Financial Leader Interview: Roisin Levine - Head of Banks - Flux

Welcome to our interview series where we speak with Financial Leaders exploring how businesses today are able to leverage the time of their talent to everyone’s advantage.

My name is Isaac Feiner and I am the Founder of Lifepoint Healthcare. I am also privileged to sit on the Executive of The Association of Medical Insurers & Intermediaries as an Executive Committee Member. If you’re a Financial Leader and would like to be interviewed please get in touch via my LinkedIn profile.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Roisin Levine Head of Banks at the Flux, an incredible business. Flux is a digital receipts and rewards platform that lives inside your banking app. They are on a mission to liberate the world's receipt data by making store receipts truly digital - which means you'll never need another paper receipt again!

Our chat was fascinating and covered a variety of topics such as Flux's service and vision, employee happiness, work life balance, how companies are maintaining their priorities with regards to the health and wellbeing of their employees whilst maintaining profitability and applying a unique tailored approach Flux have taken. We touch on COVID 19, social distancing, home working, trends and challenges employers may face with the return to an office environment.

Isaac Feiner: Hi Roisin, nice to meet you. For me, these interviews are about connecting with like-minded people, people who can make a difference, who are making a difference.

You know what I do. I run a health insurance brokerage called Lifepoint Healthcare. We provide private healthcare & employee benefits solutions. But I want to hear about you. I want to hear about Flux, what you're doing at Flux and what's Flux doing to change the world.

 Roisin Levine: Absolutely, I'm Roisin Levine and my position is Head of Banks at Flux. Flux has created an API for receipt data. So we work with banks and with merchants to deliver digital receipts. So fully itemized SKU level data that hasn't really ever been standardized and accessible before by API. Our mission ultimately is to rid the world of paper receipts so that receipt data can be leveraged to deliver better customer experiences.

 Right now we're based in the UK, and we have several banks working with us. But the ultimate goal really is to liberate receipt data globally because there are so many uses for this information, lots of cool things you can do to personalize banking experiences and to make life easier for people on many different fronts. That could be expensing or personalization of an offer or a reward from a retailer. It could simply be enriching the transaction for you, so you know what you're spending, and then a whole load of other cool stuff that can be done in the future. That's what we're all about.

 Isaac Feiner: Amazing. Just to simplify it for somebody who doesn't quite understand. I walk into Harrods and I buy myself a new scarf. So I pay with my phone or my card, and then what happens?

Roisin Levine: So within a few seconds, you should then have a receipt delivered into your banking app or the card issuer’s app that you've used. So if you were to use your Monzo card, for example, then you would simply tap your card as usual. Then what you would see on your mobile banking app is the receipt actually within that transaction view. So usually where you just have the amount and the merchant name, you would then see a full itemized breakdown of what you just purchased.

 Isaac Feiner: Amazing.

Roisin Levine: That should be instantaneous. What we're doing is we're taking the information, usually from the POS system of the merchant and the card transaction information of what just happened from your bank and we're matching those two things together and then delivering a receipt back to you very, very quickly. So you no longer need to take that paper receipt.

Isaac Feiner: Okay. Amazing. Just a question. Doesn't the information normally get emailed anyway? So people get emails or no, most companies, don't do that, do they? It's just some of the more advanced shops.

Roisin Levine: Yeah. So there are certain shops that use email receipting, and obviously online is one of those places where you'll always get an email receipt. Generally speaking, in the offline world, email receipts can cause a bit of, I guess, friction or extra time at the till. If you can imagine if you're there and then after you've paid, someone has to then talk through what your exact email address is and ask your permission to then send that. You end up with a bunch of different receipts, usually at different email addresses that aren't particularly easy to find.

What we believe is that if we have receipts living right next to the transaction view of all your different payments on your bank statement in your mobile app, that is a much better place for the receipts to live.

Isaac Feiner: One location.

Roisin Levine: So you can imagine it's much more convenient. Exactly. You could maybe search amongst that and find those receipts when you need them. At the same time, we do also work with online merchants that do obviously use email receipts. The reason we will also work with them is because they also see benefits of having their receipt information in the banking app.

Sometimes it's to avoid confusion. So for example, sometimes people pay for things online and then later look back at their bank statement and think, "I'm actually not quite sure what that purchase was." But if you've got that full breakdown of what the information is, you're much more likely to understand it. There's obviously other cool stuff that a merchant can then do in conjunction with our partners.

For example with merchants, once they have receipts and integration with a banking app, it obviously provides them with a place in which there's an ability to put offers to customers, and people use their banking apps multiple times a day. So it's a perfect place for an offer to live.

Isaac Feiner: Absolutely.

Roisin Levine: If you think about it, once you have that understanding of where your customers are shopping, what kind of things they like, then you can start to create offers that are much more relevant to what they actually want, rather than a generic or blanket offer in the hope they might got to your shop.

Isaac Feiner: Very good.

Roisin Levine: You can start to think, "Well, I know they like coffee, but they often don't buy this with it. So therefore we can discount that other item."

Isaac Feiner: I like that. I think it's a very clever idea, and I wish you immense success in everything that you're doing and getting people on board and buying into the idea. I think doing interviews like this is really going to help you get more exposure and publicity. I think it's a fantastic idea. I love the website as well, by the way. It's really nice & modern.

Roisin Levine: Yeah. We recently rebranded. Yes I think it's a really, really nice clean messaging, and we sort of changed the color a little bit. But we have an amazing designers, Gids, he's really great.

 Isaac Feiner: So thank you so much for sharing this about Flux. I'm really grateful because like me, a lot of people might not know what it is.

Isaac Feiner: So, you're involved in a growing organization. You've obviously got an insight on what I'm about to ask you & I’d like to tie it back into the subject about employees, profitability, wellness and time management. So from your position, as Head of Banks, how do you see organizations leveraging the time of their employees to the business advantage, taking into account wellness and profitability?

Roisin Levine: Yes. I think it's an interesting subject. It's obviously a challenge right now to have that togetherness that you generally have when you're in an office and you can make a statement or the CEO can sit down and say, "Well, this is our targets this month" . So you still need ways of communicating that to employees.

Roisin Levine: I think at Flux, we do a really good job on that. So we have OKR's, people are very clear of what our ultimate mission is and how everyone's role fits into that mission. I think that the change that we're currently going through, where people are working remotely just means there has to be a heightened awareness and sensitivity on, I guess, scheduling meetings. There's this view of Zoom fatigue.

 There's a view that if you work all hours a day, there's going to be a burnout and people struggling with, I guess, the end of the day clocking off and just being able to say what's work and what's home life. So I think we have awareness there. But I think really with Flux, what we've tried to do is ask almost every employee, and I think this has been something that's recently been carried out by Jerry, who's our head of people, ask each employee about their current situation, because what we noticed is that everyone has a different way of dealing with this.

 So a "one size fits all" approach to employee wellbeing unfortunately just doesn't really work in the circumstances. A perfect example is when you come to the office, everyone has the same facilities. Everyone works in one unified space. You have the same coffee machine and whatever else and internet provider. But when you’re at home, there's lots of different setups. So some people are living with multiple different people in their household. Some people have kids. Some people have a garden and nice outside space that they can sit in.

 So I think that what we've tried to do is have a more individual approach and tailored approach to how we help the employees that maybe haven't got the set up that they love right at this moment.

 What do they need? Is it just a faster internet connection? Is it a quiet space? Is there better equipment? Is it that actually it's a really tough time? So maybe people just want a bit of downtime. Also another thing is trying to encourage people to take holidays, it is a funny one at the moment, because I think a lot of people have this view that it's a bit of a waste of time to have a holiday or an annual leave day when you can't really go anywhere.

 But it's actually really important because we've all had quite a stressful time. Ultimately, you still need that away time from a desk, where you don't have to answer an email or don't answer the phone. Even if it's not the most exciting time to be off, it does give you that clarity and relaxation. So that's something that I think we very recently have tried to encourage in our public announcements. when we do a weekly wrap up to say, "Look, if you want a holiday, make sure you take one, because it could well be awhile till we all get to go away to somewhere far flung, but it doesn't mean you don't need that week off or a few days to distract yourself from work.

Isaac Feiner: Thank you for that. I think it's a really unique perspective from what I've heard. I've interviewed quite a few people at this point. But I think you're one of the first people who have shared this idea about individualized approach. I think it's really quite unique and special because I think it's a really good idea for companies to hear about, if they're not aware of it. I think it's special because everyone is in a different situation in different scenarios. I think there has to be a slightly more tailored approach.

 Isaac Feiner: So looking further ahead, what trends do you see when it comes to businesses protecting their employees and their employee time to support and grow their business? So what trends do you see that the employee and companies are going to be doing, putting in place, projects, ideas, initiatives to support their staff and their employee time, which ultimately will lead to growing their business?

Roisin Levine: So I think the obvious one, and I'm sure it's a common theme, is that given that we're all working from home, there is a realization that this can be something that can be done more often for companies that previously never really had "work from home" policies. A lot of those will be watching this period. If things go well and a business doesn't suddenly shut down and maybe some of their greatest fears realized, then they'll know that actually people can be productive and happy working from home. Actually, maybe that provides them with a better work/life balance that overall has had a great effect on the company.

 So I think what will happen is we'll likely see far more of it, especially given we've got maybe a few months where work from home and remote working is definitely mandatory for many companies. But once we get out of this phase, there will be a much more pragmatic approach to these huge offices, are we better off, rather than paying huge amounts in rent, actually making sure the home work setups for employees are better, and that maybe two or three days of the week, they are feeling like they're safe and secure to work from home, and they have everything they need.

Roisin Levine: Actually, that could be a better way and it might be more cost efficient. But I think that beyond that, they will also realize that there still needs to be some sort of, I guess, meeting or centralized way.

Isaac Feiner: Community spirit.

Roisin Levine: Where everyone feels together in some sense. It might not be that actually we have a gathering that is in an office or out or somewhere else, but there might be ways that you can join in with things that are online. So we try and do things like games nights at Flux. We try to have some form of entertainment, where someone might showcase what they're up to. It just creates that feeling that you're still together. There's still moments where we can take away from talking about work and we do something that's a bit more fun. I think a lot more inventive things will come from that because people will just have to be more creative because ultimately if this carries on and maybe more and more of your staff are working remotely, but you still want to keep that community aspect. I think we'll see some really clever ideas coming out.

Isaac Feiner: I think so.

Roisin Levine: We'll probably see some companies popping up that actually specialize in this. Whereas at the moment, you have lots of companies that specialize in workspace and design of offices and layouts and where you might place a coffee table or a bean bag or whatever. You'll probably have a company that specialize in actually, how do you keep a remote world entertained.

Isaac Feiner: I think there'll be some real winners from that. Those that are, I guess, set up may be more nimble to deal with that. Smaller companies and start-ups will find it easier initially, but I think that the corporates will definitely get involved. Actually, I think a lot of them are faring far better than they previously thought they might.

 I think you've actually hit it on the head. These are great ideas that you're bringing awareness to. I personally think it will be a hybrid type approach, similar to what you're saying, where I don't think you can have it completely out of the office because whether it's bringing on new staff or training or that cohesiveness or that creative spirit that's created just by all being together. Even just shouting across the room, somebody is on the phone, it's a different experience.

 Isaac Feiner: Looking forwards, what challenges do you think we'll find when it comes to those trends? So we've mentioned a few trends that you think might come about. What challenges do you think we'll face?

 Roisin Levine: I think the most obvious one is the communication, collaborative working, the small things that are very hard to quantify and, I guess, the things you don’t realize you're missing when everyone is remote. People already talk about how they miss just being able to chat to someone else or a different team while they are by the coffee machine. These are things that you can't quite replicate in an online format, even if you have Teams or Slack or whatever else, and you can have chats about whatever and fun things. It's not quite the same.

Often those smaller conversations, those side of the desk conversations, can lead to some of the more inventive aspects of work. You hear something else from another team that is not something you were aware of, or somebody sparks your interest in a certain project. I think that's the stuff that's really difficult to know when we're going to miss out on. I'd be interested to see how companies try to still foster that collaboration.

It might be that you have to almost have a bit of a formal process in place where you do things like, I know there's a way on Slack where you can do “donut”, which is basically they link you up with another person at random and say, "Grab a coffee." So it might be that we have to force that approach a bit more so than it would happen naturally in an office space. But it's a challenge because you do still want people to talk, even if you think I'm not sure there's something really relevant I need to speak to that person about. So I think it's still fostering that communication is going to be one of the tough challenges, but I think there'll be ways to do it.

Isaac Feiner: I agree with you. Look we don't know how it will all play out so if companies are missing out on something, because there isn't that type of personal close collaboration, because of the distance thing, we won't know what the effect will be. I think we'll only really know how it will play out in a year or so when we could see company figures, company stats, bottom line results, the tests and metrics that they use to, to see how teams are getting along, creative outputs.

 It's a massive experiment that's going on. I think time will tell. I think what will happen is there'll be this period of it's in the oven, it's cooking, and we're experimenting. We don't really know how it will play out. All we can do is anticipate the trends and the challenges with regards to those trends, try and do the best that we can at the moment, and then look at the results and see what's working, what isn't working, what needs to change.

Roisin Levine: Yeah. It's an interesting one.

Isaac Feiner: It is. I'm really grateful that you've taking the time to speak to me about this. It's really refreshing hearing your thoughts on this, to be honest. There's been a lot of negativity going on, which I try and distance myself from, but you seem very upbeat and very positive and very creative in your thought process about how you think things will play out. I'm very grateful for that.

Roisin Levine: That's no problem. It’s a pleasure... let's speak again and best of luck with everything for the rest of the week.

Isaac Feiner: Thank you very much. God bless you. Take care.