EIS eligible FinTech solution designed for millennials and Gen-Zedders to achieve their financial goals.

Lifetise is a next generation FinTech that aims to power every life decision that triggers a financial purchase, such as buying a home or starting a family. Founders Caroline Hughes and Nick Wasmuth are on a mission to help under-40s meet their life goals despite having faced two, once-in-a-lifetime financial crises plus a global pandemic. The platform helps consumers plan how to afford and achieve their life goals whilst enabling financial institutions to predict and smooth the credit, insurance and investment needs of customers throughout their lifetime. Lifetise graduated from the 2019 Accenture Fintech Innovation Lab and Caroline has been awarded the Standout Rising Star on Fintech Powerlist by Innovate Finance in 2020 and 2021. Read on for our interview with founders Caroline and Nick.

Describe your startup in two sentences

Lifetise helps under-40s consumers build long-term financial health whilst also helping banks and insurers convert high value customers at a significantly lower cost. We fix the sales pipeline for the financial sector by making it truly customer-first.

Our goal is to power every life decision - from leaving school through to retirement – that triggers a financial purchase. Helping consumers understand their choices. Enabling financial institutions to predict and smooth the credit, insurance and investment needs of customers throughout their lifetime.

What gave you the inspiration?

Nick: Everyone we knew was struggling to afford their lives in some way. Plus the media told us we would never buy homes or retire! I worked for Vitality, the successful consumer engagement platform for insurance that got people to improve their physical health. I realised you could use similar gamification mechanics to improve people’s financial health.

As Eighties kids, we naturally thought of the Game of Life. It’s a board game where you move your peg people around in a car, making life choices and coping with random life events happening to you. The winner is the player who makes it through to retirement with the most money. That seemed a perfect model for what we were trying to do, but of course it needed to be brought up to date! We’ve used that inspiration to make Lifetise a fun and engaging way to help you with life decisions.

What has been your greatest success to date? And your greatest challenge?

Nick: Well we’ve helped over 30,000 people plan how to buy a home and afford childcare, so that’s a good start! We’ve achieved this whilst spending a lot less than most Fintechs, as we’ve cracked the formula for acquiring customers at low cost: most pay anywhere between £70-£1,000+ per customer, whereas we only pay £2-£10. This gives us a much bigger margin that we can recycle into growth, creating a virtuous loop that enables us to scale more efficiently and win our sector.

Caroline: For me, it was being selected for Accenture’s prestigious fintech innovation lab programme. It gave us senior relationships with the major banks that we’re now in white-label discussions with. Plus 3 of our mentors on the programme – very experienced fintech investors – have invested in Lifetise and provide ongoing advice.

Nick and Caroline: The challenge is always resources! We bootstrapped the company prior to July 2020, so we are really good at doing a lot on small budgets and finding exceptional people for our team. At the same time, we have big plans for growth and impact – hence this funding round that allows us to strengthen our resources and serve more Lifetise customers.

How has Covid affected your business?

Operationally, we were not affected. We have always run a remote-first business as we believe it gives us access to the best possible talent pool.

Our business is helping people respond to their changing financial situation. So in March/April last year during the first lockdown, when people were worried about losing their jobs or self-employed work, we reacted quickly to provide help. In just 2 weeks, we created a covid money help hub on our website, with webinars and web apps that triaged people to available government financial support.

While some Lifetise members have struggled financially, others have been able to save more money than usual because they haven’t had commuting and socialising costs. We have a lot of members who have been able to save their deposit to buy a home quicker than expected. So there is latent demand that we expect will drive growth for Lifetise.

What kind of impact is your business having and how do you measure it?

Our mission of delivering long-term financial health straddles SDG 1 (eradicating poverty), SDG3 (health and wellbeing), SDG5 (gender equality and economic empowerment of women) and SDG10 (reducing inequality). Over 30,000 Lifetise users have created financial plans through the platform. Our covid apps helped 5,000 people financially affected by the pandemic get access to government support. We just signed a letter of intent with a fintech client to bring a debt advice platform to market.

From a survey of over 2,000 Lifetise audience members in November 2020:

68.2% had managed to save money (and a quarter of all respondents reported saving a significant amount of money) and 7.2% had been able to pay down debts.
37.6% of all respondents said that the extra savings they have been able to accrue over the past 12 months have enabled them to put more money aside to buy a house.

When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up?

Caroline: A fashion designer

Nick: NFL coach

What would you save in a fire?
Humans, animals and fine wine. The rest can be replaced.

Who is your role model/ greatest influence? And why?

Caroline: My mum. She was a single parent and raised all four of us on very little money. Then she joined our local school sixth form to do her A-levels and got into UCL medical school aged 43. We were so proud when she graduated. She’s now a palliative care doctor.

What is your happy track?