Harnessing technology

Setting socially useful fintech businesses up for success

Our fintech team seek out socially useful businesses and work with them to deliver growth and positive outcomes for their and our customers.

1 Dec 2022

Many people see fintech (financial services technology) as a confusing world of limitless new trends and constantly evolving buzzwords.

Wian Pieterse, Managing Director, Fintech at Legal & General draws on his actuarial background to plot a clear path through it. His analytical, data-focussed approach helps him and his team find and support socially useful businesses working in these core areas:

  • Workplace: financial wellbeing, health, payments / neo-banking, and workplace savings
  • Home: mortgages, equity, home buying and renting, surveying
  • Health: insurance, protection, health technology and later life care
  • Wealth: wealth accumulation, retirement, advice, pension tracing, personal investing

Wian and his team also evaluate opportunities against our climate change and broader ESG goals, and look for opportunities to create structured assets that fit our annuity fund requirements. They’ve had a busy year developing our fast-growing portfolio of fast-growing businesses.

Fintech: supporting greener transport

Our investment in electric car subscription service Onto is a good example of our approach. Onto want to make electric cars affordable, flexible and sustainable. The team’s helping them expand in line with growing UK and European demand for affordable green transport, supporting the UK’s move to net zero.

This funding round is a huge milestone for Onto as it sets us off on our journey to Europe. We believe that making it simple and easy to get an electric car is essential to building a sustainable future.

Rob Jolly

CEO and co-founder at Onto

Fintech: delivering financial freedom

Moneyhub is a leading provider of open data and specialist API connections for banking and finance organisations. It lets customers access accurate, real time financial data, helping them analyse their spending and saving habits, and make better financial decisions.

We’re hoping it’ll benefit our own customers too. Our wealth proposition vision for retail customers includes a new consumer app with integrated Moneyhub capabilities. It might suggest where you could boost your savings account by cutting down on treats or luxuries, or offer well-timed reminders to check in on your pension contributions.

Fintech: financing homes for everyone

Generation Home is an innovative mortgage lender. It wants to ‘make everyone a homeowner’. So, it helps first time buyers onto the property ladder by making it easy for friends and family to support them. It’s also cutting mortgage processing times, looking to secure offers for customers 10 days faster than traditional lenders.

Legal & General plays a significant role in the home buying and financing ecosystem, and we intend to work closely with the Gen H team to deploy our expertise and help many more customers trying to buy or refinance a home.

Wian Pieterse

Managing Director, Fintech, Legal & General Retail

 A long-term history of future-focused investing

That’s all part of our longer-term history of socially responsible investing in fintech to make a positive difference. For example, our longstanding partner Salary Finance helps employees across the UK avoid costly payday loans by drawing down their pay as they earn it.

Pieterse and his team will keep building on that history as they go into 2023. They’ll work hard to set socially useful businesses up for success as they scale by investing conscientiously and supporting them closely, taking them from “start up” to “scale up” to “grown up”.