Issue 10 2019

10 CEO MONTHLY / ISSUE 10 2019 , The footballer turned Fin Tech CEO Swedish footballer Philip Haglund used time out of the game when he was injured to create an app to equip the next generationwith financial super-skills. Nowhis company, Gimi, has been named one of the top 250most promising FinTechs in the world. Alison Brinkworth talks to the CEO about how it came about and what lies ahead. Philip Haglund has already embarked on a successful career as a professional footballer but it’s his FinTech start-up that is setting him the most goals. The 32-year-old Swede juggles playing as a striker for Swedish team IK Sirius with being CEO of Gimi, the financial application he founded in 2014 that has recently become the first neo-bank in Sweden developed primarily for children. Stockholm-based Gimi teaches children from the age of seven about the meaning of money through the popular pocket money and chores app. It already has 1.2 million users, predominantly in the Nordics, and in coming months Gimi is officially expanding into other parts of Europe. That includes the UK, where the app already has almost 40,000 users through word of mouth alone. Shaking up the digital banking industry further, Gimi this year launched the Gimi Card in Sweden – a special Mastercard for children aged 10 and over, which allows parents to preload money onto a card for their children to spend in stores and online. It’s linked to the Gimi app and enables young people to dip their toe into spending and saving their own money with the safeguard of parents having some control. Over 10,000 Swedish parents have expressed an interest in the Gimi Card for their children and Haglund explains that he is preparing to roll it out to other countries soon starting with Norway and the UK. The plan is to have 3 million active users in the next three years. [The first ever neo-bank for children in Sweden] The Gimi Card, currently only available in Sweden, makes Gimi the first neo-bank – a special kind of digital bank like Monzo and Atom Bank - that has been developed specifically for children. The card and app helps young people understand basic financial concepts and money management but has also successfully engaged Generation Alpha, born after 2010 and the next generation of bank users, in a way that traditional banking institutions are struggling to do. Philip Haglund said: “Financial literacy is an important topic worldwide because although schools teach maths and medieval history, knowledge about personal finances is lacking. “Kids are simply not being taught how to save money, or what a mortgage really means, and these and other blind spots can have devastating consequences for them later in life. Financial illiteracy is one of the biggest social issues facing today’s and tomorrow’s society and Gimi hopes to address that. [“Fin Techs have emerged because traditional banks aren’t changing.] “All banks need to show profitability and it’s hard to do that with the youth segment. What I am doing with Gimi is educational and the effect of what I am doing will be seen in 10 years’ time when these children have grown up.” Gimi’s record over the past five years speaks for itself. In Sweden alone, there are already 500,000 children using the app – the equivalent of one in every five children under 16 in the Scandinavian country. Last year, CBInsights named Gimi in the Top 250 most promising Fin Techs in the world in the digital banking category and it has raised £4.2m from investors including Collector Ventures, financial expert Harald Mix, and iZettle’s General Council Oskar Arndt. [How Gimi came about] It was when Haglund was playing for football team IFK Göteborg that he suffered a serious injury to his cruciate ligament in 2014, which triggered him to come up with the business venture and put the economics skills he learned at university to use. “I was out of action for nine to 12 months with a bad injury and when I was lying on the sofa, I felt I had lost my identity and couldn’t do what I was good at anymore,” recalls Haglund. “So, I looked at the big trends in the market and changes in society over the next five to 10