
introducing new people, but also maybe some people letting go.
39:52
And, you know, like, and, and just, you know, generally you
39:56
have more people. We still want to maintain us as
40:01
a small kind of, you know, club, sort of.
40:05
We don't view ourselves like, you know, scaling a lot in terms
40:08
of people's numbers, but but, you know, still we're growing
40:14
and. The sheer kind of complexity of
40:16
the relationships and the speed of this decisions and everything
40:22
is becoming an issue. And how do you manage that?
40:26
How do you still maintain this agility that you had like when
40:30
you started it? Do you think obviously as a high
40:33
adoption AI business as well in terms of how you've utilized it,
40:38
do you feel that that has significantly impacted the
40:42
volume of people that you've needed to have in the
40:43
organization? Because we hear stories like,
40:45
you know, Clara talks about removing a load of staff and
40:48
bringing AI in and then they rolled that back and when we
40:50
went too far with it. But like in terms of your
40:52
overall headcount, do you think your utilization of of that as a
40:56
product and embedding it into your product has meant that
40:58
you've been able to stay, you know, lesser with lesser
41:02
headcount effectively? We'll see major impact less next
41:06
year, I think, But that's that's what we expect.
41:11
But it's not about like like the journey you've referred to, you
41:15
know, replace and then realising, oh, the stuff doesn't
41:18
work anymore. Let's let's hire people again.
41:21
Because I mean, in Excel it's very easy when she's so
41:26
whatever. But in reality it's not.
41:28
I mean, you bring new people in, they don't know what to do.
41:33
Takes time to train. So, so we're careful in that
41:37
regard because our focus is on keeping customer happiness.
41:43
But there are huge areas of business and processes that
41:48
would just disappear. The stuff that we used to do, we
41:52
would just need not to do it anymore.
41:56
Yeah. And I, I have AI read in my
41:58
Slack messages now. Brilliant.
42:01
Yeah. It's, it's more long term, more
42:05
gradual process than people think in my view.
42:08
And as a company you may grow in areas where you know, you may
42:13
focus on one areas of application, but but then you
42:17
know, you may grow in other areas.
42:20
So in that sense, I think it's a more long term mixed kind of so
42:25
right. And it's going to be, it's going
42:26
to take like 2-3 years to actually kind of properly assess
42:30
that like with numbers and you know, some, some history behind.
42:35
For now, what we're trying to do is we're trying to, in certain
42:41
areas, we're trying to be a bit more mindful as to what are the
42:46
options we have and how do we prioritize those in terms of
42:50
development, hiring and maybe changing processes, etcetera.
42:56
But yeah, that's what we try to do, just to be a bit more
43:00
mindful about hiring new people rather than, you know, rather
43:07
than just, you know, just trying to cut the you've.
43:12
Got the other way to. Cut right you're looking.
43:14
At what you need to add rather than what you need to take away
43:16
well. And that's a big thing.
43:18
The way we'll look at it, there is a mantra.
43:22
OK, it used to be outsourcing to cheaper countries to cut costs.
43:28
Now the same mentality is used. Oh, let's just move all them and
43:32
happy clients to an automated chat to cut costs.
43:35
So people think of technology as a way to cut costs first.
43:42
We think of technology as a way to create value.
43:45
And that is a very different mentality and a very different
43:49
exercise in the end of the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:52
That's, that's, that's a very good point because you know, we
43:56
had the debates at the very start like where do we place our
43:59
customer support And people were saying, well, you know, Revolute
44:03
has it in Poland, let's do something like that.
44:06
You know, everybody does it. But we chose a very different
44:09
approach. We said no, no, no.
44:11
Our customer support is part of the value creation available 24
44:16
by 7, etcetera. It's not like you know call
44:19
center and therefore we need it to be based in the UK.
44:23
So our customer support is UK based and what we achieve
44:28
through that is very difficult to kind of quantify, but knowing
44:35
local context, understanding it better, especially when you talk
44:38
about things like just, you know, theme crime and you know,
44:42
compliance, etcetera. I had an issue with, you know,
44:46
with one of the providers when I was trying to explain in the
44:50
early days when we were opening a business account for Anna that
44:54
we allocated at we work and they said, well, send us a lease
45:00
agreement. They said like it's a membership
45:01
agreement. They said like a membership.
45:03
They said no, no, no, no, it's a membership agreement.
45:05
We need a lease agreement. It's your office, right?
45:09
They said, yes, it's our office. See, it's, it's how we were
45:12
corporate. I mean, that's don't you know
45:15
them? No.
45:17
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
45:18
Because like one of our competitors, most of their
45:22
compliance people line in there, right?
45:25
Yeah. They just would never have that
45:26
context. Yeah, no, I get that.
45:29
Let's say the final part of the show, guys, we we have a little
45:32
segment called the Shelf of Shame.
45:34
We ask all of our guests to nominate something from fintech,
45:37
payments, business, whatever you fancy that if you could get rid
45:42
of it forever, never have to see or think about it again, what
45:46
would your your nominations be? Eduardo, I'll go to you first.
45:50
Oh, I was hoping I would be the second.
45:56
Yeah, probably. Look, it's maybe not fintech or
46:03
I would say reductionist thinking is something that I
46:08
would be very happy if people would put to shelve or
46:13
something. Because, you know, the way many
46:16
people think and operate is that they split the issue, a problem
46:22
or any question into compartments and then try to
46:25
analyze that and and it doesn't. And I think it's it's just
46:31
wrong. Yeah, no, I agree.
46:33
And that is something that I come across and it's very
46:37
logical, very kind of bulletproof, etcetera.
46:41
It's just wrong in many cases. I mean, there's areas where it
46:45
works, but in complex scenarios it doesn't.
46:48
So enough Boris yourself. I'll just go easy with fintech
46:53
and a hype or hysteria around certain technologies or stuff
47:00
because people are often think about the category, whether it's
47:05
hyped or not. They think about the technology,
47:08
whether it's cool or not. And too little attention is on
47:14
OK, how useful it is. How is it capable to change
47:19
day-to-day behaviour? Is it actually making life for
47:24
people that use it way better or way easier or more exciting?
47:29
And I'm not talking about, you know, exciting, like earning
47:35
money for conferences that are dedicated to that hype.
47:39
Yeah, but actual usefulness to the end user.
47:43
Yeah, I think hype's come up a few times.
47:44
Happy to. Happy to put them both on the
47:46
shelf. Guys.
47:47
Look, thanks so much for coming in.
47:48
Where can people go and find out more about Anna Money?
47:52
Just follow us on the news. You know, on the news.
47:54
Yeah, you're everywhere at the moment.
47:56
I keep saying the Anna Money logo.
47:57
So yeah, something's working well.
48:01
But my daughter, you know, she asked me a while ago, you know,
48:07
are you doing fintech? I said, yeah, that that's how
48:10
people refer to it. She said, you know, many of my
48:13
friends want to do fintech. Said so is it bad or good?
48:17
She said, you know what? They don't know what they
48:20
actually want. They call it fintech, Yeah.
48:23
I think that's perfectly. Fair.
48:24
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we don't want to be in that
48:26
bus, yeah. Brilliant.
48:27
Well, thanks very much for coming on the show.
48:29
Guys, thank. You thank you very much.