Jinesh Vohra: How to Pay Off Your Mortgage Faster

This transcript is auto-generated and lightly edited for readability, it may contain errors.

[0:00] Sammie Ellard-King: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Money Gains Podcast. This is your host, Sammie Ellard-King, and today my guest is Jinesh Vohra, CEO of mortgage app Sprive. Now, Sprive is doing some great work. If you download the app, you can overpay your mortgage utilizing their software, and it will directly tell you how much you’re overpaying, how much of your house that you own, there’s some wicked calculators on there. But one of the coolest features is the Sprive shopping part of the app, where you can shop at major retailers and get cash back from that retailer, which you can then contribute to your mortgage. And that really does help bring your interest down. It was a wicked conversation. We learned all about Sprive, all about the latest mortgage landscape and how things are shaping up right now. And we also have a promo code which is Gains. So if you download Sprive and pop in the promo code Gains into the app, you get £5 towards overpaying your mortgage. But if you’re listening on YouTube, please do like that subscribe button and on Spotify or appreciate this episode with a friend. Or hit the follow button. Do it right now. Really good. And for now, let’s get started on the Money Gains podcast. Jinesh, welcome to the Money Gains Podcast, man. How are you doing? You well? I’m well. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it’s gonna be a good one. I um I’ve been hearing all about Sprive pretty much from every financial influencer banging on about it for some time. And rightly so, because when I looked into it, I thought, wow, that’s cool. Uh what a great idea. Um if you wouldn’t mind giving the audience a little bit of a background and say hello to them.

[1:53] Jinesh Vohra: Yeah, hi. Um so like you said, I’m Jinesh Vohra. I’m the founder and CEO of Sprive. Um we’re a mortgage app that essentially home helps homeowners pay off their mortgage faster and save interest. So we do a lot of cool things. Um we help people kind of auto-save um money into what we call a Sprive account. Um with one tap, they can essentially make payments to their to their mortgage. So if people are familiar with like apps like Moneybox, Plum, Chip, um, so essentially we’re helping people scroll away based on your spending. So, say for example, it was like Christmas, and you know, you know what it’s like during Christmas, spending all your money on like presents and Christmas doing that, et cetera, et cetera, you’re probably gonna have a lot less money compared to like weeks and months where you’re doing a really good job, you’re saving, you’re spending less. Um, and so we use open banking and AI to kind of find out how much you can afford and essentially start chipping away in mortgage. Um, and just by doing that um on a regular basis, the average customer survived is on track to save about £8,000 in interest and pay off their mortgage three years earlier, which is which is pretty impactful. Um, but then we also we also realised that a lot of people are you know with interest rates rising and cost of living crisis, it’s it’s becoming more and more difficult even to put you know a few extra pounds um a month towards the mortgage. So then we built what we call shop with Sprive. So we partner with brands like Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, M&S, Waitrose, um, we’ve got um Primark, um, John Lewis, the list goes on Argos. Um, and so every time you shop at those brands with the with the app, within 15 minutes you get paid extra money, um, which you could once have, you can essentially pay towards your mortgage. So, say for example, you recently made a mortgage and you’re paying 5-6% on your mortgage, effectively investing that kind of cash back um and getting a 5-6% tax-free return, which is again super powerful. And so we find that people that are doing the auto savings but also doing the shopping are on track to save about 18,000 pounds in interest, which is which is which is huge. Um, and then we do other ancillary benefits like we scan the market every day for better mortgage deals. If our customers can find a better mortgage deal, we’ll help them get some, we’ll help them get the mortgage. Um, and so yeah, think of us as a mortgage app geared to do two things. One is to help you save as much interest as possible, and B to help you pay off your mortgage as quickly as possible.

[4:07] Sammie Ellard-King: Wow, that’s amazing. So you’ve really um you know, it’s kind of a hot topic at the moment. Mortgages is uh, you know, it’s been in the news non-stop recently. So how does that work? Does it automatically come off your card payments? So does the Sprive know from open banking that you’ve spent with, say, a John Lewis? Yeah, so in terms of how we how do we know like your your spending behaviour is all through open banking. So the foot one of the first things you do when you sign up to the app is we ask you to link your bank account, and it could be any bank account that you have. So you you know it doesn’t matter if your mortgage, say with NatWest, it doesn’t matter. You can link a Monzo account, you can link a HSBC account, etc. Any any bank account where you have money. Um that allows us to do two things. One is allows us to kind of see how much you can afford, and we always do it within limits um that you’re that you’re comfortable with. Um and then secondly, uh allows us to then fund um any kind of um overpayments that we make via the app. But the beauty is that if you say, for example, it just wasn’t a good month, it wasn’t, you know, maybe the next three months or maybe in the next year, you feel like you can’t put any extra money, you just hit pause on the app, or pause for a month, or pause for a week, or pause for three months, um, and then you can do the you do you can do the shopping. Um and the shopping is essentially um like partnerships that we have with the brands. So the way it essentially works is you click on the brand, say for example you’re at an Asda and your and your weekly shop comes to £100, you type in £100 within the app, you hit pay now, a QR code appears, you scan that QR code at the checkout, that pays for the the shop, and then within 15 minutes, you’ll get some cash, like five pounds, whatever it might be, into your Sprive account, which with one tap you then can go to your mortgage.

[5:55] Sammie Ellard-King: Oh, cool. So it’s kind of like following that kind of top cashback mantra, really, with that. But then you’re pay so you put the money into your Sprive account and then pay with the QR. Is that is did I follow that right? Yes, you don’t put the money into your Sprive account, you essentially um you essentially pay the brand via the via the app and we would give you the um the QR code um essentially that you then pays for the entire shop. Um and then within 15 minutes we will we will kind of credit you the cash. So like if you take apps like Quidco and Top Cashback, etc. etc., they work slightly differently. So that what the way that works typically is they give you a link that you kind of go into and then you decide to what you want to shop uh online and then you have like a a basket, and then once you pay for it, then maybe in a month or two months or three months you get some cash. Whereas ours is very much transactional based, you know, there and then you get the money, there and then you pay for the shop. There’s it there’s there’s nothing to do with like building up your basket, etc. etc. You just type in the amount um and then you hit pay now and then you’re good to go.

[7:02] Sammie Ellard-King: One of the big things for us at the moment, we’re currently looking, well, our mortgage is up in a couple of months’ time. Um, you know, we’ve been hanging on to see where things would go. Um, you know, in constant conversations with our mortgage advisor, and it’s just been like a really difficult decision. Um, you know, one of the big things for us is about being able to repay our mortgage earlier. Currently, our lender doesn’t allow that. Um what are you seeing in this landscape and and you know how are you kind of trying to navigate that for people? Yeah, so every lender kind of works a little bit differently. And so at the moment with Sprive, we support 12 of the largest lenders in the UK. So all the mainstream lenders, so if you’ve got a mortgage like Barclays, Santander, HSBC, um, nationwide, etc. etc., we can we can support homeowners. And so um we can support 80% of the of the of the market. And um next month we’re adding um Coventry Building Society, so we’ll have 13 soon. Um and the idea is that we always want to add more and more lenders, but you’ll find some lenders are much more forward-thinking um in their approach around around making overpayments, uh, some lenders are less so. Um, what I will say um is that most lenders make it a little bit more awkward than I I think it it should be. So a good example is I went through the journey of paying off my mortgage, and that was part of the inspiration for for starting Sprive. And I remember when I was making overpayments with my lender, my monthly payments started to drop. And initially I thought that was a really good good a good thing because every month I was paying less um less to my lender. But then once I lived into it, I realised that actually that was probably not what I wanted. I wanted to make these overpayments, but essentially keep my monthly payments the same. Um, and if I did that, that would mean that I’d essentially pay off the capital, but I’d also have the benefits of A, paying off my mortgage faster, but also B, which is more important, saving much more interest than if my monthly payments reduced. And most lenders that unfortunately the default is when you overpay, is to reduce your monthly payments. Now, if you go into any mortgage lender overpayment calculator, they’ll show you these amazing interest savings that you can have and how many years you can knock off by chipping away and making overpayments, but that isn’t the default. So, what you typically have to do is pick up the phone, call your bank, tell them you want to make overpayments, tell them that you want your monthly payments to stay the same, etc. etc. Um, and then you’ve got things like um early repayment charges, and a lot of people get worried about this concept of early repayment charges where you make overpayments, and if you make if you overpay too much within a certain time period, then you get hit with a penalty. Um and I remember when I was making overpayments, I was tracking how much of my allowance I was using via Excel spreadsheets. And and that’s part of the inspiration behind Sprive, is we guide every single homeowner every step of the way. We understand overpayments inside out, we understand the lender nuances inside out. Um, so you, you know, you even some things like early repayment charges, etc. etc. There’s a widget there where you can track how much of your allowance you’ve used, etc., so that you’re not doing this fine Excel spreadsheets. And so um, you know, one of the things we’re we’re trying to do is fill the gap that essentially lenders have left because it’s not necessarily in the lender’s interest to have everyone just overpaying on their mortgage and saving interest. And while they do permit it, I you know most lenders I don’t think will be actively encouraging it because ultimately it doesn’t impact their their bottom line. And so that’s when you know a company like Sprive can come in and kind of fill that gap, create innovation, make it easier. Because um, ultimately, right now, um, a lot of people are kind of stressed about their mortgage. And if you look at the numbers of like how much interest you’re likely to pay, like one of the first things, like if anyone’s listening and has a mortgage and is curious, um, you know, feel free to head to the app store, um, iOS or Android. And we’ve got some calculators that you can literally slide around and it’ll show you the cost of debt. And the cost of debt is just eye watering. I remember when I took out my mortgage, it said for every pound that I’d borrow, I’d be paying 50p in interest. Now I was borrowing over 300,000 pounds at the time, but that’s 150,000 pounds in interest, and that was when interest rates were practically less than one, um, one percent. Um, now you’re talking about you know, interest rates are five and a quarter percent, and that’s just the base rate. Um, you know, people are getting you know, mortgages five, you know, up to up to six percent. So that the amount of interest you’re paying over the lifetime is just um if things stay the same, um, is is is eye watering. And so the more you can do this, and the more lenders are like friendly around allowing people to do this, the better. Um, and so it’s another thing to think about when you’re remortgaging is if you’re thinking about overpaying, is understanding what what does your lender do around overpayments. You mentioned your lender maybe not be not being as as friendly, some lenders aren’t allow overpayments, etc. etc. Um, so yeah, it’s it’s a good thing to factor in. Some people just think about the rate, et cetera. Um, but I think you need to think about the mortgage more holistically. And obviously, the other team at Sprive, that can also help.

[12:09] Sammie Ellard-King: Uh, one of the things, um, so a friend of mine um has the app, uses it all the time, absolutely loves it. So um she let me have a play last week because uh I said you were coming on. Um and one of the things I found was it’s super slick and easy. Uh and for like the calculators were amazing. As you were saying, you know, you can really quickly see what I liked about it is was you would it would show you how long you were until you paid it off, and then you’d have the section where it said, Hey, you’re you know, you’re gonna save X amount of money and you’re gonna save X amount of time off your mortgage. And that was just so like eye-opening. It’s there and big and green, and you feel like you’re really contributing. And actually, once you start seeing that balance go up, you know, she’s been doing it for uh uh well over a year now, and like her balance has gone down quite a fair bit. I think she’s you know managed to overpay a few grand of her mortgage, which has made a significant difference in such a short space of time. Um what was the inspiration behind that that side of the app, like the design and the feel and and yeah, I mean I think a lot of it came from my own personal journey.

[13:15] Jinesh Vohra: So I remember when I was starting to make overpayments because I after I got over the shock of how much interest I was gonna pay, I decided that I wanted to do something about it. I sat down with my wife and we came up with a a bit of a plan. Um and so we were making these overpayments and I almost felt like they were going into a black hole. Like I was making these payments and I had no idea what was happening. Um the lenders wasn’t giving me any feedback, etc. etc. And so I always liked the idea of how cool would it be if I could visually see as I’m making overpayments the the the the benefit in terms of projected interest savings, um, how many years on one track to knockoff, um, and um and and we know we show like how much of your home you own. So maybe initially you own like 10% of your home, and then as you chip away, now I own you know 12%, now I own my bathroom, now I own my kitchen, you know, that kind of thing. So it’s just uh it makes it really tangible. Um and so um when we came up with the idea, I really, really felt like that was something we wanted to um to really demonstrate within the app. And when we when we first kind of were in that kind of design phase, we all we when we have this culture within Sprive is we want to be very customer-centric. So we’ll literally just go around speaking to homeowners saying, look, this is what we think we want the app to look like. This is the kind of the things we want to show you. We want you to um, you know, be a little bit you know, mortgages can be boring, but a little, you know, a little bit of excitement around just like um it can be quite addictive that you see oh on track to save maybe 500 pounds in interest, then suddenly you do a bit more and it’s a thousand, and that cumulative effect, and suddenly you feel really good about yourself and and and you’re and you’re getting you know that even even closer to you know to that dream of being um mortgage free. And and so yeah, there’s a lot of customer feedback as well, kind of helping shape in the product because I find a lot of uh financial services products can be very complicated and they throw too much information and they show these really complex graphs and amortization curves, etc. etc. And I and I and we kind of wanted to kind of really strip that back to like what are the core things that our customers need to know? And it can boil down to things like what percentage of your home you own, what’s your loan to value, how much interest are you on track to save, how many years you’re on track to knock off, when are you when or what you know, what date, what year are you projected to be free of your mortgage. And so we just really focused on things that customers really cared about.

[16:17] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, and it shows like it’s such a cool app. It’s super quick, super slick, as I was saying, and and you know, you can get set up and open an account in a few minutes and you’re you’re away. Um which I love, and that’s so important these days. People need access, they need to, they need the visual element of it. You know, when there’s uh a massive issue with with financial literacy in this company, uh country, and um, you know, people struggle to understand a lot of these mortgage terms, which are really for mortgage brokers and lenders, they’re not for the consumer. And so I think you’ve done a fantastic job at kind of changing that mantra. Um, you know, why do you actually really believe that overpayments are such an issue for you know some of the building societies and perhaps some of the smaller lenders out there? What what do you really believe that is? In terms of why why they’re not more open to allowing overpayments and Yeah, you mentioned forward thinking, but is it because you know they’re old institutions and find it difficult to change their ways? Like what is there an is there another issue that we’re not missing that we’re missing here?

[17:24] Jinesh Vohra: I think it I think it I mean it’s all um lender specific. I think every lender has their own business priorities. Um so some lenders um it’s maybe the way they’ve kind of um um priced their their their mortgages and uh from the underwriting perspective maybe they’re not comfortable with um people paying back because obviously it impacts their impacts their bottom line. Maybe they feel like it’s not something they their customer base is interested in. So typically what you find is when you when you remortgage with the big big lenders, their mass market um residential mortgages is typically their kind of their sweet spot. And so for them, because they’re so big and they they service so many customers, there’s gonna be a lot of customers who are interested in that in that feature. When you go to some of the smaller lenders, maybe they’re more specialist lenders, they’re focused on people with certain kind of um situations um with in terms of the finances, maybe they’re self-employed, maybe they’re um they they live in a uh in a certain flood zone, or maybe you know they’re they’re a lender that specializes um helping helping teachers or you know whatever it might be. Um and so for them, maybe that they feel like maybe their customer base is smaller, they have smaller budgets, maybe they feel like their customers don’t have the the ability to overpay. You know, things like shop with Sprive never existed in the past where you could do your shopping and just pay off your mortgage. Now anyone can make overpayments with Sprive. So you know, we’re changing the paradigm. But in the in the past, I think you know, maybe certain lenders didn’t think it was that important. Um, interest rates were relatively low for quite a period of time. We’ve got a decade of low interest rates. So again, when they’re thinking about business priorities, um, that could be low on the list because they’re thinking mountain rates are low, so people probably thinking about putting their money elsewhere.

[19:11] Sammie Ellard-King: So when it comes to actually making that overpayment, what what why why Sprive in this case? Why would I say not just say pay Barclays my my extra money? What’s what’s kind of added benefit there, I suppose? Yeah, so I think that there’s um I there’s a there’s a few. So one is the um the kind of so you can make ad hoc overpayments. So you can say every time you’ve got a bit of a cash, you just do a you know an ad hoc bank transfer from your banking app to the to the mortgage lender, or you could set up a direct debit. So you could just say every month I’m gonna put £50 and it just goes towards my mortgage. So the one of the benefits of Sprive, if you’re looking to put money through like spare cash and and through kind of saving, if you if you can afford to do so, is that your income and your spending changes um from month to month, especially if you’re self-employed, but even if you’re not self-employed, you’ll have some weeks where you spend and uh a lot, and some weeks you’ll save more, etc. etc. So why should your payments to your lender be so so ad hoc and so so static if you’re setting up a direct debit? For the beauty of Sprive is for say, for example, you sweep some cash and then your boiler breaks and you need that money back, one tap you can’t withdraw and that money goes real time back to your bank account. So it gives you lots of flexibility, lots of lots of control, but it adjusts automatically based on based on your your your you know your just your your spending pattern. So it’s a lot smarter, is one thing I’ll tell you. We’re using open banking, we’re using, we’re using AI. But the other thing is sometimes people will say, I’ll make an ad hoc overpayment. So um I do the I used to do this when I was when I was in banking and had a corporate job, you’d be so busy, you’d maybe make one overpayment once a year or twice every year. But lenders are ruthless. There’s something called compound interest, and there’s something called amortization, and essentially that means that every day lenders are charging you interest. And um, the earlier you stop repaying, um, the more interest you save. Um, and so these things mean that just more regular, frequent actions um will mean that you save more interest. Um, and so that is the mentality we want to kind of create um into people. But also then you get all the analytics. So when you make your overpayments yourself, like I mentioned, you don’t have any feedback on how much interest you’re on track to save, when you’re on track to mortgage free, how many years you’re on track to knock off, you can’t see how much of your home you own, you know, things like your loan to value, which is really important when you’re looking to like remortgage. So, say for example, you’re at 86% loan to value and you’re about to remortgage in six months. Well, if you can get to eight below 85% loan to value, that would give you probably access to cheaper deals in the market, which means that when you remortgage, you’re gonna save even more interest. Now, you ask the average person what’s your loan to value, they’ve got no idea what their loan to value is. And so here you can see it, and we fresh it every month. Um, we use lender grade home valuation software, etc. etc. So we’re giving you like um the homeowner like information at their at their fingertips. And the beauty is that you’re not typing any of the information, you’re not typing in what’s my mortgage balance, what’s my monthly payments, what’s my term. We automatically source all of that when you sign up. And like you said, it takes a couple of minutes to to sign up. So it makes it super easy to manage. And then we’ve got the shopping, which is like the icing on the on the on the on on the on you know um on the cake, because like everyone shops, like the weekly shop, that was really important to me getting the grocers on board. So we have six grocers now because most homeowners, especially the ones that are families, are easily spending £100 a week on their household shop, if not more. And so just by getting extra money, just by doing your everyday shopping, your weekly shop. Um Can make a real impact in terms of helping you know save money on your mortgage. And then we’ve got like clothing stores, etc., etc. And they’re all top-tier brands. So where you where sometimes you see like Quidco and you see like um top cashback, and you’ve got inundated with brands, and it’s just a nightmare in terms of which brands do they have, etc. etc. Ours is very selective. We you know we work with high-quality brands that you’d use regularly, so that means that the the money that you earn is then significant, and then the money that you earn that’s significant is then invested into your mortgage. Um, and you know, with the rates where they are, you’re essentially effectively getting a really good return. And the good thing about paying debt is there’s no risk on investing where you can like maybe you know, you might make money, you might lose money. You know, the rate is is guaranteed.

[23:32] Sammie Ellard-King: Hey guys, Sammie here. Just a quick one. If you wouldn’t mind heading over to upthegains.co.uk, hitting the subscribe button in the top right hand corner and entering your email into the box for your troubles. You will receive a free net worth calculator worth £25. Now, this net worth calculator, if you enter your assets and your liabilities, will tell you exactly how much you are worth today. Now, what you can also do is set yourself some financial goals and track your net worth along the way using this tool. It’s totally free. So head on over to upthegains.co.uk, hit the subscribe button, pop your email in, and you’ll be sent straight to your inbox in a matter of minutes. Now, back to the podcast. And you don’t pay tax, which is which is fantastic too. One thing you mentioned about Christmas earlier, it’s got my cogs tingling here because essentially, yes, you might actually not be able to afford to overpay, but then you can still contribute by doing your shopping through the grocers because you know, let’s face it, you know, that Christmas week shop is always double or somewhat triple in your house, it certainly is. Um there, you know, you’re spending a lot of money, presents. You know, I’m going into John Lewis often buying my mum a voucher because that’s what she likes, and you know, uh the same back to me, so she could be doing the same there. And um that’s money, then you’re still contributing, even then if you’re not then able to lower your payments or your pressing pause on the app, which is such a cool, cool feature.

[25:03] Jinesh Vohra: Yeah, exactly. I mean you want Black Friday coming up, so we’re we’re we’re gonna be really pushing people to say, look, Black Friday coming up. So if you’re you know, if a lot of people buy presents obviously for Christmas during during the Black Friday C um kind of um um weekend, so great, great time to like start just using Shop with Sprive and you know, it’s just free money. Um and it’s going you know that it’s gonna go somewhere sensible. Um it’s not just gonna be spent elsewhere, and it’s it’s you know, it’s not just cash, it’s cash being invested, and you’re gonna get a you’re gonna get essentially a better rate of return um than than just leaving it in your in your bank account, especially if you’re if you’re paying a higher rate. Um and then the other benefit that I didn’t mention is we scan the market every day for better mortgage deals. So I’m not sure Sammie if you’re aware, but there’s like 170 plus lenders in the market, um, over 20,000 deals on a given day. Now, if you ask the um the average homeowner, like, which deal should I get, you know, it’s it’s not it’s not really straightforward. And so what we do is when you sign up, we know a lot about the customer’s mortgage because we electronically kind of pull that information um via their lender, and then we compare the mortgages in the market. And now, if there is a better mortgage deal, then we’ll tell the customer, look, we found you a better mortgage deal, we can help you get it. And when you remortgage through us, that the beauty is that, say, for example, right now, um, you know, rates are five and a quarter. So you maybe you lock in a rate at a mortgage deal at five and a half percent, we’ll say six percent or five percent, depending on your your financials, financial situation. And then rates drop. You know, we’ve seen interest rates rapidly rise over the last kind of 18 months, but now they’re starting to plateau. You know, inflation goes under control. Maybe the you know, the bank of England decides to reduce um interest rates, and that means that the deals in the market start to go down. Now, think about our customers are trying to overpay on their mortgage, they’re building equity up in their in their property. Um, so their loans of value is becoming more healthy, it’s they’re it’s dropping, but also at the same time, rates in the market are coming down. So there might be a scenario where actually it makes sense for you to exit your deal early. Maybe you’ve locked into a five-year deal or a two-year deal, but because the rates are where they are, you pay the early repayment charge and you switch and you lock in at a lower rate. Now you ask the average homeowner to do those calculations and you know they’re not going to be able to do it. But and if you ask a mortgage advisor, they’re not gonna be able to do it either. No offense to them, but they’re very focused on you need their help, you find you a deal, and then you you move on and they they’ll come visit you in in two years’ time or five years’ time. Um, and so we built this technology solution that is, you know, is trying to use smart tech to help people save even more money in in innovative ways that hadn’t really been done before.

[28:50] Sammie Ellard-King: That’s so interesting because we were in this exact situation last year. We were looking at this, we were like, you know, do we pay the four grand overcharge and lock in? In hindsight, it was the best decision. But we found it so difficult to work out. It took me, you know, near-on half a day sitting there doing calculations, phoning up the the lender, phoning up the new lender, then working out a loan to value, which actually then was a few days process while they sent us a letter because they wouldn’t tell us on the phone. And like having that ability with you guys and almost like someone that’s actually looking out for them is just wicked. Like, I I personally could have done with that that tool myself, so yeah, I can only see the value in that for a lot of consumers, especially when things are so uncertain right now. And I suppose that kind of leads us into this this quest next question, really, which is kind of you know, it is so unprecedented. We don’t know what’s happening, but you guys are on the ground, you’re seeing things are moving, you know. I’ve seen some of the bigger lenders starting to come down. Um how how are things for you and and what do you kind of see the next sort of 12 months looking like?

[30:05] Jinesh Vohra: Yeah, so I do think that there’s a lot more homeowners really focused around their mortgage like they’ve never been before. I think in the past, I think it was almost a thing you had, and you made the monthly payments and it was kind of ticking over, and now um people are recognising that the things have changed, the paradigm’s changed, rates have changed. If you’re looking to remortgage, you’re you’re unfortunately your monthly payments are gonna go up. That means that’s gonna impact your your your financial situation, but pressures, you’re gonna find how you know how to find ways of um you know making that make making you um be able to kind of afford those increase in monthly payments and and uh and and make sure you manage your personal finances accordingly. And so um, in terms of the the rates, we saw rates kind of go up, obviously, uh as interest rates get, you know, the the kind of the Bank of England announce hikes in interest rates, you see mortgage rates kind of in turn um increase. Um but then we’ve starting to see a little bit of a dip recently. Um I think it’s partly because um you know it is a good signal that inflation starting to kind of get under control. Um it was like double digits, it’s no longer, you know, it’s it’s kind of um sub-7% now, which is which is good. Um there’s there’s some confidence that you know inflation should fall um further. Um there’s some geopolitical issues, which I won’t go into in too much detail, but that might mean that inflation is going to um you know it’s going to be a little bit more stubborn than maybe we would we would we would like. Um and also there’s uh there’s a a bit of a price uh competition with lenders where they’re really trying to push for business, etc. etc. And that’s been really good for customers because that’s you we’re starting to see rates kind of fall. Um and so like I was talking to someone um a few days ago and they locked in a rate of 5.1% out the base rate is five and a quarter. So you know the fact that you can get deals even below um below that um is is is is you know it’s it’s it’s a good it’s it’s a good um it’s a good sign that um there are there are deals to be had. I think the the steer is always um it’s really important if you’re looking to remortgage is that you get things right because even small differences between securing a mortgage about 5.5% versus 5.6% um as an example is is huge um in terms of the amount of interest that you essentially will end up um paying. A lot of people don’t switch on time, they leave it too late. Um so it’s always better to like think about these things early because then you know you can you can do things like we do, the things with Sprive, like our advisors will say we typically reach out um six months before your deal expires, but we can even start the conversation eight months or seven months before your deal expires, and then we’ll look for deals, we’ll help you get a deal, but then we’ll also monitor it afterwards. So, say for example, you got a deal, and then you know, you’re thinking, well, hopefully rates will fall, and then they do start to fall, the advisor will then come to you and say, look, the rates fall now. I’ve got you this deal, but don’t worry about it, I can get you another deal that replaces the previous deal that I got for you, and they do that um free of charge if you’re a Sprive-backed customer. If you’re not a Sprive-backed customer, that that advisor would charge like 500 pounds typically for their time. But because we have exclusive partnerships, we have a lot of clever data, we have a lot of clever tech, um, we’re able to do really help the advisors, save time, make smarter decisions, etc. etc. And so we’ve got this really unique situation where we can we can essentially help customers um make the you know help them make the right decision. Um, and and it’s never been as important than it then than it is now. And I do see a lot of people um going, oh, it’s such a pain trying to trying to switch mortgage. I’m just gonna stick with my existing lender. I’m just gonna I’ve got a letter in the post for my bank saying I can switch with them and it’s gonna be easy. Um and sure, it might be easy, but again, you do it through Sprive. We’ve got everyone who you know, a team that’ll just do everything for you. Um we’re even building an integration where in a couple of taps you can essentially switch um with your existing lender. But I would say don’t don’t do my my steer um is don’t do that by default. Like because if you can get a better deal, it can literally save you thousands of pounds, like thousands of pounds for like uh an hour or two hours of your time, I think is a pretty good investment. Um and so and so I you know, I’d suggest people take the time and energy to um to get that right.

[34:24] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, yeah. Oh, that’s a that’s a great answer. And and how do you feel about rates next year? You know, there’s a lot of predictions out there. What’s your kind of view on it? Yeah, and there’s no crystal ball, right? Uh ultimately no one knows. Um if you you asked me two years ago, did I expect rates to go and accelerate as fast as they did? Um, you know, most people would never be able to predict that. And so um I’m gonna carry out the answer by yeah, that it’s not no, it’s not advice, no one knows it’s it’s totally unpredictable. Um and so these are like my own personal views. And if you know if it doesn’t, it doesn’t, if it doesn’t happen, then you know, um please don’t hold it against me. Yeah, exactly. But but um I do think we’re in a we’re in an environment where um you know rates won’t go back to where they were, um, is is my is my general view. I don’t think you know those days of like rates being around one one you know one percent um I think are are behind us. Um I think if you look at the last 50 years and where interest rates were, those 10 years kind of post-financial crisis were very unique years. Um and there was reasons for that. We had a we had a huge banking crisis, there was quantitative easing, um, etc. etc. Um, and now we’re in a period where I think we’re going back to a new norm. So I do think you know rates will be around kind of four to six percent kind of kind of that range. Um if it can go anywhere below that, you know, I’d be I’d be I’d be surprised. So I think we’re we’re we’re gonna start to see kind of rates kind of stabilize, and I think people are gonna have to get used to um the the level of interest that they that they are unfortunately now having to pay if they if they remortgage.

[36:03] Sammie Ellard-King: On a historical basis, like this is kind of normality, really, if you look at the averages over a longer period of time, like we shouldn’t we can’t really ever be expecting those like 1-2% rates again for a very long time, in my opinion, anyway. Yeah, I think the challenge is is that like um like my my my parents, for example, um, you know, they they’ll say, well, when I was a homeowner and there was a pot a period where rates were like close to 15%, etc. etc. And so what you know, it’s it’s it’s it’s so what we’re seeing now isn’t isn’t isn’t that crazy. But I think the the difference is is that the the ratio of income to debt and the and the and the ratio of like income to the salaries to like property prices is so much more um like skewed. Whereas before, you know, um property prices compared to salaries were much more affordable, whereas now it’s it’s it’s a lot harder to get to the property ladder because like take take my property as an example. I bought my house probably 11 years ago. Um, and I’ll be like I’ll be transparent. I I I kind of bought it for about 440,000 pounds, and over the last 10, 11 years, it’s nearly doubled in value. I promise you, my salary is not doubled in value. In fact, because I’ve started this business, it’s gone down. It’s not massively down. Yeah, but so but you know, the the average person, you know, if they’re getting benefits of their property rising, um that that’s great, but their salaries aren’t you know increasing to that effect. So um it’s becoming more and more challenging for people. So when do when the rates do rise, um, relatively speaking, um, people really do feel the strain for sure.

[37:44] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, no, it’s the shock of going from that to this in such a short space of time, which is the difference for sure. Like we don’t normally see that. Yeah, I mean, and that’s also like you when you’re used to a climatised to a certain lifestyle for so long, like there’s a lot of people who’ve never seen rates, like a lot of the the people that went to the property market over the last 10, you know, 10 plus years, they’ve not they’ve not seen anything different, and they’ve got used to a lifestyle. They and and so suddenly that shock, um, because it is a really a real shock when you when you remortgage is okay, um, that’s good. Now we need we need to really think about our you know our finances. And and what you do find with homeowners is that the mortgage is the probably the last thing that they don’t pay, because there’s ultimately it’s the reason if you’re a homeowner, you have you know you have a roof over your head. If you if you stop paying your you know your mortgage, then you know you can unfortunately lose your home. And so people will will you know will skimp our meals or you know, load up on credit card day, even though it’s more expensive, um, just to be able to um cover the the mortgage. So it’s uh it’s a it’s a really important topic. Um and it’s really important that people think about their personal finances in the right way so they don’t get into trouble. And if they even if they get into trouble, they do the right things to try to try to hopefully get themselves out of it.

[39:04] Sammie Ellard-King: You’re totally, totally right. Like this is a a really big topic for mortgage owners. And and and also, you know, one of the things you said there just sort of sparked it into my head. You know, if you were five, six years ago, got your house and you’ve kind of had that for five years and now you’re up and you’re five years up, you know, you might have taken our car on finance, you might have had a child in that time, and suddenly your outgoings and cost base is a lot larger, but your salary has only risen by 10-15% during that time. And actually though that subsequent difference is is is is a is there’s no there’s no match to that other than the fact that you’re you know you’re going to be paying a lot more out than you you can maybe actually even afford. So with that in mind, what are some of the things that you’re you know the app are doing or you know that you’re advising people to kind of combat that situation and the higher costs that people are facing?

[40:00] Jinesh Vohra: Yeah, so I think we’re always looking for like more innovative ways to to help people um with their with their mortgage. So um the app doesn’t provide advice, but it gives people like tools and and and um and and and and guidance, and then we’ve got advisors who are professional uh mortgage advisors that can are qualified to provide advice. And so we kind of combine kind of smart tech and advice to kind of help customers. But from a technology standpoint, so we’ve got shop with Sprive. Um we’re really looking to take that to the next level. So the way I kind of think about it is I want the Sprive app to be the app for homeowners that have mortgages. So anything they do in their life, they do it via Sprive. So if you’re buying car insurance, do it via Sprite, you get extra money towards your mortgage. You get you need home insurance, you want to create, you know, open a new current account, do it through Sprive, you get extra money towards your mortgage. You want to invest into your pension, do it through Sprive, you get extra money towards your mortgage. You want to do some repair work in your house again and try to get it to a stage where everything around your life, you do it through the Sprive app and you get extra money towards your mortgage. Because every little bit makes a difference and you’ll visually see the benefits, etc. etc. We’ve already seen that with people doing their shopping and with the kind of 50 brands that we have. Why can’t we take that to the next level? And so, you know, we’re we’re constantly going to be looking for innovative ways to just help people um save money. One thing’s what hope is even playing with the idea. I don’t know if we’ll actually do it, but you know, could you press a button every time you press that button, you watched an ad and it gave you extra money towards your mortgage, etc. Um just just a really cool way because um you know there’s firms like out there like We R8, which are like trying to incentivize people um because we get bombarded with ads all the time, and um people make money off it, but you know, the customer know the benefits, and so are they just smart ways of of um helping customers? Another idea we had was um gifting is a is a big thing in the UK. So I’m not sure if you know that you know you have like an annual gifting allowance, um, so you know, maybe homeowners who have parents, um maybe maybe they’re not gifting. Um this is a nice way where they could gift money into their subscriber count, and the parents obviously it’s great for them because they’re not paying any inheritance tax on the on the amount that they gift, but also you know, they they they’re comfortable that the money’s going into a good place, it’s not going to be spent you know on holidays or it’s gonna be you know going towards their child’s mortgage and essentially getting invested in, they’re getting a decent return because um you know they’re they’re paying off their their mortgage there. Um then it’s you know things like you could do like the the parent could have the app and they do their shopping and it helps them helps they know they shop at Asda or Sainsbury’s or Morrison’s and helps pay pay off their child’s mortgage, for example. So we can do all these kind of clever things just to kind of make that difference and just chip away. And so we have a ton of ideas. We have a big kind of whiteboard uh in our offices, um, and it’s all about just talking to customers which ones they really like, etc. etc. So yeah, lots going on for sure.

[43:06] Sammie Ellard-King: So you mentioned it there, like, is that the mission now? Is that your goal? Like you must be the number one if you have a mortgage, you’ve got to Sprive. Is that the main mission? So um mortgages is like definitely our mission. Our number one goal is to help homeowners save as much interest as possible and be um pay off their mortgage as quickly as possible. And then I think the second phrase is why not why stop at just mortgages? Why can’t we help people pay off credit card debt, car finance debt, student loan debt? So I’d really like to be known as the brand to help homeowners and just anyone in the UK kind of tackle debt. Because there’s a scary statistic that I saw that something said something like three million people would have debt past the age of retirement. So imagine you’re in your 70s and you still have like debt. So we really want to kind of tackle that and help people.

[43:57] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, no, I saw a video, I did a video, sorry, the other day. Um 37,600 is the average retirement pot um with your state pension included, that’s 12 grand a year. Um, and if three million of those people are then carrying debt into that too, that’s going to be even lower. So it’s it’s a scary, scary statistic, and something that I feel like we need to bring a lot of um eyeballs to so people, you know, do as much as they can to get themselves in a better place when they get to that point. Yeah, I completely agree. Cool. Well, look, Jinesh, this has been brilliant, and I think there’s so much value in this for people, um, especially for homeowners, but equally as well, if you’re going to be a homeowner soon and you’re interested in in how we can overpay your mortgage, you know, you strive is a fantastic option. Um I think you we’ve got a little gift for the listeners today. Is that right? Is that right?

[44:51] Jinesh Vohra: Yeah, so the the app is completely free when we’re on Android and and iOS. But to help um listeners get started, we’ve um we’ve basically created a promotion code. So when you download the app, if you type in gains, you’ll get five pounds towards your Sprive account to get for you get started. So you can start testing the app, put it towards your mortgage. Uh unfortunately you can’t withdraw the money, but you can you can use that to um to to put towards your mortgage, get started, see how it works. And if you like it, hopefully you can um you know keep using it and we can help you essentially get that one step closer to to becoming mortgage free and and and help you save as much interest as possible without you know impacting your lifestyle. Oh, amazing. Thank you for that. Yeah, no worries. The promo code, if I didn’t say, is gains G-A-I-N-S.

[45:40] Sammie Ellard-King: Brilliant, yeah. So Up The Gains, just take off the up the and just put in gains into Sprive, and you’ll get yourself five pounds off your mortgage if you download it. We will um include all of the links to Sprive um in the description below, including the promo code for you as well in case you didn’t hear that um again, but it is gains, so um you should know that by now if you’re listening to this. Jinesh, thank you so much. Honestly, it’s been a real pleasure, and I wish you all the best with this. I I absolutely love the love the app and the IM and what you guys are creating. So thank you for coming on. First time, thanks for having me. Really enjoyed the conversation.