After years of frustration when it came to accessing fund data, in 2020 Lucy Walker decided to step away from her career in fund selection to launch a fintech business – unsurprisingly, this is something she describes as a “steep learning curve” now.
But, throughout her time as a fund buyer, where she worked her way up from an internship at HSBC Asset Management as fund analyst to head of third-party funds in Sarasin & Partners, she identified this gap in the market and decided to pursue fulfilling that as her next career.
“It didn’t make sense to me that in our daily lives we had iPhones and slick technology, and yet in our finances and working lives, we were using technology that was built in the 1990s and hadn’t moved on. It was very slow, out of date, not on our mobiles, things were breaking… I felt that there must be a better way to access things like pensions platforms, especially when you are responsible for billions of pounds, when I am out with clients, meeting managers or attending conferences.”
AM Insights and the idea to create a fund data platform that would help fund buyers be more effective with their time and be able to access portfolio details – performance, holdings, key changes such as manager moves etc – at their fingertips was born.
But, as someone with no experience in technology start-ups, how do they begin to make this idea come to life?
“It was a very strange feeling to be unemployed and have this blank canvas – I knew I had a lot to learn.”
Building a fintech
Walker was no stranger to building businesses per se from her time at Sarasin & Partners: “I had an amazing boss when I joined [in 2011], who gave me the opportunity to come and just run with it. Within 18 months, I was running white-labelled money for IFAs, which I absolutely loved. I loved being at the quarterly investment committee meetings, giving the macro update and answering their questions; it was such a fantastic experience.”
In her words, the portfolio management responsibilities “snowballed” from there and was eventually leading up the team. In 2019, Walker was invited to join the board of the Aurora UK Alpha investment trust – where she is now chair – and NED of the Henderson International Income trust, which has since been merged away.
“This gave me the confidence that the mortgage would be covered, and I could go and give AM Insights a go. That was in August 2020, obviously amid Covid, but I was able to leave and start with a blank sheet of paper.”
So back to the beginning of AM Insights, Walker admits there were many challenges – “and a lot of it wasn’t even to do with it being a tech company. Suddenly, you have nobody telling you what to do, so that was a real shift in mindset”.
She was fortunate in that her husband had had some experience in working at tech start-ups earlier in his career and he helped her form the early development and design team.
“As we launched in Covid, it literally didn’t matter where the team was based. We hired Ivan Perevernykhata from Auckland, initially as a consultant. He used to do 10 hours a month, but that input helped shaped what we were doing and I was able to afford to hire him full-time [she didn’t take any external funding for AM Insights]. He is now our chief technology officer and it’s great to have had him there since the beginning.
“Many of the team [of 20] actually have been there since day one, which works so well as everyone knows what the situation is, they don’t have to keep asking questions – you can run faster.”
AM Insights was officially launched in October 2020, and the platform was launched by May 2022 – the first client was taken on within a month.
Now the platform has data on over 70,000 share classes giving fund selectors ways to monitor, compare and blend portfolios, find new ideas and find out new fund updates or changes.
“It is the fund research tool I wished I’d had, where I am looking to build things that I used to find irritating or a waste of my time, time that I could spend generating better outcomes for clients.”
And it has been popular – clients today include AJ Bell, Evelyn Partners and Schroders. In fact, AM Insights’ revenue rose by 10 times last year, and this year it is on track to increase by “many multiples”, says Walker.
“That’s mad growth, right?”
Branching out
One unexpected move for the firm is its work with asset managers. Initially, Walker and team started working with wealth management start-ups. “Wealth managers that were new and perhaps had just left a big outfit to go out on their own became our first clients. They didn’t have the baggage of a company that’s been around for 10, 15 or 20 years.
“Eventually we evolved and were able to start working with more established companies such as Evelyn Partners and AJ Bell, and now AM Insights, in some cases, is the primary research tool for all their analysts.
“But what I hadn’t anticipated was that a couple of years ago we were approached by asset managers to start working with them. They had seen we had built a tool that’s fast, easy to use, accessible via mobiles to compare fund data – and that’s something they needed. I was sure they would have had all that data together, but it turns out they didn’t really. So, asset management has been another fast-growing area for us.”
Walker now has a team of 20 but is continuing to recruit and expects this to grow by three to four by the end of the year to service the growing list of clients and advances in technology – artificial intelligence (AI) has of course changed how things work at AM Insights.
“We are currently recruiting testers because that’s where the bottleneck is – the developers are able to develop much faster as a result of AI so we need testers to check this work out. AI has been pretty transformational for us, and I am sure we will hire more developers but maybe not as fast as we did before.”
Innovation
AM Insights has continued to be innovative and tried to keep at the forefront of fund buyers’ needs – the platform was the first data provider to include the ACT status alongside asset managers that had committed to be signatories, following feedback from clients. Walker is also a member of the ACT Stewardship Council, the body that ensures the corporate culture framework is evolving as the industry matures.
“When we launched, anything ESG was selling like hot cakes,” says Walker, “and I felt it was important for fund buyers to understand who was walking the walk versus just talking the talk. So I introduced something where fund buyers could see where which providers were aligned with TCFD, signatory to PRI and also their gender pay gap. We then added ACT and included the date they signed up.”
In another highlight, last year, the Investment Association selected AM Insights to be one of its five fintechs for the IA Engine Innovator programme, to receive support and mentoring.
“We got to speak at the IA’s emerging technology conference, which was an excellent experience and it gave us the rubber stamp, that we are really changing things and it allowed us to move up the hockey stick – really exciting.”
Next planned for Walker and AM Insights is a move into Europe, and data from across the continent is already live and European clients are on board.
“It’s a big change for us and comes as we celebrate our fifth birthday – so there’s lots to be celebrating!”
Looking back over the past five years, Walker identifies the most challenging parts of building the business as going to market with something that is being adapted frequently and quickly to keep with up with changing technology and demands.
“When it was first launched, the platform was significantly more basic. The challenge was going to market with something that was still cool. We would get feedback to say ‘it would be amazing if you could do this’. It was a case of knowing where you want it to be and what it can do for them but also that it’s not where you want it to be right now. It was bridging that gap… but we are constantly evolving with the functionality.”
But this also comes full circle into the most rewarding part for Walker: “Building something that is such a valuable and useful tool that’s making a big difference for our clients.”
As one of a few successful female entrepreneurs in the City, it is refreshing to chat with Walker about the challenges and how she overcame them especially when she is clearly passionate about doing a good job of it, and changing the industry. She is the first to admit she is still in learning mode – “it has been an extremely steep learning curve, I’d say I have been learning something new every single day” – but is clearly relishing this opportunity.
“It’s super exciting, I want to enjoy the moment but I also can’t wait for what’s next,” she says.
