Hargreaves Lansdown has a well-established presence within the monetary providers sector and was named Workforce of the 12 months and the Finest Place to Work of the 12 months, within the Fintech Awards South West 2023.

On this Q&A, Matt Hyde, managing director at Fintech Awards South West, chats to Gemma Al-Kaisy, product lead at Hargreaves Lansdown, in regards to the firm’s function because the UK’s main platform for personal traders, its dedication to innovation, profitable collaborations, investor empowerment, adaptability to altering traits, and profession recommendation.

Gemma, please introduce your self and provides an summary of your organization

Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) is proud to be the UK’s main platform for personal traders. We’ve been doing this for over 40 years now – serving to folks save time, cash, and taxes on their investments. At the moment, we’re trusted by greater than 1.8 million purchasers, managing over £130billion in property.

We’re a FTSE 100 firm primarily based in Bristol with a crew of over 2,000 folks devoted to a transparent and compelling mission: empowering folks to avoid wasting and make investments with confidence. Our objective is to enhance monetary well-being, and supply a service that helps our purchasers’ monetary journey at each stage of life. I’m a Product Lead right here, liable for our net channel.

The Fintech Awards South West are a notable occasion within the trade. What motivated Hargreaves Lansdown to develop into a sponsor of this occasion? 

HL is likely one of the unique fintechs, a Bristolian firm with agency roots within the area and one of many first so-called unicorns (a enterprise which has grown from nothing to now be price greater than £1billion). We’ve at all times strived to make saving and investing straightforward for folks, simplifying the complicated and naturally utilizing expertise as our important enabler.

To proceed being profitable, we have to preserve investing in expertise and in folks. Being on the forefront of the fintech scene in our area helps us appeal to the best abilities and expertise to fulfil our long-term ambitions.

Innovation is a trademark of each fintech and established monetary establishments. How does Hargreaves Lansdown view the function of innovation in its operations?

Innovation – doing it higher, is inside our DNA. It’s considered one of our values. Delivering an unbelievable service is on the coronary heart of our progress story and as market chief we frequently look to enhance the shopper expertise primarily based on what our purchasers want.

At a crew degree we all know that innovation is the product of curiosity, collaboration and braveness. We allocate time for exploration into shopper wants and rising applied sciences. We construct cross-functional groups with numerous abilities and provides them autonomy to take possession of issues and alternatives. And, we embrace a tradition of psychological security the place crew members can voice their opinions and share concepts, realizing that failure is a pure a part of innovation and progress.

Collaboration typically results in new alternatives. Might you share any situations of profitable collaborations between Hargreaves Lansdown and fintech startups or different gamers within the monetary expertise ecosystem?

Positive, we efficiently collaborated with the funds supplier Stripe to course of £192million in a single day with none points throughout this tax year-end. Through the use of Stripe’s dynamic real-time error messaging, we noticed a 93 per cent discount in makes an attempt to make fee by bank card.

General, integrating with Stripe decreased failed funds by £540 million per yr. Our inner groups discover working with the options, from the front-end dashboard to back-end improvement instruments, straightforward and environment friendly. And, most significantly, our purchasers are receiving the absolute best service with a 99.999 per cent processing uptime because the partnership.

Investor training and empowerment are key features of Hargreaves Lansdown’s providers. How does the corporate view the function of fintech in enhancing shopper experiences and information?

Constructing confidence to assist folks to make good monetary choices is on the coronary heart of our service. Offering knowledgeable data, analysis and insights is a part of the answer however understanding ship these to our purchasers to assist them make the best choices, is much more necessary. That’s what we’re focussing on now.

We’ve invested massively in our knowledge functionality to know and rationalise the tens of millions of interactions now we have with our purchasers each day and used AI to mannequin shopper behaviours. Plus, we’ve received user-centred design experience in each product crew to essentially get to the guts of what our purchasers try to realize.

We all know it’s laborious to make the best monetary choices to profit your future self. We wish to use these insights to create an expertise that works proactively to assist purchasers to achieve their life objectives. We wish to assist folks create habits and make choices that may profit them within the long-term.

How does Hargreaves Lansdown keep agile and adaptable within the face of adjusting buyer preferences and rising applied sciences? Are there any particular fintech traits that the corporate is especially enthusiastic about?

Change in expertise has been a continuing for over 40 years and we’ve spent appreciable time taking a look at what we provide and talking to purchasers to know their wants as they alter, evolving our providers accordingly.

For example, just a few years in the past we foresaw the necessity for a money financial savings service which might give folks entry to higher charges on their money. Lively Financial savings is now the biggest money financial savings platform within the UK with round 150,000 purchasers and rising and is a core a part of our providing.

We developed and launched our first app earlier than there was a lot demand however now see this as a core channel for purchasers – as of right now 72 per cent of our month-to-month energetic purchasers are utilizing HL’s cell app to handle their investments.

Proper now, we’re all for how we will use expertise to make monetary recommendation and steering extra accessible. Additionally, how would possibly we get a holistic view of our purchasers monetary state of affairs, perceive their objectives and humanise our service to develop into far more of a companion, serving to them plan forward and navigate difficult monetary conditions as they come up. After all, this all means grappling with not solely expertise constrains but additionally with the regulatory boundaries of giving monetary recommendation.

Lastly, on a private degree what has helped or impressed you probably the most in your profession and what recommendation would you give to others?

 Being impressed and motivated by an organization’s goal to enhance the lives of others is a profound supply of power for me. Feeling that my work has a real constructive influence on others provides on a regular basis duties a way of which means and helps me by the tougher occasions. Empowering folks to avoid wasting and make investments with confidence is such an necessary mission and everybody at HL completely lives and breathes this ethos – you may’t assist however really feel impressed every single day.

My recommendation to anybody eager to excel of their profession is to search out mentors who’re keen to assist you by candidly sharing their information and experiences. Their steering will likely be really invaluable in serving to you progress in your profession.