This transcript was generated using automated transcription. While efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, some errors or inaccuracies may remain.

Ben Telfer:

Hello and welcome to today’s ICMIF webinar. I’m so glad so many of us can join us today. Hopefully today, we’ll be answering the question, how can mutuals innovate with a FinTech mindset? So, to in today’s webinar, we are joined by the CEO of Wealth Wizards, which is part of Royal London at the largest mutual in the UK. Ben Hampton, the CEO of Wealth Wizards will be sharing their approach to purpose-led innovation, demonstrated how it’s making guidance and financial advice more accessible and affordable in the UK. So, as usual with ICMIF webinars, we do encourage questions. You can submit these in a couple of ways.

You can add them into the chat and then we’ll ask Ben these at the end of his presentation or you can put your hand up and then after the presentation section, we’ll then get to the Q&A. So, I’ll let Ben introduce Wealth Wizards and how that links to the mutual insurer of Royal London. Ben, as I said, he’s the CEO of Wealth Wizards and he’s been CEO since 2023. Ben, over to you. Thank you for joining us today.

Ben Hampton:

Thanks, Ben. Hi everyone. And yeah, thanks for inviting me along. Yeah, as Ben said, we did this for another ICMI member, a Swedish firm. Me and Ben did a bit of a double actor about innovation, so was keen to share this story. So, as Ben’s touched on, Wealth Wizards is a part of the Royal London group. Currently standalone, but actually interesting, since I’ve had this last conversation, we’re increasingly integrating the business into the Royal London Group, which provides an interesting dynamic about innovation is done and the role we play within the Royal London Group more broadly now. But yeah, I’ve been working at Wealth Wizards’s for a number of years now.

My background is in product management, so kind of digital product management proposition and then financial advice in the UK. So, I just wanted to share a couple of different things as we go through this. One of the things that I think really resonates well with is that approach to innovation and actually why are you innovating? I think one of the things that really works for us as a small FinTech, about a hundred people is we think we’re really purpose driven and I think that’s where the mutual sector is so powerful actually. That purpose driven organisation, especially when you’re attracting quite young software engineers to come and work. A third of our people are software engineers.

And actually, engineers can work wherever. I’m focused on customers and then financial advice, right? I need to work in the sector where that’s relevant. Software engineers can work anywhere. And actually having something where it makes a difference to genuine society, to people, to the world, actually that resonates really well. And I think that’s one thing I wanted to just touch on in terms of that kind of mutuality connection. But yeah, let’s get into it in terms of what we’re going to cover off. So, I’ve already touched on that point about innovating with purpose. I want to give a couple of practical examples actually.

One about actually what’s the role of innovation when you’re actually influencing something that doesn’t necessarily often get pitched as all about innovation, regulation. And actually in the UK, one of the things that we’ve been doing increasingly is it’s a much more outcome focused approach to regulation, much more principle-based focus on regulation. And actually the way you influence that is at the different part of the policy development life cycle. So, that’s a really interesting bit. And then actually, we want to talk about something in the UK around … It’s about retirement.

So, people funding their retirement, but increasingly in the UK, people don’t necessarily have enough money to afford to retire and actually home-ownership in the UK is really high and actually could people potentially use their property wealth to help them retire. So, I want to use that as something where effectively we’ve got a contrary view and then just got a last bit just really around, well, what’s that mindset that you bring? Because I think there’s different approaches. You can hear companies that actually break out small subsets of an organisation that talk about getting away from the mothership to kind of break things fast and do things differently, but also it’s a mindset, right?

And how can you bring that mindset into the scale and structure and rigour that actually bigger organisations bring as well? So, it’s a really interesting trade off. But as Ben said, please pop questions in the chat and I’ll hopefully bring this to life, and I’m conscious that there’s people from different geographies, different jurisdictions. I’ll try and explain a little bit of the regulatory context and for colleagues that are UK based that know this stuff, please bear with me. Apologies if I’m going over obvious ground. But having been to other talks with international settings, it is really helpful to help people draw out the potential differences. So, where did Wealth Wizards come from, right?

So, financial advice in the UK is a really, really great thing. We’re really proud of our financial advice offering, but the challenge is most people in the UK don’t access it. It can make such a big difference to people’s financial decisions. Actually the outcomes they get in retirement and actually when I talk about financial advice, the best financial planners that exist do the figures and the feelings, right? And I think it’s not just about the rational numbers side of making a decision. It’s about that emotional side of confidence and understanding and reassurance. And actually, that’s one of the things we are really passionate about is, well, how do you make that kind of advice market?

And this is why it was set up more accessible and affordable. How do you make it accessible and affordable to everyone? That was the Wealth Wizard’s founding purpose. We’ve got there from the underground mind the gap. Actually, we talk a lot about the advice gap and that’s because in the UK only 9% of the UK population has paid for advice in the last two years. Actually and interestingly in the UK, we have a form of regulation called consumer duty, which the UK used to have some regulation called treating customers fairly. And actually, what the consumer duty does, it raises the bar about how you look after customers and it probably raises the standard from treating customers fairly to treating customers well.

And the challenge of that is it is some more regulatory rigour, but that actually makes it harder for financial advisors in the UK to maybe serve customers with lower values. And this is again why as a mutual, actually we’ve got a responsibility to help that whole broad range of society, not just the customers that have wealth that a typical financial advisor would support and help. Ultimately, we don’t think UK consumers are getting the help they need, right? And the Financial Conduct Authority, which is our regulator in the UK, they talk about some of these things for retirement planning. Actually, three quarters of people don’t have a clear plan for retirement.

We have a solution where you can effectively take your income from your pension in a flexible way, something called drawdown. But then they’re earlier in people’s lives, do they invest? Actually, we’ve not got a great investment culture in the UK. Lots of people use cash savings rather than getting the benefit of an investment solution that effectively helps them beat inflation and all that type of stuff, as well as access some growth. And actually people are turning to things like social media.

And I think that frightens me to death at times that someone thinks that the answer from someone on TikTok is going to give you a better answer than someone who’s a regulated individual or actually a trusted organisation that’s got good conduct standards is going to get there. And actually, part of the challenge is people don’t have the knowledge to make a decision. So, this is where financial advice is really, really important. The challenge is consumers don’t use the word financial advice. They just use the word help because they don’t understand all the different regulatory definitions. And actually, people sometimes find financial advice too expensive.

And one of the things I want to touch on is, which was interesting since the last presentation was actually a new regulatory regime has been created in the UK, which is a different type of financial advice called targeted support. And it’s really interesting in terms of how it’s helping customers in similar situations get free recommendations. So, maybe we’re going to touch on that as well. But ultimately that’s the landscape that we’re operating in the UK. That’s the context to why our founding purpose and mission to make advice accessible and affordable to everyone has always, always pretended and actually fitted really, really well when Royal London acquired Wealth Wizards in terms of bringing it forward.

So, we come back to innovating with purpose. Actually that match between Royal London as the broader group that we’re part of and actually what we do in terms of our kind of mission is Royal London are all about building financial resilience in the UK. And it’s brilliant when you get to go out and speak to different people as a mutual, I always think, because you feel proud. And I think all of you have seen, I remember when Ben came to present a Royal London Senior Leader event and we showed some of the adverts and kind of brand positioning pieces that number of the members of ICMIF have brought to life.

It is the things that can make it hair stand up on the back of your neck, hopefully, and that genuinely feel proud of what you’re doing. And from our perspective in Royal London, we want to make sure that we’re building that UK’s financial resilience so that they can deal with life shocks that actually they’ve got stuff for the future. But at the same time, if something goes wrong to there, how do they navigate it? And actually, one of the key things we think in there is making people confident with their decision making. So, that building financial resilience is one of the aspects we’ve got it. And actually in terms of Wealth Wizards, we’ve already talked about that making advice successful and affordable.

It really kind of came together quite nicely in terms of those connections. And actually, what Wealth Wizards has brought was a small financial technology firm, FinTech and actually it was two parts to it. It was tech experts, digital experts, but also experts in financial planning and customers. And I think that customer decision making, we’re not just digitising an efficiency based process. Financial advice has that emotional aspect as well as I’ve touched on. It’s how you bring those things together. We do also have a small award-winning financial advice business. It’s only got about 80 million of assets under advice.

It’s not big by any shape of imagination, but actually what it’s allowed us to do is a phrase we would probably use is eat our own cooking, right? We’re not just trying to make this and not using it. Actually by using the experiences, bringing our advice expertise, understanding the regulations, that’s one of the aspects we do. In the past, we built customisable software as a service journeys for other people working with big banks in the UK. Increasingly now, our focus is on delivering for Royal London. I think we’ve become an integral part of how the group delivers and that’s increasingly how we’re kind of coming into that group.

And it’s how do we, I don’t know, without being a pun about the wizards, how do we keep the magic, right? How do we keep the magic that kind of is in terms of how we work in terms of making sure we’re delivering effectively for people? So, that’s the kind of key thing. But I think the reason I draw this point about purpose out is it’s the why, right? And I think we all spend so much time at work that if you have a bit of connection or resonance with what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for, it becomes a bit of a drag. And I think that’s one of the reasons why this relationship, and we’re part of the group, but was a separate company, has worked because we’ve got a common value set.

I think that’s really important. I think that value set, not just the purpose-driven nature of our missions, but actually the value set of tech for good and trying to make a difference in the UK was really, really positive. So, one of the things I’m going to talk about now is maybe an unusual thing. And actually, as I said to Ben earlier, just before we joined, this was the slide that I used when I presented this last year. Since then, I’m going to tell you where this went to. So, given all that talk about the financial advice gap in the UK, only 9% of people getting financial advice, the regulator wanted to effectively design a new form of regulatory advice to help a customer effectively get access to that decision making help.

And one of the things they did was they invited 12 firms last April, sorry, April 2025 to effectively try and build a customer journey, which we’re doing an example on the right-hand side of how a customer might get some decision-making help to invest some cash in stocks and shares in mutual funds. And actually we were only one of 12 firms that were invited to participate. We were alongside Vanguard, St. James’s place. We were a big advice company in the UK, Lloyds Banking Group and little of Wealth Wizards, right? And I’m not pretending that little of Wealth Wizards didn’t get in because of the role and the connection. We did.

The role and the connection got us in, but it was brilliant to kind of get into this what they called a policy sprint. And what the regulator did here was in their approach to innovation, they wanted to test, we’ve got this idea of a new regime, a new rule set. How’s it going to work in practise? Because regulations don’t live in the rule book. They’re living the outcomes that drive for customers really. And it was brand new. We didn’t know what these draught rules would work like in practise. And what we ended up doing was doing it in such a way that you then built a journey. And actually, we were able to build this journey on the right-hand side and all the logic behind it in less than six weeks actually, you had six weeks. It was like a school project, right? You got given a deadline, you had to come back and then present in front of the other 11 firms that were in there and bring it to life. And it was fascinating that by being able to get not only consumer testing of the people that you put through it, but also bring to life abstract concepts such as regulation into, this is how we’ve interpreted it, this is how we would present it to a customer. And it was really powerful and I would massively applaud the regulator in the UK in terms of how they went about this, that they were willing to almost go, “We’ve got some draught rules. We want to see how people respond to it.”

And this was kind of something that I think as a small FinTech, we were really well-equipped. So, other people definitely did mock-ups of journeys that did user testing. What we were able to in that short period of time, as you’ve seen on the right-hand side is, we built a working journey and that was only probably possible because of our nimbleness, how we might approach it and actually taking some risks, which we’ll talk about in terms of the mindset. But that was one of the aspects we kind of brought to light. So, that’s the concept. Ultimately, it was a way to bring financial advice to more people and just without going into too much detail, effectively what the new regulation is, which is now live in the UK, it’s something called targeted support. It’s a form of group-based advice. And the way I would describe it is it’s a bit like your Netflix account or whatever your streaming platform that you use where the recommendations that you get given about what you might like to watch next is based on what people with similar viewing habits to you have also enjoyed. So, it’s personalised, but it’s personalised to the group rather than in the UK fully individualised paid for advice is a segment of one, right? So, it’s a way to kind of get that mass appeal, mass market reach in a slightly different way. So, one of the things in terms of influencing and that kind of moving quickly into building stuff and innovating is that voice of the customer.

So, what I wanted to share now is actually how we’re testing some of this. I’m just going to show on the next slide a couple of videos of some of the used testing that we did to get a bit of a voice of a customer that was involved in it. Ben, can you someone give me a thumbs up if we can hear it? That’s the only thing or just note in the message that’d be great when I just click onto the next slide.

Testimonial video 1:

It makes me feel like they’re not pushing me down the path of get you on board with the product straight away because we made money. It’s, okay, we’re already going to do this if it is the right thing to do. They want to arm me with the information and the knowledge to make that informed decision for myself.

Testimonial video 2:

So, this actually is a lot more reassuring, is a lot more transparent and I feel a lot better about it than what my bank offers.

Ben Hampton:

It was one of those super awkward moments when you present into a group of people and that was the … And we had to do a showcase, but I think we had seven minutes to present six weeks of work back and you were all timed. And I shared this slide and that clip and it was like someone being less kind about banks and like half the audience were banks. It was a low point that kind of was going. I was like, maybe we shouldn’t have said that to when done. But anyway, all good fun in terms of that, in terms of going through. So, how we drove that kind of commitment to innovation, what I wanted to show now was, and this is the other end of the story, right?

So, we influenced the policy, but actually since that has happened and coming all the way from April last year in 2025 to April 2026, because of this, and I’ve now switched to the Royal London brand, we ended up taking that regulation forward and Royal London became the first firm in the UK to get this new permission, regulatory permission to provide targeted support and the first to go live, right? And I’m absolutely sure that would not have been possible if it wasn’t for the kind of skillset and mindset that Wealth Wizards brought into the organisation. Me and my team were responsible for the Royal London project. We weren’t just acting as wealth with us.

We were acting as Royal London, but that skillset and approach to things absolutely allowed that person agility to kind of do it. I think the other thing that was really fascinating on this was the other firm that was live first or second, right? We were first and then the next firm got live on the 1st of June. So, actually we didn’t just come first, we won the race is what I would say, won it well. The next firm that went through also had a FinTech that they had acquired that was involved in building the journey.

So, that ability to innovate is slightly different structures and I’m not saying it gives a different skillset, gives a different skillset, gives a different operate environment and it’s trying to use the right operating environment or right skillset for the problem you’re trying to solve. As you scale this, you want to make sure you’ve got that rigour, robustness that you’d expect from a bigger firm. But interestingly, in that times of what we call in terms of product development is going from zero to one, that going from a blank sheet to actually your first version of it and the first version will not be right.

The first version will need to iterate and continue to refine it in the live, which is really interesting to see that aspect. So, look, we were really, really proud of doing that, but we’ve gone from doing something last April, and Ben, you might see that we now talked about it. I didn’t say at the time, I thought we were going to get first live, but it’s very much because of that innovation mindset, that fintech mindset allowed us to then leverage all the broader mouse and strength and regulatory relationships and rigour that Royal London has. The combination was a great kind of relationship to come together for this item.

One of the other things is just to see the right-hand side, obviously when we smashed out, smashed out is a bit too casual language. There was a bit more thought to it than that. What we produced in the sprint in six weeks obviously was not as good and effective as what you’ve got on the right-hand side in terms of the rigour and actually some of the aspects. But you can hopefully recognise some of the concepts that we kind of were touching on the screens at the left hand, the previous Wealth Wizards slide for the sprint. That’s what’s coming about. And actually, what we did here was it was all about testing with consumers.

Again, that mindset of actually get it in the hands of users, get it in the hands of users fast. That’s how you learn and actually bringing it to life. And then one of the things that was really interesting and that kind of feeling comfortable in the uncomfortable, kind of sticking the course in the grey areas rather than the black and white of the rules was we designed this around real people. Regulations exist and it got more firmed up than the sprint, but we kept that same mindset of actually how do we get a good answer for consumers. And we did over 200 hours of consumer testing, that really became a key part of our conduct evidence for our applications of the regulator.

And I think I’m really passionate about actually how you demonstrate consumer understanding of the offer because you need that data in MI, but how do you kind of drive it forward? But very much evidence led, we iterated it, but ultimately we weren’t dragged down. I don’t know who’s on different functions will be on this call, but we didn’t get bogged down by our compliance team to make it just a load of risk warnings. We got the balance of keeping it customer focused, meeting the regulation and now we’re really watching it with intrigue because others are putting journeys live. I think seven firms in the UK now have permission. Aviva got their permission yesterday. It was a big firm in the UK.

So, it’s actually interesting how other people do these different journeys and what it comes about. But yeah, built for the consumer backed by evidence and yeah, humblebrag. We were first in the market, which can never be taken away from us. And it’s great to see the mutuals leading the way actually, because again, that focus on the customers, sometimes the PLCs are the ones that are seen as more nimble and kind of after the growth opportunities, whereas I think we’ve done fantastically well here. So, I’ve touched on this a little bit just in terms of, again, this is starting to come to that point as a FinTech, you need to measure what you’re building, right?

Actually, what’s the outcomes that you’re trying to… the objective key results that you’re trying to deliver and actually just want to draw out a couple of bits here was one, so it is a financial advice generic’s got a recommendation, but actually our inbuilt journey surveys are showing 94% of customers understood the recommendation well, which is really great. Actually, it’s a free service. So, you might say, “Well, there’s clearly value in that because it’s free.” And I’m from Yorkshire, which in the UK definitely loves a bargain. So, we want the things to be free, but we still checked it from a value for money assessment.

Actually, did the customer find the effort they put into the journey free time as something that’s appropriate for them. So, that’s where then that kind of top right stat came into and actually confidence, right, that confidence to invest. There’s lots of people that actually investing could be right for them, but that don’t have the confidence to actually click the button and go forward. So, that’s some of the things we’ve done. But I’m just going to quickly show another little bit of video here around a bit more user testing of this thing just to see. And I’ll have a quick look at the question that’s come through as well from Nathan.

But I’m just going to click play on this one and we’ll bring this one to life as well.

Video testimonial question:

Based on what you’ve seen so far, how confident or unconfident do you feel about investing? Same scale. So, on very unconfident, five, very confident.

Video testimonial 3:

Well, just having gone through this for the last 30 minutes, I’d probably move up to a four because there’s enough information here that I would at least understand what I was doing and I could explain to somebody afterwards why I did it. So, this has been quite informative, although it’s all very vague and general, but it has … I think, as I said earlier, it’s jargon free. This is quite clear and easy to follow and easy to understand.

Video testimonial question:

And how do you think you feel about investing after going through the prototype versus how you felt before?

Video testimonial 4:

I felt before I was a bit unsure or I’m scared seeing my money go away from my bank and just not looking at it, but I think definitely much better, much a little bit more confident.

Video testimonial questions:

How did you feel going through it?

Video testimonial 4:

I think it was good. I think it was very informative. I think a lot of graphics helped to visualise what you’re getting or what are the expectations. So, I think that was really good for someone that doesn’t know as much, obviously, to visualise everything. So, I would say quite guided definitely.

Video testimonial 3:

I mean, it was well laid out. It was well laid out. It was clear, it was easy to understand. So, overall, fairly confident that you’re making the right informed decision by investing in that by choosing that all the costs were there, all the risk there, et cetera. So, yeah, so fairly well-informed.

Video testimonial question:

How confident or unconfident do you feel about investing? And that’s from one, very unconfident, up to five, very confident?

Video testimonial 4:

Probably a four. Yeah. Again, a four. Definitely much more confident. I was probably before I was a two and a half and a push and now it’s like a four, I would say.

Video testimonial question:

Okay. And again there, what do you think that’s changed there?

Video testimonial 4:

Yeah, just having it all explained put into daily lifestyle things, like the pictures with groceries, how back then they cost this much, now they cost this much, or with Fredo and stuff. I think it puts things into major perspective, to be honest.

Ben Hampton:

So, that’s a bit of a flavour of that and kind of give you a restaurant ideal turns, but it’s interesting. So, thanks, Nevin, for the question going into it. I’m just going to pull out one point. So, again, in the UK, there’s a chocolate bar called a Frederic, hard to say on my accent, but it’s a small chocolate bar with caramel in it with a frog on it. For those of you who are fans of that chocolate bar. It is often used in the UK as a measure of the price of something has gone up with inflation because it used to be about 5P when I was a boy and I dread to think how much it was now.

But interestingly, to Nathan’s question, we had it in the testing, customers loved it, but our legal function would not sign it off. Our legal function were worried that Cadbury’s were going to sue us. I would’ve been delighted if Cadbury sued me for some financial advice journey we’d built. It would’ve been a great career story, but we’ve not got that unfortunately. So, going back to Nathan’s question in the chat around how do you go about changing that culture with compliance and a more relaxed approach? I’m not sure they became more relaxed. I think we had to acknowledge uncertainty because the rules are much more principle based for this regulation.

So, the way we did it was we actually used things like the testing here and the evidence. That’s why we had 200 hours of testing. Interesting, the regulator asked for your permissions to provide an evidence of what you had tested. So, where there was areas of uncertainty, we were just quite open and acknowledged it. So, that was one bit. It was using customer testing as the evidence point to acknowledge the uncertainty. I think the other bit was sharing early. I think any compliance function would say that in terms of working with them from the start. Interestingly, you always have the last niggles of getting something live.

Many of you, if you work in delivery or change or proposition, you’ll have this kind of aspect or customer focus functions. Everyone’s happy. And at the last minute, all the people come out with all the worries and we’ll sign it off. So, we still had a bit of that, Nathan, to be honest. We’d built the relationships as we went through the process. The other thing that was really helpful is in my leadership team, I’ve already a senior risk person because we’re advice and some of my other responsibilities, they hold a regulatory function under the senior manager’s regime.

So, it gives you a bit more, not the right word, is a bit more credibility that you’ve got a senior risk person that’s living and breathing it and on the hook for things that helps as well with the marketing compliance function. But yeah, I think key thing I would say is it’s the engagement early. It’s having that senior buying, but actually it’s the user testing and that’s the key thing we try to do. But I’m very happy to follow up if you’ve got a follow-up question, but hopefully that gets it. I think the other thing which is maybe unsaid, and I don’t know if anyone would say this more broadly, I think the FCA did a really interesting thing by creating a brand new regime.

So, one of the reasons I was really keen to get first in the market was, and be first as a mutual, I think we all on this call have a higher borrowing customer outcome probably than PLCs. And maybe that’s unfair, maybe that’s unfair, but I believe culturally there’s something kind of unspoken or unsaid that lives in these organisations. So, we wanted to set a bar and a standard that is really consumer focused and that’s not that there’s no consumer focused PLC journeys, but we’ve got a natural inherent bias probably to that, I think in terms of the types of organisations here.

So, we wanted to kind of get live first, but by being a brand new regime, you actually give your compliance function a bit of get out of jail because things that you’ve kind of said, “Could I do this in the past? I’d like to push the rules.” If they’ve already said no, it’s quite difficult for them to change their mind, what’s changed to change the risk exposure, but by being a new regime, actually they’ve not concluded on it yet. There is uncertainty.

So, I actually think that almost made it more freeing for compliance as well, whether my compliance colleagues would say it like that, but I think it allowed us to go into, “Look, we don’t know. This isn’t the rule set that we’ve seen live in the wild. Let’s use the user testing to inform.” So, that was hopefully some of the points bring that to life. I’ll keep going. I’m going to move to a different topic if that’s okay. So, I kind of touched on the advice in the UK. Actually, people don’t have enough to retire. I’m also responsible for our role in the executive release advice business. So, in the UK, home-ownership is high. If you want to, you can release money from the value of your home. It’s affecting like a reverse mortgage, right? You own your house and effectively then you take out a lifetime mortgage or something equivalent and you get given a lump sum and interest rolls up. And then what happens is when you move into long-term care or you pass away, actually the house is sold and it repairs the debt and there’s no debt passed onto your estate.

It’s the product mortgage provider that looks at it. But in the UK, a really great report by Ferro Finance actually. And they’ve had another report actually just this week talking about the role that housing wealth can play in the UK. Actually, one of the FCA directors for retail banking made a speech this week as well about how housing wealth might be the fourth pillar of retirement planning in the UK increasingly. So, one of the things we wanted to do here Was Roland invested in this market in terms of acquiring an advice business and the lending business, which is the product tax wrapper and I run the advice business, but it’s a really old-fashioned market.

It was literally go around to people’s houses, you look at the house, you’re meeting people. The average age of our customer is 69. So, it’s a different age demographic. And when I took over, I was very pretty much told, well, it’s a face-to-face business. These people don’t want to complete things digitally. And my job was to go, “Well, actually, how do we use the expertise we’ve got to kind of get different parts of that journey to be filled in digitally?” And we’ll show a little bit of the data. We’ve had absolutely no problems with customers doing things digitally. I don’t think it’s your age that impacts your ability to do things online.

It’s a bit like when I watch my dad, he’s hopeless online, absolutely hopeless. I look at him with pain in my eyes of how he’s trying to click on the phone. I’m like, “Why are you clicking there? There’s a button there.” Ahead of my hands. But clearly, it’s the same as when my dad watches me try and do DIY. I’m absolutely hopeless. I’m not wired the right way. If you’ve never seen anyone mess up hanging a picture, I can show you a video of me trying to do it. And it’s like, how do we navigate some of those bits? But the point here was we went deliberately contrary. We said we’re going to try this and we’re doing something different and it’s worked. Now we’re doing it for two reasons.

One, to drive efficiency, because we want to make a more scalable advice process. We’ve not turned up as rolling in this market to just kind of tick it along as a small thing. We think the UK will require housing wealth to be a mainstream part of retirement. So, we want to believe in our supportive advice in all its forms. We want to get into it and really want to test how far customers digitally could go. So, that was kind of really, really interesting in terms of accepting you’re doing something contrary, get it live into the hands of users fast and see where it takes you in terms of one of those aspects.

So, you can see the journey on the right-hand side, not quite as pretty as the kind of mobile one for targeted sport, slightly different audience, but this has worked really well in terms of giving customers the opportunity to find out would their property actually be eligible to even do this exercise. So, you can get them to ask the silly questions quickly before they get to speaking to someone if they needed to. So, that’s been really helpful. The other aspect of that then is, well, the role of data within it. So, this is just things I think come as standard.

I’ve not updated this Ben since we last presented it. So, it was from July to August. I think we just launched it when I last did it. But actually, the volume of data that you have to understand how are customers reacting to it’s interesting in terms of the different things that you find out in terms of which questions do they find more difficult. One of the things [inaudible 00:32:35] in the UK is you can get a type of installation in between the walls of your house called spray foam. And unfortunately, there’s some kind of challenges with that that could damage your property. So, lenders don’t like to release equity off properties that have that. But we found that was a question where we put a not sure.

We said, “Do you have spray for installation?” Yes, no, not sure. Because we were seeing that more people were clicking not sure we effectively then went back into the journey and then just changed the explanation of what was about spray foam. And it sounds really basic and then sometimes, the best digital product developments are basic. We put a picture in, we physically put a picture into the accordion of help. You see that actually we’re starting to see it, the not sure spray foam was coming up, bottom left, purple bar, but that continued as it was live for longer. We went back into it and we’ve improved that a little bit. So, we’ve still getting some nutshells, but we’ve kind of dampened the effect of that.

And this is where the balance of in a fintech, you’ve got to measure your outcomes, you’ve got to place your bets about what you’re trying to deliver, but you need to know, I had a hypothesis, have I got data to understand whether it’s worked or not? And I think that was a really, really important aspect of what we were doing and what we were trying to deliver in terms of that. So, again, the importance of data to bring that to life. So, look, not quite as much on that one, but again, the message there was actually accepting it’s contrary, be clear that you’ve been different and why, but what was we trying to prove? So, we was confident people could move it digitally and fill it in digitally.

But then because it’s digital, I had a much greater speed of data. So, the ability to iterate, whereas before it was tens of advisors going around to people’s houses, I didn’t know exactly what each one did or I didn’t have a way to challenge the unstructured data into a structured way to improve the experience. So, that ability to measure, monitor, and then iterate and then measure the difference is really, really important. And again, some of you will have older books of business where there’s less good data available on the customer journey. I’ve got an easier environment as a FinTech.

This is kind of built in the standard more modern tech stack, so it’s allowed us to do that, but really important that that mindset, there’s no reason we can’t apply that discipline to any kind of customer proposition, which I think is super, super important. This is the last slide and please open up to questions and I’ll go to Ben, but I just wanted to talk about some of the things we think is really important. I think hopefully you’ve seen it here is it’s getting in the hands of users fast. It’s a real interesting balance when we’ve done things as Wealth Wizards and the Wealth Wizards brand, you’ve not got a brand risk because my brand is as much as I love the name and the brand actually it’s not got millions of customers, right?

It’s a handful of customers that we get that actually have advice under the Wealth Wizards’s brand. But if you get it into hands of users fast, you get it quicker. And the balancing you actually have to have it is what’s the threshold for a minimal viable proposition, MVP. And actually when you’ve got a brand effect like Royal London, the bar’s higher actually. So, it’s a really interesting trade off about how do you get something live, but actually you’re accepting that it’s not your best bet, but you’re going to get it live and you’ll learn stuff and actually, you’ve got an idea of what you want to deliver next or how you want to extend it or change it.

But actually rather than guessing, get the first version live, understand it, and then build it. So, I think the sooner you get into the hands of users, the sooner you learn, the sooner you can evolve it, which is great. I think the other bit I think is important from that mindset point is you’ll have to bend some rules, right? And for the volumes of doubt, I’m not bending any regulatory rules. I’m not getting ourselves in trouble and going to whatever. Sometimes, you’re taking risks seeking forgiveness rather than permission and that’s a mindset point. And you’ll all know people in the organisations that you all work with who are the ones that are the bit of the disruptors, the ones that get stuff done, not always in the most conventional way, but actually they’re still doing it for the right reasons.

And actually a lot of the people that I’ve brought into Wealth Wizards, actually some of the original FinTechers might have said they’re quite corporate. I know they’re not corporate or perceived to be corporate. They were the upstart in a larger organisation that wanted to do things differently, wanted to make a difference. It’s just that if you grew up in a larger organisation, you’ve got a different approach to rigour and robustness. You know the responsibility that comes with having a big brand and a brand that means something to customers, you got to do the right thing and it’s got how you protect that asset that is it.

But being open-minded that you might have to bend some rules, bend not break, I suppose is probably the better word. The other thing is falling, not failing. And there’s loads of different studies around this and different leadership quotes about this, but we don’t see it as that you failed. It’s actually you’ve fallen. How do you get back up? And it’s giving people the confidence to try things. Because my belief is if you give autonomy to a team actually and eight times out of 10 to get it right, the two times out of 10, they get it wrong and it’s actually throw away, they’ve kind of messed it up.

But the speed of giving them the confidence to try things means what you get from the eight right versions will be worth miles more than the two mistakes that actually added no value. So, it’s that really interesting balance between falling, not failing. That’s a permission opportunity. It’s a confidence opportunity. Clearly in any organisation, you gain trust and respect and the chance to take bigger bets. But I think that’s a really interesting dynamic within it. I think the one thing I would say, this is that interesting balance you have between perception and reality.

You can position your brand differently by being a separate brand, do you attract different talent? I know that some people actually think Royal London’s big and corporate in Wealth Wizards and they’re going to become Royal London employees over time. Actually, how do we get the balance of you attract different people that think they work with certain people? And sometimes, the work’s part of the persona. Some of you guys might say, “I would never want to work for a PLC. I always work at mutuals.” Actually, some of these people think, I always work at small companies, not big companies, but I think again, it’s purpose driven.

I’m trying to drive the connection of that purpose level because I think that’s what makes the fundamental difference. It’s not a private equity backed firm that we’re owned by that would drive different cultural beliefs, different focus on the customer, different pressures, but also different drivers. And it’s how do we navigate that? But I think my key kind of positioning point I would say about the mindset is reimagine don’t just reinvent. If you’re digitising something, you’re reinventing the thing that was always there. When people first started doing digital journeys, you didn’t want to put paper onto glass. It’s a different experience.

We’re seeing that now in the AI setting actually around actually different use cases, different ways consumers approach problems, but that’s the one thing I would say as a key takeaway is actually take the step back. The mindset is reimagine rather than reinvent within it. But look, that was all I was wanting to bring to life in terms of me talking. But Ben, thank you Nathan already for the question. But yeah, Ben, I’ll hand to you how we want to get a few questions and I’ll probably stop share. I don’t think anything I need to share anymore, Resley. You’ve got your upcoming webinars, but we can come back to that.

Ben Telfer:

Perfect. Thank you so much, Ben. I think we can spotlight you so we can all see you very well on screen, but thank you so much for resharing. It’s the second time I’ve heard that. Obviously, you referenced when you shared this at another ICMIF event, but so glad to invite you back because there was so many learnings in there and I think everybody really appreciates your openness. And then that kind of last slide that you’ve kept on I think is a great framework for other members to follow. I see there’s one question, but again, for everybody else, please do post any questions if you’d like to ask one verbally, please put your hand up and I’ll get to you.

But Ben, perhaps we’ll take that first question that you can see on screen about how did you go about engaging and changing the culture for compliance to be more relaxed about the messaging and approach as you set out.

Ben Hampton:

Yeah, no, super. So, hopefully, Nathan, I tried to bring that to life when I was going through the presentation. Is there anything else based on what I said that would be useful to bring to life?

Nathan:

No, that was covered. Thanks.

Ben Hampton:

Perfect.

Ben Telfer:

Super. Paul, you’ve got your hand up.

Paul:

Thank you, Ben. And, yeah, Ben, really good presentation. Thank you. I was really intrigued and kind of inspired really by what you were saying about the fact that the engineers are really, they get really motivated by being involved in a purpose-driven business. And one of the things that we see at One Family is the consumers, the younger consumers are much more attracted to the mutual concept, particularly when you’re into the Gen Z side of things. I was just wondering if you’d seen a similar split in terms of your own workforce where the younger engineers were the ones that were more motivated by the mutual model with perhaps older people in the group, a bit more ambivalent about it perhaps.

Ben Hampton:

Yeah, no, really good question, Paul. And I think you do see it because some of the ideas we do show and tells, they’re always desperate to, “Oh, can we do a savings product to help customers get on the housing ladder?” And it’s like you can, you probably won’t make any money on it. So, it’s a bouncing out between commerciality and purpose. But I would always amaze that the purpose thing always, it came up both in interview processes, but also exit interviews that people resonate with it. I have to admit, and now this is recorded, don’t tell them, but sometimes I’m like, “I don’t think they understand what financial advice is necessarily.

Don’t necessarily need to, but it’s the feeling of it is doing something good.” And I think whether one family, whether it’s child trust funds for you guys I suppose would be a big thing from speaking to Jim. And then I know John McGuigan, who’s the new chair for you guys, he’s my exec coach actually is John, so yeah, kind of all the different aspects. But yeah, you do see that connection, you do see a different mindset within it. Obviously, they’re all more mobile literate, but I do think there is a generational difference between purpose-driven environmental stuff. You get other aspects as well, right? So, we wanted a stay interview. We do stay interviews as well as exit interviews. So, it’s like, why do you work at Wealth Wizards?

What do you like to do? And there’s this young female engineer and she was like, “If you was going to work anywhere, where would it be?” And she was like, “Oh, well, I’m an engineer. I’d love to work at one of the big firms like Google.” “Oh, interesting. So, why would you like to work at Google? “”Well, they have cool things in their offices like hammocks.” I’m like, “Okay. What do you like about working with Wealth Wizards?” “I really like the fact that I can work from home.” It was like sometimes things are … So, we won’t be using those hammocks if you’re working from home. And it’s just kind of this interesting dynamic that you have within it. But yeah, I definitely recognise that point, Paul.

We’re in an era or a time where you’ve got a segment of customers that are more discerning and I think that only fit really well for what mutuals can do. I think the challenge we’ve got is how as mutuals we articulate what a mutual is. So, Royal London have literally just done our advert and we’ve gone about we’re customer earned, we work for you, we’re trying to bring it to life. And that’s just one, lots of other people have different things, but yeah, it’s how do we get the cut through? I think that’s something that all as a sector we need to really work together and leverage.

Paul:

Yeah, I agree. I just think it’s really interesting. One of the competitive advantages that I’ve been really thinking about recently for mutuals is the employee proposition. It’s not just the external thing, but the fact that if you want to get software engineers or whoever else, really, really engaged and motivated, given that the kind of purpose focus of Gen Z, I think we’re in a really strong position.

Ben Hampton:

Yeah, agree. And it’s attract that different talent point. It’s just we need to tell the story clearly. That’s the key thing, but hopeful answered that question, Paul and thank you so much for asking.

Paul:

Yeah. Thanks, Ben.

Ben Telfer:

Thanks so much, Paul. And thank you, Ben, for the answer there. Another question’s come in. “Congratulating you, Ben. That’s you, Ben, not me, Ben, but well done on what you’re doing so far, such a big need for the innovations and what you’re developing.” So, the question is AI is of course all the talk these days and many users will try and solve their education and questions with AI tools. Are you building AI into some of your solutions like talking to a bot?

Ben Hampton:

Yeah, it’s a really good question. Thanks for that. It’s a really interesting puzzle on this one. So, I think we’ve got more progress in using AI in our software engineering. My CTO would talk about our kind of software engineer development, software development life cycle. We use AI-driven tools within that AI to write some code. It changes the role of some of your more senior engineers, actually. It’s an interesting puzzle there. I don’t know if there’s any tech people on the call, but it does change the role they play. In terms of putting into consumer stuff, it’s an interesting puzzle.

So, the board at Royal London keep giving me grief on this because I’ve built that targeted support chain and I think it’s great. It’s got good conversion stats and it’s like, well I’ve been replaced by AI. I think I’m really pro AI, but we use the phrase word pro AI, but not AI blind. It’s got to come back to what’s the use case. And we have a slight additional challenge in financial advice that anything that’s probabilistic advice can’t be wrong on the 1,010th time. It has to give the same outcome consistently and that’s the puzzle I have with the AI aspect. I think it’s what you’ve kind of alluded to is it’s how do you layer it into different layers of the experience?

We have the guys working on a bit of a proof of concept of a digital coach, again, trying to drive that kind of emotional aspect in. And we haven’t got it to a point where we could get it live because it was either really useful but risky because it was suddenly … I was like, it sounds like it’s giving financial advice and it shouldn’t be, or it was safe but bland. And it’s a really interesting dynamic about how you do it in a regulatory setting. In my actual release advice business, we have something called a virtual X release file assistant, so massively helpful.

So, it checks some of the free text answers the advisors are putting in in the fact find about why a customer wants to take the money out, et cetera. And it prompts them against what they need to cover from our suitable advice guide. So, definitely backstage efficiency and coaching of the colleague. We haven’t yet got it live into the customer experience because of that kind of link to advice and the risk of implicit advice, which is a UK specific thing. But look, I think we always underestimate… We overestimate change in the short term and underestimate in the medium term. So, it’s clearly coming.

Advice has an additional bit of complexity that our team are wrestling with about where’s the right place to navigate it. But look, loads of uses in the development life cycle directly and actually I think as a compliance tool for advice and customer calls, really, really helpful.

Ben Telfer:

Thank you, Ben.

Ben Hampton:

I don’t know what you guys are seeing it. That’s the other thing I’d throw back is, I don’t know if anyone others has seen where they’re using it, because again, you’ve got to have the confidence to test it. The bit that’s new for us is your confidence of getting it live and the controls you have around it are different. That’s the bit that’s harder in terms of the goal. Because the FCA work, the senior manager will be on the hook for it, regardless if it’s AI or if it’s just some deterministic model. That’s the interesting puzzle we’re kind of wrestling with. But, yeah, Ben, I don’t know if any others have got other thoughts on this space.

Ben Telfer:

If anybody would like to just to comment on that, I know we have a number of innovation leaders and fellow life mutuals in the audience. If anybody would like to comment on that, please do put your hand up or if you’ve got another question for Ben, please raise your hand or type that in. I think it’s a great discussion point, Ben, but we’ll see if anybody would like to comment on it. I’m sure there are many companies doing the similar things and approaching AI in the same way. But if anybody else give people the last chance to say anything, but if not, thank you so much, Ben. A real pleasure to host you on this. Great to have an engaged audience as well.

Anybody watching this recording, please do reach out if you’ve got any follow-up questions or anything that ICMIF can help with. I’m sure Ben would be happy to connect with you. On screen, you’ll see some of the upcoming webinars that we’ve got next week. We’ve got the latest in our CEO interview or CEO panel discussions with three leading CEOs across the ICMIF network and then later next month we’re hearing the perspectives from some of our Canadian mutuals about how they’re strengthening wildfire resilience. So, thank you so much again, Ben. Thank you everybody for joining today and hopefully everybody enjoys the rest of the day or rest of the evening. Thank you everybody.

Ben Hampton:

Take care everyone. Thanks. Bye-bye.

Ben Telfer:

Bye.