We are proud to announce that Nick (CEO) has been nominated for Innovator of the Year in the UK FinTech Awards 2023. This is incredibly meaningful to us as it serves as an acknowledgment of everything Nick has been working towards on both a micro and macro level.
When Nick entered the industry a decade ago, he had a single mission: join a historically rigid and unwelcoming sector, one which reveres profit over humanity, and create a consumer-first, helpful, and accessible financial tool. The very nature of his intent was innovation at an industry-wide level. Today, Nick’s decade-old dream is foundational to Fluro and cemented in our vision statement: create permanent positive change in the credit industry. This affirmational nomination is the cherry on top of 18 months of rebranding, introducing impactful partnerships with household names, and welcoming new investment.
Everything we have done as a team at Fluro is a result of Nick’s engaging, empathetic, and encouraging leadership. Nick has an infectious passion for innovation and, in his drive to do better for people, he has built a team who believe not only in his vision but in Nick himself. Everything below is because of the culture and ethics Nick has instilled in the business from day one.
The Fluro approach
Whenever we approach a task at Fluro, the first question is always, ‘How do we make this the best it can be for the customer?’ For financial services, this typically means making it fast, making it simple, and making it frictionless. To take existing processes and established practices and make them faster, smoother, and more accessible, often requires innovation - whether at a tech level, a design level, or a cultural level.
Shackles of perception
Viewing customer experience through existing parameters is limiting, and we do our best to look at everything without the lens of traditional expectation. For example, when thinking about how to communicate ‘representative APR’ to customers, there were two core issues:
1.In financial services, it’s necessary to be cognisant of invisible barriers to entry. Not everybody has access to the same education, the same resources, or the same support system. This could mean little-to-no experience with financial terminology, but it could also mean little-to-no experience in where to look to find answers or how to process that information. It could easily be overwhelming. And that anxiety or misunderstanding could lead to financially damaging decisions.
So, we needed an innovative way to explain representative APR simply, quickly, and helpfully, right? Wrong.
2.By looking at customer experience without parameters, it was clear to Nick the real issue wasn’t how to explain representative APR but the concept of representative APR itself. Representative APR is the regulated industry standard for communicating loan interest rates in a way that is ‘fair and not misleading’. From Nick’s perspective, not only did it have multiple invisible barriers (financial verbiage, a degree of numeracy, research for what constituted ‘representative’), it wasn’t fair and it was considerably misleading (it was a system that worked for those the system favoured - higher credit scores and higher or more consistent annual income, a social strata likely more familiar with financial jargon, etc.).
To resolve this, instead of changing how we talked about representative APRs, we devised and developed an entirely new system to show customers their personal loan interest rates. In doing so, we eliminated unnecessary invisible barriers and created a fair system for everybody. Since the inception of real rates, Nick has lobbied for a modernised Consumer Credit Act that better serves customers.
The Fluro method
Infiltrating the industry at large, influencing adoption and positive change, our alternative to representative APRs, real rates, is a shining star in Nick’s innovation story. However, it’s just one example of Fluro’s approach to every single stage of the customer journey.
We have refined our application process to be as fluid and accessible as possible. To do this efficiently and effectively, we utilised the transparency of open banking paired with advanced data analytics to serve consumers fast, personalised, and accurate rates. In a majority of instances our customers receive a quote in under 3 minutes, get a credit decision in seconds, and get paid out the same day, all processed within our robust, secure, data-driven architecture. This infrastructure is supported by our award-winning customer service: currently approaching 5*s on Trustpilot, our tech-first consumer-driven approach outshines legacy institutions.
Innovation means to constantly adapt and challenge the space and the evolving technology that facilitates it. Innovation is a permanent journey of improvement and inspiration, and this neverending potential is what drives Nick and his team here at Fluro.
