[PART 2]
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.
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