Ep 21: Gareth Gumbley, Frollo

In episode 21 Dexter Cousins talks open banking with Gareth Gumbley, CEO of Frollo.

Frollo is on a quest to help Australians feel good about money. 

Using the power of technology and community, Frollo’s ecosystem enables clients to build their own unique customer journeys and value propositions. Their SaaS Integration platform brings together an AI engine, API’s, partner integrations and Open Banking solutions. 

Turning data into insights, Frollo’s features include transaction enrichment, money insights, goal setting, bill tracking, budgeting and financial wellbeing tools, as well as product comparisons (through Open Banking).

And, as the first FinTech in Australia to become an Accredited Data Recipient in the ACCC Open Banking system, Frollo is also leading the way towards a more transparent financial sector for all Australians.

Download the Frollo App: https://frollo.com.au/app/

Thanks to our partners FinTech Australia, a member-driven organisation that is building an ecosystem of Australian fintechs to advance the global economy and culture.

We share their mission to build a strong community, foster connections and support innovation. To become a member go to https://fintechaustralia.org.au/join-now/

Tier One People is Australia's leading FinTech Executive Search firm. If you are looking to hire game changing talent contact talent@tieronepeople.com 

If you would like to sponsor the show please contact info@tieronepeople.com

Join the fastest growing community in Fintech 

Subscribe Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/fintech-leaders-7092732051488980992/
Connect on Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3DsCJBp

Transcript

Dexter Cousins : 0:03

Welcome to the FinTech Australia podcast, brought to you in partnership with Tier One People, Australia's leading FinTech executive search consultants. I'm your host, Dexter Cousins. In episode 21. I talked to Gareth Gumby CEO of Frollo. Frollo is on a quest to help Australians feel good about money. Using the power of technology and community. Frollo enables clients to build their own unique customer journeys and value propositions. And as the first FinTech in Australia to become an accredited data recipient in open banking, Follo is leading the way towards a more transparent financial sector for all Australians. But before the show, I just want to say a big thanks to our partners Fintech Australia. The day is the first of July 2020 marking the launch of open banking in Australia. FinTech Australia as a member driven organisation, has been building an ecosystem of Australian fintechs, to not only advance the global economy, but have also pushed very hard for the open banking regime in Australia. Tier One People shares FinTech Australia's mission to build a strong community, foster connections and support innovation. There's never been a more important time to become a member. So head over to fintechaustralia.org.au/join-now. Gareth, welcome to the show.

Gareth Gumbley : 1:42

Thanks, Dexter. Good to get on today I'm pleased to be here.

Dexter Cousins : 1:46

Well, it took a little bit of persuading and hassing on my part, but it's awesome to finally have you on the show. We're pretty familiar with each other, but for the listeners that aren't aware of Frollo could you maybe share a little bit more about what you do.

Gareth Gumbley : 2:02

Sure, I'd love to. Frollo is a purpose driven FinTech. We're really on a quest to help people feel good about money. To do that, we built a really simple to implement technology that helps businesses, their customers and employees to turn around their finances. We do that and helping them use their own bank data. A little bit more about Frollo is that there are two parts to our business. We have a consumer app, and we have over 110,000 consumers on that. That's really where we test and learn with our technology. Then we also work with Neo banks, traditional banks, fintechs, lenders, or employers to leverage our b2b SaaS platform or open banking solutions. Really they use white label apps or they integrate our API's into their existing mobile apps or their lending processes. Then we help them fast track new solutions to improve people's financial well being or innovate in a banking experience. That's just a little bit about about us.

Dexter Cousins : 3:02

Great. It's exciting times for Frollo. Were here talking two days out from, what is the official go live date for CDR. A bit of a first for you guys over the last couple of days and one of the reasons why it's been so hard to get hold of you, would you like to share with our listeners a little bit about what you've recently just achieved?

Gareth Gumbley : 3:25

Sure. We were the first Australian FinTech to become accredited under the CDR at the unrestricted level, which means that we can not only use bank data, but also use utility data and telco data as that becomes available. Over the last weekend, on Saturday at 5.35 we officially provided a consumer provided consent, and we collected bank data from one of the big four banks. It felt like, for us, a bit like being the first FinTech on the moon. We were pretty excited. I think everybody is sitting on the sidelines waiting with bated breath for CDR to really get rolling. It was nice to see it happen in action, it's phenomenal. So it's incredibly fast. The data is good. It's pretty exciting for the team to finally get there. We've tested hundreds and hundreds of use cases. It's a bit like that Reed Hoffman saying, you know, where you throw an airplane off a cliff, and then you build it on the way down. It's really been like that with CDR as we've really worked with the banks and the ACCC, Data 61 to build the standards, apply to the rules, and we all had our own interpretations along the way. We had to work together to navigate that. But I think there's been a tremendous amount of effort that's gone into it to get us to where we are now it's an exciting time.

Dexter Cousins : 4:50

Yeah, and I guess I guess, you know, that kind of analogy of building the plane as you're flying it. The risks if you get it wrong, certainly within a FinTech highly regulated environment, it must be very difficult to be able to go with an approach of experimentation, once you've got all of those boundaries with which you've got to work in.

Gareth Gumbley : 5:14

Yeah, I think it really is. But there's a tremendous amount of focus on making sure that what we're setting out to achieve is really protecting consumer data. The consent process, the ability to remove your concern, initiate your consent, have it for a period of time. That is pretty critical in the process to make sure that we get that right. A lot of time and energy goes into that. The screens that we use in the app, the language we use, It took as many iterations to get that right with the ACCC to get consent, right. Then the second is then sucking in the data and then having it inside our environment, in a safe environment to be able to interpret that and provide insights back to consumers. There are three steps to this. It's give consent, receive the data and then the third is now what we're going to do with it? And that's been the most exciting and biggest investment for us, I think post just getting accredited.

Dexter Cousins : 6:10

From a consumer perspective, when do you think Frollo users are going to be able to see the benefits of CDR and the work that you've been doing?

Gareth Gumbley : 6:22

In two days. We start to open up. So we've got, I don't know hundreds or thousands or so, that are pushed to the top of a waitlist that were created. They'll be the first in the country.

Dexter Cousins : 6:38

I hope I'm on there.

Gareth Gumbley : 6:39

I think you are on that. Yeah, for sure. Maybe I'll bump you up a little bit from this. But that's really the process. We'll start to roll that out gradually. We've got banks online now. Our employees are testing so we're all using it and starting to see the benefits of it, and then we'll start to bring the consumers in on the first of July.

Dexter Cousins : 7:00

Great, you used an analogy of the first FinTech on the moon, I think I'd use the comparison of when the internet was born, not very many people knew about it. It took a number of years before it really had an impact. I get the same feeling that CDR could be following that same path of the internet. Where not many people are aware of it. But it's going to have a significant impact on how we all live our lives. What are you seeing as some of the opportunities for Frollo as you go live in the next couple of days and have you got any anything new or innovative plan for users?

Gareth Gumbley : 7:43

We've been working in the space of helping consumers feel good about money for the last three years. Prior to open banking or CDR, we were using screen scraping to do that. A lot of the techniques and the API's we created to work with core bank systems as well as screen scraping, we're able to leverage immediately with open banking and that CDR data. Really, that's about helping consumers on three customer journeys. The first is helping them save for something. helping them identify ways they can save money. The second is to pay down debt, helping them manage their finances to reduce their debt and reduce their stress around their debt. Or the third is those of us that just want to track our money or just see where our money goes to track our finances. They're the key journeys that we take consumers on. But the exciting thing is with CDR is that we're able to tie product API data with consumer transaction data. What that really means for the consumer is that we're able to see how they're using the financial products they have today. Whether it's best suited for them, or whether there are better deals out there and we'll be able to bring that to market within the next few days and start to identify that, showcase that capability.

Dexter Cousins : 8:56

Fantastic. It's exciting times. You mentioned there, this has been three years in the making. Going back to the early days of Frollo, how did you how did you get the idea for the business, Gareth?

Gareth Gumbley : 9:12

I had 15 years working in payments. I liken myself to being an old dog in the land of FinTech. Fintechs were really just startups or small businesses. I guess my understanding of starting to understand how consumers manage their finances, how they move money around and how they make payments. The other thing that I did was I tried my hand at consumer finance. I felt that there was an opportunity to help people borrow money in a better way. What I learned in that experience was that lending money was not the solution for helping people out. I felt that if people have got a problem, the car's broken down, if you could lend them some money that would help them get ahead, help them solve the problem they had. The reality came to me as I sat there one day, sitting in the risk department looking at how we lend money. The opportunity to help people is actually to engage them in their finances earlier in the process. To understand how they could be in a better financial position before taking a loan and then during the life of the loan. Or during the savings experience that they had while saving for a house. I think I sat there one day, marathon training, excited about the gamification that Fitbit was bringing to me or Strava. I was thinking there's nothing that's doing this for me in finances. PSD2 was on the radar, open banking was a conversation, the whole world of digital payments was happening. I just sat there one day with a piece of paper at the dining room table and went there has to be a better way of doing this. It has to be a more fun way of getting people engaged in finances. That really was when Frollo was born as a concept. That was back in 2015, it's taken some time for me to bring that to life.

Dexter Cousins : 10:56

Where's the business now in terms of number of people, investment round, are you guys bootstrapped?

Gareth Gumbley : 11:03

We've now got just over 30 people in the business. A combination of developers, product management, sales and data scientists, being that data is probably the biggest explosion of skill set that we have in our team now. We've been growing our revenues year on year for the last three years, we've had over 300% revenue growth in the last couple of years, consistently. To fund the business, it was initially bootstrapped by myself, and then we've done three small, private funding rounds. We're still pretty much focused in Australia, but exploring partnership opportunities now to take us off into new markets. I guess the success that we had was really to use the key partners that we signed, the banking partners, to help us fund the business as we developed IP and built ourselves out. We work today with the likes of Virgin Money, Volt Bank, a number of Neo lenders, like Specklin. A number of tier two banks as well as increasing number of fintechs that are starting to engage with us. I guess the trick was to make sure that we brought capital in from people that we liked and we knew, as well as making sure that we were really focused on building a business that was sustainable for the long haul.

Dexter Cousins : 12:17

You talked about the team there Gareth. You and I have had some chats around talent and the challenges that our startup has particularly around attracting tech talent. You've got some philosophies around leadership and attracting people to the business that really resonate with me. We've talked a bit about sports and performance as well. What is your approach to the culture that you're building at Frollo?

Gareth Gumbley : 12:48

I think it was fortunate really to have had the opportunity to run a number of other small businesses that accelerated and scaled really quickly. I think I've probably made all my mistakes along the way, as I've matured,. I think what that allowed me to do was really decide what was important for my blueprint for Frollo to be successful. I think one of the key things was making sure that we had a really strong purpose around what was the business? and what were we trying to do? Then being authentic to that with both the staff as well as every organisational partnership that we interacted with. Everyone that met Frollo I believe has a good understanding that we're purpose driven, that we care, we want to make a difference. We're innovative and passionate. That really helps you attract talent. I think that the second part is that the market is small, and we have developed that relationship into the market. That's allowed us to hire people that we knew already, and then bring their friends and their friends and friends. We've really done pretty well bringing a nucleus of staff that helped build a solid culture when we were five or seven people. As we've expande to 30, which is a really nice, manageable size team to look after, we've kept that poetry and kept that authenticity. When you get challenges like COVID, and we all have to separate back to a home bases for a while, we didn't lose any of our momentum. We didn't lose any of our culture. We didn't lose any of our enthusiasm to make a difference. That's all been pretty exciting. I think the final part if you can find some really high performing people, that like to set an example. Those with an incredible amount of energy to hold the team and set a good example then that sometimes helps bind the rest of the organisation around that nucleus.

Dexter Cousins : 14:38

You've been pretty brave as well, you've not just locked to the Aussie market, but you've hired people who don't have any Australian experience as well. What are your tips to any founders out there? We keep hearing, there's no talent. What are your tips to find other ways of bringing in good people?

Gareth Gumbley : 15:06

You use the word brave. I think courage is good with both the people you're hiring and yourself. We took a risk by taking people that had experience in other markets and other disciplines and other industries, and then seeing if they were able to apply that to our organisation. Then we just provided the coaching, the support, the onboarding, and the nurturing and allowance of time to let them come up to speed. Which I think, if you can just be a little bit more patient, you'll eventually start to see the benefits of those teamsreally flourish. We've been fortunate to hire some incredible software developers from all over the world. We've probably got 15 or 16 nationalities in our 30 staff. I think that diversity and willingness to bring on board an app developer who worked on the number one app in Nepal, absolutely gives them the credibility to be working on an app in Australia. I guess the enthusiasm to bring talent in and bring good people in, has enabled us to build a pretty high performing team.

Dexter Cousins : 16:15

It's as we talked about earlier, exciting times for the business. What do you see as being the next 12 months for Frollo?

Gareth Gumbley : 16:26

The next 12 months is really going to be about helping other organisations develop use case around CDR. We've really built our apps and our API's to enable others to fast track on to CDR. You can apply to become an ADR today and then you can essentially outsource most of the technical and process capabilities and components of that to Frollo. We can really accelerate the number of organisations that get accredited in ADR and are able to leverage CDR data. This is really where we want to see our focus over the next 12 months. When we started out, we set out to solve the problem that one in three Australians feel financially insecure or 50% of the population stress about money. We want to try and build use cases within our own consumer app that enables us to prove out those use cases to show ACCC, to show government, to show industry, to show the ecosystem that there are ways and opportunities to help consumers. They may never know that they're using CDR or open banking, but what they do know is that there is a better way of looking after their money, a better way of moving their money and a better way to experience financial products. The average Australian today probably spends $1,000 a year in the lazy tax. They're just not aware that they could be on better deals or products more suited to their lifestyle. There's a tremendous opportunity there. As well as just building financial literacy and financial well being. If we know where our money goes, we know how much we've got and we know we've got enough to pay the bills. You can almosttake a big deep breath and know that you're okay, at least for this month.Then start the next month fresh. Those kind of use cases are going to become much easier to develop experiences around, particularly with the quality and the speed of the data that comes with CDR.

Dexter Cousins : 18:26

You've been been around for quite some time. You're at the forefront of innovation. Other than Frollo, which other FinTech out there has got you excited?

Gareth Gumbley : 18:36

That's a good question. What's got me excited?

Dexter Cousins : 18:41

It's the first time we've dropped this one into the podcast. It was at the request of our listeners.

Gareth Gumbley : 18:50

I think I'm gonna pause on that one. Can I ccircle back to you?

Dexter Cousins : 18:53

Yes, you can circle back. Answers on a postcard, please. I guess to wrap up the show, Gareth, where can people find out more about Frollo?

Gareth Gumbley : 19:07

You can just jump onto our website, Frpollo.com.au. We've recently rebranded there's some good fun engagement articles, white papers on there. We regularly do webinars now. Feel free to reach out. What I'd say most importantly, if you want to learn a bit more about Frollo, then reach out and talk to one of the team. There's a very passionate team out there and you can pick any one you like on LinkedIn. I'm sure they'll chat, happily and heartily about Frollo, and what we're up to.

Dexter Cousins : 19:37

And if people want to download the app

Gareth Gumbley : 19:39

Then just jump on the on the Apple App Store and on the Play Store. A little bit more features on iOS. That tends to be where we test and learn first, and then we drop into Android. The biggest complaint we get in life is that our Android app is lagging Apple. We'll get there, we need more time, a little bit more time.

Dexter Cousins : 20:00

Good stuff, mate. It's so good to see the progress that you're making. It feels like it's been a long journey. This last two years of making this all happen, it's exciting to see that it's finally here and we're not just talking about it anymore.

Gareth Gumbley : 20:18

I think we'll continue to enjoy CDR and the benefits that it brings. I think all of us will be frustrated that its not quite moving fast enough. The UK is a good example of that. They saw a tenfold increase in the number of API requests in the last 12 months. These things take time to build out, it's incredibly complex but I think the next few months will be exciting chat around what's happening and then we'll start to see innovations really come into the market as we go into 2021.

Dexter Cousins : 20:48

Gareth, good luck with everything. We'll invite you back on when you figured out what the other exciting Fintech is, who you'd like to talk about.

Gareth Gumbley : 20:59

It's rare that I get stumped on a question, well done.

Dexter Cousins : 21:04

It's like that interview question, tell me your favorite joke. You just can never think of one.

Gareth Gumbley : 21:11

What is your favorite?

Dexter Cousins : 21:13

Two monkeys in a bath one says. Ooo Ooo Aaa Aaa and the other one says put more cold water in then.

Gareth Gumbley : 21:21

Good Dad joke, Dexter to finish on.

Dexter Cousins : 21:24

That's been my go to response for the last 10 years. I've got to get something that won't offend people.

Gareth Gumbley : 21:30

Brilliant.

Dexter Cousins : 21:31

Good stuff. Well, mate, good luck with everything. It's been great to have you on and please keep us posted on the progress of Frollo and looking forward to taking the CDR version for a test drive.

Gareth Gumbley : 21:43

Yeah, will do. Thanks, my friend. All right, speak soon.

Dexter Cousins : 21:49

Well, that's the end of the show, folks. Thanks for tuning in. And thanks to our partners FinTech, Australia. Remember to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google and all of your favorite players. Check out the show notes for additional info on our current opportunities. If you'd like to sponsor the show, or you're looking to hire game changing FinTech talent, check out tieronepeople.com or contact talent@tieronepeople.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai