Hannah Baynham, Co-Founder, haboo money
Hannah Baynham, Co-Founder, haboo money
Today it’s time to meet Hannah Baynham, Co-Founder of haboo money. haboo is a fair, friendly and flexible platform that helps consumers control, manage and accelerate their debt repayment journeys.
Over to you, Hannah:
Who are you and what’s your background?
While still at university (studying Philosophy & Spanish at Kings College London) I took my first foray into Fintech, bagging myself a part-time job at Starling Bank in 2018. Here, my eyes were opened to the endless possibilities presented by the UK’s Fintech ecosystem and I officially caught the Fintech bug. During my time there (I went full-time after university) I was lucky enough to get exposure to Customer Operations, Payments, Business Banking, Product, Marketing… The list goes on. It was a true start-up / scale-up experience where I learnt an immense amount about the fintech industry and also what it takes to build something game-changing from scratch.
As Starling begun to grow astronomically, I decided it was time to broaden my horizons and moved to Elixirr – a ‘challenger’ consultancy where I was able to apply my passion for Innovation and Fintech in a more corporate arena. In my 5 years of consulting, I advised some of the largest global brands in banking and financial services on the major trends impacting their sectors, and helped them to design and implement strategies and propositions that would enable them to remain competitive in a rapidly changing landscape.
At the end of 2023, an old colleague chatted to me about a challenge he had been mulling over in the consumer debt landscape. Too many people were getting into uncontrollable debt, and it really didn’t seem like enough was in place to support consumers on their repayment journeys.
Quickly, the two of us became obsessed with this challenge and were convinced that our early ideas and concepts had potential to help tackle the consumer debt crisis in a meaningful way. And so we started haboo money in January 2024.
What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?
As the Co-Founder of an early stage startup , my day to day responsibilities are vast! From product design, user testing, marketing, sales, fundraising and general admin, there are few hats I don’t wear.
But I try to focus mostly on Strategy & Product – bringing our vision for the future of debt repayments to life in close collaboration with my Co-Founder and our awesome CTO.
Can you give us an overview of your business?
We are building a product that seeks to revolutionise the debt repayment experience for both consumers and lenders. Harnessing Open Banking and next-gen payment technologies, our ambition is to create a seamless, friendly and flexible experience that acts as a companion for consumers throughout their debt repayment lifecycle (anywhere up to 5+ years!).
Our aim is to get people debt free faster and develop regular saving habits along with improved financial wellbeing. Our business model is B2B2C – we want to partner with lenders to offer this experience to their consumers, offering a win-win-win for the lenders, their customers and society.
Tell us how you are funded?
7 months in, we are currently bootstrapped, but starting to look at external funding partners (VC, Angels) to help us turbocharge our journey.
What’s the origin story? Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?
The consumer debt market in the UK is spiralling out of control. Although financial inclusion and financial wellness has been a massive trend in fintech over the last 10 years, the consumer debt market has seen very limited investment.
Countless startups have come along to make lending easier and more accessible (e.g. mobile lending, alternative credit scoring) but few organisations (asides from some amazing charities) are actually helping consumers get out of debt. We couldn’t believe that this was the case – and so decided that something needed to be done.
Today, after the disbursement of a loan, consumers are largely left to their own devices. A direct debit is set up and for 24, 36, 48, 60 months or more the consumer has absolutely no engagement with their lender… Unless they are in trouble (i.e. have missed a repayment).
haboo seeks to change this, creating a dynamic, friendly experience that consumers want to engage with throughout their loan repayment journey. Along the way, haboo will help consumers either:
- a) accelerate their repayment journeys (in instances where consumers’ disposable income increases)
- b) stay on track by making sure repayments align with salary cadence
- c) in the worst case scenario,identify consumers who are at risk of falling into arrears earlier than they would be traditionally, mitigating the distress and trauma often caused by arrears in today’s debt market.
The debt market is full of taboo.
People don’t like to talk about it and that means they hide away from the problem. We are here to change that, which is the origin of our name ‘haboo’ – we want to kill the debt taboo by helping people build healthy financial habits. You can read more about our story on our website – www.haboomoney.com.
Who are your target customers? What’s your revenue model?
We partner with lenders and offer the haboo platform as a companion app to their unsecured lending products. Our end consumers are people who are in debt, have the means to get out of debt, but don’t know how best to control and accelerate their debt repayment journeys.
haboo costs the end customer nothing – our revenue model is B2B2C, offering lenders compelling benefits which are guaranteed to provide return on investment as we lower delinquency rates and reduce the operational burden of collections.
If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?
While a lot has been done in recent years to crack down on irresponsible lending, it is still a huge problem, and too many people have access to (mainstream) lending products that they don’t need and can’t afford.
‘Trendy’ alternative lending solutions such as BNPL are exacerbating this challenge and are bringing the average age of debtors down – it’s alarming to see the stats around the proportion of Gen Z who are already finding themselves financially vulnerable as a result of irresponsible lending products.
What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?
What are you doing to help your customers out of debt?
Have you considered that if you play an active and positive role in their debt repayment journey (in their time of need), you are more likely to retain them and they will become more valuable to you in the long term?
While banks are under pressure to comply with incoming consumer duty regulations, very few are thinking like this or doing anything meaningful to action their obligations – and haboo is here to change that.
We aren’t just here to help consumers – we are passionate about helping lenders along the way too.
Where do you get your Financial Services/FinTech industry news from?
Can you list 3 people you rate from the FinTech and/or Financial Services sector that we should be following on LinkedIn, and why?
- Marcel van Oost, always the first one on my feed to break the latest Fintech industry news
- Simon Taylor , always offering unique and unfiltered perspectives on the latest happenings in Fintech
- Holly Holland (Financielle) , uncovers candid and data-based insights around the shortcomings of the UK lending and debt ecosystem
What FinTech services (and/or apps) do you personally use?
Obviously, I will always be a loyal and life-long fan of Starling and I use them for the majority of my personal banking.
I also love the simplicity of Nutmeg, which I have recently consolidated my pensions into.
The process (which I have been putting off for years) was so easy and it’s such a weight off to know all my pensions from different jobs are in one place (and generating attractive returns!).
I also enjoy any / all propositions that reward me for spending – e.g. Airtime Rewards which gives you cashback from major retailers in the form of phone bill credit.
What’s the best new FinTech product or service you’ve seen recently?
I am seeing a lot of hype around Yonder at the moment – a next generation Credit Card.
Their marketing is world-class, with some great campaigns – particularly the recent ‘Pint Protection’ which refunds customers for spilled drinks.
Asides from Brand, they are also practically doing some cool things that I have my eye on, for example using Variable Recurring Payments to enable flexibility around credit card repayments.
Finally, let’s talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?
AI – obviously. Particularly in the advice space. We have already seen the emergence of ‘roboadvisers’ in wealth, but so far have not really seen a game-changing application of AI in proper financial advice offerings.
I’m also interested to see how similar AI-enabled advice can be applied to the debt advice market (something we will be keeping an eye on at haboo!).
Obviously given the risk and sensitivity around financial advice a lot of work will need to go into the integrity and security of such AI products, but I don’t think the market is that far away from making this a reality.
Open Banking is also naturally another one to watch. I think in particular when it comes to frictionless payments and putting more control in the hands of the customer, we will see major change in the way regular recurring payments are sent and collected.
Thank you so much for participating Hannah!
Follow Hannah on LinkedIn at Hannah Baynham and find out more about haboo money at http://www.haboomoney.com.
