• 11.5 million people in the UK have less than a hundred pounds in savings
• 9 million people are in serious debt
• 81% of young people in the UK feel anxious about money
• 73% of adults say that money worries impact them at work
• 58% of people do not understand money and say they don't recall being taught anything about money at secondary school or sixth form college

that’s why Loqbox exists!

Loqbox is a multi-award-winning FinTech and they are in a mission to “give everyone access to a richer life.” Gregor is the Co-CEO and Founder of Loqbox, and in this episode he shares with us the shocking reality of financial wellbeing of people in the UK… and what Loqbox is doing as part of the solution

We must understand the basics first, so we explore how solving a customer problem while having market demand is key to building purpose driven FinTechs, what do we mean with financial wellbeing, the relationship between our credit score and financial wellbeing, Loqbox’s customer segments and the personal finance tools they’ve built to enable people build up their credit histories and access finance methods that they may have previously been excluded from.

Gregor is an experienced entrepreneur and executive and non-executive director, has lovely leadership style, and has lived and worked in countries like Kazakhstan, Brazil, South Korea, and Thailand!

Let’s dive into it!

👉 You can find Gregor here

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregor-mowat-03b85b3/
• LinkedIn Loqbox: https://www.linkedin.com/company/loqbox/
• Website: https://www.loqbox.com/en-gb/

👉 And you can find Monica here:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicamillares/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@moni_millares
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moni_millares
• Website: https://moni-millares.mystrikingly.com/

If you enjoy this Purpose Driven FinTech episode it would mean the world if you subscribe and give it a follow so that we can have more impact. Remember to connect in YouTube or LinkedIn to keep the conversation going.

In this Purpose Driven FinTech episode we cover:

(00:32) How to build Purpose-Driven Fintechs

(03:19) The Triad of Market Readiness, Founders, and Regulations

(04:18) The Shift from Growth to Profitability

(06:16) The Story and Purpose of Lockbox

(07:38) The Three Pillars to Access a Richer Life

(07:42) The Importance of Financial Education and Habits

(08:36) Building a Good Financial Profile

(09:17) The Journey from Debt to Savings and Wealth Enhancement

(15:20) Understanding the Customers of Lockbox

(24:12) Understanding Financial Wellbeing

(25:09) The Intersection of Financial Health and Personal Feelings

(26:30) The Impact of Financial Anxiety

(27:34) The Role of Education in Financial Wellbeing

(28:52) The Importance of Financial Health

(30:11) The Effects of Financial Stress on Work

(43:09) The Power of Financial Coaching

(46:03) Putting the Customer at the Heart of Fintech

SEARCH QUESTIONS

• How to build credit score from scratch?
• What is financial wellbeing in the UK?
• How many people in UK have no savings?
• What is credit history building?
• How to improve credit score while saving money?
• What are the barriers to financial inclusion?
• How to build credit score at 18 years old?
• What is Loqbox Save and Loqbox Grow?
• How to report rent payments to credit agencies?
• What is the relationship between credit score and mortgage rates?
• How to rebuild credit after debt management plan?
• What are credit score bands in the UK?
• How to help new immigrants build credit?
• What is unregulated financial advice?
• How to democratize financial coaching?
• What is the impact of money anxiety on work?
• How to change financial behavior through product design?
• What is the "so what" principle in product development?
• How to help vulnerable customers with credit building?
• What are the unintended consequences of credit building tools?

—

Production and marketing by Monica Millares. For inquiries about coaching, collabs, sponsoring the podcast or creating or editing your podcast email Monica at fintechwithmoni@gmail.com

Disclaimer: This episode does not constitute professional nor financial advice and does not represent the opinion nor views of my current, past or future employers. The guest has agreed to record and release our conversation for the use of this podcast and promotion in social media.

Gregor Mowat: fantastic. Thank you, Monica.

Monica Millares: Thank you. It's a pleasure having you on the show. I'm really looking forward

Gregor Mowat: to this chat. Likewise, thank you very much for inviting me along. Thank you. Thank you.

Monica Millares: Okay. So before we get started, this podcast is all about building purpose driven fintechs.

And having more impact. So before we go into your story, what you've done, how you're having impact is the other. In general, what is your take on how fintechs can be more purpose driven?

Gregor Mowat: So that's a fantastic question. Let's define what purpose driven is. Purpose. Purpose driven businesses of any kind depend on three things, I think they depend on the market being ready for them.

Let's just take that as an example. The market has to the consumer rather has to be ready to yeah, to actually accept. Okay, I might pay a slightly or I might pay slightly more for this product, or I might receive a slightly lower interest rate of my savings. But it's really matters to me that you plant that tree.

So therefore, I will use your services to the market. That's really important. If it's not there, it's just not there. And in a time of it's Thank you. I think that's particularly difficult in a time of rising cost of living in the UK around the world, but in the UK, of course, where we're operating, particularly consumers, I think, are increasingly voting with their wallets because they don't have that spare cash.

And if that's not the case, that's not authentic. Founders must be authentic for purposeful business to thrive and flourish. And the regulatory environment, absolutely essential. Most of the purposeful businesses in the UK are early stage businesses. That's difficult. It's very difficult to start a business and it's very early stages because particularly in fintech where it's so highly regulated.

If you get those three things all line up, bang, you've got purposeful business will thrive.

Monica Millares: Well done. And I love the triad. I think you're the very first person that talks about the market being ready. People talk about the regulator all the time. The founders, of course, because it's the DNA of the company, but you're right.

Like the market needs to be ready. The customer needs to value what you're offering. Otherwise.

Gregor Mowat: Yeah. Otherwise. I totally agree. I totally agree, Monica. If you think about it, you can create all the business models you like and need, but they all have to be paid for somehow. And ultimately that has to come from people adopting your product, using you rather than using your competitor.

Monica Millares: because I like that, that since the very definition of what's a purposeful or purpose driven fintech, we're adding the word commercial like we're talking, Hey, the customer needs to pay for it.

Maybe 15 years ago or eight, eight, 10 years ago, it was more like, Oh, purpose customers. Have a lot of financial stress, therefore we need to do something about it, but I don't know, the past few years, it's been all about growth. And then there's a change in narrative and now it's not about growth at all costs.

Now profitability comes part of the equation and hence it's important.

Gregor Mowat: I fully agree. And it's funny because one of the things at Lockbox that has marked us out as a little bit different from the very beginning Is that we've always believed that you cannot execute on your purposeful business unless you have a sustainable business to have a sustainable business.

Monica Millares: now. Yes. Because now it's all about profitability.

If you ask anything like across the world, what are you focusing on? Oh, profitability. Turn

Gregor Mowat: the business around. My co founder Tom, and I chuckle when we, hear that because we were so unfashionable. I've had VCs saying, Oh, you're idiots. You should be you should just be growing. You should just be growing.

Monica Millares: Good, for you for sticking to your beliefs. So you've like already given us a little bit of background about you. Can you tell us a little about Lockbox and your story and your purpose, of

Gregor Mowat: course?

Fantastic. Lockbox's mission is to give everyone access to a richer life. Now, what's the story behind that? Everyone knows that every, word in a mission is chosen with extreme care. So there's two themes that really matter in that statement. One is the word. Everyone, because what lockbox is about his financial inclusion.

So that's why everyone so access to a richer life access to a richer life. The word richer, of course, objectively means more money, but that's not the important meaning. The really important meaning is, of course, that the double meaning the more fulfilled life achieving what you want without money getting in the way.

Oh, Living a happy life because you're not stressed, essentially flourishing. Be the best you can be. And don't let money prevent you from being that. And we think that there's three things that you need in order to access that richer life. The first one is. You'll have heard this many times on this podcast.

So 58 percent of people do not understand, they don't understand money. They say they don't recall being taught anything about money at secondary school or sixth form college. So you come out with that level of knowledge and you're like, this is very stressful. What do I do? There's too much choice and you bury your head in the sands.

things go wrong and then you go into that spiral. So that's the first. Education and good habits. The second thing that you need is to curate a really good financial profile. So what does that mean? In the case of Lockbox, it's helping you to build your credit history and build your credit score.

And so that's going to save you, you can access the best products, best services at the best prices, and that's going to save you thousands and thousands of pounds over the course of your life. And then, so that's the second thing, your financial profile. And the third thing is. In the case of people who have extensive high interest debts, first of all, reducing them and substituting them out for for lower, cost debt, and then one eventually moving from debt into savings and from savings into wealth enhancement.

So it's basically building up your fund. You've got your kind of your credit profile, and then you've got your savings profile and your borrowing profile. If you can build all of that up, all three of those education. Credit history and savings that is going to help you get access to that richer life.

So that's what we're, that's what we're all about at Lockbox.

And it's happened to me, this is like genuine, I say that we as fintechers, our responsibility is to ensure that we as fintechers have good financial lives and that we have those, products and services for ourselves, because we also have the anxieties as our customers.

Gregor Mowat: I'm terrible with money.

I will not engage. Tom's helping me. He's helping me.

Monica Millares: Yeah, like when you first said, I don't remember the exact word that you said, but I was like, Oh, that's me. Like when it comes to looking at my pension,

Gregor Mowat: totally

Monica Millares: agree. So it's that is like a key thing. The other thing it's the, what we, many of us strive for, that it's like to live our best life. And, then it's like money becomes, barrier to living your best life because then unfortunately you need money to do whatever you want to do.

You need to take a sabbatical. How am I going to to say, Oh, I want to go and I don't know, learn how to be a pilot. How am I going to pay for

Gregor Mowat: that? Totally agree. If you think about it, nobody that I know, maybe one or two, hear actually about their credit score. Some people do because they're like it's a, test.

I need to get the best. But the vast majority of people. They don't care about their credit score. They care about, and in fact, they then don't even care about the loan that they need, that they want to get using their credit score. They care about the thing they're buying that's going to enable their life and enable their goals.

So he has to take finance to get that. He can't get a job unless he gets the car with the car. He gets the job. He starts to build up through those aspirational levels and you can only do that by building your credit score as the first block. So it's all about the end. It's not about the beginning. It's, and it's the classic thing.

Top Tom uses this analogy all the time and absolutely love it. It's your, when's the best. time to, to plant a tree a hundred years ago. When's the second best time right now?

And then I say, okay, but now I know, and I've learned all of these. Now I can take different decisions going forward. So it is a journey.

Gregor Mowat: People have to be ready. People have to be ready at the right time. I look at kind of 18 year old Gregor was an absolute idiot. Who was happy to go off to university and And run around doing stupid things there, but not thinking about his finances at all.

And we find, that a lot with that age group between 18 and 24. That's exactly when you should start using lockboxes products and services. But typically people wait until they're about 24, 20, 23, 24, because the thing that eventually motivates them is they try and do something and they can't do it.

So yeah, I don't think you should beat up the Monica five years ago.

Monica Millares: No, exactly. It's and like you said at the beginning, when we go through the schooling system in any country, like managing your finances is not part of What we study all these other things, but not managing your finances right now.

I do a lot of mentoring and right now, when I speak with, I don't know, ladies under 18, 20, 25, and they say, Hey, what could you tell your younger Monica younger self, or I tell them, I was like. I've totally changed my response over the years. Right now is at your age, be on top of your finances at your age.

You don't want to reach my age to be on top of your finances. Like start when you're super young. Priority number one.

Monica Millares: It's a journey, it's a journey. It's a journey. I know. It is a journey.

Cool. So this takes us like in a very good like conversation path to then say, if we look at your customers, who are your customers and which problems are you solving for them?

Gregor Mowat: So our, that's that's super question. Our. Customers are broadly you could probably say it's across for four kind of segments or groups or personas.

You can't do it before then, because to build a credit payment history, you have to be. It involves credit. So you have to be over 18 in order to qualify for that. So the first group are young people. The day you turn 18, you're invisible to the financial system. So let's make you visible. Come and work with Lockbox.

Take out one of our credit building features, Lockbox Save, Lockbox Grow or Lockbox Rent. Take out one of them and you'll start to become visible to the credit reference agencies, the three agencies that, that control all the data that borrowers use in the UK and, actually in most countries in the world.

So there's young people, then there are other people who are new to credit, which would typically be people who, who have come to the UK for the first time to live. They don't have a profile. They might they might have perhaps come from a very successful career in Mexico and landed in the uk.

So that's a second, that's a second group. The third group are people who have made mistakes in the past. So if you have in the UK been on a debt management plan of some form or another where your debts are renegotiated and then you pay that off over four or five, six years. At the end of that, when you come outta that the, fact that you've had that problem will remain visible on your credit history for six more years.

So people who just are paralyzed. So we help them with the educational element. And then more and more recently, so I've talked about their four, they're the four personas that we've been historically working with. And more recently, we've just got incredible data to suggest that that actually we can help people who've been in the game a little bit longer and who are a little bit higher up the, The credit scoring hierarchy, to really improve.

Now we did a calculation that if you go from that, if that takes you from the middle of the good band. That would take you on the experience scale that would take you into the excellent band and the difference in the APR. The the annual percentage interest rate that you would pay on a mortgage in the UK at that level would result in you effectively saving about 18,000 pounds over a 25 year period, based off of the UK's average mortgage levels.

So actually that's an increasingly important ban for us because it's not just about the people who can't get going, it's actually how do we make it better for the people who are already doing well?

No, it is like very, specific.

Gregor Mowat: Exactly. Who, yeah.

Monica Millares: Yeah. And, it got, even got me thinking I had not considered quote unquote, what in sometimes we refer to them as vulnerable customers, the ones who have already been in debt and now they have, let's say a little stain in the exam, and then you have to wait six years to go through that if.

Life, financial life for me, sometimes it's very stressful. I cannot imagine if you're in that situation, it's even, you're like,

They don't charge any money for any of their services. And they how these guys, how it had absolutely changed their lives. And it really struck me watching the three of them. And they were three completely different demographics. One was an old retired, older retired chap. One was a guy who was in his mid twenties.

And one was a lady who was in her kind of 30s, 40s, late 30s, early 40s. So three very different demographics in terms of geography, where they were located, et cetera. And but, the one thing that really struck me was these guys, they finished that, all that hard work, they've paid it off, they've done, they've served their time, they've done their dues.

And they're just starting again, and actually, there's probably nobody better in terms of as a credit bet than someone who's already gone through that pain. So yes, and yet they're not cut a break. So if we can help them, then we're delighted to do

Let's get into more detail. So it seems like financial wellbeing is part of it's core to what you do. Sure. I get that impression based on what I've read and what we've spoken about. Can we step back a little bit? And then can you expand? What is financial well

Gregor Mowat: being? Wow. Now that's a big question.

Monica Millares: Because we cannot solve financial well being if we don't understand what it is. No,

Gregor Mowat: but you're absolutely right. Let's define it because it should be defined. It is a term that we're hearing more and more in the press. And we call ourselves a financial well being business. So we absolutely have a strong sense of what that, what it means to achieve financial well being.

So the way we look at it, I think terms that are perhaps a little bit. Better understood. We think it's the intersection between financial health, which is a moment in time. It's about the numbers. It's how much saving do I have? How much debt do I have? What's my APR? Where's my pension if I've got one?

Can I get a mortgage? Have I got a mortgage? Is it the right rate? That's financial health. It's a, that's a moment in time, almost like a balance sheet. It's just there. And then you've got financial wellness, which is much more about the internal systems, of, the individual. It's how do I feel?

It's the output of building your education and building your habits and building your financial profile. Managing your budget so you reduce your expenses and therefore then start to reduce your debt and start to build your savings and all of that stuff. Ultimately, it's being in control. It's being in control so that you can achieve your life goals without money getting in the way.

That is what we at Lockbox believe is financial well being.

Like the number may sound like super high. For some people, because they don't have that number, but for me, I'm like, Oh my God, but that is not enough for the future or not enough for what I want to buy or not for whatever it is. Therefore, I can still have a, KPI, a metric that it's like a hard metric that says you've got this much savings, you don't have any debt.

Halfway through, because half of the equation, you're solid, but your internal world is not.

Gregor Mowat: That's exactly it, Monica. So if you, if we can then help you, because you're right, the financial health, what is a good number for somebody who sits beside me in the office is not necessarily a good number for me.

I might be happier with less. I might need more. That's it's all really dependent on the individual and, how I internalize and I react to money. It could be completely different. Some people, you say to them have you planned for the future? Have you got a pension? And they would go, they immediately go, no, I haven't now I'm stressed.

Monica Millares: Yes, I really like that. So if we then go deeper, because we started talking about customers, we just, me as an example, I say me, but it's not about me. It's, I was just using the word me as an example. We're talking about customers. If we talk about customers, the protagonist here, what are the biggest pain points that they have in this?

Definitional financial well being,

But to get to it, you need to go through it. So we talked about 58 percent of people in the UK who've left school don't recall being taught at school or at sixth form college. So that's what happens if you're not taught. What's the output of that? The output is anxiety. 81 percent of young people in the UK feel anxious about money.

One is your physical health. One is your mental health and one is your financial health. If any one of these is out, the other two go spiraling off as well. And so if you feel anxious about money, you exercise less, you get depressed and bad things happen, and it becomes a very, negative spiral. And so what does that mean?

What does that mean for you It means unhappiness. It means difficulty for the wider economy. What does it mean? It means, literally millions of lost. Productive hours at work for economies and so companies are losing the tax generated by companies means that's not as good.

More shocking is that how, like what proportion of employee or what proportion do employers believe are affected? They believe it's, they believe it's 30 percent of people are affected. And I find something amusing in that. I'd like ironic amusing is the wrong word. There's something ironic in that insofar as they think it's only 30%.

First of all, 30 percent is a big number. So it's already quite a big number. It's

Monica Millares: very big. Yeah. And then

Gregor Mowat: it's actually 73%. So that's crazy. So you've got education makes you anxious means you lose time at work. 81 percent of people don't talk about. They don't talk about it. So then you've got your dirty little secret, which is I'm worried about money and you don't know that everyone else around you is also worried about it.

It all starts with education. So the number one problem is education. And so we focus, that's why that's the number one pillar that lockbox Yeah, addresses.

Monica Millares: It is very, powerful to put numbers behind the problem.

Gregor Mowat: Absolutely.

Monica Millares: Absolutely. Because all the stats that you've just gone through, they are insane slash.

How did we come here in the first place? Yeah. And how

But I think that the market must fill this gap, and they must think of innovative ways to do that, get the education going, get people talking about it. Why is this a dirty secret in 2023? If you think about it, physical, back to that triangle, your physical health. Until the 1980s, you just accepted physical health.

And then you You drop dead at 65 and you go that was it. And then in the 80s, we started to take agency. We said, no, I don't believe that. Jane Fonda is going to show us how to work out. We're going to, we're all going to [00:33:00] learn. And we all start to get physical. And now we have Pelotons and we have so many, apps.

I'm perfectly comfortable talking about that. And there's Headspace and there's calm and there's, proliferating numbers of apps to help you address those issues. So agency has been taken there. And then you come to financial health and everyone's don't say anything. Now is the time to start talking about financial health, to start taking agency over your own financial health, your own financial wellness, and therefore your own financial well being.

And I'm like, Oh, I'm going to test that. And as a result of talking about that, we came up with this concept of money circles. Where it's basically some sort of community. It's yeah, a community where you can just talk about money in a safe space without any judgment and learning from each other.

And that's something that we're very, focused on at Lockbox as well. I I think it's a lot, I love the fact that the money circles idea is

Monica Millares: really super. Yeah. I was like, I need to action that at some point, like at work or myself, I'm like, I'd like that. So we've talked extensively about the problem, which is awesome.

So now let's move into the solution. Can you tell us more about Bugbox? What are you guys doing to actually solve this problem?

So the most obvious, we've mentioned it already, is trying to get a mobile phone. If you're 18 and you've never had a credit history, And you walk into a shop off the high street, the credit reference agencies currently don't know you exist. Most, ID and identification and verification processes require you to require two independent sources of data in order to verify who you are.

One is typically the most obvious is get yourself on the electoral roll. The other is, have you, do you have any record with the, have you ever had a loan? Have you ever borrowed money? And if you've, and it's a catch 22. No, I can go on the electoral roll, but I can't get a loan because I don't have a profile.

So you can initially get your mobile phone or if you need to take credit. Build your credit score up to the point where you're able to access a loan or a credit card or whatever it is you need in order to get what you're looking for. And then once you're even on that cycle to keep curating your profile alongside all the other things you're doing so that you migrate up through these different bands and you can access better priced credit.

Effectively, and the way we do it is we've got two memberships. One is a free membership called lockbox light, and one is a paid for membership, and they're rammed full of different features and we have lockbox save where you save up and you save and build your credit history. At the same time, we have lockbox grow, which is our.

To the Experian rental database, rental exchange. That one is one. Yeah, those three, there are three key credit building features. We have a whole load of other features around them. Lockbox coach for the education, lockbox learn for the education, et cetera, a whole load of ways to budgeting tools, et cetera, to help you build your savings.

But they, the key credit building stuff, which is what we're best known in the marketplace for in the UK, that's those three features, lockbox save, lockbox grow, and lockbox rent.

Sure. However. And it seems like a dark art, it's a science, it's a, it's difficult to do. However, you guys have done this really well. Like you are, it's like a stat that you should be very proud about like that it's 88 percent of customers have had like positive impact. That is huge.

It's

Gregor Mowat: absolutely huge.

Monica Millares: What has been your. Secret. It's secret to success.

Life changing. It's enormous. It's the best price to value exchange for credit building. You can get on the marketplace really powerful. And how do we get to that point? We have a culture in lockbox, which is very much being brought by brought in by Tom, my co founder, who's ex military, which is to always look in everything we do for the so what?

For example, I know my credit score. So what? What are you going to do now? I know my credit score is rubbish, or I know my credit score is good, but what are you going to do? And so every single thing we do. So we started with that, with with lockbox save was our first was our first feature. And it's Really difficult to get people to save money in the UK, hence the statistic about 11.

And so that becomes a kind of perfect intersection. And so we put that in place. And the feedback that we get now is particularly around all of our features around lockbox. Grow the feature. The feedback we get is it's just consistently. I couldn't get this. And now I can get it. Thank you very much.

I started lockbox. A year ago came to September. I unlocked my lockbox. I took out my savings. I went into the shop and I bought the school uniform. No pressure. I could never say before. And my credit score has gone up and I've started my next lockbox save so that next year I have the same outcome. So thank you very much.

Lockbox is really, super. I think the mentality in the business is very much always looking for the so what? And then sometimes you just get a little bit lucky again. Unintended consequence like If you help people put their credit history in the right way, they can also build their savings.

And that's a really nice outcome for them.

Gregor Mowat: So coaching is important because education is the most important thing.

But okay, so education is important. So why lockbox coach? Lockbox coach is one of our features. Lockbox coach is a free financial plan, which provides tailored. unregulated advice, to, for how to improve your financial position effectively. So it's, tailored in terms of to the individual.

It's not tailored to individual specific financial products. And for your listeners who are maybe not so aware, you have to walk a very careful line in terms of understanding what is regulated advice and what is unregulated advice in the UK. So we, designed this many years ago and we've been improving it and improving it.

It's because financial advice and financial advisors are for rich people. So what we're trying to do. And people suddenly are getting access to a service that you have to have a lot of money to afford. And we give it as we give it as part of our free package. It's part of our lot books like package because it's so important.

We want you to have that education because we understand that you'll then probably buy our paid for membership. Because why wouldn't you? Because you'll understand the value. It brings, You So if we can get this in front of enough people, and we're working on different ways to improve it constantly, then effectively we're democratizing access to something that typically was just for the elite, and that's something that gives us a sense of satisfaction.

Awesome.

Gregor Mowat: Lockbox, you'll find us at www. lockbox. com. That's where you will find out about all of our our wonderful features are two products are wonderful features and all the new amazing things that we have coming down the pipeline to also

Monica Millares: perfect and as a very last question, if there was.

One thing, just one thing that you can change in the industry and fintech such that members of staff, customers, and shareholders have a better life. What could that

Gregor Mowat: be? I, it's one thing I can think of many things, but I'll try and bring it to one for you. One thing, it should already be there, but it's not for everyone.

But it's all for nothing if the consumer is not right at the heart of all of your thinking.

Monica Millares: I agree. And you use the key word. Many people could say at the center of what you do, but you just at the heart of everything you do. And that makes a massive difference. That's it. It's like massive difference.

Center of what we do, heart of what we do. Yes. The customer should be at the heart. Awesome. It's been an amazing pleasure having you in the show. Thank you,

Monica Millares: you, guys.

See you next week. Ciao