| Name: | Simon Nixon |
|
| Current Position: | CEO and Founder | |
| Current Organisation: | Moneysupermarket.com Financial Group |
|
| Background: | I started my entrepreneurial career by dropping out of my accountancy degree course at Nottingham University – I just knew I was not cut out to be an accountant.
After spending a few months selling insurance and mortgage products for a large brokerage, I noticed that there were no tools for brokers and Independent Financial Advisers to easily check, compare and source the best mortgage deals in the market. So for the next few months I toiled at the photocopier churning out a fortnightly magazine called Brokers Update, listing all the mortgages available in the UK. Brokers loved it, so I left my job, purchased a printing press and set up my own office in the local enterprise centre. Before long I had 3000 subscriptions and four staff. However, by 1990, it was clear that the future was in technology and the personal computer age soon meant that to survive and progress, a computer based “mortgage sourcing system” would be required to replace Brokers Update, enabling brokers to compare and source mortgage products direct on their PCs. Mortgage 2000 I persuaded my then girlfriend’s brother, a student in computer studies, to drop out of university and build a software program called Mortgage 2000 - so called because at the time there were 2000 mortgage products in the market - which is now used by over 7000 of the UK’s financial advisers and brokers to source the best mortgage products for their clients. Access to 7000 financial intermediaries allowed the business to leverage mortgage lenders, who agreed to pay the intermediaries higher commissions, whilst paying my business a fee for initiating highly targeted marketing opportunities provided through this broker database and mortgage sourcing system. moneysupermarket.com Having spotted the potential impact of the personal computer in the early 90s, by 1997/8 I was keeping a very close eye on the internet. In 1999 I decided to make a move and set up a B2C website called moneysupermarket.com. We adapted the Mortgage 2000 system and created a website where consumers could research mortgage deals themselves. We launched in December 1999 with two more channels, credit cards and personals loans, enabling consumers to source the best deals available in the market. This decision to expand beyond mortgages proved to be the best decision of all. We accelerated moneysupermarket.com market penetration and growth by partnering over 200 of the UK's leading internet service providers, portals, websites, and digital TV channels (including Yahoo, Freeserve, Auto Trader, many newspaper sites, Telewest and Sky), thereby developing a huge network for the distribution and sale of its services and products. We provide the moneysupermarket.com tools co-branded and free of charge to these partners, agreeing instead to split the fees earned (via deals negotiated with personal finance product providers) for every product sold via partner’s sites and TV channels. This revenue model was ground breaking at the time of launching. Three years later we receive over 60,000 visitors a day and have around 270 employees supporting the moneysupermarket.com business. We have relationships with nearly all the financial service companies in the UK. In January 2004, the moneysupermarket.com personal loan channel alone transacted over £200 million in loan applications and the credit card channel received more than 10,000 applications each day. We continue to reinvest our profits in new services, which we believe can improve the way people manage their online finances, shopping and searching habits. Intelligent Robots – 2nd Generation Search During 2001 and 2002 further significant investment exceeding £1M in software development continued, and 2003 saw the launch of account aggregation software under the name “View My Accounts”. This enables users to put all their financial accounts, including loans, mortgages, credit cards, savings and bank accounts onto ‘one page’ whilst demonstrating beside each account the potential financial benefits achievable by switching to the market leading provider. The account aggregation project was a big learning curve for me – our IT department expanded in numbers and talent – it is now 100+ strong and has delivered one of the Internets most revolutionary and exciting products – 2nd Generation Search using Intelligent robots. This technology has enabled us to launch two new channels in 2003, namely insuresupermarket.com and travelsupermarket.com. Our 2nd Generation Search software has enabled us to break into the Home and Motor Insurance markets. Consumers visiting our website can obtain home and motor insurance quotes simultaneously from 30 or more different providers, simply by completing one proposal document on the “insuresupermarket.com page”. This process provides the best buy option from a meaningful list of major insurers. The newest addition to the business was launched in Autumn 2003. This is a site allowing people to compare travel products. Travelsupermarket.com uses similar technology to insuresupermarket.com, but provides a comparison of short and long haul flights, car hire, all-in-one holidays and hotels. People are also able to use the site to purchase travel insurance at the same time. There are further markets in which we will use our 2nd Generation Search software to increase price transparency for consumers – our ambitions are ongoing. Business results As you would expect the company's turnover has grown dramatically from £3m in 1999 to £38m for the year ending December 2003, and is forecast to reach £60m for the calendar year 2004. All of this growth has been achieved by continuous reinvestment of profits and cash. As our results show it is not only business volume that is growing but also profit – our operating profit target for 2004 is set to double our achievement in 2003. The future www.moneysupermarket.com continues to empower the consumer to research and buy best value products, through transparency of process aided by state of the art software. This has been the ongoing theme since I launched Brokers Update in the late eighties, and has provided better value for consumers, whilst reducing costs of business acquisition for financial product providers. How have I been able to achieve all this? If I have any special skills I would say they include understanding how to make the most of marketing mechanisms coupled with the ability to motivate others. These skills manifest themselves as follows: • Firstly I have a good eye for spotting opportunities, and then making my fellow directors and staff equally enthusiastic and committed to realizing these opportunities. • Secondly, I have built each part of the business from the lessons learnt from each previous stage, as told by the history above. Each time we develop the next stage I invest (risk!) the profits and cash from the earlier successes, but extend the markets into which I have already proved my capabilities. • Thirdly, I have built my team largely from people I already knew, either through business contacts or as friends. Almost without exception they joined as they enjoyed the excitement of tackling new ventures, and not having to cut through the bureaucracy of their previous employers to make things happen. Although with now 270 employees there is inevitably some bureaucracy, we motivate all levels of staff with bonus earning opportunities, and senior employees and directors can earn equity stakes. The culture is informal but any staff who do not give 110% look out of place. • Fourthly, I have no intention of stopping this growth – within the UK market there are still massive opportunities to improve the marketing of financial (and other) products both “off line” and “online”, the latter including the internet, digital TV, and 3G – I intend to be at the forefront in taking up these opportunities. Outside the UK, Europe, which in most parts lags behind the UK in the marketing of financial products, will soon be ready for a moneysupermarket.com operation. With our reputation well established in the UK, I intend to take yet another big step by crossing the channel. To conclude, I am not a corporate being. My “team” take care of that. I remain the main ideas man of my business and am very proud to have created the Moneysupermarket.com Financial Group – my ongoing duty to my directors, managers and staff is to motivate them emotionally and financially – I shall depend on them if I am to continue to be a successful entrepreneur. |
|
| Related Links: |
|
|
| Current: |
PPC search engine marketing by Browser Media
Proactive hosting and
managed services provided by
Netstore Plc
Login