AirFunders Blog
28th January 2021
A Living Pension
The recent report from the Resolution Foundation “Building a Living Pension” – ‘Closing the pension savings gap for low-to-middle income families sets out the reasons why additions to auto enrolment contributions are important......readmore.....
14th December 2020
Saving more, reducing debt, hiding the real issues.
The resilience of the UK economy as shown by recent GDP figures is encouraging. The savings ratio is increasing, and consumer debt is decreasing. Everything looks good as we approach 2021.
Is this the UK we are living in currently? Or are these figures hiding the real situation of the UK economy?....read more....
8th December 2020
Building back better post COVID-19 and the K shaped recovery policy makers are sleepwalking towards.
If I achieve one thing today, I would like you to take a closer look at GDWe.
Carnegie UK Trust just released its report on Gross Domestic Wellbeing (GDWe), an alternative measure to Gross Domestic Product when looking at the economic situation. The report covers England only due to the availability of data but the themes I am sure translate across the UK.
If policy makers focus solely on GDP, then they are continuing to sanction the growth in inequality in UK society....read more....
30th October 2020
UK Credit card debt has reduced dramatically since February 2020 from £72bln to £61bln. This is good news, right?
On the face of it a 14% reduction in credit card debt shows that things are going the right way. What it probably shows is that workers, working from home on full salary are not spending on travel and lunches. It also shows that with no pubs or restaurants to frequent people have not been going out and incurring this expenditure.
What this figure actually shows is rising inequality......read more....
5th October 2020
Let the Seeds flourish
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is now”
Ancient Chinese proverb.
After a mortgage, a pension is likely to be the largest investment that an individual will have. There are exceptions to the rule of course but for most, this holds true, and yet many do not even think about a pension.....read more....
29th September 2020
Building a Fund from fresh Air. Can open banking provide a lifeline for those in need?
"For these households, getting into debt increasingly reflects a toxic combination of low income and high fixed costs (such as housing, utilities, food and essentials), making it hard to avoid debt even when life is lived very frugally” IPPR Report Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups at greater risk of problem debt since Covid-19".....read more.....
22nd September 2020
Invest and compound your cash back and discounts, don't just spend them.
As individuals look more at gaining value on their expenditure through discounts and cash back, we ask, why not make more out of it. Here is why you should.....read more....
15th September 2020
Shoppers of the world unite and take over.
What Smart Data can do for you.
The government detailed their intention to legislate on ‘Smart Data’ on the 9th September 2020, with the vision “for an economy where consumers’ data works for them and not against them.”
Smart Data is about consumers having control of their data for it to be utilised in ways that benefits them .... read more....
9th September 2020
Deepening consumer loyalty in different ways using open banking
Back in February 2020 Bank of America estimated that Amazon had about 44% of U.S. ecommerce market share. The market share in the UK for 2019 around the same time was estimated at 30% according to a report from Edge by Ascential. This was of course before Coronavirus which has seen a marked increase in home deliveries......read more...
25th August 2020
I can vouch for vouchers
With or without the lockdown for coronavirus, there is change underway in how people are paying for their goods.
In April of this year cash withdrawals were down 60% year on year, and although this may be a direct reaction to lockdown, the reaction to covid 19 probably hastens this trend....read more....
16th June 2020
Embrace Change
There is nothing like a crisis to speed up change. The situation that the economy is in just now is unprecedented and both companies and individuals will have to change and adapt to a new normal. Can things go back to how they were before the coronavirus pandemic? Businesses will change as people have become used to acting differently which is leading to priorities changing. as a result. It is unclear if those priorities will change back to the pre coronavirus ways.
The full impact on the economy is going to take a long time to play out...read more...
6th June 2020
AirFunders from Inception. Joining our Community Could Make all the Difference to your Future.
I thought by way of introduction that you might be interested to know about why I decided to launch the platform, and what madness made me want to get into entrepreneurism (and it wasn’t not receiving a salary)!
In financial services different products come into fashion at different times. Innovation is there to match the changing attitudes of society, to provide products that people want to invest in where they can secure the best return for their money. Sometimes the return is less important than the social impact........read more...
5th February 2020
Pension funding problems. Can consumer loyalty programmes help?
As some readers may be aware, The AirFund pension support scheme recently put out a survey looking at pension readiness and attitudes to cashback programmes, rewards and consumer loyalty. With over 1,000 respondents, the results show some interesting and also some concerning conclusions.
Why is this important?
We are heading towards a pension crisis......read more....