1. Can you explain what it is and what services Wealthyhood offers?

Simply put, we believe that long-term wealth-building can only be achieved by having a robust plan and consistently investing your money in a well-balanced portfolio every month. A portfolio that matches your needs and risk appetite, so that you can commit to it.

This is the experience that we aim to offer and the mindset we want our users to develop through Wealthyhood. Hence, we focus on 3 main pillars that create this brand-new investing experience for younger investors.

First, we offer smarter tools to develop, finetune and automatically maintain your investing strategy and wealth-building mentality. I think everyone’s time is invaluable, so we take care of all the simple details for you to focus on growing your wealth efficiently.

Second, we offer personalised insights to invest your way, focus on what matters to you and achieve your individual goals. Every investor is different and so have to be their investment portfolios.

Third, we have fewer fees. Every £ you don’t pay in fees today can grow exponentially to its full potential in your portfolio. £1 not paid in fees can be £50 in a few years, due to compounding and proper investing.

It’s not only how our tools guide our users to invest the right way, but also how we help them develop the right wealth-building mindset. You don’t have to be a millionaire nor an expert to have a successful and pleasant investing journey.

2. What is the value proposition of Wealthyhood?

We’re building the first DIY wealth-building app for today’s long-term investors in Europe. We guide long-term investors to build their wealth over time, by intelligently investing their money, the way they want, with fewer fees.

Wealth creation is more of a marathon than a sprint, and we want to help everyone run that race, through a very accommodative experience. We want to make smart and personalised investing accessible to our generation so that everyone can grow their money in a way that corresponds to their values and personality.

3. How does the “Millennial investor” behave?

Millennials or the “Re-wired” investors have very different preferences, when it comes to investing, especially compared to the previous generations. I would describe their main characteristics as follows:

• Just me – wants a personalised experience.
• In control – wants full control of his/her investment process.
• Holistic approach – wants a service that solves the problem and not be part of it.
• DIY – wants to have active participation in the process.
• Digital & Personal – wants digital access from everywhere, anytime.
• Sceptical of Authority – doesn’t trust traditional institutions.
• The first-class investor – wants top-class service, even with a lower investment budget available.

As for Wealthyhood, we focus on investors who do NOT have extensive investing, and do not want to day-trade – they want to build their wealth over time.

4. How do you think Wealthyhood contributes to driving the future of finance?

As mentioned, we want to make it easy for anyone to get started with investing. You don’t have to be an expert nor a millionaire to have access to quality investing strategies. This is what we contribute to the future of finance. A hands-on, digitally guided experience that helps more people to participate in the investing journey. We believe investment education should be at the core of our product and our users should grow as investors alongside their money.

5. How do you think the implementation of digital functionalities will impact the traditional business model in a company?

We can see huge tech disruptions taking place across all industries. Financial services were the last to onboard on this trend, but it’s happening now. We’re moving towards more efficient operational models, cheaper services and gradual democratisation of traditionally fragmented segments of the market.

6. How has the current crisis caused by Covid affected the development/growth of your business?

Over the past year, the number of retail investors has skyrocketed. There is a booming new generation of retail investors, mainly Millennials. A few stats can showcase that. In 2020:

• Total retail investor accounts were up 275%, globally.
• Funded accounts closed the year up 277%.
• 77% of new retail accounts were opened by investors under the age of 40. 46% under the age of 30!
• 23% of under-35s with savings but not investment products say they are likely to start investing in the next 12 months, compared to 11% overall.

When it comes to investment platforms, like Wealthyhood, I have to admit that the effect of Covid-19 was positive. As for us, we’re still early to grasp this explosion, but I think we’ll continue to see this trend expanding further.

7. Do you think that the current situation can be used as an opportunity to promote digital innovation?

I think that we all realized that we had previously underestimated how many things can be done from home, leveraging the power of technology. Our life has changed to a more digital version of it. And when it comes to digital, that’s a call for innovation, along every potential aspect, be it work-from-home tools, to better communication channels, like Clubhouse.

8. How would you convince investors to trust the fintech sector at such a sensitive time for the economy?

Well, as hard as it would be to convince investors a year ago that easy it is today. Everyone expects the global economies to recover, sooner or later, so investors are positioning to gain from that recovery. Apart from that, financial markets weren’t hit as hard as someone would expect, compared to the overall economy. Most indices, like the S&P 500 are way up year over year, having by far recovered from last year’s pandemic-driven crash. This disassociation has kept the markets calmer than expected.

Every market has opportunities, however, long-term investors, focusing on wealth-building shouldn’t get very distracted from short-term ups and downs. Having a long-term plan and sticking to it is more effective than even predicting the bottoms of the market!

Systematically investing in one’s portfolio every month, can weather every short-term storm, by simply buying at different price levels.

9. How will Wealthyhood be able to expand internationally?

Our offering is country-agnostic. We consider ourselves a European investment platform, regardless of starting from the UK, where we are based. Thankfully, in today’s environment, it’s easier than ever before to offer your services in different jurisdictions, while keeping your operations lean, as a startup requires!

This mindset led us to work early on to develop a community of Wealthyhood Ambassadors from all around Europe, to be closer to local investing communities and leverage their power to expand abroad, faster and easier.

10. What challenges does Wealthyhood face in the sector?

Well, as you know when it comes to competing for people’s investments and money, it’s becoming a quite crowded space. No matter how differentiated we are and confident of the superior experience that our product offers, when it comes to attracting new customers, better-capitalized companies have an advantage.

This is what we need to overcome, by taking a completely different approach: a user-friendly long-term wealth-building experience for investors that are not financial experts or traders.

The post Interview with Wealthyhood’s Co-founder appeared first on Relawding.

The answer is not cost alone but rather that the rapidly changing consumer environment has begun to leave the legal services profession behind. Many people are now accustomed to living their lives online and have subsequently come to expect easy access to detailed information and multiple options before making any significant decision. By contrast, the current legal market can seem opaque to the uninitiated causing some modern consumers to put off seeking legal advice until it is too late.

 It’s easy to understand why; the average client is often in a highly stressful period of their life and might never have sought legal help before. Many of these potential clients will seek out the services of a firm, but there remains a large untapped section of this population who simply never consult a legal professional or who hesitate how to choose their lawyer. These potential clients are caught in a stressful cycle of knowing that they would benefit from legal help but lacking the knowledge or means to make that desire a reality. 

LexSnap was created to efficiently connect these individuals with the legal assistance they require. Our technology seamlessly combines the accessibility and efficiency of 21st-century technology and the reliability and expertise of traditional practice:

Quality – Above all, LexSnap prioritizes providing a quality service and only uses the work product of the legal professionals who are consistent with our high standards of practice.

Connect – LexSnap allows lawyers to expand their client far beyond the hierarchical confines of the traditional workplace.

Efficiency- There’s no need to wade through unnecessary requests or get bogged down by repetitive administrative tasks–our sophisticated technology handles all client requests and shares them with those professionals who would be best suited to respond only when the technology can no longer answer the query.  

Innovate- The Legal profession is currently wrestling with how best to adapt to the proliferation of technology into every aspect of modern-day life. Working with LexSnap, allows lawyers to be at the forefront of innovation within the profession.

Specialize- The unprecedented access and control over their clients that LexSnap provides, allows lawyers to build a particular niche speciality at a rapid rate. 

“We are passionate about our Natural Language Processing tool and want to help law firms and in-house lawyers to find the best way to harness the possibilities that come from using our technology. We work with our clients, side by side, to design a customised product – a bot or search bar – using our AI-powered search engine and our clients’ proprietary data, which accelerates revenue growth for their business by optimising their labour costs and improving their customer journey.”

To keep up to date with the latest legal news, click on legal to get your daily dose.

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FLEX Legal is a legal tech start-up established in 2016 by CEO and co-founder Mary Bonsor. They use automation to create an easier recruitment process for applicants, law firms and legal departments.

Mary came with the idea when she was a law student who found it very hard to find legal work experience. When Mary qualified, her law firm was right next to a law school and it was upon seeing law students outside the window that the lightbulb moment hit her! The idea was to create a platform that connects the students and law firms.

Mary took the transition from practice to start-up her own company in a risk-averse manner. Mary conducted her research over a year and met James, her co-founder, and raised £120,000 in funds before she left private practice. Funding was the most important step for Mary because she needed a salary which would allow her to leave her career as a lawyer. But it also gave them the time to gain that security that other people believed in FLEX Legal as much as they did.

“When we started getting investors keen, that is when I handed in my notice and it gave me the courage to give it a go!”

Offering brighter opportunities for law students all over the world…

FLEX Legal separates itself from the other companies in the legal tech industry, through its ethos which is focused on the technology and the people. The technology is vital for them to operate, but without the people, they would not function. As fundamentally, Mary states: “Law and recruitment is a business of people – people buy off people, and so we still think it is essential to build relationships with both candidates and companies.”

With every start-up there comes challenges, and FLEX Legal had their fair share of them. Mary said they did not have terms and conditions and did not have a lot of money to spend on the operations side of the business. Their business model was wrong, and it was something they had to adapt to. As well as working in a small team of two, they had the daunting task of learning on the job, which was fun and rewarding.

Mary said she had to: “ ’just give it a go’ – which is now my motto.” She advises that you learn a lot more from trying things out instead of overthinking them.

As with any new venture, mistakes happen and it is important how you learn from them. Mary says they made mistakes, but that’s where all the learning comes from. An example of this is that they nearly placed someone who did not have the right visa, but as they noticed it they realised the importance of compliance and how the tech could help them with this.

This led them to develop their work portal and James created a Right to Work section, which only allows placements once this has been approved. As Mary stated earlier, you learn the most from doing, and that is incredibly important in building tech.

How the pandemic had affected the legal world and upcoming business…

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit FLEX Legal was hit with its fair share of difficulties, as many business and individuals have faced in these trying times. They lost 50% of their revenue overnight and had very few bookings over the summer with firms trying to cut costs. As with any business maintaining company morale has been a struggle with Mary highlighting issues, such as childcare responsibilities in the shift to working from home.

Despite these difficulties, FLEX Legal has come out stronger and this time has allowed the company to rebrand and grow again. Mary emphasises the support staff had for each other with fun, social game meetings and bi-weekly one-on-one sessions with staff across the company to build and maintain those crucial relationships that help a company thrive.

Mary has ended this year with a high after winning Entrepreneur of the Year at the Women in Law Awards 2020! She remains humble in her success awarding the success of FLEX to her team. For Mary, the award is a “great recognition of the hard work we do – and our mission is still to help as many law students and non-lawyers find a life/work balance or achieve their career goals.”

Future prospects for the company…

In 2021, the company will be granting law students free access to their digital online diary so they can record their work experience all in one place. This will help foster and create a community to help law students with their careers. Mary is really excited for this as her passion is to help budding lawyers in their new careers and being able to do this for free is an exciting venture.

In a world where graduates have been struggling to find their feet in the professional world, Mary has some advice for new graduates embarking in their legal careers:

– “Find your strengths and focus on what you love as the legal sector is huge with roles from legal tech to project management.”

– “Network! Network! Network!”

– “LinkedIn is a great platform to do this, as people love to help, and it is very easy to reach out to those who you admire.”

– “Finally, be kind, 2020 has been tough on everyone and reaching out and checking in with your friends and colleagues are needed in this world!”

Flex Legal has so far been recognised as Legal Supplier Innovation winner at the LexisNexis Legal Awards 2018; Legal Innovator of the Year winner at the Legal Business Awards 2018; Resource Management winner at the Legal Week Innovation Awards 2019, and was Best Technology Product runner up at The Lawyer Awards 2019.

We would like to thank Mary Bonsor for her time and we wish FLEX Legal all the best in the future.

https://flex.legal/

To keep up to date with the latest interviews, click on interviews to hear the latest news in the commercial and legal world

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The role of the predictive analysis and data in the legal industry has seen an incredible rise in the last decades. Law firms can use data analytics for research purposes. Research is the thinking process, which puts technology and people into a dynamic relationship. Clean and enriched data underpins the technology and the people. Predictive analytics supports quantitative research, making sense of big data and unwieldy data sets, which support qualitative data.

On the other hand, the courts will take into account more than the rational as they also include human behaviour and emotion. In case of management, lawyers often seek to second-guess the best time to file a case, which jurisdiction to use or what judge might be more sympathetic, but also to understand the human task of legal reasoning by judges.

LexisNexis – Ravel Law, seeks to help lawyers to be data scientists through user-friendly data mining that can uncover patterns in a range of outcomes. Ravel’s Judge Analytics enables lawyers to find out whether a judge is sympathetic towards an argument by analysing past decisions. Another LexisNexis product, Lex Machina, also mines and analyses data from past legal proceedings, revealing connections and making predictions about outcomes, assisting legal departments to select and manage outside counsel.

Additionally, ContraxSuite uses AI and human input to augment and integrate the user’s experience in document research. What legal analytics is doing though, is encouraging lawyers to take a more data-based approach to their decision making. In litigation, predictive analytics is a powerful tool in case law research and eDiscovery. Intraspexion uses deep-learning and predictive analytics to predict and prevent potential litigation based on its patented software.

Another division of legal analytics is the development of intelligent interfaces; that can guide lawyers or clients to specific legal information for their legal needs. The aim of this technology here is to help guide a user through to the right outcome. ML may also be used to help the system better provide the right answer that is tailored to the user’s needs.

Rather than asking the client to do all the work, an AI system could be used to help guide clients to the right outcome in terms of an advisory path and understand their queries using NLP. Equally, there are opportunities for firms to use predictive analytics in identifying new business, being more effective in bringing new clients on board, leveraging data use within the firm, cross-selling and upselling existing clients, and reducing their own operational costs.

Like many emerging technologies, predictive analytics is just beginning to have a significant impact on the practice of law. With the right tools and an appreciation of the future potential, early adopters can gain an edge on competitors and make an impact on clients. Therefore, lawyers are well-advised to see predictive analytics the way they use their own perception; it offers powerful support but is unlikely to replace them or at least, anytime soon. The legal profession is undergoing a great transformation.

The tools of AI, ML, NLP and CC can be used to study, predict, and respond to normative judgments. In this assignment, the concept of predictive analytics in law and the benefits that could be derived from it to enhance the decision-making process was highlighted. Within the world of law, data and technology are essential components of internal and client-facing delivery.

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Data is the oil of the digital era,” proclaims The Economist. With that being said, the future of the legal industry is and will be based on data; data is the key to successful outcomes and evolving the practice of law. Law has been slow to adopt data analytics, but that is changing. Big data analytics technologies are becoming ubiquitous in many industries, and the legal sector is not an exception. The legal industry is facing an important challenge with the enormous amount of data generated on a daily basis. Predictive analytics describes the use of statistics and modelling to determine future performance based on current and historical data. In addition, predictive analytics is a discipline that has grown alongside the exponential growth of data in the digital world.

A 2019 survey of Big Data and AI Executives found that: 72% of companies report they have yet to forge a data culture, 69% report that they have not created a data-driven organisation, 53% state that they are not yet treating data as a business asset and 52% admit that they are not competing on data analytics. A McKinsey report reveals data-driven organisations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers; six times as likely to retain customers; and 19 times as likely to be profitable as a result.

In fact, the law contains huge amounts of data from judicial decisions, briefs, articles, commentaries, legislative texts and other documents. Legal data includes fact patterns, precedents and case outcomes. This data is the foundation of legal predictive analysis. Nowadays, the legal industry is making use of this type of analysis to improve overall efficiency and accuracy. The software comes with language-based technologies that easily scan, read, and synthesise written documents. Predictive analytics looks at patterns in data to determine if those patterns are likely to emerge again.

In a nutshell, is the science of drawing insights from large volumes of data. Also, “Big Data” is frequently a core component of related technologies, incorporating developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Cognitive Computing (CC). Those innovations can fall under the umbrella of analytics too. For example, NLP can help contract review and reading legal agreements, such as due diligence documents or leases. In some cases, this also means helping people to finalise contracts. NLP is many times faster than human lawyers at reading contracts, while accuracy levels in matters such as due diligence are generally higher than that achieved by human lawyers.

There are obvious benefits of a data analytics-driven culture, but what it is not so obvious is how to achieve it. What are the steps that the legal industry needs to take to get from where it is now to where it wants to be with data? Using data well creates value and develops a successful strategy, and predictive analytics lies in knowing a balance between data and people. Predictive legal analytics is an emerging sector as the legal industry remains hesitant to introduce technology into a very traditional, human-driven process.

Predictive analytics can help law firms decide the optimal composition of teams and ensure all needs are covered by relevant expertise, including deciding on what outside counsel, consulting, strategic partnership or individuals best fits the client’s needs. Using predictive analytics in the hiring process helps match the right candidates to the firm as well as selecting individuals both for ad hoc projects and long-term relationships. It can also be used for e-billing systems to determine how the workload is distributed and whether any practice areas need additional support.

Like any other legal technology, predictive analytics can take over many legal tasks and reduce the ordinary but essential work involved in each case. Legal research and litigation prediction systems involve the examination of data that are produced from the practice of law. Data could be expert opinions on legal matters by the partners of the firm; statements of facts about laws and regulations; relevant cases and commentaries by judges; as well as any associated case notes or updates that the firm has created itself or is linked to.

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