Swave, a smart savings startup founded by two former hedge fund data crunchers, is to undergo a 12-week innovation immersion with Lloyds Banking Group after winning a financial literacy challenge run by Innovate UK. Tapping in to the algorithmic trading expertise of founders Krissy Bordas and Ross Tappin, the Swave app is designed to sit alongside and complement a personal banking app. Using an algorithm to detect spend on ‘luxuries’ such as meals out and cinema tickets, Swave highlights the opportunity to save either the equivalent amount, or a percentage into a savings account. Following Swave’s achievement at the innovation challenge, Lloyds invited Bordas and Tappin to base themselves in the bank’s digital hub in London for 12 weeks, where they stand to benefit from input from the bank’s digital team as they build their proposition. Tappin says: “Being able to base ourselves right in the centre of Lloyds’ innovation team means that we can appreciate first hand the considerations that we need to make to ensure what we’re offering not only offers a great user experience, but that we have the technical capabilities to scale our offering in line with demand.” During the 12 weeks being spent with Lloyds, he says Swave intends to launch a pilot to test the app in advance of a full rollout early next year. Marc Lien, Lloyds Banking Group’s director of innovation & digital development says: “We’re able to share with Krissy and Ross what we have learnt going through similar product and proposition development. In turn, we can understand the different considerations that they are able to make as an innovative start up, making this a great example of the mutual benefit for both banks and Fintechs that collaboration can bring.”
Lloyds Bank is supporting early stage start-up, Swave, which has raised £1m in a Series A funding round. The Swave app aims to use an algorithm to detect spend in "luxuries" such as meals out and cinema tickets and highlight the opportunity to save an equivalent amount, or a percentage of it, in a savings account. Lloyds has invited Swave to spend 12 weeks based in its digital hub, benefiting from its experts, during which time the start-up plans to launch a pilot to test the app head of next year’s launch.