Interview | Ed Maslaveckas, CEO Bud
“Tech giants will be collaborators”
Ed Maslaveckas is Co-Founder and CEO of Bud, the leading UK platform in aggregating financial services and products into a single marketplace. The start-up has recently raised a total of £1.5 million in seed capital in a round co-led by InnoCells.
Maslaveckas does not consider tech giants –such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft– Bud’s competitors but future collaborators.
What solution does Bud bring to the market?
Bud is a technology platform that sits across financial institutions. It connects services from currency exchange, investments, mortgage brokers, utilities, insurance and more into the platform via APIs –lines of code that seamlessly connect systems– to offer an ‘all in one’ banking experience, regardless of the vendor.
What is the aim of the platform?
Bud’s main objective is to turn banking apps and websites into the place where people go to get things done. It works by understanding people, based on their transactional data and objectives, and serving them with the right financial product at the right time.
Why did you create Bud?
The initial ambition for Bud was to allow any user the ability to use any financial services in one place. While the core proposition has not deviated much from our original vision, the scope of impact has widened.
As we explored deeper data capabilities we started to imagine Bud being more than an app and a website. We imagined it to be a service that changed and adapted based on a user’s life. One that understood people better than anything else in the market and that could change on a user-by-user basis to give them the best, most personal experience.
Did you imagine Bud as it is now?
Bud is far more advanced than we envisaged it would be at this time. The capabilities and demand have exceeded where we thought it would be two years down the line, and it is only getting better.
Our retail proposition, which has been picked up by HSBC in the UK, will be joined by our ‘Bud for small business’ shortly –which is already shaping up to be a game changer in the business banking market.
Which is Bud’s competitive advantage?
We decided to build our own technology from scratch. This meant a much longer build time, but allows us to execute on ground breaking technology.
Also, our approach to regulation and compliance is key. Instead of buying someone else’s or paying a firm to do all of our applications and liaising with the FCA, we did it all ourselves.
Moreover, our team is a melting pot of bright and charismatic people. From particle and Astro-physicists to music producers and advertising professionals to successful start-up founders. Most of the team has not worked in finance before, which gives us an unfair advantage: a naive optimism, unburdened and unrestricted by the woes of the industry, which helps us look at customer problems differently and helps us work more effectively.
The team is familiarised with regulation…
Being involved in the first regulatory sandbox conducted by the FCA means that our whole team knows about regulation. We approach it with the same priorities as we do new feature development or staff engagement.
When we have conversations with banks and other institutions we can ease concerns to help them understand and advocate the platform. Being regulated, as we are, also de-risks the bank for the activities we carry out.
Which services does Bud currently offer?
We offer a retail and small banking propositions. These are delivered through banks, so they can offer our tech to their customers. The capabilities of Bud change very often as we add more third parties to the platform.
Which are the platform’s key features?
Aggregation, smart balance, goals and lists are the key tools that allow our systems to understand people and their ambitions. They are data gathering tools, which helps us paint a picture of users for persona mapping and our neural network.
The marketplace is our collection of integrated partners. The marketplace of services covers all areas of the financial services space –except funeral care– including some of the best known fintech companies in investments, currency exchange and mortgages.
Which features do you envision to display?
Our roadmap for features is pretty extensive and almost entirely built around our platform model and our data capability. We ultimately want to be wherever the customer is, connecting the dots between services so they can get on with their lives.
Why did you evolve from B2C to B2B?
We needed to test our platform before banks could see the benefit, both from an experiencing point of view, but also commercially. Our B2C app and site was used to prove people wanted the service.
Following the first successful months of having a live product with real data that was earning revenue, we started to share with banks what we had done. It was clear that our business model works and that the impact it could have on customer’s lives could be huge. Working with banks to deploy this technology makes sense, they have the customers and the drive to create better experiences.
Are you still working on B2C?
Our app still exists and is a testing platform for our new features. Similarly to when we started, we want to know the impact of all the features we make. By keeping in invite-only ‘always in beta’ app we can deploy there first and show how people used it, before making it available for banks.
How many providers do you have?
We currently have 65 partnerships and we are expanding all the time. We will be looking to implement non-financial services next. This is how we will turn the bank account into the place people go to get things done, by allowing both financial and non-financial to interplay on the platform.
How is the integration process for service providers?
Banks can integrate in a number of ways, from full adoption of our app and services to being APIed into existing wireframes. We do not directly integrate into the core backend systems, we act more as middleware that sits closer to the point of interaction.
Is it difficult to interact with third parties?
Managing a network of third parties can have its ups and downs, but our partners are all excited by our approach when it comes to partnering with banks and our data capability to connect them with the right customer at the right time.
Our relationship with banks is one of respect. We know there are certain protocols internally and it is our job to help make those stages of sign off as simple and as painless as possible. The lead times can be long, but keeping an open dialogue helps both companies move forward with purpose.
How is the entrepreneurship environment in the UK?
Hard. Entrepreneurship is not easy nor glamorous anywhere in the world. The UK certainly has some advantageous business conditions such as tax incentives for early stage angel investors and a very dynamic market.
Do you see London as the fintech hub in Europe?
London benefits from a number of luxuries, regulation being chief among them. Having a regulator who is committed to not only increasing innovation but understanding it too is a great starting point.
Most global banks have a foothold in London, so meeting with the right people is easier. Bud is a diverse workplace, with almost half of the team coming from outside of the UK. London will continue attracting skilled people because of the culture and career prospects.
Do you consider tech giants your potential competitors?
Tech giants will be collaborators.
Would you consider offering your own financial or non-financial products?
The way our product works is by being impartial. If we had our own products that would not work. Also, I am not sure our partners would be too happy if we started offering our own services in competition to theirs. However, we have been starting identifying many gaps where customers could benefit. More to come on that…
Are you thinking about monetising consumer data?
Our model works without having to monetise customer data. We prefer to keep that data sacred and use the insights gained to understand where people are not being serviced and to help our bank and fintech partners serve them better.
Which are Bud’s next planned evolutions?
Expanding into business banking and developing our retail proposition further for Europe and America.
You recently raised £1.5 M in a round co-led by InnoCells. How was the process?
The current market dynamics of large and small financial players, as well as the evolving landscape of regulation, has been too much for many non-specialised to keep up to date with.
We found that InnoCells had a grasp on where the market was and where it was going. This meant we could have more in depth and constructive conversations, leading to a mutual understanding. We could not be prouder to be working with InnoCells and the team behind it.
