Growth case study: Moneybox
Moneybox is a savings and investing app. You may well recognise it from its advertising campaign, promoting its feature which automatically rounds up small purchases and add the change to your savings account.
But Moneybox’s offering goes considerably beyond this. They offer stocks and shares ISAs, ISAs and pensions, and have shown a flair for creativity in promoting their products.
One example is the popular Time Machine, which allows you to see the future growth of your savings, giving you a tangible goal to save towards and resist the temptation to withdraw. The company places a strong emphasis on bringing financial literacy to their customers, with an easy to use app and a financial academy that offers lessons on personal finance and savings.
So how did they get to their current position as one of the UK’s fastest growing and most prestigious fintech start ups? Founded in 2015 by childhood friends and serial entrepreneurs Ben Stanway and Charlie Mortimer, Moneybox’s mission was to bring an easy-to-use product to the market that could help people take control of their financial futures.
Valued at £4.5m, Moneybox took £2m in seed funding in January 2016 for a 28% stake, followed by a Series A funding round seven months later, raising £1.4m for a 17% stake. It also brought on the former chief executive of The Investment Association as an adviser. By this point the company was receiving coverage from industry press and being tipped as one to watch. It then began to grow rapidly, expanding its headcount, releasing an Android app to accompany its iOS one and expanding its product offering into Lifetime ISAs.
Two years on from its Series A, the company was now valued at £37m and raised £14m in a Series B funding round. It had grown its customer base to 100,000 people, with the average person investing £20 per week. At the end of 2018, it launched its financial academy.
A further two years down the line in 2020, Moneybox launched a personal pension in March, with a customer waitlist of over 100,000. It nearly tripled its valuation to £107m and raised £30m in its Series C funding round in July. By this point, it had 120 employees, 450,000 customers depositing an average £100m onto the platform every month, a 121% year-on-year increase from 2019. It then issued shares for sale on crowdfunding platform Crowdcube, raising £7m over two days, having hit its original £1m target in just 20 minutes. The crowdfunding campaign was so successful that it closed 27 days early.
The company showed it had reached organisational maturity by hiring a top COO at the end of the year, and it continues to grow rapidly, now boasting well over £1bn in assets managed. The UK fintech landscape is in strong state heading into the autumn of 2021, and Moneybox is one of its brightest sparks.
Camino Search works with some of the highest-calibre finance candidates in the tech industry. To hear about our work or for an informal chat about the market: