Chip sees “big opportunity” to own wealth building space, as gears up to launch investment products

The CEO of Chip believes the savings app has a “big opportunity” to own the wealth building and wealth management space as it gears up to launch its first investment products next year.

Simon Rabin said: “I wonder whether what’s happened now with interest rates basically has made cash a bit of a dead asset.”

“And we are going to see an enormous trend towards passive investment funds, passive diversified investment funds, that consumers are going to become as comfortable with as they have been having their money in cash.”

Rabin said that during Covid and a period of low interest rates, its customers have wanted to earn returns outside of cash deposits.

Chip is planning to offer access to funds and ETF’s but not direct equities under its premium account offering launching next year.

Rabin believes current incumbents in the wealth building and wealth management space are underserving customers.

On Robinhood, in particular, he said it appealed to “hobbyists”.

On roboadvisors generally, he said: “They don’t necessarily give people the effective tools to build wealth and put themselves in a better or improved financial situation going forward.”

Earlier this year, Chip raised over £10m in a Crowdcube campaign.

On the merger between Crowdcube and Seedrs, Rabin said it was “good for young companies” but hopes the new company is more Crowdcube than Seedrs.

He said Crowdcube is “a bit more about leveraging your community and engaging your customers with your brand and with your product rather than Seedrs felt a little bit more transactional.”

Chip is now four-years-old and says it has helped savers put aside over £165m over the period.

Rabin added: “We started out by automating savings in order to make putting money aside as effortless and simple as possible, and now we’re on track to revolutionise wealth building by making it automatic."

“2020 has been an incredibly big year for us. Not only did we double the user base, triple the team and close our biggest funding round to date, but we also launched features that allow our users to build wealth and save for the longer term.”