Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave for the last few years, you have probably come across multiple articles describing the millennials’ inability to save and invest money. They are often described as spenders with virtually no concern for the future. While the latest Fidelity study has shown that the situation is improving (60% of millennials save for their retirement), only 9% describe themselves as investors. Spendolater wishes to change this trend by creating a product that will serve as a guide and personal trainer in saving.
“Millennials need a lot of hand-holding in order to stay on track,” said Sara Koslinska, the CEO of Spendolater, during the ImpactCEE ’16 fintech/insurtech conference. According to her research, most millennials are keen to save but are clueless where to start. This is why Spendolater, unlike its competitors, focuses on behavioral economics and gamification, helping their clients begin to invest small amounts at a time and keeping them motivated.
The main idea of Spendolater is simple – it saves money each time you complete a transaction with any card. A fixed percentage of the transaction’s value is moved to an investment account, becoming a part of an appropriately managed portfolio made up of low-cost mutual funds. You can monitor the amount of savings (and interest) in an automated tracker and set short- or medium-term goals, such as holidays or a new car.
Spendolater operates in a B2B2C business model, which means that the product (white label app) is sold to the banks and then distributed among the banks’ customers free of charge. The advantage for the banks is not only in engaging with millennials, but also in obtaining high-quality data regarding their behavior and thus performing credit scoring. Implementing Spendolater provides cross-selling opportunities, too – for example, when a customer is close to completing his goal of saving for a new car, the bank can offer him an insurance program.
This startup has two co-founders. Sara Koslinska, the CEO, is a serial entrepreneur with experience obtained in London, Tel Aviv, and Warsaw. Ka-ming Lim, the CFO, spent over 25 years in the financial services industry in London, New York, and Singapore as a fund manager, stockbroker, and analyst.
The product has still not launched – the team hopes to begin first implementations in the first quarter of 2017 in Scandinavia and Western Europe. Until now, they have acquired 15,000 EUR of pre-seed funding from Startupbootcamp.
