This is the first in a series of posts from the Pia team about the shaping of Pia and some of the plans that we have to empower investors to take action in a complex market. We are also building a community of people who want to shape the future of investing. If this sounds interesting then head over to yourpia.com and sign up for early access.
I am one of Pia’s founders, James Mackonochie, and in this post I will talk about the journey up to now. I hope you enjoy.
Life before Pia
OFF3R was the business that we initially built. OFF3R was an investment comparison service that focussed on the alternative finance sector. The objective of the business was to help people discover new ways to invest and we worked with equity crowdfunding platforms through to peer to peer lenders.
We built a strong list of partners whilst guiding a large number of investors through the alternative finance sector. However, after a year of building the business both Lex and I felt that we could be doing more to help our customers invest for their futures. We had countless conversations with friends, family members and users of OFF3R about what we could do to help them invest. The answer that kept coming back was pretty clear….
“I know I need to invest but I just don’t understand it and I don’t know where to go for information that I can trust.”
It was clear to us that we needed to look at how we could better serve the millions of underserved investors in the UK.
Months of listening
Last summer was spent locked in meeting rooms with scores of people from all walks of life. We spoke with investment professionals right through to people that had never even considered investing before. We tried to change up the environment for these sessions as much as possible to keep it fresh and to stimulate new ideas. Including going to external venues like the truly superb Engage Works in Aldgate East. This involved giving our attendees the chance to play with VR headsets, but most importantly, a huge Minority Report style touch screen where we could collaborate.
Irrespective of the venue the core question we posed was simple:
“Why and how do you invest and, if you don’t, then why not?”
Initially it felt like looking for a needle in a haystack given the range of people we were speaking to. Over time, however, a few key trends started to build and by the end of the process we were clear over what the problems were:
- Many didn’t have the knowledge nor understanding to invest with confidence;
- Those that did were overwhelmed by the complexity and range of investment providers; and finally
- Finding a trusted and unbiased source of information was incredibly difficult.
After all of that listening, we spent some serious time as a team digesting it all. We looked at how we could evolve OFF3R to deliver a solution to meet the problems. It soon became clear that more drastic action was needed, and a totally new approach was essential for us to help our customers. Pia was born…
Taking the plunge
Underserved investors were placed at the centre of this new approach and we needed to find a way to support and guide them to begin to invest with more confidence. The solution we designed is based around three core pillars:
- Engaging and interactive education give investors confidence to invest;
- The widest array of investment choice broken down to make it easier to digest and navigate;
- A virtual assistant, called Pia, to guide investors through the journey of making an investment decision.
We knew this was a huge problem to tackle and one that would require some serious talent to deliver. However, the whole team were enthused about what lay ahead and we started to build out the proof of concept to test with our community.
Next up, we’ll explore the team we have pulled together to deliver Pia and the branding journey we have been on.
Does this sound like a solution you’d want to use? Head over to yourpia.com to join our rapidly growing community and to get early access to Pia.
