Interview | Xavier Capellades, Nomo
“We want to be a benchmark platform for freelancers”
Xavier Capellades is CEO of Nomo by Banco Sabadell, the first fully-digital fintech platform designed specifically for self-employed individuals and freelancers. It combines in one software, both web-based and app, all the services and tools necessary for freelancers to digitalise their processes, simplify their lives and save time and money when managing their business.
The platform is available for Android and iOS and it also has a web and a desktop version. It works as an assistant that helps freelancers to free themselves from procedures that do not affect the growth and productivity of their business activities, such as cost control, preparation of invoices and estimates, bank reconciliation (regardless of the bank), taxes, agency procedures, etc.
Could you please describe the self-employed group in Spain?
In Spain, there are 3 million self-employed individuals from various groups or sectors: lawyers, journalists, architects, personal trainers, working in education, administration, etc., as well as more creative profiles, such as graphic designers, or more traditional or offline, such as plumbers or carriers, among others.
In general, it is not a very digitalised group, which invests time in manually managing their business. In the Spanish market, until the roll-out of Nomo, there was no specialised digital solution focused on admin services, with access to financial services, exclusively targeted at sole-traders and freelancers.
What is Nomo’s goal?
Nomo digitalises processes that until now were carried out in the traditional way, i.e. manually. For example, many freelancers controlled their expenses in a notebook.
With our solution, you can take a picture of the receipt or invoice and the app reads the expense, controls all expenses and, in addition, includes a follow-up of the taxes to be paid, derived from the expenses.
We also tackle the unmet needs of self-employed individuals on a financial level by connecting their finances to their full accounts or by providing them with access to ad-hoc financial services.
Tell us about Nomo’s team.
It is a young, digital team with a startup spirit. We work with the Lean philosophy through which we launch MVPs, analyse results, iterate and re-launch, and so on.
Thus, we minimise the margin of error and frustration, added to the fact that the foundation of our developments is done with previous customer validations, thanks to interviews, surveys and product testing, among others.
How do you contribute to expanding Banco Sabadell’s value chain?
Banco Sabadell has allowed us to have speed and independence of business and team, while taking advantage of all its assets. We contribute from the point of view of digitalisation, as a complementary tool with added value, in addition to the services already offered by the bank.
Nomo was born in 2018 within InnoCells, Banco Sabadell’s innovation hub and corporate venturing vehicle, based on two levers: the transformation of the employment model on a global scale and the need to provide services designed for self-employed workers.
How many freelancers already trust Nomo?
Currently, we have more than 60,000 users, and the forecast is that this figure will multiply.
What subscription plans do you offer?
Freelancers can sign up to the services by choosing between the Standard and the Premium plan. Through both plans, Nomo unifies services and tools that respond to all the current needs of sole traders:
· Creation of personalised estimates, which are subsequently forwarded to customers and converted into personalised invoices, once estimates have been approved.
· Creation and emailing of invoices, using a customisable template with the company logo, with payment tracking and control, which is an expensive task in the day-to-day life of the self-employed. In addition, it allows you to create contacts and save them so you can link them when you add invoices manually.
· Digitalisation and automatic reading of expenses and income. Nomo allows you to digitalise receipts and invoices of expenses through photos and automatically export them to an Excel file. Freelancers also have the possibility of uploading several invoices at once, sending them directly to Nomo via email, so that they are automatically logged on the platform, which allows comprehensive control of expenses and sales.
· Control of net profit/loss of the business.
· Real-time monitoring and forecast of tax settlements that self-employed workers must submit to the tax authorities at the end of each quarter.
· Aggregation of a bank account, whatever the institution they bank with, to keep control of the treasury. Nomo also allows people to link invoices with account movements and thus reconcile their accounting with the bank.
· Management and generation of account books, as well as the possibility to export them.
· Digital management service to submit the corresponding tax assessments, with unlimited consultations with the agent, and management of all the tax procedures derived from the business.
· Arrangement of a current account with a debit or credit card, plus POS (if required), and Banco Sabadell financial products.
· Access to added-value services via partnerships with third parties.
What partnerships with other services have you incorporated?
We have partnerships with companies that provide valuable services:
· Sabadell Renting offers vehicles for rent or Apple computer equipment.
· AliExpress allows you to boost online sales for Spanish freelancers with e-commerce.
· Axa offers users exclusive terms and conditions to improve their protection via insurance for temporary leave and accidents.
· Malt facilitates the connection between freelancers and companies that need their services.
· Raisin gives users preferential access to more profitable savings products from all over Europe.
· iSalud offers freelancers health insurance through a completely online process.
· MilContratos makes it easy to access and manage legal documents.
The next partnerships will be with companies that offer cross-cutting services to self-employed workers. For instance, we are considering petrol, telephone communications, etc.
Nomo is a multi-channel platform
Nomo started out as a mobile platform, so that freelancers could check their business, anytime anywhere. This feature has since evolved and, taking into account user requirements, we have extended the services to the web platform to cover much more market and target customers. In this way, users can choose the device or use both, as they are synchronised.
Nomo is also available in a desktop version, so that self-employed workers can access all their services through their computers.
What feedback have you received from freelancers?
The adoption of the services is excellent and positive. It is reflected in the use of the platform’s features and in the feedback received from users, which allow us to evolve and improve the existing services or create new ones.
What is your vision for the future?
We want to be a benchmark platform for freelancers –for Nomo to be a platform where freelancers find everything they need.
Therefore, we will incorporate other services for the control of management and administrative procedures and also expand our line of financial services.
