What is Vepel
Vepel combines wealth management services and everyday banking in a single app, making it easy for you to keep track of your finances and reach your savings goals. We use Machine Learning to make informed suggestions on how much you could save each month and find the most suitable portfolio for you.
Why We Built Vepel
Stock & Bonds.
In the last 30 years, large stocks have returned on average 10.7% per year (8.3% adjusted for inflation), and long-term government bonds have returned between 5%-6%. To provide an illustration, £10,000 invested at 8.3% for 10 years turns into £22,196.50.
Interest Rates & Inflation.
Over the last 3 years, the average interest rate on savings accounts (easy access ISAs) is approximately 0.48%. In comparison, the average inflation rate in the UK over the same period is 1.4%, which means the majority of savers are having their capital eaten away by inflation.
One Place To Manage Your Money.
Although there are many different wealth management platforms, we struggled to find one that offered both current and investment accounts. We wanted “a single source of truth” because we believe savings and spending are interdependent. Furthermore, allowing users to manage all their finances in a single app, opens up opportunities for sophisticated recommendations and key insight derivations.
Suboptimal Saving Strategies.
Saving can be challenging, and knowing the optimal amount to put away each month is even more challenging. As a result, many of us often employ static approaches including either saving a fixed amount or set a percentage each month. And while these have their place, these approaches can often result in under-saving or over-saving.
Banks.
Traditional banks often hold customer deposits in current accounts or term deposit products, such as fixed-term savings accounts and ISAs. They then lend a proportion of these deposits out to other customers through means such as overdrafts, loans and mortgages. The difference between the interest received from the loans and the interest paid to customers is known as net interest income. Over the last ten years, the average net interest increase across the top 5 UK banks (HSBC, Standard Chartered, NatWest Group, Lloyds and Barclays UK) is 2.26%.
The problems we saw with traditional banks are:
- Users have no control over who their money is lent to or the ways it’s invested.
- Users have no way of knowing where their money is at any single point in time.
- Users don’t know how much profit their money is making.
The Founders
Henry Hargreaves
Co-founder
