Australian FinTech company profile #92 – ClearScore
- Company Name: ClearScore
- Website: www.clearscore.com/au
- Key Staff & Titles:
Stephen Smyth, Managing Director Australia & Head of International
Justin Basini, CEO and Founder
- Location(s): Sydney
- In one sentence, what does your fintech do?:
ClearScore make finances simpler and easier for people so they can save money, starting by giving them their credit report for free.
- How / why did you start your fintech company?:
Justin Basini, the founder and I (Stephen Smyth), both worked at a credit card company Capital One. In many different countries we have seen that the problems for individuals with finances are the same. Financial services are not interesting, they are too complicated and it’s too hard to find a better deal. Justin created ClearScore to solve this problem by making it easy for people to find better deals on credit cards and loans. I have helped ClearScore expand overseas to South Africa, India and Australia.
- What is the best thing your company has achieved or learnt along the way (this can include awards, capital raising etc)?:
We’ve learnt that there is enormous demand for a better way to connect people with lenders and vice versa. We now have over 12m users worldwide, many of whom come back month after month. Lenders also love our platform as we are able to match the rights users to the right product because of the way we allow them to target appropriate individuals by showing their offers to people with the relevant credit history.
- What’s some advice you’d give to an aspiring start-up?:
1. Test your hypotheses. It’s not enough to have a great idea, you have to test it in market and see if people want to really use your product.
2. Focus on unit economics. Understand how much money and return you will make per customer, investors want to invest in businesses with great growth potential fuelled by profitable unit economics.
3. Do lots, but also think deeply about the most important problems. Start-ups need to hustle but they also have to be better at cracking the toughest problems for their users: only by executing better than competitors will you win.
- What’s next for your company? And are you looking to expand overseas or stay focussed on Australia?:
ClearScore believes its mission to help users with their finances is relevant across the globe. We intend to launch a new country every 1-2 years.
- What other fintechs or companies do you admire?:
Capital One: the home of test and learn in financial services.
Transferwise: for solving a customer problem with a easy to use forex service
Apple: for putting great customer experience at the heart of their business model
- What’s the most interesting or funniest moment that’s happened in your company’s lifetime?:
The most interesting, if not very funny, has to be Covid crisis that we are currently living through. Our role to help people with their finances seems more important than ever but the willingness of lenders to lend has dropped below even what was seen in the GFC. This impacts our revenue and our users ability to raise finance. We’ve had to make tough choices on how to conserve our cash and find new partners and new innovations. We think we will emerge stronger and with a better proposition for users!
