With a track record of spearheading innovative initiatives, he's the force behind multimillion dollar campaigns and has been instrumental in amplifying assets under management by over one billion dollars As a chief marketing officer who has honed the art of brand storytelling and product UX, Filippo embodies the innovative spirit and robust leadership that our listeners aspire to. Filippo, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you so much. My pleasure.

Thank you. Thank you. To kick us off, Filippo, can you can you tell us about your background? And I'm intrigued, really, because I know that you're a former agency owner yourself.

Yeah. So I started on the other side of the table. I started as an agency co founder and entrepreneur in my hometown back in Italy back then. Right. And I did that for more or less twelve years. And we started as completely bootstrapped agency, so the just the two co founders, and and we grew quite organically from there. So entirely bootstrapped from from the first day and started to acquire and also win quite significant accounts.

In finance? Were you working in finance?

No. Back then back then, think about the most important Italian industry. Think about food, fashion, wine, entertainment. We had quite good account in all of them.

Okay.

And then we were using win winning against the the big guys, you know, the listed the listed non independent agents.

Yes.

Yeah. And I did that for twelve years, and at some point I felt I wanted to go out of Italy, wanted to go abroad.

Okay.

So, I sold my equity, I entered into the INSEAD Executive MBA and I started to travel as an INSEAD student. Okay. One of their campuses is in Singapore, and so I went there with my wife. We fell in love with this country and what it represents. And from there I started to network to find a job there, and so I changed the industry, function, continent, all at the same time while I was still a student.

Right, right.

And I entered into a wealth tech company post the series A as a chief marketing officer with a very small team that grew very fast in the subsequent five years. And with a company that went from a few dozens of millions of asset under management to more than one billion US dollar in in a matter of four years. Wow. Phenomenal growth.

Yeah. We grew up, I mean, the classic rocket ship backed by VC that you read on the books, and then and then you are part of it. Yes. It was a fantastic experience.

We did that for four years and a half. We did that from series a to series d and across COVID, across scaling financial products in the Southeast Asian market. So ranging from Singapore to also Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and also we went also in the Middle East with Dubai.

Right.

Right. So we scaled this very fast across five markets and many, many different type of products.

So what the industry tends to call as a robot visor, it is a word we don't like to use. Yeah. But that's probably the word the the label that was given to us. Okay. And we don't like because there are not so many robots doing their decision.

No. No. Of course. But what was it about when you were over in Singapore?

So obviously your experience in agency life before then was nothing to do with So in fact, the first thing I did was to end all the contract with agency Right.

As soon as I became the CMO of Statuary in Singapore. But jokes apart, think the agency experience gives you incredible customer centricity. Yep. Because the only way to bring on your account is to really understand what your customer needs. This is something that is in my DNA, and I think for me has been a sort of a superpower because honestly, it's not something I see happening often.

No. And and I guess the the other the other bit I'm intrigued about is is at Stashway that you were developing products, a lot of products, it evolved. So when you first came in there, you went through enormous growth.

So I'm interested to know in, I guess both at Stashway, but also at Money Farm now.

Yes. Because after Singapore, I just to conclude the the story, then I we decided with my wife because our kid was delivering in Singapore, and and we say, okay. You know what? Let's be closer to the grandparents.

Yes. And also, yeah, we we felt a bit of we were missing home. Right. So we come back and then I found another well tech player that was in a different position, already a series d player called Monifred.

Yeah. But also they had the similar need, a need to scale up a single product to a multi product offering. Yeah. So this is what I'm doing right now as a CMO in in money farm.

What what would you say is is the is the link now between the the work that you do as CMO in in marketing the business and and acquiring customers and clients and and and growing the business from that side, but what's the what's the involvement that you have as CMO and also in shaping and developing the the product roadmap that you could do that you're suggesting to the business?

Yeah. That was very clear in Singapore where we felt at some point that the banks were playing some not very they didn't have a very clear proposition when it comes to a certain type of products in which in order for the customer to have attractive yield, he had to go through many hoops. There were many asterisks with a very fine print of things you need to satisfy in order to reach that advertised rate of some some financial products.

Okay.

And so that was a case in which marketing, but also product were very aligned to say, there is an opportunity here. There is an opportunity to do something incredibly simple Yeah. Incredibly transparent with no asterisk compliance wise. I mean, are some asterisk.

Of course.

This compliance has already vetted my speech. And so we created this product. We call it SIMPLE.

Okay.

And it was the most successful product of this company. Amazing. Because it was super carefully positioned to own this niche of I I don't want to think about all the fine print. I just get what I see.

I see.

And I and I get it in a very transparent way, deliver it with a top notch up experience that usually a bank cannot match due to legacy legacy requirements.

So is that is that essentially kind of cutting through the red tape for the consumer and just making their life simpler, is that what we're saying?

In a way, yes. It is also the unbundling of the bank, you try to move faster before the bank will arrive there. Because at some point they will arrive for sure.

Yeah. And that that experience that you that you had in Singapore, that's you you're starting to take that over into into Money Farm and can you can you link the two there?

Yes and no, yes and no. There is a different product maturity.

Southeast Asia is a very fragmented market. UK and Italy, the two markets in which Money Farm operates are different. The regulatory environment is different.

Overall, literacy is completely different. It is completely different between UK and Italy.

Okay.

But if I compare with Southeast Asia, it's it's a different world.

Yeah. Can you expand on that a little? Yes. I think that you've got a really unique perspective, and it would be interesting to understand about more about what you mean about the different levels of financial literacy between the markets.

Yes. So I mean I mean, Southeast Asia, Singapore is a is a very advanced country. GDP per capita probably is in the top five in the world, maybe it's the second or third one. And then maybe you go into Malaysia in which you have a completely different set of regulation and completely different approach to money, and then you go to Hong Kong when there is a component of luck, there is a component of betting, you know.

So every country has a completely different relationship with money. And so the financial literacy is a direct reflection of that. But also between Italy and the UK, in general, there are are some of our values as money farm that we have to stress out much better in Italy compared to the UK because in the UK they are taken for granted. Right.

In Italy, no. So the fact that around independence, around about cost transparency in UK is like a given. Right. In Italy it's like a plus.

Oh, wow. So you need to pay a lot of attention. Yeah. Plus there are compliance considerations that was honestly very very interesting in Southeast Asia in which, I mean, if you want to show a banknote, you need to send a fax, not an email, a fax to the central bank of one country, but you cannot show a pig, obviously, because it could be offensive to some religion.

Yeah. If you I mean, it's it's a very intricate maze of regulation. Yeah. And remember, we are a startup as a scale up. We don't have one thousand people in compliance. We have, like, two people, and they need to end up five countries.

I I was in a compliance meeting last week and talking about the the need to bring you know, build closer bridges between marketing and compliance because, ultimately, both on the same team, both trying to achieve the same aims, but often they're seen as kind of going head to head. In such a fast moving startup, growth trajectory like that, how does compliance and marketing work together? Is it is it going bashing head to head?

Or do you find actually that kind of combined I smile because I think for a CMO the two best friends in a company are the chief compliance officer and the chief financial officer.

Right, right.

And if they are your friends, then the friendship with the CEO is much easier.

Okay, okay.

So I was lucky to honestly have a great chief compliance officer close to me in my experience in Asia and now in Europe. I think it's just, at the end of the day a matter of relationship. Yeah. You need to put in this bank of trust little deposit because at some point you will make a withdrawal.

Yeah.

And that withdrawal will be huge, usually. Yeah.

So the way in which I navigate this is through personal relationship with these with the compliance people.

And the fact that at the end of the day, we are there, marketing and compliance, to do something for the greater good of the customer, especially if you work in a well tech player that has a positioning around better and improved cost efficiency, getting the most the best value for for for your money. This is absolutely aligned with the customer interest. We are not there selling complex derivatives and trying to make them up and dress them up as something easy just to make up more fees. We are there to say you need to stay invested.

You need to stay invested for the long time. You need to start investing yesterday. All the all the normal thing that you will say that an financial adviser will say to you. So compliance helps us deliver that message through a digital medium, through a through a smartphone, through a an automated one to many type of type of instrument.

So if we are aligned on that, we can work out solution. I have several example in my mind in which the first answer is always we cannot do that, and you sit down and you make it up. Yeah. Yeah.

Because at the end, what you are your outcome is a better situation, a better end net better situation for your customer. Yeah. And at the end of the day, this is what we want. Also, the regulator exists in order to do that, to do that.

So Have a conversation, you understand from from what how how the situation looks from their perspective, they see it from yours, together you remove each other's blind spot and you end up with a a better solution overall.

This campaign, this wording, this disclaimer text, is it improving the outcome for the customer? If it is yes, then let's discuss better if that word is not the perfect one, the font size, because probably there is a way to make this happen.

Yes. Yeah.

And but if you start to say, don't do that because compliance will never then you start to go down a slippery slope of not good collaboration.

Yeah. That's interesting to hearing how you you work with with compliance to to and I and I love that that advice about coming at it from the customer's perspective as the the starting point for that discussion. It creates a very level playing field, and I think that's that's definitely something I can take away as a as a a as a learning point.

Also, because, if I may say so, in a young and small if you want for the traditional banking industry size, wealth tech, you are not too big to fail.

Yes.

So you are, as I usually say to my colleague, you are small enough to be killed as an example.

Right. So it's not like nobody's going to save us. Yeah. So the moment you do something wrong, you will have the spotlight there.

And this is why you should not trust Welltech. We our CAC and lifetime value equation is built on trust. Yeah. So you need to be ten times more pay to pay to pay more ten times more attention than other what other competitors do.

Yeah. And I can tell you in the company which I've been, we were quite often wondering about why other people can can do that. Why they go out with this ad on television on tube and and why we cannot do that. We we cannot because if you read the regulation, it is clear that you cannot do that.

Right.

And so we need to be very, very careful.

Yeah. On top of your game. I'm interested in in how within your role as CMO that you also work with the CEO and the CFO on a, I guess, a strategic growth of the of the business, especially when it comes down into either entering into new markets or developing out new products. Is there anything you could expand on that?

Obviously, the marketing line in the p and l is a significant one.

So the shift from being a cost center to be considered an investment is a mental shift that is not to be taken for granted.

With the CFO, the collaboration is all around agreeing on a framework to measure output and efficiency and efficacy of of the marketing budget because obviously if you go out with something that is more brand awareness and less direct response, it's simply stupid to then measure a direct response metric on that budget. Yeah. And vice versa is is true. So in my experience, marketing budget is the first victim of any cut, rightfully so I will say, especially in companies like the one in which I worked in the last few years that are very, very product focused.

So if you are if you if you wonder, should I spend one hundred k more on this campaign or one hundred k more to accelerate product delivery? You will spend one hundred k more to accelerate product delivery. Sure. So first of all, agree on the framework with the CFO, agree on the fact that you are your definition of success is shared.

And then with this framework in place, you go to the CEO and you try to establish a partnership about about that. I have read somewhere that the tenure of the CMO is one of the shortest around the C suite. Yes. It doesn't surprise me. Yeah.

There was a I think it's sort of like three to five years?

Is that right?

Yeah. Don't remember, there was a very interesting McKinsey article about this. Yeah. And I think most of these short tenure curse is due to some misalignment of expectation with the with the overall C suite and XCO members.

Yes. Because probably the the mandate and the scope of the CMO is not so clear. Is this a product guy? Is this a commercial guy?

Is this a brand positioning guy? Yes. Probably is. But he's more a chief growth officer, he's more a chief marketing officer, more a chief brand officer.

It's the boundaries are not so well defined compared to, I don't know, a chief operating officer or a chief financial officer, at least in a start up scheme.

Yeah.

I'm I'm interested in how you approach marketing effectiveness, whether that's a a money farm or stash away, and interested to to understand how how you're, I guess, held to account, but also how you hold your team to account as well and what you're looking for within the effectiveness of the work that you So I think in the wealth tech, wealth management world, is a very tricky question to answer, because if you only focus on outputs, so at the end of the day, which is your CAC?

No, that's the first question the CEO will always ask you. I was in a meeting half an hour ago and it was all around CAC, customer acquisition cost, customer acquisition cost, payback time, lifetime value. Okay, fantastic. But the problem is that in our industry, there is an influence from the markets and where the SP five hundred is and where the central bank interest rate decision are.

Right. That incredibly influences what you do. Yeah. So if you focus on your output, you risk that when you do everything well, but the market is not going towards your direction, you wrongly think that what you are doing is wrong.

I see.

And when you are doing wrong things, but the market is helping you, you assume you are a genius. Yeah. So probably you are not a genius and not a moron, but the the reality is always in in the middle. So Yeah.

If you focus on inputs and try to do small improvements channel by channel, test and iterate in in incremental improvement in which the incrementality factor can be really statistically measured, I think you are on on the right way. Okay. But you need to be aware that in this industry, the market drives a lot. Yes.

And you are sitting on this elephant, and if the elephant goes up, you up with him and down down with him. Yeah. Yeah.

And we don't need another Warren Buffett sentence to to No.

No. Say that. Sure. Yeah. He he makes sense.

It's that in a very clear way.

Yeah. No. No. Yes. Yeah. But no, that makes perfect sense.

And any difference out of interest as we've been talking about the way that things are slightly different across from Europe to Asia, any difference in the way that you ran operations?

So given the European market is, in my opinion, much more mature than what I saw in Southeast Asia, You need a seniority when it comes to agency that was not needed honestly when in in the countries in which I opened during my tenure in Southeast Asia. Okay. So as told you in the beginning, I terminated the contract with agency there. Here is is exact opposite.

I immediately recognized the need of very senior help on a few topics that internally I could not deliver. Yeah. And it was it will it will also probably be stupid to deliver that type of skill set internally. You buy it when you need it.

Yes. So that's for sure was was different. The attitude towards money, honestly, I think is universal.

When it comes to money, people have super strong emotion.

When the market goes up, there is this greed, everybody's becoming rich, I want to be part of it, and they buy when the market is at the top. And then when the market goes down, there is fear, there is, oh my god, we are losing everything, let me sell everything when the market is at the bottom. So they do exactly the opposite of what they should know. They buy and sell low.

So my job in that case is the same both continents. My job is help people cope with their emotion. That is my job. Yeah.

We do that across an holistic strategy, multichannel strategy, but at the end of the day, you tell them, listen, don't follow this emotional roller coaster. Yeah. Stick to dollar cost averaging. Stick to what is the best for you because this is this should be boring.

And and again, Warren Buffett say it very well, but let's not mention him too well. As boring as watching paints get dry. You know?

So so the job I think of CMO working in wealth tech beside positioning a brand and getting a product to market, create creating craft crafting compelling narratives for one to one, one to many.

But at the end of the day is helping your customer base handle well their emotion.

Yes. Yeah.

And it could be a unconscious and conscious conversation that you deliver in a holistic way across multiple touch points. So the complexity is orchestrating this thing in the midst of a complex startup scale up where the strategy changes very fast and things go right, go left, then go up and down.

But that sounds like that that's the constant drumbeat that is is always behind everything about educating the And and drives many of your decision, the fact that you go and advertise on television.

Why you do that in that specific channel, in that specific inventory? Because the big guys do the same, because the big banks do the same. So you go there, so you inherit trust simply by sharing the same, by anchor visually anchor into the same spot. No? Yeah. You go on the tube and you want that spot because that spot is usually taken by the big guys. People will resonate with that.

I see.

So can you measure the the the brand recall?

You can. Can you measure the the direct conversion and activation? No. Probably not. You cannot. But doesn't matter. Because you are contributing to the brand position in terms of trust.

Yes. Yeah. I guess there are there are certain things that depending on how you you execute on that, that there's like, thinking back to your incremental improvements that you'll you'll you'll so for example, if you created a number of pieces of content, educational content around video, you can measure overall watch time, for example. And if you can see an incremental improvement on that, that is evidence that things are going in the right direction.

So absolutely yes, but maybe one step further. Let's assume that all those video were around diversification. Yeah. And then you are able to match that with the fact that people on average have more than one product with you in the same time span.

Yeah. Okay, so then my video and my content strategy all around diversification produce measurable results.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is this linked to asset under management going up? Difficult to say, because if the same time the SP was going to the moon, yes. Otherwise, no. Yeah.

Because I told you people behaving that very emotional way. Yes. But still I can remove some of these biases and really measure something that I was able to move the needle there. Yes.

Yeah. And so maybe after six months all around diversification, I discovered that people have a more diversified portfolio of products with us. So goal achieving in a way.

Yeah. The subject of financial literacy, this is is something that I sense that you feel very passionate about, and it's, again, with your experience across different geographic regions, is there anything you can tell us about?

Yes. So in Southeast Asia, I I insisted a lot to have an academy, and I also invited Wall Street Journal bestseller author, Nirajal, to be our spokesperson in this academy project because he was speaking, I mean, he had two bestseller books all around how to be undistractable, how to be somebody that has a focus, you know, in what he decides to do and then he achieves. Think about that with your financial planning. That's a very relevant topic.

Yes. In Europe, I don't felt that need because overall, I think even if financial education, unfortunately, is not in on our ag school curriculum, and it should be honestly. I agree. But for sure, there is greater scholarization on average in which, I don't know, a family budget or the fact that I should be properly insured if I have, I don't know, a wife with children or with my partner is is more ingrained.

So I don't feel that need. But overall, we have lots of people just with the mandate of producing very high quality, very engaging content. And honestly, when we publish our quarterly report, our strategic asset allocation view on the market, you could take our logo and swap it to one of the top Taiwan investment banks.

And honestly, you will not notice the difference.

Right. Right. Right.

Because the quality is very, very high.

Yes. Yeah. Let's, I guess, go back up slightly slightly, I guess, back back to Money Farm. And and again, this is essentially the the the the second wealth management platform that you that you are scaling.

I what would you say are the are the lessons that you've that you've learned and the experience about how how you go for fast growth in in in this sense?

And what would you be advising other marketers to do, not to do based on the experience that you've gone through?

First of all, guess is over over communicate. Like repeat everything three times in three different ways on three different channels in private message, town hall, overcommunicate.

To your team and Internally.

Yeah. Internally. Internally. Yeah.

Overcommunicate. Yeah. Craft a compelling vision where you want to go with your team and just overcommunicate it in a way that you seem like a parrot repeating always the same three lines. Be be extremely clear.

It is either black or white, don't speak gray. Just decide and then repeat it like a parrot everywhere because usually when you go from scale up, start up to scale up, were some information asymmetries that were bridged simply by a water cooler conversation. Right. But several times, and this is my experience, but also what I read in several book books, people don't make the mental jump and now we are now a scale up.

What we used to do in twenty, now there are two hundred fifty people across multiple countries. Yeah. So they assume information gets shared in the same way, in very informal way. You know, the famous two pizza team of Jeff Bezos, at moment you cannot feed the team with more than two pizza, you start to have inefficiencies.

Yeah.

And so how do you solve that? You overcommunicate.

Yes. Okay.

Also, if you want to scale, you need to hire people.

Yeah. But then you are people and you have a problem of information sharing and information asymmetries, so you overcommunicate. That will be my first thing. Okay.

You should find yourself saying things time and time again in multiple ways. I I also started here to have a a recorded video message I I send maybe during every week, but let's say every month. On Friday, in which for five minutes I simply tell what is on my mind to the entire team. Then you do town hall, then you do one on one, then you do everything you can do to over communicate.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's the first thing. When let's say that when there is a void of information, the human mind doesn't fill that void with positive things. Right.

Okay. Yeah. It's fear, uncertainty, doubt, worries. Imagining the worst. Yes. Yeah. That is how we are wired, so you need to change that.

Yes. The second thing is that my style is I try to use as much as possible motivation and going towards a better situation than running away from something bad.

Okay.

And in this sense, emotion are very contagious. Yeah. So I see the CMO as a very influential role from a leadership perspective. Okay.

Because let's be honest, the people that report to you the people you choose yourself to surround with will know much better than you the technical details of that network, that campaign, that way of delivering the message. So you or at least this is how I interpret my profession is you are a very well trained coach to allow them to do their best. Yeah. And so if you approach this with a positive emotion, enthusiastic emotion, this is a nice way to deliver your to to reach cultural alignment.

And when you have cultural alignment, if you have hired well, things happen by themselves. Yeah. If you have hired poorly, then you have another issue. Yeah.

But if you have hired well, then things happen by themselves, provided there is the right context. Overcommunicate and cultivate emotion that promote action.

And trust trust the team.

Yeah. And obviously, maybe is a third minor point, you should have hired well.

Yeah.

Yeah. Humble people, people that are willing to learn, people that understand that they work in a startup to scale up. So Yeah. The Proverbial thing hits the fan Yes.

Often. And then it's a roller coaster thing. This is not corporate. So people should have a very clear mind that they have joined the startup scale up.

Yes.

If they expect something very glamorous or very corporate It's not that.

No.

You are going to be deluded.

Presumably that would have come out within the recruitment process, hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully.

Yes. Let's be optimistic.

We're in a very volatile market at the moment, and customers' attitudes, preferences may be not quite what they were this year for what they have been over the last few years, maybe. How how do you manage in your role again, maintaining growth in in that challenging volatile time?

Everybody now wants the yield. Yeah. Just give me the number, tell me it's fixed, tell me it's guaranteed, just give me the number. Don't tell me there is a sixty forty portfolio that twenty years down the road will do well for my future self and my children and whatever.

This is this is it. This is the the reality right now, and you can see the biggest player. If you go on the homepage of the biggest wealth tech, let's call with the word I don't like to use, but the biggest robo advisor in the US and everywhere in the world, all their own page has been now completely changed. They only speak about, I give you x percent guarantee. If you went two years ago, it was just one hundred percent equity. Just just stay here and don't worry. The the market will do its own job.

Sure. Sure.

So you need to adapt to customer preference Yeah. For sure. That means that the product team will be put under immense pressure to be sure that you have a wide enough product offering to satisfy completely different set of customer needs because during COVID and with a very different central bank policy on interest rates, the needs were completely different. Everybody was a genius of equity investing and risk on everywhere, annual spirit.

And now everybody wants a money market fund. Yeah. And just a guarantee, just give me the bond, just government bonds. Italian will love that.

Yeah. And they have loved that if you see the latest emission.

So you need to be sure you have a product team that is capable to resist under immense pressure because this is where lots of pressure will go. Yes. And maybe if you are clever enough to build tools that allow you to serve different needs when the market changes and I will explain myself better, a brokerage execution only capabilities. Okay. That for example will allow you to serve bonds if there is now the flavor of the bond, but also something that is, I don't know, ETF linked to a specific team if the the world is switching to the team and to so it's not easy. Yeah. It's not just a marketing job.

And the more leeway the platform gives to you, the more you are capable of driving and riding these customer preferences. Yeah. But, an important but, let's be mindful that our job at the end of the day is to act in the best interest of our customer.

And so who am I to tell them that they should forget about building a position in a well diversified portfolio in this period even if they it is not top of their mind? Yeah.

Probably I should not neglect that because probably now is the time to think about building a position for the long term. Yeah.

It's not financial advice, but But it goes back to the Yes.

Where am I to ignore the fact that even if everybody wants a yield right now, maybe there is a merit in building a position maybe on things that looks much less attractive. Again, let's not commit the same error to buy high against a low. Let's try to position ourselves in a counter trend way to be ready to then get the best get the best of both. And there are tools that allow you to do that. Yes. And and this by the way something Monifar we are developing right now as we speak.

Right. And I guess a lot of a lot of that is about the speed that you can develop products to market. Again, it dictates that that speed will be driven by the type of company you are, but also by the by the size of company you are, how well resourced you are as a as a as a company, and that's gonna enable you to be agile. But I I would always think that startups and scale ups are inherently more agile than I mean, obviously, we play the game of leveraging as much as possible the lack of IT legacy nightmares.

Yeah. That obviously is the plug of every of every big financial institution. Yeah. But even as as the world tech world. Yeah. Start to have legacy issues.

Because of the because of the speed of technological development.

Yes. And also because you started five years ago thinking that platform will be capable of handling whatever load. And then you go to the next end user and say, you know what, we need a complete refactoring. We need to stop every product development for six months. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

But you probably could not afford that. No. So, yeah, maybe the television player goes low, we go much much faster, but we tend to be also slower than other players. And so from there, there is an entire new chapter to think about Open Finance platform in which with APIs, you maybe rethink what was called the robo advisor.

Yeah. And maybe ten years from now, the shape of the industry will be completely different than what we have right now due to open finance, due to traditional banks that move towards a more outcome focused job, what is called a platform economy. And then you have big tech entering the space. Look at Apple with Goldman Sachs.

Look at buy now, pay later. I mean, that that opens up an entirely different world that is very far from wealth tech Yes. Because you go into payments, etcetera, etcetera. But then don't think that those transaction are a prerequisite only of big banks.

They could be the the Amazon, the Apple. They can be there in a second.

Yeah. Yeah. You you mentioned about acquisition, and I know I've I've for for our interview.

I read recently about the acquisition of Profile Pensions. And what what what role is, again, from from your position, do you play in the the acquisitions and presumably the activity that happens after the acquisition?

So marketing comes, at least in in my experience, comes later at the at the table when things from a strategic balance sheet and financing perspective are already being ironed out by the CEO, by the chief strategy, chief operation officer, by the people more closely involved with the funding decision and terms and condition of those deals.

Then when there is the wet signature, hopefully very fast marketing start to be engaged because the risk is then to engage it too late on in the process. Yeah. Because then you have in such a small company issue of a very big corporation because you have M and A issues, you have merging brands, culture of employees. Okay, maybe there are only fifty employees and two hundred on the other side, not ten thousand and fifty thousand.

But still, it's not like we are all expert in merger and acquisition. And so you you have internal challenges, you have communication challenges, you have two brands, they need to become one. You have new distribution channels, b to b to c distribution channels. In Mone Faro, it has been done in the past with Post Italian in Italy.

It has been done with M and G in the UK, and now it has been recently done with Profile Pension. So it's a very active company from m and a type of growth, m and a driven growth. Yeah. And for me, my career, this is also honestly the first time I see this spanning out because first, I have my own company, which, I mean, the last thing that was in our mind was growing to m and a with entirely self financed.

Then in in Singapore, it was not feasible in the same way. But again, given the maturity of the landscape here in the UK and Italy is different, then it becomes possible. So marketing comes last and it has all the internal work stream to merge everything properly and external, two brands, one brand only, where there are the synergies, which channel can we incorporate in the scene under the same team, which channel makes sense to abandon, will the new customer be able to mature well from a cross selling perspective or not, who knows? Yeah.

There was an assumption when the deal was signed and then the due diligence was carried out, but Then the reality kicks Yeah.

One of the things that we spoke about offline was the rise of the female investor.

And this is and and I know that you this is something that you've looked into, and I wanted to speak about this. For me, I wondered if is this a new marketing thing that we've just discovered, or really is the reality actually? Female investors have been around a long, long time.

Yeah, yeah, no, this is a super important topic, and here maybe I can make you some comparison between Southeast Asia and Europe, because in Southeast Asia, this gender investing gap was a big thing for us. Apart from having a very, very diverse C suite, very diverse C suite, we felt that it was absolutely misrepresented and something had to be done.

Misrepresented in terms of marketing communications or misrepresented it?

In the sense that the female In the actual data? No.

In the sense that the female investor population was not receiving enough attention I see.

From traditional financial players. Got it. With product tailored for them, with communication that leverages some of the unique life stages, etcetera, etcetera. Okay. So it was not well represented. Yeah. And and so we did a series of initiatives.

And I can tell you because since we are so backed by data and customer insight and customer insights, we have measured everything. And after a while, was clear that on average, our female customer back then in Southeast Asia were after they have chosen a specific risk profile of their portfolio, they were they were able to change the risk profile much less frequently than their male counterpart.

Okay.

Why?

I don't know. In a sense, it's a matter of attitude towards investing. But once they felt that that was their risk attitude, that was it. Okay.

And obviously this has huge benefit from a performance perspective because if you start to You're not chopping and changing.

Yes. Exactly. Yeah. That was something proven from a statistically significant way.

What we discovered here in the UK and Italy, and we published in Monopharm a press release in March this year, is that we saw year over year, twenty twenty versus twenty twenty two if I'm not mistaken, a huge increase of ISA subscribed by female investor.

Okay.

Huge increase, absolutely not comparable with the with the male counterpart. And on average, the ESG component for the female population was much, much higher.

Wow, fascinating.

And they were investing much more on ESG driven investment than non ESG one.

So And that insight is available still for Yes, is in our one of our press release.

Right, fantastic.

So if anyone anyone is interested in that March twenty twenty three was published.

Fabulous. Fabulous.

I guess the summary of of that is that the the money money from feeling investors from a from a wealth platform perspective is very interesting because it's it's stickier money.

At least their approach with the risk is more stable. Okay. So, hopefully, these rewards in the longer run with a lower churn.

I see. I see. Okay. If we come back then, I guess, to marketing in general acting as a catalyst for for Money Farm, the the you've gone through another round of funding at Money Farm. I imagine with that comes aggressive targets, performance targets to to hit from a from a growth point of view. How are you approaching that, and how has that changed your, I guess, your your your your tactics from a CMO perspective?

So the round was done last year in a very different economic environment from an interest rates perspective. So again, marketing budget is the first to accelerate, but also to reduce when needed.

Okay.

I think you need to be aware of the greater picture. And the greater picture for in the specific of money farm was to bring this company from a single product provider for ten, eleven years of twelve years of existence to a multi product provider. Right. So this is how we have developed from a marketing perspective our capabilities and our resources. And this is what will be presented early next year Okay. With a completely new branding and overall product offering and positioning.

I see.

So this is how the money So that's been the main focus.

Yes. This is how the the money has been has been spent.

Okay.

Plus, we never stop experimentation. And we have developed and taken to market many different products. I mean, what we have done in the last six months was probably not done in the last eleven years. Oh, wow. Yes.

Been a busy busy time. And they so the the brand work is has happened or is happening?

Will be revealed very soon. Okay. Okay.

Nothing more we can say about that.

The idea is that, obviously, there is a much wider product offering.

Yeah. And when you think about money from you think about a wealth player, a total wealth player for the all of your needs.

Yes.

Yeah. All delivered to an app or with this cost transparency and especially in Italy, as I was saying before that maybe UK is taken for granted, but in the Italian market, not for sure. And with a top asset allocation team, etcetera, etcetera.

That's something for us to keep an eye on money pharmacy, seeing what sort of comes next.

Just just start thinking about wrapping wrapping this up and thinking about what you you it sounds like you've had a very busy six months, have to say. But in with with from your perspective, how you see the the markets, what they have been and what we hope they may be coming into over the next year and subsequent years after that.

From the position of wealth tech, where do you see the trends going and where are you seeing your kind of shift of focus to consider when you're starting to consider what the next couple of years looks like?

In my industry, I think it's very difficult to make predictions that go more than the next quarter. Alright. In the sense, if you remember back in the summer, now let's wait for the end of the year when interest rates have peaked for sure.

Now, I mean, let's wait till another six months. It's very very complex. Yeah.

I think we need to have a Back to that elephant going up or down.

Yes, exactly. Because again, then you focus on output and then honestly your self efficacy is reduced because I do well, I do badly, but then it's not depending on me. No, this is not the attitude. No.

So I think you need to be well positioned with a wide product offering that captures all the different customer preferences that for sure now are not on the pure equity portfolio for sure. They are elsewhere and so you need to be able to capture them. And this is something that several players are are doing. And I don't think the efficient use of money will never stop to be like that in the sense that the capital is not easy.

Yeah. And expensive because the VC funding rounds are not done at the same valuation of a two years ago, three years ago. No. During COVID, it was insane.

And those multiplier are not there anymore. No. So capital capital costs and capital could be expensive to raise in this moment because you risk a down round, you risk a dilution, etcetera, etcetera. So either you rebrand yourself and you call yourself charged GPT investment or something, And that would be a way to get a very very high valuation.

If you remember three years ago, everybody was calling themselves blockchain or something just just to go after that. Yeah. Yeah. But jokes apart, I I I think for wealth managers, it it will be tough.

Yeah.

And there will be a very prudent use of money. Don't see people splurging like probably was done a few years ago.

No. So I guess, thinking thinking of the conversation we've had just now, I think it it would seem to me that the thing to to do would be stick to the knitting, focus on what it is that you're actually trying to achieve, and and and look for that continuous incremental growth so that regardless of the elephants going up or down, you're confident that the work that you are doing is contributing to the to the to the ultimate trajectory of the business.

Yes. And it's always up to the right also because we are not a bank. Yeah. So it's not like a business on stock.

Now you have a stock of money just for keeping the money there, you make money. Yeah. It's completely different in our case. You are not there.

You need to reach that stage maybe twenty years down the road.

So it's just growing every day, day after day. It's not protecting. It's acquiring.

Yes. Yeah.

And nowadays we fight against governments because people will love the new bond, you know, government bond. So very, very complex.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much, Filippo, for coming and joining and and sharing so so much insight from from your time, both in in Asia and also now straddling across Italy and and the UK. So thank you very much.

My pleasure. Thank you so much.

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