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Clayton Howes – MONEYME: The leadership shift every founder must make to scale.

June 15, 2026 · Hosted by Dexter Cousins

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Clayton Howes is the co-founder and CEO of MONEYME (ASX: MME), a Sydney-based non-bank lender that has originated over $5 billion in consumer credit since 2013 and manages a $1.9 billion loan book today. In this conversation, Clayton covers the full arc: bootstrapping without external capital, listing on the ASX two months before the pandemic, acquiring SocietyOne on the day Russia invaded Ukraine, and how MONEYME’s proprietary Horizon platform has become a competitive moat in Australian consumer finance.

About Clayton Howes

Clayton Howes is the co-founder and CEO of MONEYME (ASX: MME), which he has led since founding the business in 2013 after nearly 10 years at Vodafone Hutchinson Australia in commercial finance, sales strategy, and retail transformation. He holds an undergraduate degree from Oxford Brookes University and previously worked at GlaxoSmithKline in the UK in M&A analysis.

The MONEYME journey

  • How MONEYME grew from a self-funded startup in a desk-sized office to a $1.9 billion loan book serving hundreds of thousands of Australians across personal loans, credit cards, and car finance
  • Why Clayton believes consumer fintech is the hardest vertical in startup land and how regulatory complexity becomes a barrier to entry once you reach scale
  • The IPO timing that saw MONEYME list in December 2019 and face a pandemic two months later, and how a challenger mindset beat every forecast during Covid
  • How the SocietyOne acquisition closed on the day Russia invaded Ukraine, the capital markets fallout that followed, and why the asset ultimately thrived under MONEYME management
  • Why the Horizon technology platform, built with over 450,000 developer hours, is MONEYME’s core competitive moat and why Clayton refuses to white-label it
  • The leadership shift every founder must make from player on the field to coach, and the cultural signals Clayton watches to know when it is time to change roles
  • What it actually takes to keep 250 staff coming into the office voluntarily, and why MONEYME placed its Newcastle office next to the university it hires from
  • Why being a Certified B Corp (B Impact Assessment score of 91.2) and a listed company are congruent with what’s right for shareholders, communities, and the business
  • The product innovations in car finance and credit cards that Clayton believes will drive MONEYME to $5 billion, and the future role of cryptocurrency in the product mix

Links and Resources

  • Clayton Howes LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/claytonhowes/
  • MONEYME Website: moneyme.com.au
  • MONEYME Investor Centre: investors.moneyme.com.au
  • ASX ticker: MME
  • Careers: media@moneyme.com.au / clay@moneyme.com.au

Fintech Chatter is brought to you by Tier One People, executive search for Fintech – where we work with founders like Clayton to find the 1% who redefine what’s possible. If you’re upscaling your leadership team, start at tieronepeople.com.

Links from this episode.

More on consumer lending.

Full transcript.

Lightly edited for readability — filler words removed, wording otherwise unchanged.

Dexter Cousins
Hello and welcome to Fintech Chatter. I’m Dexter Cousins, your host and the founder of Tier One People, the executive search firm that helps you hire the top tier of fintech leaders. This year, I’m spending more and more time on AI native transformations. If you’re an exec, board member or head of people and want to find out more about what’s happening out there, you can get me on LinkedIn or reach out to me at tieronepeople.com.

Now, on to today’s guest. Clayton Howes is the CEO of ASX-listed MoneyMe. I caught up with Clayton at their Newcastle office on their 13th birthday. It’s an energising story, one that’s full of challenge, knockbacks, resilience and optimism: all of the qualities you need to succeed in fintech. So tune in and let me know what you think in the comments. If you are new to the show, make sure you follow us wherever you’re watching or listening. And if you’re coming back, thanks so much for your support. It really does help me in promoting great founders like Clayton and great Aussie fintechs like MoneyMe. Clayton, welcome to your Fintech Chatter debut.

Clayton Howes
Very excited to be here. Thank you.

Dexter Cousins
I’m a little bit… yeah, what can I say? Disappointed in myself. I’ve been doing this podcast since 2019. It’s now 2026 and you’re making your debut. Why have I taken this long to ask you?

Clayton Howes
Because it’s the lucky seventh year.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah. Well, it’s also, I think, quite fortuitous that it’s your 13th birthday. So MoneyMe turned a teenager this weekend. Congratulations.

Clayton Howes
Thank you.

Dexter Cousins
For our listeners and our viewers who aren’t aware of MoneyMe, do you want to do a quick introduction, a little bit about who you are and what you guys do?

Clayton Howes
Sure. I’m Clayton Howes, founder and CEO of MoneyMe. We’re a public company. We’ve spent the last 13 years developing technology in consumer finance, and our focus was automation, data and customer experiences. Today we’ve got a personal loan, credit card and car finance portfolio. We’ve originated over $5 billion in our time. We have a $1.9 billion loan book, and it’s growing really quickly. We’ve serviced hundreds of thousands of Australians. And what excites me most about this industry is I still feel like we’re in a day one mentality. It’s the beginning, where technology and structural shifts in the sector are starting to make sense. And one of the most fundamental things is the generational change of consumers. 13 years ago, digital savviness was actually quite rare. Now it’s just natural. That 27-year-old that I was talking to is a 40-year-old now. And that prime credit quality has just been an attitude that we were hoping to have as we grow up with the consumer that we started with, and it’s working pretty well.

Dexter Cousins
Awesome. Now, you make a really great point as to one of the reasons why I actually invited you on the podcast, which is that you have been here from the beginning. Fintech in 2013… it wouldn’t have been a word, maybe just coming into the psyche of ASIC. Some of your previous competitors, et cetera, would have been on that path of everybody putting in submissions to the regulators around, okay, how do we define this fintech thing? Do you want to talk us through your journey, and how you went from Vodafone to jumping into fintech?

Clayton Howes
Yeah. But touching on that early stage of that buzz term, fintech: it was going gangbusters overseas.

Dexter Cousins
Kind of like AI, isn’t it?

Clayton Howes
Yeah. Everyone had heard about it, but didn’t really know what it was about. And I remember winning fintech of the year three years in a row, and I think it was because not everyone really knew what it was. We had a bit of an idea. That was exciting. I was a corporate guy. My past experience at GlaxoSmithKline was as an M&A analyst, and then I got a job at Vodafone here locally in Australia, because, as you do after living in England for too long, you decide you want to stay, because of the sunshine and everything else is too cool. But there was this thing that really drew me to Australia, more than the sunshine and the beaches, and it was this entrepreneurial spirit. It existed here, and in my past, being a spoke in a big wheel, it was always difficult to break through and see how you were going to test yourself on this entrepreneurial journey.

I spent a bit longer than I thought I would at Vodafone. I think I was there nearly 10 years. But I had the best time, and I learned financial services. I learned big brand challenger mindsets. I learned technology, and the raft of things that makes MoneyMe pretty special: from origination, customer cycles, technology, brand execution and beyond. So an interesting background for myself personally, having led that. And the choice came about between maintaining the course of being good in the corporate world, or tapping back into what I thought I was doing here in Australia, which was intending to be an entrepreneur and give it a crack. So I jumped off the treadmill and I chose to start MoneyMe, 13 years ago.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah. So there would have been a phrase at the time, and it’s still kind of used, coined by the Silicon Valley tech giants: move fast and break things. You picked the hardest category in startup land, fintech, to earn your spurs as an entrepreneur. As I like to say, in fintech you’ve got to move fast and make things, because if you break them, you end up going to jail, right? So it’s a high-stakes game. What was it that made you pick fintech, over going into any of the other themes that would have been running at that time?

Clayton Howes
Occasionally I think, gosh, wouldn’t it have been better if I’d started a Boost Juice?

Dexter Cousins
Yeah. Or Krispy Kreme franchises.

Clayton Howes
Of course. I think we’ve all got that. But the reality was, what was meaningful to me was disrupting the traditionals, that being the big banks here. Seeing it in Australia, I couldn’t understand why the banks were becoming so dislocated from servicing the customer. How we could do it better was something I thought would be more interesting. I don’t think Australia needed another Boost Juice, or another gym membership, another gym franchise or anything, but I did think it needed an alternative to the banks for the younger demographic, and technology was being leveraged in markets that I thought could be leveraged here. So yeah, I took the hard one. I looked at the stats and saw which businesses succeed after 5 years, and this wasn’t a sector that was very high on the rank. So I knew the challenge I was getting into, but that’s kind of what makes it exciting.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah. One of the other challenges as well, and our data backs this up: when we’ve looked at people who’ve been successful in fintech and those who haven’t, 90% of people who make a move straight from corporate into a startup leave within the first 6 months. Obviously it was your baby, right? So your stakes were already pretty high. How did you manage that transition, and what were the big “what have I got myself into” moments for you?

Clayton Howes
I don’t know is the answer, but I do remember every day mattered. Every day. And I had a plan, and that plan hasn’t been realised yet, so I still want to see that plan through. On my first day, 13 years ago, I wrote a business plan on an office window. I hired the best office, right? It was tiny. It was the size of this desk behind me, and I managed to fit four people in there after some time. But I wrote this business plan on the window, and I won’t reveal it here, but I will one day, when I’ve reached its destination. And certainly the motivation in the first 6 months was to get to market. I had this one principle on the day I launched: I don’t want to look over my shoulder and imagine what it would be like to be busy with customers coming in. I wanted to be frantic, managing demand that I just couldn’t physically cope with. And that happened. And that buzz from day one has maintained its course for me: being in consumer and datari, and the changing consumer behaviours, and expanding products, launching new products, getting cheaper capital. Getting cheaper capital means cheaper prices, cheaper prices mean better audiences, and that means more challenge. The momentum has not shifted, other than maintaining its course of: this is an exciting place.

It’s hard for the first 6 months. But people were getting caught up in this sector, going, it’s challenging to get a credit licence. That is absolutely not true. It took me 3 months personally to get the credit licence. I didn’t have lawyers. I wrote all the policies. It’s not hard. And this was pre-AI, right? This was actually punching this stuff out. So I don’t think the first 6 months are as difficult, but I think you need to have that ambition about what the future looks like.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah, that north star is important. It’s interesting that you said that about the licensing piece, because that is something that I think, again, makes it difficult. Consumer finance is a really difficult category. We talk about fintech being difficult, but then you go narrower again, and consumer fintech is probably, for me, the pinnacle, right? It’s like the New York, New York song: if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. I think if you can build this business…

Clayton Howes
True story. You can be an Olympian. It’s demanding. The controls are not scalable, like the regulation that you’ve got to exist in here. If you can break through and get to the scale, right, if you can get to that scale, your natural moat, the barrier to entry, the buy is so high that it actually gives you a little bit of confidence that you just need to get there, and it’s harder for competition to enter. But I totally agree. It’s not scalable. It’s built for banks. It’s built for large teams to manage these complexities. It’s built with a high cost structure. And then it’s always difficult, because the consumer at the end point is in a favoured position under this regulation that’s designed to be that way. But again, it’s part of the challenge, the challenge of mindset. If it was too easy, everyone would do it.

Dexter Cousins
Exactly. So you went down the path: an office, four people, you started to really get momentum. At what point did you start to think, hey, we should go out and list?

Clayton Howes
Oh, the listing decision was interesting. So I spent all my money. I sold my boat. I put my wife’s intended house, the one she wanted to live in, on pause. Did all the things. So maybe part of why I didn’t give up in the first six months is because I had no choice. We had to keep going, right? When I grew past self-funded, I brought in one of my business partners now, Scotty, and handshake capital came through. I quickly grew out of that and moved into family office funding. And we’re going back to the 2015 time frame, right? There was no real institutional money for startups. It was too early, right? And so moving through family offices, there were tier 2 lenders, and I was running out of scope here, right? I had a business that had a $90 million loan book: too big for family offices to support, too small for banks. And public markets were very favourable for our sector, and with the likes of some of the guys like Pepper and others, it was a very obvious place for us to access capital. So in December 2019 I listed MoneyMe, and that was not intending to sell at all. It was purely to have access to growth capital, and be fished with access to growth capital.

Dexter Cousins
So, what, 4 months later, the world locks down.

Clayton Howes
Well, I wish it was four, but it was two.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah. No one predicted that.

Clayton Howes
In December ’19 we were off to the races, and then the world locked down. Books started changing. Banks started finding it difficult to service new products, and to do anything, really. I remember we had a document to sign, and it was near impossible to get a bank to sign it, because they were grappling with wet signatures and how this all worked. It was actually physically a challenge. The market said that everyone’s going to lose their jobs, and the casual person’s the most risky. Well, everyone that was a casual had the best job, because they were supermarket people, they were nurses, in all those sectors that were bulletproof, immune from anything. So there were lots of ups and downs. But the reality is, when you’ve got a technology-first business and you come in with a challenger mindset, you get the advantage of being able to see things and move fast. And our early listing stages didn’t do anything other than beat every single forecast we put out there. And that wasn’t just because we were on a trend. Everything changed, but it was the mindset, and this culture and DNA of being a challenger, seeing things first and executing. And nothing’s changed since that point.

Dexter Cousins
So how did the SocietyOne acquisition come about?

Clayton Howes
Well, isn’t that another interesting one? So when you’re listed on a full growth tier, everyone loved us, but there was this word, consolidation. It was the biggest buzzword. It’s like: consolidation, we need a leader. A consolidation strategy is well supported by institutional investors. And I’m like, okay, so we’ll go and buy the best one. If you guys want consolidation… capital markets are demanding it, all these shareholders that I’ve got, right? I’m talking to them, and they said, consolidation, can you lead with an acquisition? And the intrinsic value, the buzzwords that come with it, from my former M&A days, was too real for me. So I went and struck a deal with the shareholders of SocietyOne, and I bought that business.

But here’s timing like you won’t believe. When you’re public, you have to do everything behind the scenes, in isolated, controlled environments, and you do this capital raise, and then the day that you want to transact is the most important, critical day. You go, right, this is the deal, this is what it is, and everyone closes up, and it’s formulaic on that day. Well, guess what that day was, after I decided to buy this business? The day that Putin put a tank into Ukraine. It’s like, okay, well, I’ve seen this.

Dexter Cousins
Your timing is impeccable.

Clayton Howes
I’m saying for whatever since I’ve done all the challenges or lessons is intended. I’ve had my fair share. Can you believe it? The deal’s done, Putin’s put a tank in, you’re public, and the capital markets use this exit, which is where… So now I’m stuck with this business that I’ve bought, with no money to pay for it, and that’s the entry point into a challenged capital markets environment. And the lesson was this: private equity are very, very favourable when money and public markets are strong. When money and public markets are volatile, private equity are very, very strong. They’re entrepreneurial. And so that was a bit of a challenge, going through that: protecting public market interests as best as possible, maintaining the business’s course, and managing a challenged macro climate. It was very interesting. And here I’ve now got two screamingly successful, high-demand businesses for money, because SocietyOne came with its own channel and strategies, which were excellent, and MoneyMe was also excellent.

The good news is that it was a bit of short-term pain, and very quickly we embedded the good parts of SocietyOne. We achieved all the unit economics that we wanted. The asset was underappreciated, and under our management that asset thrived. It’s bigger, it’s merged under a single platform, MoneyMe, and the customer experiences have been sensational for those SocietyOne customers. So, a bit of short-term pain and bad timing. Had I done that deal the day before, it’s a different story. But hey, that’s interesting all in itself.

Dexter Cousins
So you’re now at a $1.9 billion level?

Clayton Howes
1.9 billion, and that was at my last reported date. Obviously we’re on a growth tier, so it’s just continuing to go up.

Dexter Cousins
So what does the path to 5 billion look like?

Clayton Howes
The strategy is clear, right? We are a digital technology that’s creating efficiencies for customers. Fundamentally, customers are underserved. If you try to phone one of your major four banks right now as a customer, good luck in speaking to somebody to resolve your problem within an hour. Good luck, right? We think time is the most valuable thing in our life, and there’s no question that it is. Waiting an hour, and you aggregate that amongst hundreds of thousands or millions of customers: that’s a lot of time wasted. Now, that’s a long answer to this 5 billion, but the trajectory we’re on is simple. Create a better value proposition for customers, treat them kindly and fairly, value their time, and use digital technologies, which are being accelerated by AI now, to get us to that point of 5 billion. It’s just a matter of maintaining that discipline and execution.

Our brand is thriving. Our three products are not being contested by Commonwealth Bank, which is a good thing. I chose a swim lane. And maybe a bit of advice for anyone starting: pick a swim lane where you’re not going to be drowned out by the behemoths. Mortgages, business lending and other big, institutional-infrastructure-required products or swim lanes, they’re not us. Consumer: credit cards, personal loans and car finance. Those three value propositions actually favour us as a non-bank, with regulation changes for banks. So I can see this line of sight. The wind is in our sails. We’ve reached scale, we’ve got capital market support, we’ve got the customer base. So I think five billion is not too far away from this.

Dexter Cousins
Can you talk me through the Horizon platform?

Clayton Howes
Good tech. So most businesses, when they start a finance business, do the traditional thing: well, let’s go hire finance people, the treasury people. That’s how you start. That’s how everyone started in this sector. Well, I thought, no, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to build a technology-first business. That means I need technology people only. So we built Horizon. Instead of creating our first warehouse, we created our first technology. And I remember the first customer on this technology was a Commonwealth Bank customer, a young 20-something-year-old, and I asked him why he chose MoneyMe after he was first through the door. He said, well, the bank’s asking me for pay slips, and I work in this joint, and they’re going to take two days to lend me some money. You guys did it in about three minutes flat, and there’s no other option for me.

That was on the Horizon platform. It was built for high automation, using data intelligence really early, and we used AI. We created our own algorithmic AI, so it was mathematical modelling that looked at data points and gave us a confidence factor and risk. It’s much faster and easier now with AI, of course, but the same principles applied. So Horizon is the full end-to-end technology stack that can cross multiple geographies, multiple languages, multiple credit products, have revolving and fixed facilities, asset-backed. It’s a bank’s infrastructure, and it’s been built using 450,000-plus developer hours. So that’s our genesis, and it’s still our unique advantage.

Dexter Cousins
And are there any plans to go and white label that and expand the business, or are you going to keep it purely as your bespoke platform?

Clayton Howes
I think it’s a distraction. I don’t know if that’s right or wrong, but we’ve certainly been asked for this. And in my view, the long game is to protect your most valuable asset, and for us that’s our unique advantage. It’s also a distraction. I want our tech people to be working on our products. I want them to be working on the next generation of technology, as opposed to managing somebody else’s demands. So, selfish or strategic, I’m not quite sure what it is, but I certainly enjoy having the technology for tomorrow’s consumer in our hands and in our control. And when you look at our operating cost leverage ratio, and you look at our outsourcing versus what we actually built inside, it’s working. It is, without a doubt, a very, very obvious strategic benefit. It’s pointless in the beginning, when you’ve got a small loan book and revenue of $20 million a year, and you’ve got this big technology team and this big infrastructure. It feels awkward. But now we’re near $2 billion, with 250 staff members and three big products, launching in new markets. We’ve grown into our technology. So that thought process about licensing it is going away quickly.

Dexter Cousins
Got you. And so it’s 13 years now that you’ve been at the helm. Over those 13 years, you’ve highlighted some really stressful situations and challenges. What’s your observation, or your partner’s observation, of your leadership style? How do you think that’s changed over those years?

Clayton Howes
I think we naturally learn a bunch of things along the way, and you take them in your stride and you apply them. But put all that aside, the organic learning from experience, for a second. Culture eats strategy, right? And this is what this organisation has. I might have set the pace and the tone and the culture in the beginning, when I was on the field, writing policies, embedded in the credit decisions, embedded in the marketing strategies. I call myself a player on the field. And at a point in time, I felt like I needed to change to become the coach. You become player-coach, and then you migrate into the state, which is manager. And for me, that recognition of when it’s time for me to change my role has been the single most important thing I’d recommend to people who have started these journeys and have gone through tough times. The way you find your value is identifying what your purpose now is. You can take those lessons and still maintain this high-value culture, but through other people, for whom it’s now their journey to go through, learn, and apply the energy that’s needed.

So maybe for me, the lessons in time… I’m not wounded by them. I’ve actually gratefully got some battle scars, and they put me in the position to be the best manager I think this business can have. Without those tougher times… it’s easy to be a good-times manager. But seeing the tough times, the resilience required, who in your team can dig deep, and elevating them to exec roles because they’ve been through those moments: that’s actually been a wonderful thing.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah. Has it helped being listed, and having a board there to give you that nudge or feedback sometimes? Because one of the things that I find, Clayton, particularly with founders that are still bootstrapped, or at an earlier stage, is that it’s really difficult for them to let go. They know that they should do it, and sadly they hire people with that express purpose, but then find it really difficult to let go. Have you ever had a tap on the shoulder from anyone to go, hey Clayton, mate, pull your head in a bit, right?

Clayton Howes
I think so. I wouldn’t say pull my head in. That certainly hasn’t happened, right? I’m very considerate, very inclusive. It’s my personality type, right? I enjoy collaboration with my board. I look forward to the meetings. I don’t find it challenging. I enjoy the conversations. I enjoy talking to shareholders and learning what their perspectives are. With time, you know what your true north star is, and there are multiple ways of getting there, and different perspectives are always handy. Now, that’s not to say you steer course because there’s a screaming shareholder or a screaming board member. No. I would be the wrong person if I swayed. When you have a strategy, that strategy doesn’t change. It maintains its course, and it’s all about execution. And thankfully, today, I still have a very clear vision of what that strategy is, and I have a very coordinated 250-person team behind me that’s pushing through, breaking boundaries and winning on the battlefield, and the challenger mindset hasn’t been lost.

So when I think about being public, that’s very low in the order after setting strategy, creating a culture, having a challenger mindset and execution. The boundaries we have to operate under as an ASX-listed business, I’d do that if I was private. It is discipline, and perhaps from my corporate days I had that discipline in any case. The fact that there’s a structure, the fact that things are a bit more public, I find a bit of an advantage. I find the ability to communicate with large institutions and banks, where information is public and audited, actually a very helpful place for transparency and inclusion. It’s actually part of my strength. So I enjoy being public. I know the share price looks terrible, but it only matters if you’re selling. Right now, I’m enjoying being public still.

Dexter Cousins
One of the things you mentioned there, which I’m really interested in digging a little deeper on: every single business that I’ve dealt with hits the same problem when they start to scale. They start off with an initial product, customers love it, they grow, they get funding, and they’ve got to grow more. So they bring in a chief product officer, who maybe isn’t anywhere near as close to the customer, and they start building things that they think they would like, or that they think are cool. What’s your advice to other founders as to when to pull back from that, and what you can never, ever sacrifice with the customer if you want to be successful?

Clayton Howes
You never, never lose touch with the front line, right? A fair proportion of my day, at least, is spent learning what the front line is doing. I walk the offices, I sit with my team, I hear and I collaborate in a way that’s so organic that you pick up where the gaps are. You pick up what the competition’s doing. You pick up where the opportunities lie for efficiencies. You’re able to navigate this complexity by hearing what’s happening, and the business is very much alive, and it’s exciting. That’s the bit I would find very challenging to be relevant in if I wasn’t close to the front line. I’m still deep in the product development. I’m still deep in the technology and marketing architecture. But now I have experts that are just better than me at it. I haven’t lost any of it; now I’m at a higher level, where I’m not close to the action, I’m more in the action, but I just don’t have to do as much, because there are experts doing that.

So my advice to founders, coming back to that: if today you feel slightly disconnected from the business, somebody else needs to take over. There’s no one that cares more about this business right now than I still do, and I have a lot of people that care about this business. And fundamentally, it’s because I believe in it. I believe in its people. The guy I first hired, James, was out of university. He’s now my chief of strategy, and it won’t be long before he’s been 13 years in this business. And there’s a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, 7th, 8th, 10th, 50th, 100th person with the same trajectory and storyline. I’m having what I call a founders’ dinner on Wednesday. It’s not that there were 15 founders; it’s the foundations of this business, with these people that are so close to the action. So it’s not just me being close to the product development and the consumer. I have a big foundational team that are equally as close to the action, and that’s what we get our thrills from.

Dexter Cousins
You’ve got an office full of people here. A lot of businesses have struggled to get people into the office. What’s been your secret?

Clayton Howes
I can’t keep them out, right? They want to be here. I think about it this way. I’ve got three offices, and the Sydney office is where most head office roles exist. It’s got its own energy and it thrives. It’s where the strategies are set. My execs are all there every day. Everyone’s there every day. Sometimes we have to control it to 4 days a week, because we don’t have enough space for everyone to be there 5 days a week. Newcastle is a different value proposition for staff here. It’s easy to get around. There are no long commutes. The university where we hire most of the guys is across the road, and that was the genesis of this idea: why don’t we put the jobs where people actually want to live? The cost of living pressures are a little bit different, and we create an environment, and it’s a nice space to be in, and there’s an energy. That’s just the case. I still don’t enjoy going to a restaurant that’s half empty. But if the place is full, let me stand in the line; I’m waiting to get into that place. And everyone has that mentality here. It’s got momentum. It’s got energy. The people are here, they’re collaborating, and it’s just organic.

Dexter Cousins
Awesome. Now, you’re a certified B Corp as well as being a listed company. How do you manage those two things?

Clayton Howes
So I changed the constitution, right? It said, right, this constitution needs to change. We need to have a charter that says we consider all stakeholders’ interests for what ends up being the greater good of society and the communities that we operate within. Now, that principle guides our north star: whilst we’re building a business, we’re building an ethical business that’s got sustainability at its core. We don’t have a big carbon footprint. We’re digital, we’re new age, so we think about things differently. We also have a very strong discipline about what impact we have on our communities and the environment we’re operating in.

One of the products we launched to stand by that is our free credit score tool. Effectively, every single MoneyMe customer has access, and you don’t even have to be a customer. You can sign up for free, which we pay for, and we’ll give you the credit information that the bureaus hold. It’ll tell you how your data is being used and how you rank in society, and so it enables you to think about your credit and your credit profile and how your data is being leveraged. Now, we think that’s important. That’s a benefit to society: the younger demographic understanding the importance of credit and how to manage it, and in effect getting cheaper pricing, because over the course of time, when it’s time to get a mortgage, you want a good credit profile. That’s just one of the many, many things we do to help influence our footprint on society. B Corp is a great standard. We had to pick a standard to maintain some boundaries, and to have a framework that exists, and of course it’s also a helpful recognition of what we’re doing in that ESG space. So I don’t think being public and being B Corp certified are anything other than congruent: what’s right for shareholders, what’s right for the community, and what’s right for the business and its stakeholders is congruent.

Dexter Cousins
We’ve talked a little bit about the present, and I think what’s really great about what you’ve shared is that it really does encapsulate where I believe we’re at right now. You started off with fintech 1.0, which was: let’s improve the technology, let’s make it a bit cheaper for people, let’s improve the experience. But what we’ve not seen a great deal of is new products and product evolution. And we’re at a point now where even the well-off in Australia are starting to struggle, and I couldn’t think of a more critical time for fintech to step up and start innovating on the product side. What are your thoughts about the future, and how are you positioning MoneyMe for this challenging environment that we’re in?

Clayton Howes
It’s a good question. There’s a spectrum, and certainly not everyone’s doing it as tough as each other, right? The key for us is to navigate to the market that we can service with confidence. What that looks like for us at the moment is, by design, servicing a higher credit quality customer: customers with behavioural traits in how they consume credit. It’s not just for ambitious purposes, but cash flow management, and it doesn’t matter how affluent people are, cash flow is always something that you need to manage, right? We participate in those times when people’s cash flow is important to them.

Cars, for example. We finance cars, and one of the product innovations for us was being able to drive a car from the showroom on the day you decide to buy, not 8 days later. Time, remember, is the most important factor. You go into a dealership on a Saturday and you want to buy the car. You make all your commercial decisions as a family, this is the right car, and you get to buy this car and drive it out 8 days later, right? With this convoluted process, with no transparency of what this person is doing behind the desk, and are you getting the best rate? Who knows? So we changed that game entirely. We put the power into your hands. You can set up finance and structure it the way you want. You decide how much of a deposit you want to make and what your repayments are, and if it fits for you, you can establish that loan without any middle-person friction points and costs, and drive it away within minutes. Not days, minutes, right? So the product innovation is literally replacing banks’ traditional infrastructure, which is expensive, and putting the power in your hands. That’s really key.

But we’re only just touching the surface. We have credit cards, and credit cards serve a valuable purpose here in Australia: cash flow management, right? We have income that’s coming, but we have stuff that we need to pay for, whether it’s school fees, or whatever it is. Petrol’s expensive, all these things, right? So instead of earning Qantas points, and I use Qantas as an example, but frequent flyer points that maybe will be valuable at some point in time… I haven’t found any value. What, a free sandwich at a lounge, for all my hard work accumulating these points? We could do a bit better. The younger demographic don’t see it the same way. They’re not interested in that free sandwich, right? So what we created is cashback. Looking at international markets, we’ve replicated one of the most genius things. If I spend 100 bucks today, I get my value up front, and it’s a discount on my bill. And it all works with interchange and all that stuff. So all of a sudden, we’ve created a time efficiency in the product. Not only can you get the product faster, but the rewards and value recognition are instant. I’d definitely take that as a value proposition. That’s innovation, right?

So when you fast forward MoneyMe into the future: macro is certainly unclear, but what is clear for us is the ability to leverage data and navigate around some of the riskier obstacles that exist, because we can’t service everyone. We must service the target market that works for our business model, and it’s quite big, because again, we’ve got cars, we’ve got credit cards, we’ve got personal loans. So it’s a big target market. Being able to navigate that well, being able to continue to scale… our cost of money is getting cheaper. In 3 weeks’ time I’m overseas structuring deals for cheaper money again, because money is very cheap when you’ve got the track record, the trend and scale, and that’s working for us. So we’re coming back to Australia with more efficient capital, and that means better pricing for Australians. So I’m enjoying the trend that we’re on now.

And I’m going to continue by saying we’re not going to stop here, because there are things still underserved. There are people who, for good or bad reasons, hold cryptocurrency. It’s an asset. People hold on to it, even if valuations are somewhat unpredictable. How do we enter into that value proposition? Perhaps instead of frequent flyer points, they earn cryptocurrency at the right price, or who knows? There are things in the making for us that I can’t really talk too widely about on a podcast, but I’m very excited about what that innovation and product mindset continues to look like. Like I said, starting with cars: it’s fast, it’s efficient, it’s cheaper. Starting with credit cards: it’s more meaningful value propositions, more tangible. So you’ll continue to see that from guys like us.

Dexter Cousins
Awesome. Well, Clayton, it’s been fantastic to have you on the podcast, and thank you so much for being so generous with your insights and sharing the journey. We get amazing talent listening to this podcast. If anybody’s potentially interested in careers at MoneyMe, where’s the best place for them to find out more?

Clayton Howes
Please, information is available not only on our website, but we’re quite active: media@moneyme.com.au, for people that are looking for opportunities. And I have no hesitation in you sending an email to myself. We’re very efficient, and I like to hear from people. So my email is easy. Forgive me if I take a little bit longer to respond to some of those potential candidates. Don’t take it as disinterest; just take it as a really busy, enthusiastic CEO that will get to you. It also allows me to see what people are interested in in our business. So hopefully that’s helpful.

Dexter Cousins
Well, brilliant. Congrats on making it to a teenager, and look, let’s do another one when you turn into an adult.

Clayton Howes
I’m excited about that. Yes, it’s been a great 13 years as an adolescent. I think that’s what you call under-13-year-olds, I’m not sure. This hopefully is going to be a well-behaved teenager.

Dexter Cousins
Yeah. Great, great. As always, folks, you can connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter. If you’re new to the show, make sure that you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts, or give us a like and subscribe on YouTube. And if you’re coming back, thank you so much for your support. It really does mean a lot to me. Until the next episode, keep well.

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