IBS Journal May 2018


45


What sets you apart from the competition?


Bean is focused on reducing our users’ costs of living, for instance the money that they spend just to get through the day.


We do not tell you to spend less money on coffee or not to go out at the weekend. We look to cancel subscriptions you no longer use or reduce the cost of the things that you do use. That way our users can lead the same lifestyles but have a bit more money left over at the end of the month.


Taking this approach means that we do not bombard you with emails and notifications all the time. We only get in contact with you when there is something specific to do, like renew your car insurance or switch energy supplier.


There are a number of personal finance management apps out there, all looking at helping you to get a better idea of where your money is going or to squirrel away excess cash. However, there is not anything which is as effective as Bean at reducing the money that leaves your account while you are asleep.


Another aspect of how we structure Bean is that it needs no configuration from the user. Once you attach your bank account, we do all the heavy lifting. You no longer have to spend hours categorising every transaction to get a pie chart of your spending breakdown. We do everything for you, including letting you know specifically when you can save money.


Finally: our bills marketplace. We are authorised by the FCA to work with both credit and insurance products. This means that we can help consumers save on virtually any recurring household expense.


What was your smartest move?


Deciding to double down on recurring costs and our relentless focus on saving our users money. There are a lot of really exciting things that you can do with transaction data to help consumers.


By creating this focus, we have been able to create a very compelling


exciting things that you can do with transaction data to help consumers


“ There are a lot of really


proposition for our users that is difficult for other platforms in the market to copy.


By being a mission-driven company, we have found a number of similarly minded companies and organisations whose values are aligned with ours and, as such, which are happy to work with us to reach our goals. We call this our partner network. It turns out that there are a lot of companies that worry about the finances of their customers. By partnering with Bean, we are able to actively improve this situation, not just as a one-off intervention, but on an ongoing basis.


Where did things get tough – what was your biggest setback?


Things are always tough. As soon as you solve one problem another one appears.


In the early days, we decided to completely rebuild our platform, as we knew that we needed to start from a strong technological base. The platform we had built at the start was great, but we built it quickly, almost as a demo to test the proposition. At the same time as the rebuild we started the Barclays Techstars accelerator. This meant that we were being pulled in a number of directions and the lack of a functional platform made it really difficult to engage the amazing senior stakeholders that we were getting access to. This delayed some partnerships that came out of joining the accelerator. However, it was absolutely the right thing to do. We now have a far more scalable and flexible platform. On top of this, we have still managed to get the partnerships going, albeit it has been slightly delayed.


Where do you want to be in five years’ time?


As I have said, at Bean our relentless focus is on saving our users money. In five years we want to be saving our users tens/hundreds of millions of pounds every year. To do this, we will be a true consumer champion and a household name. We will be trusted by millions of households to help them make better spending decisions.


www.ibsintelligence.com 45


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