Ever wailed “Where’s my money going?” while staring at your £34.28 balance that has to last until pay day? Ever wondered exactly how much of your cash is landing in the pockets of Pret’s owners or pushing up Starbucks’ shares? Or asked yourself, as you’re hit with yet another overdraft charge, why the banks are doing so well out of your being broke?
Well, meet Cleo — an artificial intelligence money-managing assistant that can solve these puzzles for you. The service links up to your bank account to make calculations about your finances, from creating a pie chart that shows the share of your spending falling in different categories (such as eating out, groceries and transport) to sending text messages about how much moolah you should ration yourself to spending each day. It can also help you find better deals with banks, to stop you over-paying on credit cards or to get a better interest rate on your savings. It lists which bills you still have to pay each month too.
The assistant was launched in the UK and now has approaching 100,000 users, but Mr Hussey-Yeo wants to sign up a billion customers across the globe and “to take on the banks”. After signing up I texted Cleo to ask how I’m faring financially. I shuddered (and felt like a middle-class cliché) when told I’d coughed up £109 in Waitrose over the past three weeks.
But why do we need this service? “We’re all really under-served by banks,” says Barney Hussey-Yeo, its co-founder and chief executive. “I grew up with Facebook — I can curate my life online but I can’t do that with my banking. As customers, we don’t know enough about financial products.”
Post-university, Hussey-Yeo worked as a “decision scientist” at Wonga. “It was being there that I found banking — and I don’t just mean pay-day lenders — was pretty broken,” he explains. “The banks are just too slow to adapt. It’s not in their business model to help the consumer. Cleo is there to manage your money for you, to do the heavy-lifting.”
So what’s the most common query from users? “Easy: ‘How much am I spending on beer?’” Truth is, if you truly need to meet your financial goals and track your spending, this is something you should use. Click here to start using Cleo now!