18
FEATURE
WEDNESDAY 15 FEBRUARY 2017
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MeetProdigyFinance:Thefintech
firm thatwentglobalondayone
W
ITH Trump in the White House
and a hard Brexit on the horizon, protectionism is back on
the menu. Many entrepreneurs are concerned about the implications for the
free movement of goods, capital and
people. But at a recent Leap 100 breakfast, chief executive and co-founder of
Prodigy Finance, Cameron Stevens,
sounded a note of cautious optimism.
Prior to founding Prodigy Finance,
Stevens was at Insead, where he and his
co-founders witnessed students domiciled outside the US unable to access
funding. They found it paradoxical that
a graduate could be accepted into the
best universities in the world but not be
trusted to pay back a student loan. “It
seemed like a problem worth fixing,”
says Stevens.
Prodigy Finance took international
graduates who had been cast aside by
banks and lent to them – initially just
through alumni networks, but now also
through a pool of impact investment
funds. Like so many entrepreneurs, he
wanted to find the “intersection of
doing something meaningful for the
world, but also build a profitable, highgrowth business.”
Prodigy Finance was founded in 2007.
“Fintech wasn’t sexy and it wasn’t called
fintech and everyone just thought of us
as crazy.” His advice from a credit lawyer
was straightforward: “Please don’t do
this. This is the only advice we’re going
to give you. You’re going to regret it.” So
far, Stevens has nothing to regret:
Prodigy Finance has provided over
$250m of funding to graduates from 118
different countries, with a 99 per cent
repayment rate.
Banks remain restricted by local considerations when offering their services.
Stevens thinks it’s “ridiculous that
they’re so nationally orientated. Most
internet services are going global, but
most financial services are still local. We
IN
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ten
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TO ACCESS TH E SK ILLS YOU N EED?
think that’s going to change.” He says
there’s been a fundamental shift in how
the world works. Just because someone
has moved country, it shouldn’t make it
harder to collect their debt. LinkedIn
and other platforms allow banks to
keep track of debtors; taking the slow
boat to China is no longer a worry.
Prodigy Finance has been global from
day one, with Stevens praising
platforms such as Upwork and Clarity
for making it easier to scale. Technology
now allows entrepreneurs to “zero in on
that skill you need really quickly, and
effectively have the infrastructure of a
large multinational without having it
internally.”
But with offices in London, Cape Town
and N ew York, as well as a satellite office
in Bangalore, sometimes things get lost
in translation. Stevens recommends
employees read Erin Meyer’s Culture
Cameron Stevens:
“We’re seeing a
physically closing world
but a digitally opening
world”
Map to address “the problems that arise
with hiring people from different backgrounds and the mindsets they bring.”
His South African team don’t always
understand why the American team on
Skype video don’t take a couple of minutes out for personal interaction before
getting
down
to
business
–
“maintaining culture over multiple
locations can be very difficult.” To
address this, Stevens advocates “bringing the entire team together, physically
in one place.”
Stevens is optimistic for tech. He
thinks that the creativity of entrepreneurs will circumvent the protectionist
forces of Trump and Brexit. “Ultimately,
we’re seeing a physically closing world
but a digitally opening world so
position yourself to take advantage of
that, rather than be challenged by it.”
Sophie Jarvis
Higher education institutions could
provide more information about
their courses, the numbers
enrolling etc so that we can pick up
trends at an earlier stage and be
proactive in generating roles.
Graham Painter Chief executive Cream UK
A more vocational education and
a curriculum that enables young
people in the business world.
Finance and business
understanding at every level
would better prepare them than
the shock to the system that they
currently experience.
Stuart LucasFounder and co-chief executive AssetMatch
Callingentrepreneurs:Bevocalaboutthevisasystem youneed
T’S THE lull before the storm. O n 31
March, parts of the UK’s visa system
will be overhauled. When Article 50 is
triggered, European nationals will be
treated differently to how they are now,
but Theresa May is holding her cards
close to her chest – a little too close for
many European nationals, business
owners and immigration experts.
It’s not all doom and gloom – or at
least it doesn’t have to be. For the first
time in over a decade, Brexit presents an
opportunity to rewrite the UK’s visa system. We could reform parts of the system that aren’t working. For example,
alongside the London Chamber of
Commerce and the mayor’s office,
we’ve been making the case for a
London visa. But whatever the changes,
the aim should be the simplification of
the currently hard to navigate system,
where startups and scaleups face a con-
I
MISHCON
COMMENT
Maria
Patsalos
fusing plethora of choices. For company
founders, it’s a little like trying to navigate around London’s tube network
blindfolded.
A company usually needs to get a Tier
2 sponsor licence to employ a non-EEA
migrant. They are required to advertise
for the role in the UK and the migrant
must meet the labour market test and
the minimal salary requirements.
Entrepreneurs tend to come knocking
when they identify one person that they
need. The three-stage process is laborious for a small firm. First, they must
apply for the sponsor licence, which is
easy enough, but a third of companies
are then audited to ensure they have the
systems in place to monitor a migrant.
Business owners tend to shy away from
a knock on the door from the Home
O ffice. The business then must apply for
a certificate of sponsorship and finally
the migrant applies for a visa. The
process can take months and there are
Home O ffice and legal costs. Just
explaining the process scares off 90 per
cent of applications. It’s only when a
business starts to scale that the benefits
outweigh the costs.
A Sole Representative of an O verseas
Business visa is a useful visa category
because there is no investment required.
It’s for an overseas company planning to
set up a branch or subsidiary in the UK,
although the migrant can’t have a
majority shareholding or a controlling
interest. With £200,000 investment, the
Tier 1 Entrepreneur visa allows incoming entrepreneurs to invest in British
firms and get a visa, but they must be
made a director of the company.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. O ther
routes include the UK Ancestry visa, Tier
5 youth mobility and intern schemes,
intra-company transfer and Exceptional
Talent visas. These routes are testament
to the fact that successive governments
want talent to come into the UK.
But how should talent and skills be
defined? What the Home O ffice deems
to be a skilled and important job may
not reflect the necessary salary for a Tier
2 visa. Just consider the great British
fashion industry. It is suffering from a
shortage of talented seamstresses and
pattern cutters, and we don’t have the
further and higher education courses
that teach the skills due to a lack of
demand from British students. Is it
rational to try to force these skills out of
an unwilling native population, when
we could easily plug these gaps with
skilled immigrants?
Entrepreneurs are not helpless to
influence the system. The government
is consulting and appears to be
listening. When it announced a plan to
force companies to disclose how many
foreign workers they employ, the backlash was enough to make the government scrap the plans over the weekend.
Entrepreneurs across all industries
should be vocal about the sort of visa
system they need. It might be another
decade before we get another chance.

Maria Patsalosisa partnerin theprivate
departm ent at Mishcon deReya.
Billion
dollar
company.
Est. 2017
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