For today’s profile we have Greg Cox of Quint Group.
Let’s find out more. Our questions are in bold.
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Who are you and what’s your background?
I picked up my passion for tech when I studied computer science at school.
From there, my first involvement in online technologies began in 1999-2000 during the first Dotcom Boom. Since then I’ve spent over 15 years as an entrepreneur, establishing and running businesses from start-up to £60m turnover across various sectors including the consumer finance, payments and online automotive, working both in the UK and internationally.
I founded Quint Group in 2009 and have since driven its growth and development over the last seven years; this has included launching our Monevo loan market places in four countries as well as establishing technology hubs for the Group in China and South Africa.
What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?
I am Group CEO.
I spend the majority of my time working with my team on overall direction, operational excellence and strategy. In addition to this I enjoy working on the development of new opportunities, tech and products within the Group.
Greg Cox of Quint Group
Despite my broader role, I continue to work closely with my team on the pure tech and product side of my businesses.
Can you give us an overview of your business?
Quint is a leading international, highly innovative fintech Group operating in the consumer finance market.
The Group was founded in 2009 in response to a rapidly changing consumer finance environment driven by advancements in technology, the emergence of alternative lenders and a shift to online operating models. Technology and innovation has been at the core of the business since inception and this enables it to react quickly to changes in the market to deploy new products and processes.
Quint owns and operates a portfolio of four mutually beneficial and strategically aligned financial technology businesses in the consumer credit sector that are all powered by the Group’s market leading proprietary technologies and infrastructure.
Monevo operates in four countries giving brokers & financial websites access to an entire market of lenders & providers through its market leading loan & insurance platform and API.
Our Data Services business provides unique real time market data and financial intelligence to lenders, credit providers and specialist data businesses.
Credit Angel is the UK’s most innovative and relevant online financial management tool. Credit Angel gives consumers a suite of services including Credit and Social Reporting and Scores.
MoneyGuru.com is the UK’s fastest growing credit focused price comparison site and service. Seek and You Shall Find.
Historically, the UK has been Quint’s core market, although over the last three years it has successfully established a presence in the US, Australia and Poland. These are expected to be key growth markets for the Group’s Monevo business going forward, given the scale of the market opportunities.
Quint’s innovation and adaptability has seen it develop over six years. It remains focused on enhancing its established businesses, developing new products and expanding into new international territories to deliver growth.
Tell us how you are funded.
We are lucky enough to self-fund, and don’t have to rely on any third party investment.
Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?
The consumer finance marketplace continues to transform, rapidly driven by technology innovation, continually shifting consumer preferences and regulatory change.
It was the start of this change that made Quint Group. In late 2008 when I first started to look at the UK’s consumer finance market place, it was clear to me the consumer finance sector had not benefited form or embraced available technology the extent that other markets had, such as flight booking or other ecommerce sectors.
It seemed obvious to me that this would happen, so establishing a business that drove this theory would develop opportunities and turn them in to success.
Who are your target customers? What’s your revenue model?
Multiple revenue streams supported by a diverse range of products and territories
• Monevo Market place earns revenue by charging the lenders that use it market place every time a customer is accepted or takes outs a loan.
• Quint’s membership businesses generate recurring revenue by charging a monthly subscription Fee to consumers,
• Quint also owns and operates MoneyGuru.com, which compares consumer credit products including personal loans, business loans and credit cards. As with Monevo Money Guru is paid by the financial services companies that it introduces clients too.
• Our data businesses charge the users of our data on a per record or on a contracted basis.
If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?
So often do we hear the financial services business we work with say they have excellent technology capabilities when they do not, as well as identify the struggles they have due to a lack of tech advancement. I would like to give these businesses the technology capabilities they need to improve their product.
So many want to embrace technology but continuously wrangle with legacy platforms and implementation of change in this area.
What is your message for the larger players in the Finance industry?
Seriously consider the possibility that you might not exist in the years to come. In recent decades we have seen huge names fall to the wayside as new companies innovate and take market share. Nokia is an example of this and I genuinely feel that there is a large bank or financial institution out there that will become the Nokia of the financial services market. Making lots of noise about technology and changing isn’t a replacement for actually changing and doing it.
What phone are you carrying and why?
IPhone 6+ Flexible, plenty of application types easy to use as a Mac user. I did move to Samsung on Android for a couple years however my use of a mac laptop and iTunes meant that the Apple stack got to me in the end!
Where do you get your industry news from?
http://www.altfi.com/
Can you list 3 people you rate from the FinTech sector?
Nigel Verdon
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigelverdon
FinTech entrepreneur focused on building great ideas. Broad range of experience from tech guy to trader to investor with deep industry experience in capital markets, foreign exchange, credit, international payments and technology.
Anthony Wong
https://www.linkedin.com/in/antwong
Anthony Wong joined the Group in 2015 as Group Marketing Director. Anthony is a marketing expert with over 15 years’ online marketing experience in both Europe and Asia and previously worked for Quantcast.com as Head of EMEA Client Services and for Paddy Power PLC (Ireland) as Head of Partnerships. Whilst at Paddy Power, Anthony led the international gaming industry’s leading affiliate programme and his team was winner of the EGR Award Best Affiliate Programme 2011 and Most Innovative Affiliate Programme 2012.
Steve Mclaughlin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemclaughlinftpartners
Focused on helping the leading companies across the broad financial technology / fintech ecosystem raise private equity and debt capital, execute initial public offerings (IPOs) and conduct stellar M&A transactions. Steve is a great source of what’s going on in the VC and M & A part of the Fintech market.
Can you suggest the name of an Angel Investor or VC that might be interested in being profiled?
Rory Sterling
What’s the best FinTech product or service you’ve seen recently?
SoFi
SoFi, which is short for Social Finance, started as a way for high-earning recent graduates to refinance their student loans. Over the past couple of years, they have expanded into both mortgages and personal loans. One of the best features of SoFi is that they offer Unemployment Protection. If one of their borrowers loses their job, they are given the ability to pause their loan payments for three months at a time. The organization will also help you find a new job with the help of their career-counselling program.
Finally, let’s talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?
The emergence of a globally recognised lending and financial services businesses that will start to gain scale similar to that of the major big banks. Think Uber in financial services.
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Thanks to Greg for his answers today. You can find out more about the Quint Group on their website, twitter, facebook and linkedin.
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