Joss Tasker, CEO & Founder, Sync Savings
Today we’re meeting Joss Tasker, CEO & Co-Founder of Sync Savings. The company connects banks to savers by integrating savings accounts into the apps people already use.
Joss, over to you:
Who are you and what’s your background?
My first degree was in Politics and Anthropology. From there I decided I wanted to go into international law so I did a law conversion in the UK and then to an LLM in Public International Law in the Hague. It was brilliant, I did some interesting work in Pakistan and at the Commonwealth Legal Division but somehow it was not for me. After some travels I ended up back in London looking for a job, the legal recruiter found me a role at BlackRock opening markets for iShares across Europe, Asia and Latin America.
I loved the pace and the fast evolving legal and regulatory landscape but I was less excited about the mission and the culture. After some searching for something more impactful I found Octopus Ventures, there were only 100 people at the time it was a small VC and renewables investor. I started at Octopus in 2012 and I don’t feel like I’ve ever really left.
I was a co-founder/Director of Octopus Labs, an incubator/skunk works where we set up a handful of fintechs including a cash management platform and a P2P lender. I was lucky enough to also be involved at the start of Octopus Energy, Octopus EV and Octopus Wealth too. From there I went to Monzo Bank as the first Compliance hire and subsequently Compliance Director.
I built out and scaled all things regulatory during the period of rapid growth in 2018-2020 as well as being involved in product build including Monzo Pots – which was set up on the same basis as Octopus Cash Management. After leaving Monzo I started a consultancy – initially just half a day a week for Octopus Electric Vehicles. I had two very small children at the time and I was very tired! A couple of years later the consultancy was more than a full-time job, supporting new banks through authorisation on the one hand, and fintechs on the other. It struck me that these businesses needed each other.
Mid-tier banks typically don’t have current accounts and raise liquidity for lending via cash savings products. They almost all distribute via the same ‘best buy’ tables, they typically have poor tech, slow onboarding and as a result end up paying 4x more than high street Banks for liquidity.
At the same time, interest rates were rising back to normal levels and the UK’s cash saving problem was deepening along with the cost of living crisis. After lots of fruitful conversations with my Co-Founder Alex Fox (also ex Monzo and ex Octopus), we founded Sync Savings to solve Bank liquidity challenges with cheaper, predictable liquidity whilst helping more folks to save regularly and helping fintechs, payroll providers and retailers to engage and delight users with high quality embedded cash savings.
What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?
As co-founder/CEO everything is my responsibility. We’re a very small team so, I do more or less everything, aside from engineering.
Can you give us an overview of your business?
We’re a B2B2C SaaS Fintech addressing the issue of financial insecurity by integrating great savings accounts into the apps people already use. For example, we plug payroll savings into apps like PayCaptain and link savings accounts to credit-building apps like Canopy.
Value Proposition:
A quarter of adults in the UK have absolutely no savings at all. Meanwhile, there is also £400 billion sitting in retail savings accounts earning just 1% or less (mostly in high street banks).
At the same time, mid-tier banks typically pay over three times more than high street banks to acquire deposits and yet suffer from 80% churn associated best buy table distribution.
Meanwhile, away from comparison sites there are endless untapped distribution channels across the internet for retail and SME cash savings.
We’re solving these problems for banks and savers with our embedded savings plugin.
- Banks get 20% cheaper liquidity
- Savers get ultra-convenient savings accounts with automated deposits and great rates
- Distribution partners get huge revenue and engagement opportunities
We aim to help customers save more by surfacing great savings accounts directly to savers wherever they are on the internet at what we call that point of intent, where folks are thinking about their money.
Our core focus is integrating savings accounts into payroll and employee benefits platforms, helping people to automatically save a portion of their salary every month.
We’ve had great interest and in early tests, we’ve seen amazing conversion rates of over 50% with opt-out payroll savings which deliver:
- Improved financial wellbeing
- Happier employees, Increased engagement
- and retention
Once we’ve nailed payroll savings we’ll apply embedded savings to other verticals including credit-building platforms, money management apps, accounting tools for SMEs and even powering save now, buy later with retailers.
We currently have 3 partner banks, and have distribution partnerships, driving over £100 million in deposits in the first 12 months.
We were selected as one of a handful of startups for the Lloyds Bank Launch 2024 Pilot where we will test a save now, pay later proposition with a major retailer.
We’re passionate about helping millions of UK adults to start saving regularly and work closely with policymakers and research organisations to share our learnings and seek regulatory changes needed to make regular saving easier.
Tell us how you are funded?
We raised a small friends and family angel round in August 2023. We have some brilliant investors on our cap table including CEOs from Octopus EV, ComplyAdvantage, Travelex, Multiply.ai and Profile Pensions as well folks with really relevant experience from UK banking, Monzo, Google and LinkedIn.
We have some early revenue and we will be raising again over the coming months.
What’s the origin story? Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?
As mentioned above, it was through supporting new banks through authorisation on the one hand, and fintechs on the other that I realised they needed each other.
Cash savings should be at the start of everyone’s financial resilience journey and yet it struck me that rewarding, regular cash saving was far more difficult than it should be. The whole market is characterised by a lot of friction and ambiguity for a product that is and should be, very simple.
As interest rates were rising and the UK’s cash-saving problem was deepening along with the cost of living crisis it felt like the right time to address these problems with great quality user-centric tech and outstanding customer support.
Who are your target customers? What’s your revenue model?
Our target customers/distribution partners in the first instance are employee benefits and payroll providers seeking to add an income stream and drive engagement by adding payroll savings as an financial wellness benefit.
We also work with fintechs looking for a simple, plug and play interest-bearing cash savings solution and finally retailers looking to lock in future revenues with our ‘save now, buy later’ proposition.
If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?
Universal KYC passport to be implemented instantly.
The amount of time and money wasted on KYC is phenomenal, if we can crack it in the UK it would instantly make our system safer and easier to navigate for consumers and provide incredible leverage for fintechs too.-
On the savings side, I would protect the term ‘savings’ making sure that folks are not storing their hard earned cash in e-money, earning no interest at all.
What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?
Keep investing in good quality, strategic fintech partnerships!
Where do you get your Financial Services/FinTech industry news from
Lots of places, I really like Sifted, LinkedIn, chatting to friends and advisers in the industry, and going to events and of course a few podcasts too.
Can you list 3 people you rate from the FinTech and/or Financial Services sector that we should be following on LinkedIn, and why?
- Sophie Pender – founder of the 93% Club the UK’s first and largest state-school social mobility organisation
- Holly Holland (Financielle) and Laura Pomfret (Financielle) from Financielle – they’re super smart at decoding money for the masses and have brilliant content
- Marcel van Oost – he’s hard to miss and must be the hardest working creator in Fintech, do sign up for his holistic and reliable daily Fintech News
What FinTech services (and/or apps) do you personally use?
I’m enormously biased but I still think Monzo has the best overall banking app.
Moneybox consistently does a great job with UX and functionality, delivering lots of features and services without making things overwhelming.
Finally, another biased one but I love Octopus Energy and Octopus Electroverse for all things home energy, energy saving and EV charging.
What’s the best new FinTech product or service you’ve seen recently?
- Cheddar – save hundreds each year with up to 35% cashback at 150+ retailers https://www.cheddar.me/
- Glyphic AI – an AI co-pilot for sales teams
- Tokens of Appreciation – tokenised stock as an employee benefit
- Rule Money – a way of saving money that works with your ADHD brain, not against it. www.rulemoney.co.uk
PayCaptain – The first UK cloud-based payroll software solution designed to bring Payroll, Banking, and Financial Wellness together
Finally, let’s talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?
Embedded cash savings and save now, buy later – you heard it here first!
Thank you so much for taking the time to participate Joss!
You can connect with Joss on LinkedIn here: Joss Tasker (and her co-founder, Alex Fox) and you can find Sync Savings online at https://www.sync-savings.com/.
