Index's @narimer channelling the @anthemis thesis: "I’ve always seen the financial services industry as merely a collection of businesses that exist to match these different cashflows with the right counterparties. My partners and I at Index recognize that the Internet is a tremendous enabler for marketplace businesses of all types and over the last couple of years, we have been attracted to entrepreneurs leveraging this power to bring greater efficiency, transparency and performance to the financial services industry."
Saving Private Savings | Index Ventures Not 100% convinced that rate-shopping is a sustainable long-term business opportunity (at least not direct-to-consumer) but am impressed with WeltSparen's approach which seems to (finally - so many others attempts have been so Moneysupermarket in this regard) leverage technology in this space intelligently. And Index is smart money so I might very well need to rethink. One of the key problems with rate-shopping is that it tends to ignore basic ALM risk management tenets, in particular with respect to credit and liquidity risk (can anyone say IceSave?) - and tends towards a natural adverse selection bias. For the (good) borrowers (banks), it is generally easier and more cost-effective to tap institutional/interbank markets for marginal deposits (rather than chasing fickle, rate-sensitive deposits.) If I were at WeltSparen (or an investor) however, I have a few ideas of where I would take the technology they've built. Will be interesting to watch and see if they ultimately pivot into the business model I envision... Either way, I hope they succeed - both for my friends at Index, and because the world needs smart folks like this to help re-invent financial services.