Date: 20 February 2023
Author: FINTECH Circle

Aventur helps you prepare a personal financial plan. This will show you how much your investments and/or savings will earn over time in order to achieve your goals.

How would you describe your business in one sentence?

Aventur is the Future of Finance…. an FCA-regulated, fully integrated Personal Financial Management (PFM) platform connecting all your finance in one place, providing complete transparency and control, increasing inefficiencies for advisers and enhancing the financial well-being of investors.

Tell us why your company is a game changer for our industry?

The financial advice sector has suffered decades of underinvestment in technology, with dozens of segregated systems and outdated legacy platforms requiring continuous rekeying of data which is inefficient and open to errors. 

Most also still rely on time-intensive manual admin processes, demanding significant time and resources, driving up costs, and resulting in unaffordable charges for those without significant levels of wealth.

Aventur is a unique, fully integrated Fintech solution designed for both financial advisers and customers. Aventur makes money smarter through API integration with multiple data providers, including Funds, Stocks, Crypto, Debt, Tax, Cash Management and open banking sources. 

With everything in one place, our AI can analyse and identify helpful planning improvements which customers to fix themselves, receive remote hybrid advice or engage with an advisor.

We increase back office efficiency for traditional financial advisory businesses by 10 X, allowing them to reduce costs and increase their number of clients.

We now give the 43 million people in the UK who are unwilling or unable to access advice, can now take control and manage their money on their own terms.

What has been your biggest achievement to date?

Aventur has created a digitally integrated, fully independent financial ecosystem and saved users from unnecessary advice costs while freeing advisors from huge back-office administration costs.

Our key achievements so far include:

• Build a fantastic team of industry experts who live and breathe our vision.
• Start-Up of the Year 2022, Stevie International Business Awards
• B Corporation Certified – Proving we’re a business with purpose and profit.
• Gained over 3000 clients who entrust us to invest and manage over £160,000,000 of their hard-earned money
• Quickly built a pipeline of over £750,000,000 FUM (Feb23) from Independent Financial Advisors who see Aventur as the future for their business and clients.

What has been the greatest challenge leading a start-up so far?

Innovating for the good of people and the planet is hugely exciting and rewarding, but educating an outdated, expensive and highly regulated industry has been seriously challenging.

It took quite some time for the industry to understand how technology can make life simpler, especially as many in financial services are older and not what you would call ‘tech-savvy’. 

One business we ended up acquiring was still working from 17 filing cabinets of paper clients’ files. They were turning businesses away through the massive regulatory and administrative burden of their business.

It took us 6 months for the owner to understand us and be convinced, but I’m pleased that the company is now fully in Aventur and the business is now once again hugely successful.

What’s your typical day like?

I don’t tend to have a typical workday, which keeps me on my toes.

I’ll often wake up early, head to the gym for a workout, and mentally plan and prepare for what the day has in store.

If I’m in the office, I get to my desk around 9 am and then, like most of us spend most of the day on video calls and email. Although, most days I try and am lucky enough to get out of the office for face-to-face coffee meetings on most days.

My day ends at around 7 PM, and I like to either head out and eat with friends or cook at home, spending time with my partner.

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learnt from your fundraising journey?

I’ve learned not to be scared to ask for help, and to Never underestimate the kindness of strangers.

Throughout the past couple of years, since we started Aventur, I’ve been blown away by the generosity of some huge industry names, who have helped in ways that I could not believe.

I think the specific issues we are solving and that our business is about profit but with a purpose, has in some way meant people want to help and support us… and I’ll be forever grateful to them.

Your advice to anyone starting out as an entrepreneur?

Don’t give up, don’t compromise, and don’t doubt…. You got this!

Stacey Body, Co-Founder of Aventur

You can connect with Stacey Body on LinkedIn