![]() ![]() “Ensure that you’re able to add value to them.” “Be clear on your strategy, who are the right types of shareholders for you to focus on bringing on to your register, and why they may be interested in you,” he says. Be clear on your strategyįor founders hoping to raise some capital and kick-start their startup growth, Baum’s advice is to understand what you want to get out of an investment, and to target the right investors to provide it. Tic:Toc is a “disruptor of the process and the poor historical practices,” Baum adds. “Our philosophy on fintech is that the most successful fintechs disrupt … the current distribution landscape and customer experience, but still actually partner with banks,” he says. Rather, he sees the fintech working “in partnership with banks”, collaborating with the institutions to change the disintermediated way in which the home-loan approval process has previously been managed. That said, Baum doesn’t necessarily consider Tic:Toc an industry disruptor. “We saw the opportunity and we’ve gone for it.” “We saw with the reaction to Tic:Toc that the market is crying out for a much better customer experience in the home loan space,” says Baum. The reason the property sector is so attractive to startups is because it’s “the most relevant from a consumer perspective”, while also being profitable. “We thought about what is possible in the major asset classes, and really home loans stood out to us … the home loan space in Australia represents about half of industry profitability,” he says. “The first phase of fintech was really some of the low-hanging fruits,” he says, with startups initially focusing on payments, unsecured loans, small-ticket loans and the underbanked SME segment. “We’re seeing a number of things coming together that are going to make the financial services landscape ripe for disruption,” Tsen said.īaum suggests Tic:Toc, and other property-finance startups, represent something of an evolution in the fintech space. Tsen cited the banking royal commission changes to authorised deposit-taking institution licensing the advent of ‘open’ banking and the launch of the New Payments Platform as among the reasons why it is becoming easier for startups to emerge and scale. New chair of FinTech Australia Alan Tsen recently told StartupSmart we’re currently in a “perfect storm” for fintechs. The fintech sector is also seeing plenty of startup activity of late, with SME-focused cross-border transaction startup Airwallex securing $109 million earlier this month, in the biggest venture capital raise in 2018 so far. In May, cloud-based digital home loan platform Athena, which offers home-buyers lower-interest loans backed by super funds, raised $15 million in Series A funding.Īlso this year, startups such as LocalAgentFinder, ActivePipe and Soho have raised millions for tech-based offerings intended to make the processes of buying a home simpler and smoother. Tic:Toc isn’t the first fintech to address shortcomings in the traditional property space. “Platform apps in financial services is something that’s going to be here very soon,” he says. Tic:Toc will also “increase marketing spend to bring on more and more customers”, he says.Īlthough the company has seen growth over its first year of trading, “to date, we’ve only done modest marketing”, he adds.īaum’s growth strategy is also pinned around some lucrative platform-as-a-service partnerships, details of which will be released in the next few weeks. ![]() ![]() While Baum doesn’t reveal the company’s current revenue figures, he say Tic:Toc is facilitating $40 to $50 million in home loans every month, and his original team of six people has grown to 43.Īccording to Baum, this investment comes at a time when the platform is ready to move to the next level and “has the capacity to process significant growth”.īaum says the funds will be used to further develop the technology and refine the platform, “broadening the proposition”. ![]()
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