Early career professionals have navigated unprecedented challenges, including a global pandemic, remote work transition, and evolving onboarding processes. A key issue emerging is their limited understanding of business’s commercial aspects and financial acumen upon entering the workforce. Wealthbrite addresses this critical gap by providing financial skills training to these young professionals, benefiting them both personally and professionally. By enhancing financial literacy, companies can improve their work environment, alleviate employee mental stress, and recoup a portion of the estimated £20B lost annually in the UK due to poor financial literacy, which leads to work absences and reduced productivity
London TechWatch caught up with Wealthbrite CEO and Cofounder Carla Hoppe to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
I closed a £200,000 SEIS round from both first-time investors and existing angel investors. 70% are from underrepresented communities, including women, ethnic minorities, and those with lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and 100% came either from my existing network or my networking efforts.
Tell us about your product or service.
At Wealthbrite, we provide financial skills training for early careers talent in work. We believe that financially savvy talent is high-performing talent, and our training programmes plug a critical financial skills gap in the UK.
Our programmes cover both business finances and personal finances – teaching people at the start of their careers how businesses make and manage money and how they do the same. We know that employers say one of the key skills which early careers talent lacks is commercial awareness and the ability to see the bigger picture. Our Rainmaker series addresses this skills gap head on. What’s more, with our Wealthbuilder series, we are tackling one of the key drivers of mental health issues in working adults – poor financial literacy.
The effects of poor financial literacy are estimated to cost the UK economy up to £20B annually in poor workplace performance and absences from work. We believe that there is a simple solution – upskilling talent financially. It’s a win-win situation – not only do employees benefit from greater financial resilience and skills for life, but they are also better able to deliver an organisation’s commercial goals.
What inspired the start of Wealthbrite?
When I worked at Big Four firms, I saw first-hand the damaging effects of poor financial literacy. It affects everything, from how people show up and perform at work day-to-day to their chances of rising to the top of their company. It wasn’t just in early careers talent but right up to my peer group, which was director and partner level.
For years, we’ve talked about the issues related to poor financial literacy in the UK, but we continue to do the same things (often not very much at all), expecting a different outcome. I was motivated to address financial literacy in a relatable and relevant way for people at the start of their careers to set them up for future economic success.
How is it different?
We’re tackling financial literacy in the workplace because 85% of working people in the UK are employees with a single source of income from their employer. So, the best place for people to learn about personal financial issues like how to read a payslip, paying taxes, and financial benefits like pensions, and insurance is in the workplace when they first encounter it.
What’s more, we know that when people understand the financial dynamics of their business, they are more aligned with their commercial goals and can achieve better business outcomes.
We’re doing things differently by embedding financial acumen into the workplace skills matrix. We also deliver training using a ‘just in time’ model, which accelerates learning and changes behaviours by giving people the skills they need at a time and place when they are most likely to use them.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
We work with businesses that want to build financially savvy teams that can deliver real results. Given the size of the problem in the UK, we see this as a minimum £20B opportunity, but the global corporate training market is expected to be nearly $500B by 2027.
The increasing need to pre-skill and up-skill talent in business is driving growth in this market. There’s also a need for personalised learning experiences that engage a younger audience when supporting early careers talent, so we see a significant opportunity here.
What’s your business model?
We work directly with businesses to support them with training opportunities for their early career talent.
We offer both standardised and bespoke learning series on our tech platform; this training is carried out online through live webinars or a digitised experience. There is a mix of self-taught modules and community engagement events to drive performance and uptake within the learning platform.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
We’ve already seen lots of news about businesses reducing the cohort sizes of their incoming graduate or apprenticeship programs and budgets being cut.
People are more mindful of where they put their money, but what we have built taps into a genuine business need. We’re not presenting a vitamin that will make them feel better. We’re presenting a painkiller that’s going to solve one of the biggest business issues that exists. The damaging effects of their people not understanding the commercial purpose of their organisation and dealing with the fallout of poor financial literacy in their personal lives.
What was the funding process like?
As a first-time founder, it was all new to me. It’s a difficult market to raise in at the moment. Businesses are becoming much more mindful about where they put their money, and so are investors.
That forced me to be even better at articulating Wealthbrite’s story, our traction, and being direct about the opportunity. Then, I just had to take people with me on that vision.
I enjoyed meeting different people who I probably wouldn’t have had cause to meet if I hadn’t gone through a fundraising round. I like to think even those who didn’t come onto the cap table are now Wealthbrite ambassadors telling other people about us.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the cheque?
We’re thinking differently about a long-standing problem. Many of our investors personally resonated with some of the stories we shared about the issues that businesses and individuals are facing. They’re motivated to find a solution to that problem and be part of creating that solution.
Fundamentally, investors want to see that you are a smart investment that will yield a return. We were able to tell a compelling story about our traction and the types of internationally recognised law firms and banks we’ve worked with. That put us in a strong position.
We’re thinking differently about a long-standing problem. Many of our investors personally resonated with some of the stories we shared about the issues that businesses and individuals are facing. They’re motivated to find a solution to that problem and be part of creating that solution.
Fundamentally, investors want to see that you are a smart investment that will yield a return. We were able to tell a compelling story about our traction and the types of internationally recognised law firms and banks we’ve worked with. That put us in a strong position.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We’ve developed a significant accelerator programme that will go to market in the autumn. It’s been co-designed with businesses across different industries to create a new way to train early careers talent and upskill them on commercial and financial acumen. The most exciting part is that we’ve built every piece of the programme to solve real problems businesses face.
What advice can you offer companies in London that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Connect with other founders. I benefitted from being part of a group of founders in the early careers space who had previously gone through funding rounds. They shared lessons learned and what they wished they’d done differently or sooner and made introductions to angels on their cap table who might be interested in supporting Wealthbrite.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Global expansion. We’re already in discussions with businesses in Asia. Given its size and the exciting things they’re doing around training and development for the future of work, I’d love to see us go to the North American market.
What’s your favourite outdoor activity in London?
I really enjoy running. It’s a great way to see London, and the canal system is beautiful — I highly recommend it as a day out.
