The Intermediary speaks to Neil Stevens and Kyle Augustin about Fintel’s strong trading results for the half-year ending in June 2023, its two new acquisitions, and where it is heading next.
The Fintel half-year trading results released this morning were extremely positive, give us your reaction.
Stevens: We continue to grow the business organically, taking on new clients, building out the products, helping intermediaries with product providers to get better outcomes from the market.
Over the past few years, we have been developing the platform of our business.
We’ve been building some new products and obviously making some acquisitions to make sure we are the most connected and complete platform in the UK, and today is a big step forward for us.
Speaking of acquisitions, Fintel also announced two major acquisitions this morning – of MICAP and Competent Adviser – why these companies, and why now?
Stevens: As for why now, the world has changed.
Consumers need more choice and a bigger range of tools in the kit bag.
MICAP is an incredibly strong addition to the Defaqto platform, that’s already the market leader in so many areas, but didn’t have research on tax advantage investments.
Consistent with the Mansion House speech last week, where the Government told the industry we’ve got to work a bit harder and look a bit broader at the role of the industry in generating capital for development companies and growth.
I think that’s equally applicable to the big institutions and to the private clients and advisers, so this is a great time for Defaqto to extend its research into EIS, BCT, AIM portfolios and to give advisers access to really first-class institutional quality research in those products.
When it comes to Competent Adviser, Kyle has worked on that deal for a couple of months, and indeed been working with that team for a couple of years, as they’ve been a supplier to our business for a while now.
Augustin: We saw a demand for training towards the end of the end of last year – a lot of that was coming through to Consumer Duty.
Competent Adviser has the best content, it has the most relevant information for IFAs and mortgage brokers, this is what made us switch from wanting them as a supplier to wanting them as an acquisition.
Fintel is obviously keen to keep growing its business proposition, can we expect more acquisitions going into the second half of 2023 and beyond?
Stevens: We are committed to developing our platform, that will be through investing in product innovation and finding companies that have a demonstrated value for intermediaries and bringing those companies into our family.
The more we can connect services up the better; we can make data integrated, we can make workflows easier, and we’ll help our clients help their clients, which will make their businesses better.
They do better, we do better – so you can bet we will be committed to doing everything we can to grow this platform.
With the financial markets as they are at the moment, how important a role do you think technology will play going forward?
Stevens: I think in every industry, and in every aspect of the consumer’s life, it is transformational, particularly for financial services.
We are in a space where the markets change rapidly, product providers are sometimes changing rates with 24 hours’ notice.
So, mortgage brokers need ‘finger on the pulse’, up to date information on affordability criteria and eligibility.
You’re talking about a mortgage market that’s 90% served by intermediaries, so the intermediary market is huge in the UK. These guys need up to the date technology. As for independent financial advisers (IFAs), they need competency, they need development, they need training.
Augustin: IFAs and brokers need data, because data drives their decisions. Without data they can’t make decisions.
The market is changing so fast every day, almost every minute, so the quicker they can get data and transparency to what’s happening and what the scenarios can be, the more accurate their decisions can be for their consumers.
Finally, what can we expect next from Fintel?
Stevens: We’re committed to growing the company organically, serving more of the market.
In 2021, we did the biggest enterprise deal we’ve ever done with Tatton Asset Management, a huge licensing agreement.
We already serve companies like Quilter, Fairstone, Radian and more – so we’re dealing with small companies but also some of the biggest and most prestigious in the market as well.
There are around £50bn worth of personal recommendations made on our platform every year, we support over 10,000 IFAs and 3,000 mortgage brokers, and we want that scale to grow.
We want to be serving more of the market, with more features, so as we connect more things onto our platform we can make that data, as Kyle mentioned, easy to access and reusable so IFAs aren’t constantly rekeying customer information.
We want to be a part of every financial decision that takes place in the UK, whether that be a customer using our Defaqto ratings when buying some car insurance, or an IFA designing an incredibly complex IHT portfolio – we want Fintel to be there as part of it.
