Tom McGillycuddy:
0:00
You know, you could, you could, you could have a few jobs and you've amassed quite a lot of money in your pension fund. And so if we all started to align that money with them, you could have a massive impact on the world and the way and the way things have invested if you tilt with a couple of markets by 1%, in the direction of impact as a huge cascading cascading impact on the online economy. Hey, how are you? I'm very good. Thank you. Very good.
Peter Bell:
0:33
How are you? You're not too bad, not too bad. So I'd like to start with understanding a little bit more about the people what they do and why. So tell me a little bit more about Tom.
Tom McGillycuddy:
0:42
So a little bit of context, as I started working in finance, about 11 years ago, I started working at Barclays, Greg on a Barclays graduate scheme, which is where I met Matt, who's the founder. Prior to that Matt and I are from from Google maps from Liverpool first people that find me to go to university, first people in our families to leave those places and go somewhere else. And when I joined bathrooms in London, I thought I'd won the lottery in every sense of the word, money, career work in initiating a family never worked in anywhere near. And that kind of wore off pretty quick, I felt because I felt like what I was doing in my day to day job didn't have any real meaning to any purpose and realise that the person that that needs motivation beyond just financial to kind of get out of bed and get out of bed in the morning, and told me a few years to realise what was wrong with me, I felt like everything is locked on paper, like, it was great, but I wasn't happy with what I was doing. And I realised it was everyone, everyone I grew up with was like, Well, it can't be your job, could you just fantastic. I was like, well, the cabinet my job, then it must be something else. And then I realised it was my job, nothing that was like fundamentally broken with it, but I just need I'm the kind of person that needs like a crusade or something that's bigger than me to just devote myself to and I suppose then I started to realise that, you know, find out you could use finance for for good, why couldn't it be used, it's a very effective tool, capitalism very effective at funnelling capital to stuff. So why can't that stuff be good, there was no good reason I found that you couldn't invest for return and for for positive means you don't have to give it return. And so that's kind of led me to kind of where we are. And what we do really was to start journey of, of rethinking financial services. And there was a lot of people a lot, there was a percent of a percent of people in those buildings thinking similar things. And we all kind of came, you know, to this part of the industry now is blowing up. And now people think, oh, yeah, of course, this is the right path, the right direction for the industry. But you know, 1011 years ago, no, but no one was really talking about it. And you were, you're portrayed to be like a lunatic hippie, thinking about these things in investment banking and financial services. So I'm glad that's changed a little bit.
Peter Bell:
2:47
Yeah. So as I was saying, just before we started recording, it's interesting because it pivots along further to what we initially discussed back with Scott on a previous episode about, you know, looking for an index looking for purposeful index that actually has more meaning behind it. So people can actually invest more so into companies, businesses, and industries and brands, I guess, that are much more aligned to like future goals and aspirations. And in respect to the work that they do, they started something called the purpose power index. But this is like a further pivot to that. So can you tell me a little bit more about circa 5000?
Tom McGillycuddy:
3:21
Yeah, so what so 5000 is, is it's an investment platform, a long term investment platform, so nothing short term, nothing trading, where we are only investing in companies that are building a prosperous, long term future for us across the overarching areas of people and planet. So climate and then non climate impact areas. So it could be anything from you know, clean energy companies, clean water companies, to affordable housing, healthcare companies across those kinds of sectors and cross those kinds of themes. And we predominantly, you know, get people to invest that haven't invested before. So our customer base is, is relatively young, they are people that perhaps wouldn't invest ordinarily, using the other methods of investing, you know, short term investing or investing in just some whatever it is just for return. They want to end financial return, they want to plan for their future, but they want to do it in a way that they see the future along the values. And so that's all that we do, really. So we we've created these themes, people can invest in like indexes, we use indexes in the background for the for the sub themes, and people can start investing from almost as little as they want. And they can invest for themselves, the children, the pension tax, free taxable. And then in the on the in app experience, there's a few key components. One is obviously investment, education, financial markets, commentary to let people know what's going on in the world, in a kind of accessible way. And also Impact Reporting impact measurement so people can learn about the good that the companies are doing around the world, people's lives that are ultimately being impacted by these companies in the different geographies they're investing in. And then over time, they can build a financial future for themselves. So the there's two component parts so I've been So this point is all about impact investing and making this the default form of investing for everybody. And the goal for us would be, you know, in 10 years time, no one's even thinking about it as an as a trade off or anything, it's just an obvious thing to do. And the other element of it is financial inclusion. You know, when Matt and I started work, like I said, we've we've never had an exposure to the industry before. And none of our friends and family had either. And we felt like the net, the industry was unnecessarily complicated. And there's like a few basics, you could teach people, and that could do most of the job in terms of providing for the financial future. And so if you get if you mobilise, you know, millions of those types of people to invest this way, for the first time, they've never known any other way of investing before, it's all they know. And that's how you transform an industry from the ground up as we see it from the individuals that are making the investment choices. So that's the that's the business the overview.
Peter Bell:
5:49
Yeah, exactly. And I think the assessment piece is key, because the impact assessments and what people are actually doing, because at the moment, it's an awful lot of narrative about like, you know, things like levelling up or whatever it may be, and it's just, you know, like, it's going to be on the narrative, right? And next, actually, people want to be able to assess performance, and assess impact. So why in your, in your opinion, is impact investing? Why does it make sense financially, as well as morally?
Tom McGillycuddy:
6:14
Yeah, don't talk to me about levelling up. I'm a northerner, you know, so I can see that's not happening, I am as well. So I can tell you, I can tell you, instantly, it's warm to you from your voice, you know, so the returns argument that that we have for our specific kind of impact investing, because there's a million different variations of it. Like, if you're just general investing, there's a million different variations of general investing, there's no reason why impact investing, you know, wouldn't be the same, there's different ways of implementing it. Our version is, what we're looking to do is invest in companies who are providing products and services solutions to huge structural shifts and society, long term structural shifts that are underpinned by a massive social or environmental cause, for example, water scarcity, right is a huge problem in certain parts of the world. But there are companies that providing solutions to that, and then using technology to scale those solutions. And if you scale a solution on a massive structural shift, there's a long term returns argument to that as an investable option. So it's not, it's not there's some jargon in industry, like ethical investing, or socially responsible investing, that's actually different to impact investing, what those kinds of investments are about screening out bad companies that you want to avoid. So it all started with the Church of England not wanting to invest in tobacco and things like that. And then you just left with some other stuff, right? There's no argument returns argument to investing in for the stuff. But as the returns arguments are going, these are the companies of the future, providing solutions that we think the world needs, these companies are using technology Scout solution, that's the returns based decision. So it's kind of like positively screening in companies based on the product and service and the revenue lines that they have. So that's the returns argument. And that's a nod to the purity of the approach, because what we're trying to do is identify companies, this is the ideal situation where 100% of their revenue is from one or more of these themes that we're trying to kind of get exposure to so they only build affordable housing units, for example. Now, that's the whole Holy Grail, like a pure play company, 100% of the revenue from this one very clean source, you can assess the impact very, very easily as a consequence, because they do just one thing over and over again, really, really well. Some companies are not like that, though, they have multiple revenue sources. So we have to, sometimes we can't invest in companies where 100% of the revenue is impactful, but as long as it's the majority, and as long as the other area of revenue isn't a red flag that we want to avoid is neutral, then we're fine with that. So that's how we look at it from a assessing a company perspective, it can get very, very complicated about how you measure and define impact. But if people think of it like that, we're investing in companies whose revenue model, the thing they sell, is intentionally trying to solve a big problem. That's the bulk of the assessment, really, you can do loads of other things after that. But that's the big sift. That's what makes this different to ESG. Investing, for example, we're actually looking at what the company sells, as opposed to whether the company is just well run. And a good corporate citizen, we do that as well. But it's an after we've, we've assessed that revenue.
Peter Bell:
9:07
Yes, I personally agree with you with respect to that. I think it's much more than ESG. And I wouldn't be surprised if ESG turns into another like Corporate Social Responsibility exercise where
Tom McGillycuddy:
9:17
it's already happened, it's already happened and
Peter Bell:
9:19
where it's not going as far as people require it, I'm interested as well, because also the work that you do like it's this shift isn't exactly new. I remember back in 2019, like Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock said that you'd only invest in those companies that have a strategy for climate change. You've also, you know, in the weeks after that in the Business Roundtable, which consists of CEOs of 182 companies in America, largest companies in America, they came out and like totally pivoted on the work that they were going to do to make make sure that was aligned to that statement as well and go above and beyond.
Tom McGillycuddy:
9:52
Yeah, yeah. It's changing a black rocker, an important organisation and this was actually with some of my Black Rock friends yesterday. It's actually quite a few people I know In the so that our impact investment team is the team that I used to be at my old company, they all move to BlackRock. So I was sort of here with him yesterday, and very thinking and a lot the senior leadership that are very, very serious about it, they'll take that business itself was like a lot of time to transition to this way, because it's a huge behemoth, 10 trillion, Aum, you know, they can say things, but it takes a long time to move. But they're a huge factor in this if we're going to address these problems. We're going to change the investment industry, Blackrock needs to be on board, and it seems like they are. So it's very, very important.
Peter Bell:
10:30
I'm also interested about, you know, the shift that I think at the moment, we're in a paradigm shifting moment whereby, you know, historically, if you look at like the traditional forms of capitalism, if you look at it from Milton Friedman's viewpoint, it was about shareholder value. And now we're shifting more towards everybody has an equal stake in a company success or longevity. There's numerous examples out there don't want to name and shame them. But like, we're ultimately in a position now whereby everybody has worked with vested shareholders in the success of our company. So there is this like whole change agenda that's taken place. So a lot of that, for change, to really have a foothold into the future. We have to kind of look more towards like things like democratising investing and the work that you know, you do around those particular elements. So, if you would like to talk a little bit more about democratising investing, because I think, yeah, some topic
Tom McGillycuddy:
11:20
one one element of what you're saying just like spark something to me, which is whether people realise it or not, they are all currently investors because of their pensions, right. So the workplace pensions, the old ones, the ones that are currently in, everyone's got a pension, lot of people really realise they have that, that they are in charge of where that's invested. And so a lot of these pension funds that are settled by companies are invested in the worst companies that people wouldn't want to invest in, you know, the coal companies, for example, tobacco, gummy, whatever, just, they just invest wherever. And one of the one of the, one of the things that we want to make people realise is that's their money, and they can do what they want with it. So if they are, if they're someone who really cares about climate change, or these other issues, the long term future, which most people of our generation, but it's not really a generational thing, there's my parents care, you know, so they just don't realise that they can do something about it. And so one of the big things that we're trying driving at the moment is, is making people realise that they've got these pension pots sat around, they can consolidate them, they can actually do it with us, we will go and get them for them. And then they can invest with impact tea all in our app, just like it's another account, but it's they're all workplace pensions all in one place, alongside their ICER and their their investments that they've got. So that we can kind of create more informed investors and create and make people realise that they have a massive say in how these companies should be run, because they are ultimately the owners of these big businesses. You know, all these big businesses, when you look at who owns them, it always says like big asset managers names like Vanguard, for example. But Vanguard are just a fund manager that's managing funds for all these pensioners are these people who have a pension the future or a drawing a pension now, and so I don't think people realise how much say they could have with their money if they are starting to tilt it in the direction of more of a positive impact in a positive future. So that's one area of democratisation and education that we're very, very passionate about. And it happens to be that for most people, their pension fund in terms of the size of it is the biggest amount of money they'll ever have, you know, you could you could, you could have a few jobs, and you've amassed quite a lot of money in your pension fund. And so if we all started to align that money with them, you could have a massive impact on the world and the way and the way things have invested if you tilt with a couple of markets by 1%, in the direction of impact as a huge cascading impact on the online economy. So that's a message that we're trying to get across properly. And I think if we're successful, even moderately, so you can start to massively change the pension industry. And that's where the bulk of people's money is invested. So democratising access to core investing, massively passionate about it, because most people growing up in this country and you know, namely other countries as well. Don't invest, don't think to invest. I think that's starting to change. A lot of people don't think it's for them. So we want you know, remove all the traditional barriers for that, educate people, make it accessible, and then move to pensions and get people to realise that they have a lot of power, the pensions that they can unlock if they invest it in the right way.
Peter Bell:
14:16
Yeah, I'm intrigued when you mentioned barriers, because like as to northerners, right. And also, with respect to kind of the schools that we probably went to and the jobs that we picked up. Yeah, we're probably from a minority of the larger group. What we've ended up doing and where we've ended up working. And I think that it doesn't need to be that way. I think a lot of it comes down to education, a lot of it comes down to financial education, the fact that people it's not like a door that you can go through, it's, it's possible to kind of open that door and actually understand a little bit more about how the markets work about how the financial sector works. And it's not a us versus them narrative, it's, it's accessible to all and you know, it's I'm intrigued as well in respect to where we'll end up going because at the moment if you look at the tradition to markets, a lot of people look towards the strength of the pound, or they look towards the strength of the footsie. And, you know, that's as far as they go in respect to their knowledge of investing. But I think when you talk about people can actually draw together their pensions and put it into a place and actually have more transparency, I guess, over what they're investing in. And why, then yeah, you can drive the whole narrative for change by your conscious decisions to encourage businesses to be a lot more sustainable in their practices. Because where we go next, you've got to look at technology, right? And you've got to look at things like blockchains, and like NF T's and better in crypto. These are kind of things that to beat to some people. It's like, well, I've heard of it, but I don't understand what it is, I think I think it's worthwhile talking a little bit more about like blockchains and the impact of crypto and obviously, NF T's in this kind of new financial world that we're going into.
Tom McGillycuddy:
15:51
Yeah, I've got a lot to say about it. I've got a lot to say about it. But it's interesting that is related. You see a lot of people I've, you know, I know a lot of people who people have grown up with that will come to me because they see me as an investing person. And they'll ask me investing questions. And I've got those people that I know that have never invested in the stock market before cryptocurrencies live in cash and cryptocurrency. I think that is that is a problem. That is a problem. And you see people that have never invested before, but go straight to Trading Stocks or buying derivatives or doing something very, very risky with the money. I think that is a problem. Because those types of investments, especially trading, and short term investments, should only really be done by certain types of people, generally, industry professionals, generally with great technology and great information. If you're trying to build wealth yourself, which most people who are investing on long term wealth themselves, those are not the tools to do it. There's most people 70% of people use trading platforms never make any money. So people should understand that. And if they still want to do it, treat it like betting on the football a little bit. You know, it's like money that you're willing to lose after you've built up a proper investment portfolio that is diversified and long term. That's in terms of trading. Now. That's just my approach to generally invest in how I would how I've done it, and how I think people should think about doing it for themselves. But it's not to say that blockchain and crypto etc is not interesting, fascinating, doesn't have applications. I think it does. I'm personally quite interested in it. In terms of us as a business, I think we you could see a version of our offering in the future where as long as we're confident that the the securities, whether the securities or not are positive for the world, we could offer them. So there are clean crypto, there are environmentally friendly tokens and things like that. There may be an add on to our offering in the future, if we can still stay true to the impact and stay true to the long term investment proposition. So we wouldn't give people the ability to trade in and out of crypto never. But if you wanted to invest in something that was clearly demonstrably positive for the world, and it was part of this new exciting technology, you could see as offering that at some point in the future. And then on the NFT side, yeah, yeah, I'm fast and fasten it. We've got we've got a lot of our shareholder base. There's a lot of very experienced investors, brilliant investors, individuals, and the tech, kind of like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger school. This is all bollocks. I don't want to be quick to bemoan anything at all, because oftentimes, in the past, most of the news come out. And I've said that'll never happen. And it obviously does. But the NFC things interesting. I don't know that. I don't know. And that I think there's some applications for it. I think there's probably nowhere near as many applications as people think. But there's some I think it's very, very good for creators and artists and things like that. And musicians absolutely buy into that. I don't think it's going to be like everything. And I also really, really don't like the idea of our lives being in the metaverse I hate, you know, maybe it's a sign up becoming like an old grumpy northerner, as opposed to the young one that I used to be, but I don't want to do that. So that's probably a sign that it's going to take off and do exceptionally well, that I don't want to do it, you know?
Peter Bell:
18:56
Yeah. You know, with my gaming hat on, I just see, like, the endless possibilities to it. So with
Tom McGillycuddy:
19:02
gaming 100% I'm not I'm not into that. But I would 100% thing as a whole massive world. But I don't I don't want to take part in it.
Peter Bell:
19:11
I think I think in respect to some of the things that you mentioned, you know, like, I agree, and in respect to how you make conscious decisions around investing shouldn't be taken off some random or on tick tock that you've never heard. And they're telling you to invest all your money in x, y, and Zed if it because like that is just like, it's just, it's just gambling right? At the end of the day. In that respect, some may pay off, don't get me wrong, they pay off, but like there's a lot of a lot of fail.
Tom McGillycuddy:
19:35
And then in investing, which is just because you've invested and it's paid off doesn't mean it's the right decision. Right? So it doesn't mean it was a good investment decision, even though it's paid off because you didn't understand what you were doing. And you've got lucky you don't really fundamentally understand what's driving the price, what's driving the interest, and that's where, with a lot of the LFTs and some of the Kryptos it's a stretch to understand what is driving it and I think what you're See now is, for me the boom in NF t's the boom in Kryptos, as a consequence of the Fed, and the money printing has been going on for the past 10 years and cut plus COVID. So you have a lot of liquidity in the system, that money needs to find a home to earn returns. And therefore, it just starts filtering down into these random nooks and crannies of the world and blows up and inflate certain asset types, maybe ahead of where they're at. And now we're sick. Now we've, we've seen the correction in those things. And if you're, for most of us, we've never lived in a world where the central banks were pumping the system full of money all the time. We've never lived in that world where we lived in it, but we never worked in it. Now, during our working careers, we're about to experience what that's like. And if you speak with people who've been investing for 3040 50 years, it's a lot different to the world that we've been in. And what drives things more are the fundamentals and the real world use cases of the things not just this is going up quickly get on it until it and then it stops and then you get out of it. That's just gambling in its purest form. Investing is more than that. So I think we're now we're now unfortunately for a lot of these people that have been speculating, who've never invested before who don't really know what to do and who are listening to some some light on Tik Tok, flogging them some random names or some coins that are experiencing the harsh reality of their decisions. I think No,
Peter Bell:
21:17
exactly. No, no going all in. It's like playing poker, right? They're going. And they've essentially just got a pair of nines. And it's just like, you're kind of all in on a really rubbish card.
Tom McGillycuddy:
21:26
So it's very easy to invest when the market just continues to go up. And all you got to do then is pick a riskier investment got more than the market. But now the market is doing this and trend in this way. For now. This is where proper investors make money. And, and but when we buy property investors, I mean, like the experienced professionals who are interested in making short term money, but for most people, what they should be doing is just investing for the maximum time period that occurred and trying to leave it alone and trying to add to it and increments. They shouldn't be trying to play these games because it's more than a full time job for experienced individuals. And I always say this, that's why I used to work at Wellington management. And Wellington's got some of the most successful hedge funds and active strategies in the world. And the best investors were only right 51% of the time, and career professionals with all the data and all the research in the world. So what makes you think you're going to be better than them? And I know that so that's why I don't do those things, really with my own money. And if I do do it, I see it as like a gamble.
Peter Bell:
22:23
So there's a few things that I want to pick up because it seems rude not to bearing in mind your experience in the sector. On a previous episode, I had a conversation with Morris Pearl, who used to work at BlackRock and he's gone on to work for the patriotic millionaires. And they kind of tried to implement like, what like a wealth tax in America, you hear calls for wealth tax in the UK, especially on the basis of oil and gas firms making a lot of money and then kind of taken a lot in respect to dividends. What is your opinion, what is your viewpoint on the wealth tax first, and then second to that? The challenges that we see at the moment we see 54% increase in bills, we see nine 10% increase in inflation. There's a lot of parallels that I'm seeing now versus the initial the initial start of the financial crash back in 2000, to eight to nine, I fully expect a recession to come come in play in the next coming months. What is your opinion of the market now versus that time? But first of all, what's your opinion of a wealth tax to begin with?
Tom McGillycuddy:
23:16
Yeah, a lot of great questions. So I think it depends on how it's implemented. Because there are pros and cons to just a broad brush. Well sucks because you could you do genuinely have a lot of people who, on paper are wealthy I they have a house that's worth a million quid in London, but they don't have they don't actually have any money to pay the tax bill, if it came in. So entirely depends on what level and to whom, and on what basis because if you're taxing people based on an asset, an asset value, I feel like that's a little bit not what we're trying to do. What we're trying to do is make sure that exceptionally wealthy people who are earning a lot of money pay their fair share of that money. And so I think that's where I think it wasn't it was Miliband wasn't it in his in his manifesto, who had it in the last time for labour? And I think it was it was on the asset value and things where you lost people, basically, because you have a lot of people that will be hit by that which on paper. Yes, there's a lot of money, but they're going to sell the house just to compare the tax bill. So I think it depends on how it's done. Support if if it's done in the right way and doesn't penalise people unnecessarily based on just house house prices?
Peter Bell:
24:19
Yeah, I think it's also the understanding of what is wealth and when we're taught is a wealth tax. It's not the 89% of us. It's actually the you know, the one percents the
Tom McGillycuddy:
24:28
two, that's the thing, I think a lot of people then focus goes well, what you focus what tends to happen in this country, and I think he's saying the US is when people have those conversations, they immediately go to well, I'm earning a decent amount and I have a decent house. However, I'm not worth a billion quid. But I think what people are talking about is these exceptionally rich people paying more. And I think if that message was was brought across in an articulate way, then I think you'd get more support for it because you're not targeting like you get a lot of people who are like new middle class in this country have a cluster My parents and me, we grew up very, very working class. My parents now are working class people, but but I'd say a middle class lifestyle and that, and for them, anecdotally, their perspective is, but I've just finally got some money. You know, and I feel I don't, I don't feel like this is for, you know what I mean. So it's all the implementation of it, I think.
Peter Bell:
25:18
I think it's also the pivot. And back to the education piece that we said that almost like education on investing, you've got to educate people on a wealth tax and taxation, because like, anybody that's kind of going to succeed in that argument, they're going to have to dictate it and articulate it in a way that clearly defines the the tax is going to be on the super rich on the people that are firing themselves into space, or rockets for the sake of Yeah, yeah. Rather than rather than like your parents, my parents that are kind of gone from kind of middle class up to fairly wealthy, for their hard work and whatever. But
Tom McGillycuddy:
25:52
it takes talented popular politicians to articulate that. And unfortunately, I don't think we've got any of them left
Peter Bell:
25:59
tivity. And so it's a it's a difficult climate at the moment. Let's let's look at the parallels and in respect to the challenges that we face in this country, and in respect to the parallels that can be drawn to 2008 2009.
Tom McGillycuddy:
26:13
Yeah, so 2018, as the name was, was driven heavily by, you know, by overzealous lending by banks, on mortgages, you know, in America, America used to have these ninja loans, no income, no job, and you got a mortgage, you had LT in 110 120%, LTV mortgages, so we're not in that position. So it is to be a recession is to be a crash, it won't be the same reasons. And it won't be the same aftermath because the banking sector is much safer now, because because of what they did in the aftermath of the financial crisis. That's not to say there won't be a recession, there will be a recession. I've worked in financial services for seven years now. And believe me, every single year, I've worked in financial services, credible economists have said there'll be a recession soon, every single year. And so sad times in the past, I've been convinced it was, it would happen, and it wouldn't. So I've signed off from making predictions either way, because I always seem to be wronged by these various other people. And no one ever seems to get penalised for these wrong, wrong calls, they just make a new call and then forgotten. So whether or not they'll be a recession, or you could see one, there's a lot of risk, a lot of reasons why the Bank of England have come out with a very bearish forecast. But the Bank of England have done that also in the past, and I've got it wrong. The worrying thing is inflation, which everyone thought was transitory, which is proven not to be but if you keep talking about all these old heads, or no investment management heads, they've all said to me that, you know, at some point, all this money we've pumped into the system will come home to roost in some way. And now we're starting to see that and obviously come to more of it into the system during COVID. You know, you could argue for right and wrong reasons, you know, all day. But now that money's getting spent, you also have the easier problems with with Brexit problems with the oil price, we have the Russia Ukraine situation for us in the UK, it's like the perfect storm. And that's why inflation is the way it is. And I don't think government is doing enough in terms of helping the poorest people in society deal with those increases in energy bills. So you could have a wealth tax, you could you should have a windfall tax on the other energy companies that could help people with the
Peter Bell:
28:15
money goes straight to that that money goes straight to the people, it doesn't go into a system that goes straight to the people, because
Tom McGillycuddy:
28:22
that's a fan of if you look at the QE, quantitative easing, all the money printing that's been going over the past 1011 years, only recently, did we actually do it properly, which was you gave people money to spend, because all that previous time the money was printed, but it went into the financial system and inflated equity prices and house prices. So people who had equity portfolios, and people who had houses have got richer, but everyone else hasn't. So that so the middle class in the upper class have got richer, but poor people have got I've got haven't benefited from that. And now probably we're getting hammered because of inflation or the bills going up. So it's like a perfect storm that's been happening over the past 10 years, and the government needs to do more. So I don't think the situation the situation is entirely different since 2008, because of the reasons for that crash. And what happened. So as opposed to a crash, you could see a prolonged period where it's not a fantastic environment, you could have prolonged inflation. That could be true. And you could have a sticky situation for a few years. I think that's more likely than as gold. But the world implodes and we're building again, I don't think but I don't think that's going to happen. But again, you know, what do I know, you know, this is just what I what I've kind of what I gleaned from what people were saying.
Peter Bell:
29:32
Yeah, I think the challenges that we have at the moment in the UK we face a rather unique circumstance that a lot of countries don't face like if you look at globally, in respect to GDP, it was around about 2% of the cost was the pandemic but Brexit as a whole is about 4% of GDP. There's that there's a first parallel between that and I noticed today that they're trying to kind of go back to the EU and start that negotiation again on a on a deal that was apparently haven't read it. It's interesting because like We have Brexit. And sooner or later people are going to have to have adult conversations about Brexit and the realities of it because it then subsequently drives as you say, like things like inflation is almost like record levels. The UK are in this perfect storm whereby it's been built from COVID. It's been built from financial malpractice. It's been built from Brexit. It's been built on a on on terminologies of it take back control, levelling up, and all that nonsense, where ultimately we need to get beyond that we need to start looking towards solutions. And we need to get people to speak calmly and articulate the challenges that we see at the moment rather than kind of this He Said, She Said nonsense that seems to be going on quite frequently in the UK, because I agree with you in respect to we won't see a full on light switch moment where the lights are turned off. What we'll see in this country is fuel prices continue to rise, our our cost of food continue to rise, we'll see people that are in housing, that they maybe rent, their rental prices will rise, if you own a house, yeah, your your your household rise in value, but it'll be a false, right. So like, if you look at any, like, say for was a light switch moment, then a house, let's say worth a million now, the lights go off, it's worth 600 700,000, you then negative 300,000 400,000 negative equity. And it's it's about understanding finance and how it really works and how it works on an individual level. Because I think only by doing that, then you you can be part of the solution. And yeah, I believe we're shifting more towards a peer to peer human centric purpose economy, whereby people are looking more to long term and people are understanding more of these kinds of short term challenges, and focus on solutions. So ultimately, the world that we kind of transition into is more equipped to face crises, because there will be more crisis as we go along. It's just like the world is quite turbulent. So I'm positive in respect to the world that we're heading into. Because I think we need to be willing to be part of the conversation. But I think I do feel like we're both from the north, right? So if we talk honestly about levelling up, and we talk honestly, about the challenges that we faced in our early years, there is a division, and it's it doesn't need to be that way. So I'm interested because you're not telling me about you growing up in respect to it, and also, how you ended up going into finance.
Tom McGillycuddy:
32:33
Yeah, yeah, a lot, a lot to talk about in the car. Obviously, I was born and raised in Wigan, and I generally have a fantastic upbringing, when I was a big family, of a family, from Ireland, have family from from we're going to get a massive family growing up very, very fun upbringing, very, very lucky to have had so many family members around me that that loved me and brought me up really well. And so yeah, it was you say it was working class. It was Wiggins, an old man in sound, but still very much that kind of mentality. So no one particularly had a lot of money, but he never felt that because everyone's in the same position. So it felt great, to be honest. You know, I can't really, I can't claim to be like, you know, downplay and be all like, you know, saying it was it was too hard and things like that. Yeah, I mean, compared to some people show up, but it was a adequate upbringing. I love Wigan. I've actually moved back after 11 years in London. I've moved back recently because I missed it so much. I love I love being around my family and friends and people from Wigan, like just for people that are listening that are not familiar with the the geography of like Lancashire in the northwest. It's right next door to Bolton. So if you know Peter K, that's what everyone in Wiggins like, basically. So my dad doesn't find PK is funny because he knows 50 Peter K is at the pub is what he said to me and in my dad's is funny as him in his own right, you know what I mean? Some people are just jokers you know, the getting on with life. They work hard. They play hard. That's the kind of the place it is basically and I missed it. I missed I missed the energy, the people. And so I said what's your point, though, the major thing that I think is all comes back down to on every single issue more or less is the education system in this country. If I think about my school years of my high school years in Wigan, luckily for me, my mom, my mom brought me up very, very military fashion. Basically, she was very, very strict with me, she she would do things like this sounds like child cruelty, but I'm going to tell her Sorry, mom, but it still be in good stead before my tea every night. Sort of nasty. Call it infinity. So sorry about that. Anyway, for your dinner, she would make me sit on the kitchen counter and recite my times tables all the way through to my nine times tables, each number all the way through flawlessly, and then I would have my food basically. So she used to make me do my English literature homework, I would write in pencil first. And if it was flawless, then I would write it in pen and then I would write it in pen in the book. So I have to do my homework at least three times for every piece of homework I had. So you created this Like, hard working lunatic character, basically. And she did it on purpose because she was like, I don't want him to get in, you know, be hanging around with like by groups people, every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I was doing a spot for a team, because that would keep me out of trouble. I didn't know, I didn't know that, that didn't know, that's what she was doing. But, you know, rugby, football, whatever I was playing for two or three football teams at one point, you know, I was just always playing sport. And that was her way of keeping me out of trouble and keeping on the straight and narrow. But anyway, the education system, it was I mean, it was fine, I was lucky enough that I was in the top set for everything, basically. And what seemed to happen at that school, there was 10 sets for every class. And the top set, got the best teachers. And if you say set three, and below, they just let you languish, and do whatever. So it was like, you only got a good education, if you happen to already be good, which is ridiculous, really, if you think about it, but you never got taught anything that was any in any way useful for your life. So there was no financial education or political education. I'm very, very interested in politics and politics at a level ended up doing politics at level, and it's part of my degree as well. But there was no economics, politics, finance, there was no like, here's how the world works. Here's how to think about things. It was all nonsense. And I think because of that you didn't engage the kids all at school, I only worked hard out of fear of letting my parents down and add a couple of teachers that were brilliant for me. So I was afraid of letting them down as well. So I did well for them, really, I wasn't personally interested in anything that was doing. But it was that fear of letting people down that I worked and to be honest, fear drives me majorly, still, like fear of not doing well fear of being on the street, down the street. Now I've gotten my parents, but it's true fear of failure is still very, very much embedded into my character, but the script to your A Levels equally as nonsense and abstract that English language, English literature, French and politics, that's not doing me any good, really. And then my degree, which was politics, and criminology, and then I entered the real world. I was like, I know nothing. Basically, I know nothing about anything. And I started at Barclays. And I couldn't even work out percentages on my calculator. That's not even a joke. It's not even a joke. I don't know how I got on that graduate scheme. I have no idea. I think, honestly, Matt and I have joked that we were some quota. Because you had like 50 people, there was Harvard, Princeton, these amazing schools in Singapore, you had very wealthy families and their children were on it very, very powerful people's families. I won't name names, but the mattone me in the corner, like What the hell's going on? It was the first time I saw anyone wearing a little pinky ring. I was like, why is it why these lads wearing these little rings? And as I asked my family crest, Dad, we have a family crest. Now, obviously not so bad. I think I think the education that's why of all his faults, and you could name a lot of them. Tony Blair was great in a lot of respects, because education, education, education was his mantra was his focus. Because that is how you open people's eyes to everything, as how you preparing for the future, that unlocks like, all the stuff of like the, you know, the typical thing that I felt growing up was all that's not for us, or we don't go to London, or we don't work in those industries, you get a proper job. And that's not for us kind of mentality, you change all that mentality. And as a consequence, you change social mobility, and you change people's view of their life and their career and what's possible for them by opening up the their eyes to stuff so yeah, I don't know how that's it's hard to change, because obviously government run thing, and it's, you know, it's it's glacial to change, but education is so important. So important. And I was lucky that I had, I would, I would never have gone to do an A level or a degree. And I told him this, if it wasn't for my English literature teacher, he kind of changed my life in a lot of respects. And I wrote in my letter to explain to him a few years ago, they basically changed my life, have a look back, when when my dad told me all the basics, hard work, the polite turn up, etc, repeat, repeat. But he he taught me intellectual curiosity and to think for myself. And he did it in a way that I don't think a lot of people who are from that relatively normal background get exposure to so there's a there's a charity in London called debate mates. And what they do is they go into working class areas of London, and they teach the kids debate in which they do at private schools, right? They obviously debate topics and what it what it teaches you is how to construct an argument how to oppose an argument, self confidence, public speaking, standing up in front of your peers, you never get any of that. But my essential to teachers sometimes would come in and go, right, we're not doing the curriculum today. We're going to split the room up. And here's the subject, you're going to debate for it. You're going to debate against it. I had no idea what I was doing at the time, but we loved it. And it was like a challenge. And it just unlocked things in my mind. And then that set me off on a path of like questioning stuff, and we are eternally grateful for him. So if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't I would have gotten on a trade. So I remember having a conversation with my dad and my dad was like, Don't do that. But I've worked in the construction industry. He was like you've got a chance to go on to college and a level that we never did. So you've got to go and do it. If it wasn't for my dad, and maybe my teacher, my life would have been, you know, very, very, very, very different to what it is now. So that's look really, but that that teacher and but yeah, a lot of people don't get that. And it's because education systems doesn't really give you anything at all. And I think that's where that's where abandoning people, and that's where we're really messing up.
Peter Bell:
40:20
Yeah, and I couldn't agree more with regards to the education education education piece, because if you, if you look at the small tweaks you can do I know, they tried to do a lot with respect to academies and stuff. And I know, there's also a debate that people have in respect to private schools versus public and like, should they be scrapped? Should they not? I think, wider, it's more so actually, you know, you talk about not being able to do percentages, like actually teaching people maths properly, that's actually you know, relevant to a job, that that'd be useful. Definitely a political education. Because anybody that is like, switched on, you don't need to be switched on, to be honest, in respect to politics, you just need to have a memory. And you look back to kind of 97, when Blair came in, like they came in, it's almost like what we see now is exactly the same slim debates with the time they were talking about, like, corruption back then they were talking about a lot of the problems that we see at this point in time was also back then. And Blair came in and started talking about, you know, Britain deserve better New Labour, new, new hope, like, it's simple messages. But ultimately, actually, when do we do choose to elect a government, we have to hold them accountable for their actions. And, you know, like anybody that's listening to the Queen's speech the other day, that's just like a refurb of previous narratives, that it's not doing anything for us. So we need to like decide, as we go forward. How do we hold our MPs accountable? Like I would say, the public spoken in the local elections, I'm very much intrigued as to where we go next. In that respect, I won't go too deep into
Tom McGillycuddy:
42:00
things like ours. Remember, I learned at college, I chose politics. And I started doing those, those lessons. And I was like, what the different voting systems in different countries? We have a voting system that's called this, and it does this. And here's the pros and the cons of it. I was like, well, because you just get brought up like this, is it? This is the way it is. And because you don't know alternative, so Germany does it quite differently. They have an element of PR in the Oh, no. Okay, what's what's PR, and then you just got, you go down these different routes. And that's the great failure, I think there's an you could argue it's intentional, see why there's an element of it, because you don't want an electorate that's going to rip up their voice. But yeah, failing people in those things, you've got to find all those things out for yourself, basically, or get taught if you choose it and let your education otherwise, the vast majority of people never find out.
Peter Bell:
42:51
But I've mentioned it in previous podcasts, like, there's things such as, like the great resignation that's taken place at the moment. There's things like the effects of the COVID pandemic that took place preceding that this the realities of Brexit and also the continuation of realities of Brexit, as we see at the moment, like, one thing that happens in moments of change is largely people actually reflect on their lives and reflect on change and start questioning why. And you know, that the what's behind that? And I think there's a lot to be said, of what Simon Sinek talks about in start with, why if you start with why things are taking place, and if you like, if you understand there is a different way, then there's an awful lot you can do as an individual in respect to ushering in change not only from a personal level, but also from a wider societal level as well. And I think, you know, where are we at the moment? I think we're at the moment of just a debate, right, where we're starting the conversations, people are really educating themselves on what's important and why. And I think further, further down the line, we will see the kind of change that a lot of us have been clamouring for for a long period of time. But it takes time. Right?
Tom McGillycuddy:
43:58
It takes time. But you're right. I mean, like, if it wasn't for the financial crisis of 2008, we wouldn't have made the change in the banking sector that we needed to make, you could argue that this form of investing that we do, wouldn't have had it people grew up in that financial crisis was people were like, why are we doing it this way? Isn't there a better way? And it started this like questioning of what was the purpose of investing? What's the purpose of financial services, and impact investing kind of properly, obviously existed before that, but it started to rise more afterwards, people started to think about using these things as a tool. So yes, I think massive change comes from these big moments, these big crises, and you see what happened with COVID. Recently, people started to change their question, the question their relationship with work, what they want from their lives. It always comes from these big moments. So I'm hopeful. I'm an optimist. I'm an optimist. Like
Peter Bell:
44:49
you mentioned, you move back from like, back to Wigan from London, we moved up to Newcastle from London. And
Tom McGillycuddy:
44:55
why not? That's why right now, yeah,
Peter Bell:
44:57
there's an awful lot of people that kind of did make that shift and Yeah, you know, like technology has opened up. So reality is that you can work with whoever whenever and this huge possibility. So I think rather than Yeah, like we are in a true moment of turbulence, but rather than kind of be mired down by thinking that you know, you've you feel helpless look, look around for areas of hope and educate yourself and understand that what is possible by kind of a utilising your voice for change and also be what was possible if you use your time to educate yourself on the history and also the future and what it may actually evolve into. And I think if you do that, you can put yourself on a journey for development that you'll You won't regret, you'll you'll start seeing the world in a in a much more brighter way. And you'll start impacting the world around you in a much more bright away. And the more and more people that go in this kind of change journey, the better our future will become as a whole. So I think there's loads of positivity, positivity respect to where we're going. So just close out because I could talk to you all day.
Tom McGillycuddy:
45:56
Yeah. You just said that's, that's perfect. I love that. Just to
Peter Bell:
46:00
close out is there any like Final thoughts or key takeaways you'd like to leave with our audience?
Tom McGillycuddy:
46:05
Today, we've talked a lot about a lot of stuff. I'll talk shop for a second from, from so 5000 perspective on who the audience is, and who's listening. If you don't invest, you know, it is open to you. And I think everyone should invest long term for the future. It's one of the key ways that you can secure your own future way out into retirement or out to the future. And you should do it in a way that builds a future you want to retire into. You know, so invest in the companies that you think doing stuff that's good for the world. Hopefully, that's where those but that's the message from me. And I think the more people do that, the better for them, the better for themselves, and the better for everyone else as well. It's a win win.
Peter Bell:
46:42
No, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you. Enjoyed it.
Voice Over Artist:
46:50
Thank you for listening to the purpose made podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to purpose made wherever you normally get your podcasts to hear the latest news and views. You can also find and follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter or contact Peter directly to connect, inquire about purpose made, or request to be featured on the podcast. We look forward to welcoming you back soon for another episode.
0:00
You know, you could, you could, you could have a few jobs and you've amassed quite a lot of money in your pension fund. And so if we all started to align that money with them, you could have a massive impact on the world and the way and the way things have invested if you tilt with a couple of markets by 1%, in the direction of impact as a huge cascading cascading impact on the online economy. Hey, how are you? I'm very good. Thank you. Very good.
Peter Bell:
0:33
How are you? You're not too bad, not too bad. So I'd like to start with understanding a little bit more about the people what they do and why. So tell me a little bit more about Tom.
Tom McGillycuddy:
0:42
So a little bit of context, as I started working in finance, about 11 years ago, I started working at Barclays, Greg on a Barclays graduate scheme, which is where I met Matt, who's the founder. Prior to that Matt and I are from from Google maps from Liverpool first people that find me to go to university, first people in our families to leave those places and go somewhere else. And when I joined bathrooms in London, I thought I'd won the lottery in every sense of the word, money, career work in initiating a family never worked in anywhere near. And that kind of wore off pretty quick, I felt because I felt like what I was doing in my day to day job didn't have any real meaning to any purpose and realise that the person that that needs motivation beyond just financial to kind of get out of bed and get out of bed in the morning, and told me a few years to realise what was wrong with me, I felt like everything is locked on paper, like, it was great, but I wasn't happy with what I was doing. And I realised it was everyone, everyone I grew up with was like, Well, it can't be your job, could you just fantastic. I was like, well, the cabinet my job, then it must be something else. And then I realised it was my job, nothing that was like fundamentally broken with it, but I just need I'm the kind of person that needs like a crusade or something that's bigger than me to just devote myself to and I suppose then I started to realise that, you know, find out you could use finance for for good, why couldn't it be used, it's a very effective tool, capitalism very effective at funnelling capital to stuff. So why can't that stuff be good, there was no good reason I found that you couldn't invest for return and for for positive means you don't have to give it return. And so that's kind of led me to kind of where we are. And what we do really was to start journey of, of rethinking financial services. And there was a lot of people a lot, there was a percent of a percent of people in those buildings thinking similar things. And we all kind of came, you know, to this part of the industry now is blowing up. And now people think, oh, yeah, of course, this is the right path, the right direction for the industry. But you know, 1011 years ago, no, but no one was really talking about it. And you were, you're portrayed to be like a lunatic hippie, thinking about these things in investment banking and financial services. So I'm glad that's changed a little bit.
Peter Bell:
2:47
Yeah. So as I was saying, just before we started recording, it's interesting because it pivots along further to what we initially discussed back with Scott on a previous episode about, you know, looking for an index looking for purposeful index that actually has more meaning behind it. So people can actually invest more so into companies, businesses, and industries and brands, I guess, that are much more aligned to like future goals and aspirations. And in respect to the work that they do, they started something called the purpose power index. But this is like a further pivot to that. So can you tell me a little bit more about circa 5000?
Tom McGillycuddy:
3:21
Yeah, so what so 5000 is, is it's an investment platform, a long term investment platform, so nothing short term, nothing trading, where we are only investing in companies that are building a prosperous, long term future for us across the overarching areas of people and planet. So climate and then non climate impact areas. So it could be anything from you know, clean energy companies, clean water companies, to affordable housing, healthcare companies across those kinds of sectors and cross those kinds of themes. And we predominantly, you know, get people to invest that haven't invested before. So our customer base is, is relatively young, they are people that perhaps wouldn't invest ordinarily, using the other methods of investing, you know, short term investing or investing in just some whatever it is just for return. They want to end financial return, they want to plan for their future, but they want to do it in a way that they see the future along the values. And so that's all that we do, really. So we we've created these themes, people can invest in like indexes, we use indexes in the background for the for the sub themes, and people can start investing from almost as little as they want. And they can invest for themselves, the children, the pension tax, free taxable. And then in the on the in app experience, there's a few key components. One is obviously investment, education, financial markets, commentary to let people know what's going on in the world, in a kind of accessible way. And also Impact Reporting impact measurement so people can learn about the good that the companies are doing around the world, people's lives that are ultimately being impacted by these companies in the different geographies they're investing in. And then over time, they can build a financial future for themselves. So the there's two component parts so I've been So this point is all about impact investing and making this the default form of investing for everybody. And the goal for us would be, you know, in 10 years time, no one's even thinking about it as an as a trade off or anything, it's just an obvious thing to do. And the other element of it is financial inclusion. You know, when Matt and I started work, like I said, we've we've never had an exposure to the industry before. And none of our friends and family had either. And we felt like the net, the industry was unnecessarily complicated. And there's like a few basics, you could teach people, and that could do most of the job in terms of providing for the financial future. And so if you get if you mobilise, you know, millions of those types of people to invest this way, for the first time, they've never known any other way of investing before, it's all they know. And that's how you transform an industry from the ground up as we see it from the individuals that are making the investment choices. So that's the that's the business the overview.
Peter Bell:
5:49
Yeah, exactly. And I think the assessment piece is key, because the impact assessments and what people are actually doing, because at the moment, it's an awful lot of narrative about like, you know, things like levelling up or whatever it may be, and it's just, you know, like, it's going to be on the narrative, right? And next, actually, people want to be able to assess performance, and assess impact. So why in your, in your opinion, is impact investing? Why does it make sense financially, as well as morally?
Tom McGillycuddy:
6:14
Yeah, don't talk to me about levelling up. I'm a northerner, you know, so I can see that's not happening, I am as well. So I can tell you, I can tell you, instantly, it's warm to you from your voice, you know, so the returns argument that that we have for our specific kind of impact investing, because there's a million different variations of it. Like, if you're just general investing, there's a million different variations of general investing, there's no reason why impact investing, you know, wouldn't be the same, there's different ways of implementing it. Our version is, what we're looking to do is invest in companies who are providing products and services solutions to huge structural shifts and society, long term structural shifts that are underpinned by a massive social or environmental cause, for example, water scarcity, right is a huge problem in certain parts of the world. But there are companies that providing solutions to that, and then using technology to scale those solutions. And if you scale a solution on a massive structural shift, there's a long term returns argument to that as an investable option. So it's not, it's not there's some jargon in industry, like ethical investing, or socially responsible investing, that's actually different to impact investing, what those kinds of investments are about screening out bad companies that you want to avoid. So it all started with the Church of England not wanting to invest in tobacco and things like that. And then you just left with some other stuff, right? There's no argument returns argument to investing in for the stuff. But as the returns arguments are going, these are the companies of the future, providing solutions that we think the world needs, these companies are using technology Scout solution, that's the returns based decision. So it's kind of like positively screening in companies based on the product and service and the revenue lines that they have. So that's the returns argument. And that's a nod to the purity of the approach, because what we're trying to do is identify companies, this is the ideal situation where 100% of their revenue is from one or more of these themes that we're trying to kind of get exposure to so they only build affordable housing units, for example. Now, that's the whole Holy Grail, like a pure play company, 100% of the revenue from this one very clean source, you can assess the impact very, very easily as a consequence, because they do just one thing over and over again, really, really well. Some companies are not like that, though, they have multiple revenue sources. So we have to, sometimes we can't invest in companies where 100% of the revenue is impactful, but as long as it's the majority, and as long as the other area of revenue isn't a red flag that we want to avoid is neutral, then we're fine with that. So that's how we look at it from a assessing a company perspective, it can get very, very complicated about how you measure and define impact. But if people think of it like that, we're investing in companies whose revenue model, the thing they sell, is intentionally trying to solve a big problem. That's the bulk of the assessment, really, you can do loads of other things after that. But that's the big sift. That's what makes this different to ESG. Investing, for example, we're actually looking at what the company sells, as opposed to whether the company is just well run. And a good corporate citizen, we do that as well. But it's an after we've, we've assessed that revenue.
Peter Bell:
9:07
Yes, I personally agree with you with respect to that. I think it's much more than ESG. And I wouldn't be surprised if ESG turns into another like Corporate Social Responsibility exercise where
Tom McGillycuddy:
9:17
it's already happened, it's already happened and
Peter Bell:
9:19
where it's not going as far as people require it, I'm interested as well, because also the work that you do like it's this shift isn't exactly new. I remember back in 2019, like Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock said that you'd only invest in those companies that have a strategy for climate change. You've also, you know, in the weeks after that in the Business Roundtable, which consists of CEOs of 182 companies in America, largest companies in America, they came out and like totally pivoted on the work that they were going to do to make make sure that was aligned to that statement as well and go above and beyond.
Tom McGillycuddy:
9:52
Yeah, yeah. It's changing a black rocker, an important organisation and this was actually with some of my Black Rock friends yesterday. It's actually quite a few people I know In the so that our impact investment team is the team that I used to be at my old company, they all move to BlackRock. So I was sort of here with him yesterday, and very thinking and a lot the senior leadership that are very, very serious about it, they'll take that business itself was like a lot of time to transition to this way, because it's a huge behemoth, 10 trillion, Aum, you know, they can say things, but it takes a long time to move. But they're a huge factor in this if we're going to address these problems. We're going to change the investment industry, Blackrock needs to be on board, and it seems like they are. So it's very, very important.
Peter Bell:
10:30
I'm also interested about, you know, the shift that I think at the moment, we're in a paradigm shifting moment whereby, you know, historically, if you look at like the traditional forms of capitalism, if you look at it from Milton Friedman's viewpoint, it was about shareholder value. And now we're shifting more towards everybody has an equal stake in a company success or longevity. There's numerous examples out there don't want to name and shame them. But like, we're ultimately in a position now whereby everybody has worked with vested shareholders in the success of our company. So there is this like whole change agenda that's taken place. So a lot of that, for change, to really have a foothold into the future. We have to kind of look more towards like things like democratising investing and the work that you know, you do around those particular elements. So, if you would like to talk a little bit more about democratising investing, because I think, yeah, some topic
Tom McGillycuddy:
11:20
one one element of what you're saying just like spark something to me, which is whether people realise it or not, they are all currently investors because of their pensions, right. So the workplace pensions, the old ones, the ones that are currently in, everyone's got a pension, lot of people really realise they have that, that they are in charge of where that's invested. And so a lot of these pension funds that are settled by companies are invested in the worst companies that people wouldn't want to invest in, you know, the coal companies, for example, tobacco, gummy, whatever, just, they just invest wherever. And one of the one of the, one of the things that we want to make people realise is that's their money, and they can do what they want with it. So if they are, if they're someone who really cares about climate change, or these other issues, the long term future, which most people of our generation, but it's not really a generational thing, there's my parents care, you know, so they just don't realise that they can do something about it. And so one of the big things that we're trying driving at the moment is, is making people realise that they've got these pension pots sat around, they can consolidate them, they can actually do it with us, we will go and get them for them. And then they can invest with impact tea all in our app, just like it's another account, but it's they're all workplace pensions all in one place, alongside their ICER and their their investments that they've got. So that we can kind of create more informed investors and create and make people realise that they have a massive say in how these companies should be run, because they are ultimately the owners of these big businesses. You know, all these big businesses, when you look at who owns them, it always says like big asset managers names like Vanguard, for example. But Vanguard are just a fund manager that's managing funds for all these pensioners are these people who have a pension the future or a drawing a pension now, and so I don't think people realise how much say they could have with their money if they are starting to tilt it in the direction of more of a positive impact in a positive future. So that's one area of democratisation and education that we're very, very passionate about. And it happens to be that for most people, their pension fund in terms of the size of it is the biggest amount of money they'll ever have, you know, you could you could, you could have a few jobs, and you've amassed quite a lot of money in your pension fund. And so if we all started to align that money with them, you could have a massive impact on the world and the way and the way things have invested if you tilt with a couple of markets by 1%, in the direction of impact as a huge cascading impact on the online economy. So that's a message that we're trying to get across properly. And I think if we're successful, even moderately, so you can start to massively change the pension industry. And that's where the bulk of people's money is invested. So democratising access to core investing, massively passionate about it, because most people growing up in this country and you know, namely other countries as well. Don't invest, don't think to invest. I think that's starting to change. A lot of people don't think it's for them. So we want you know, remove all the traditional barriers for that, educate people, make it accessible, and then move to pensions and get people to realise that they have a lot of power, the pensions that they can unlock if they invest it in the right way.
Peter Bell:
14:16
Yeah, I'm intrigued when you mentioned barriers, because like as to northerners, right. And also, with respect to kind of the schools that we probably went to and the jobs that we picked up. Yeah, we're probably from a minority of the larger group. What we've ended up doing and where we've ended up working. And I think that it doesn't need to be that way. I think a lot of it comes down to education, a lot of it comes down to financial education, the fact that people it's not like a door that you can go through, it's, it's possible to kind of open that door and actually understand a little bit more about how the markets work about how the financial sector works. And it's not a us versus them narrative, it's, it's accessible to all and you know, it's I'm intrigued as well in respect to where we'll end up going because at the moment if you look at the tradition to markets, a lot of people look towards the strength of the pound, or they look towards the strength of the footsie. And, you know, that's as far as they go in respect to their knowledge of investing. But I think when you talk about people can actually draw together their pensions and put it into a place and actually have more transparency, I guess, over what they're investing in. And why, then yeah, you can drive the whole narrative for change by your conscious decisions to encourage businesses to be a lot more sustainable in their practices. Because where we go next, you've got to look at technology, right? And you've got to look at things like blockchains, and like NF T's and better in crypto. These are kind of things that to beat to some people. It's like, well, I've heard of it, but I don't understand what it is, I think I think it's worthwhile talking a little bit more about like blockchains and the impact of crypto and obviously, NF T's in this kind of new financial world that we're going into.
Tom McGillycuddy:
15:51
Yeah, I've got a lot to say about it. I've got a lot to say about it. But it's interesting that is related. You see a lot of people I've, you know, I know a lot of people who people have grown up with that will come to me because they see me as an investing person. And they'll ask me investing questions. And I've got those people that I know that have never invested in the stock market before cryptocurrencies live in cash and cryptocurrency. I think that is that is a problem. That is a problem. And you see people that have never invested before, but go straight to Trading Stocks or buying derivatives or doing something very, very risky with the money. I think that is a problem. Because those types of investments, especially trading, and short term investments, should only really be done by certain types of people, generally, industry professionals, generally with great technology and great information. If you're trying to build wealth yourself, which most people who are investing on long term wealth themselves, those are not the tools to do it. There's most people 70% of people use trading platforms never make any money. So people should understand that. And if they still want to do it, treat it like betting on the football a little bit. You know, it's like money that you're willing to lose after you've built up a proper investment portfolio that is diversified and long term. That's in terms of trading. Now. That's just my approach to generally invest in how I would how I've done it, and how I think people should think about doing it for themselves. But it's not to say that blockchain and crypto etc is not interesting, fascinating, doesn't have applications. I think it does. I'm personally quite interested in it. In terms of us as a business, I think we you could see a version of our offering in the future where as long as we're confident that the the securities, whether the securities or not are positive for the world, we could offer them. So there are clean crypto, there are environmentally friendly tokens and things like that. There may be an add on to our offering in the future, if we can still stay true to the impact and stay true to the long term investment proposition. So we wouldn't give people the ability to trade in and out of crypto never. But if you wanted to invest in something that was clearly demonstrably positive for the world, and it was part of this new exciting technology, you could see as offering that at some point in the future. And then on the NFT side, yeah, yeah, I'm fast and fasten it. We've got we've got a lot of our shareholder base. There's a lot of very experienced investors, brilliant investors, individuals, and the tech, kind of like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger school. This is all bollocks. I don't want to be quick to bemoan anything at all, because oftentimes, in the past, most of the news come out. And I've said that'll never happen. And it obviously does. But the NFC things interesting. I don't know that. I don't know. And that I think there's some applications for it. I think there's probably nowhere near as many applications as people think. But there's some I think it's very, very good for creators and artists and things like that. And musicians absolutely buy into that. I don't think it's going to be like everything. And I also really, really don't like the idea of our lives being in the metaverse I hate, you know, maybe it's a sign up becoming like an old grumpy northerner, as opposed to the young one that I used to be, but I don't want to do that. So that's probably a sign that it's going to take off and do exceptionally well, that I don't want to do it, you know?
Peter Bell:
18:56
Yeah. You know, with my gaming hat on, I just see, like, the endless possibilities to it. So with
Tom McGillycuddy:
19:02
gaming 100% I'm not I'm not into that. But I would 100% thing as a whole massive world. But I don't I don't want to take part in it.
Peter Bell:
19:11
I think I think in respect to some of the things that you mentioned, you know, like, I agree, and in respect to how you make conscious decisions around investing shouldn't be taken off some random or on tick tock that you've never heard. And they're telling you to invest all your money in x, y, and Zed if it because like that is just like, it's just, it's just gambling right? At the end of the day. In that respect, some may pay off, don't get me wrong, they pay off, but like there's a lot of a lot of fail.
Tom McGillycuddy:
19:35
And then in investing, which is just because you've invested and it's paid off doesn't mean it's the right decision. Right? So it doesn't mean it was a good investment decision, even though it's paid off because you didn't understand what you were doing. And you've got lucky you don't really fundamentally understand what's driving the price, what's driving the interest, and that's where, with a lot of the LFTs and some of the Kryptos it's a stretch to understand what is driving it and I think what you're See now is, for me the boom in NF t's the boom in Kryptos, as a consequence of the Fed, and the money printing has been going on for the past 10 years and cut plus COVID. So you have a lot of liquidity in the system, that money needs to find a home to earn returns. And therefore, it just starts filtering down into these random nooks and crannies of the world and blows up and inflate certain asset types, maybe ahead of where they're at. And now we're sick. Now we've, we've seen the correction in those things. And if you're, for most of us, we've never lived in a world where the central banks were pumping the system full of money all the time. We've never lived in that world where we lived in it, but we never worked in it. Now, during our working careers, we're about to experience what that's like. And if you speak with people who've been investing for 3040 50 years, it's a lot different to the world that we've been in. And what drives things more are the fundamentals and the real world use cases of the things not just this is going up quickly get on it until it and then it stops and then you get out of it. That's just gambling in its purest form. Investing is more than that. So I think we're now we're now unfortunately for a lot of these people that have been speculating, who've never invested before who don't really know what to do and who are listening to some some light on Tik Tok, flogging them some random names or some coins that are experiencing the harsh reality of their decisions. I think No,
Peter Bell:
21:17
exactly. No, no going all in. It's like playing poker, right? They're going. And they've essentially just got a pair of nines. And it's just like, you're kind of all in on a really rubbish card.
Tom McGillycuddy:
21:26
So it's very easy to invest when the market just continues to go up. And all you got to do then is pick a riskier investment got more than the market. But now the market is doing this and trend in this way. For now. This is where proper investors make money. And, and but when we buy property investors, I mean, like the experienced professionals who are interested in making short term money, but for most people, what they should be doing is just investing for the maximum time period that occurred and trying to leave it alone and trying to add to it and increments. They shouldn't be trying to play these games because it's more than a full time job for experienced individuals. And I always say this, that's why I used to work at Wellington management. And Wellington's got some of the most successful hedge funds and active strategies in the world. And the best investors were only right 51% of the time, and career professionals with all the data and all the research in the world. So what makes you think you're going to be better than them? And I know that so that's why I don't do those things, really with my own money. And if I do do it, I see it as like a gamble.
Peter Bell:
22:23
So there's a few things that I want to pick up because it seems rude not to bearing in mind your experience in the sector. On a previous episode, I had a conversation with Morris Pearl, who used to work at BlackRock and he's gone on to work for the patriotic millionaires. And they kind of tried to implement like, what like a wealth tax in America, you hear calls for wealth tax in the UK, especially on the basis of oil and gas firms making a lot of money and then kind of taken a lot in respect to dividends. What is your opinion, what is your viewpoint on the wealth tax first, and then second to that? The challenges that we see at the moment we see 54% increase in bills, we see nine 10% increase in inflation. There's a lot of parallels that I'm seeing now versus the initial the initial start of the financial crash back in 2000, to eight to nine, I fully expect a recession to come come in play in the next coming months. What is your opinion of the market now versus that time? But first of all, what's your opinion of a wealth tax to begin with?
Tom McGillycuddy:
23:16
Yeah, a lot of great questions. So I think it depends on how it's implemented. Because there are pros and cons to just a broad brush. Well sucks because you could you do genuinely have a lot of people who, on paper are wealthy I they have a house that's worth a million quid in London, but they don't have they don't actually have any money to pay the tax bill, if it came in. So entirely depends on what level and to whom, and on what basis because if you're taxing people based on an asset, an asset value, I feel like that's a little bit not what we're trying to do. What we're trying to do is make sure that exceptionally wealthy people who are earning a lot of money pay their fair share of that money. And so I think that's where I think it wasn't it was Miliband wasn't it in his in his manifesto, who had it in the last time for labour? And I think it was it was on the asset value and things where you lost people, basically, because you have a lot of people that will be hit by that which on paper. Yes, there's a lot of money, but they're going to sell the house just to compare the tax bill. So I think it depends on how it's done. Support if if it's done in the right way and doesn't penalise people unnecessarily based on just house house prices?
Peter Bell:
24:19
Yeah, I think it's also the understanding of what is wealth and when we're taught is a wealth tax. It's not the 89% of us. It's actually the you know, the one percents the
Tom McGillycuddy:
24:28
two, that's the thing, I think a lot of people then focus goes well, what you focus what tends to happen in this country, and I think he's saying the US is when people have those conversations, they immediately go to well, I'm earning a decent amount and I have a decent house. However, I'm not worth a billion quid. But I think what people are talking about is these exceptionally rich people paying more. And I think if that message was was brought across in an articulate way, then I think you'd get more support for it because you're not targeting like you get a lot of people who are like new middle class in this country have a cluster My parents and me, we grew up very, very working class. My parents now are working class people, but but I'd say a middle class lifestyle and that, and for them, anecdotally, their perspective is, but I've just finally got some money. You know, and I feel I don't, I don't feel like this is for, you know what I mean. So it's all the implementation of it, I think.
Peter Bell:
25:18
I think it's also the pivot. And back to the education piece that we said that almost like education on investing, you've got to educate people on a wealth tax and taxation, because like, anybody that's kind of going to succeed in that argument, they're going to have to dictate it and articulate it in a way that clearly defines the the tax is going to be on the super rich on the people that are firing themselves into space, or rockets for the sake of Yeah, yeah. Rather than rather than like your parents, my parents that are kind of gone from kind of middle class up to fairly wealthy, for their hard work and whatever. But
Tom McGillycuddy:
25:52
it takes talented popular politicians to articulate that. And unfortunately, I don't think we've got any of them left
Peter Bell:
25:59
tivity. And so it's a it's a difficult climate at the moment. Let's let's look at the parallels and in respect to the challenges that we face in this country, and in respect to the parallels that can be drawn to 2008 2009.
Tom McGillycuddy:
26:13
Yeah, so 2018, as the name was, was driven heavily by, you know, by overzealous lending by banks, on mortgages, you know, in America, America used to have these ninja loans, no income, no job, and you got a mortgage, you had LT in 110 120%, LTV mortgages, so we're not in that position. So it is to be a recession is to be a crash, it won't be the same reasons. And it won't be the same aftermath because the banking sector is much safer now, because because of what they did in the aftermath of the financial crisis. That's not to say there won't be a recession, there will be a recession. I've worked in financial services for seven years now. And believe me, every single year, I've worked in financial services, credible economists have said there'll be a recession soon, every single year. And so sad times in the past, I've been convinced it was, it would happen, and it wouldn't. So I've signed off from making predictions either way, because I always seem to be wronged by these various other people. And no one ever seems to get penalised for these wrong, wrong calls, they just make a new call and then forgotten. So whether or not they'll be a recession, or you could see one, there's a lot of risk, a lot of reasons why the Bank of England have come out with a very bearish forecast. But the Bank of England have done that also in the past, and I've got it wrong. The worrying thing is inflation, which everyone thought was transitory, which is proven not to be but if you keep talking about all these old heads, or no investment management heads, they've all said to me that, you know, at some point, all this money we've pumped into the system will come home to roost in some way. And now we're starting to see that and obviously come to more of it into the system during COVID. You know, you could argue for right and wrong reasons, you know, all day. But now that money's getting spent, you also have the easier problems with with Brexit problems with the oil price, we have the Russia Ukraine situation for us in the UK, it's like the perfect storm. And that's why inflation is the way it is. And I don't think government is doing enough in terms of helping the poorest people in society deal with those increases in energy bills. So you could have a wealth tax, you could you should have a windfall tax on the other energy companies that could help people with the
Peter Bell:
28:15
money goes straight to that that money goes straight to the people, it doesn't go into a system that goes straight to the people, because
Tom McGillycuddy:
28:22
that's a fan of if you look at the QE, quantitative easing, all the money printing that's been going over the past 1011 years, only recently, did we actually do it properly, which was you gave people money to spend, because all that previous time the money was printed, but it went into the financial system and inflated equity prices and house prices. So people who had equity portfolios, and people who had houses have got richer, but everyone else hasn't. So that so the middle class in the upper class have got richer, but poor people have got I've got haven't benefited from that. And now probably we're getting hammered because of inflation or the bills going up. So it's like a perfect storm that's been happening over the past 10 years, and the government needs to do more. So I don't think the situation the situation is entirely different since 2008, because of the reasons for that crash. And what happened. So as opposed to a crash, you could see a prolonged period where it's not a fantastic environment, you could have prolonged inflation. That could be true. And you could have a sticky situation for a few years. I think that's more likely than as gold. But the world implodes and we're building again, I don't think but I don't think that's going to happen. But again, you know, what do I know, you know, this is just what I what I've kind of what I gleaned from what people were saying.
Peter Bell:
29:32
Yeah, I think the challenges that we have at the moment in the UK we face a rather unique circumstance that a lot of countries don't face like if you look at globally, in respect to GDP, it was around about 2% of the cost was the pandemic but Brexit as a whole is about 4% of GDP. There's that there's a first parallel between that and I noticed today that they're trying to kind of go back to the EU and start that negotiation again on a on a deal that was apparently haven't read it. It's interesting because like We have Brexit. And sooner or later people are going to have to have adult conversations about Brexit and the realities of it because it then subsequently drives as you say, like things like inflation is almost like record levels. The UK are in this perfect storm whereby it's been built from COVID. It's been built from financial malpractice. It's been built from Brexit. It's been built on a on on terminologies of it take back control, levelling up, and all that nonsense, where ultimately we need to get beyond that we need to start looking towards solutions. And we need to get people to speak calmly and articulate the challenges that we see at the moment rather than kind of this He Said, She Said nonsense that seems to be going on quite frequently in the UK, because I agree with you in respect to we won't see a full on light switch moment where the lights are turned off. What we'll see in this country is fuel prices continue to rise, our our cost of food continue to rise, we'll see people that are in housing, that they maybe rent, their rental prices will rise, if you own a house, yeah, your your your household rise in value, but it'll be a false, right. So like, if you look at any, like, say for was a light switch moment, then a house, let's say worth a million now, the lights go off, it's worth 600 700,000, you then negative 300,000 400,000 negative equity. And it's it's about understanding finance and how it really works and how it works on an individual level. Because I think only by doing that, then you you can be part of the solution. And yeah, I believe we're shifting more towards a peer to peer human centric purpose economy, whereby people are looking more to long term and people are understanding more of these kinds of short term challenges, and focus on solutions. So ultimately, the world that we kind of transition into is more equipped to face crises, because there will be more crisis as we go along. It's just like the world is quite turbulent. So I'm positive in respect to the world that we're heading into. Because I think we need to be willing to be part of the conversation. But I think I do feel like we're both from the north, right? So if we talk honestly about levelling up, and we talk honestly, about the challenges that we faced in our early years, there is a division, and it's it doesn't need to be that way. So I'm interested because you're not telling me about you growing up in respect to it, and also, how you ended up going into finance.
Tom McGillycuddy:
32:33
Yeah, yeah, a lot, a lot to talk about in the car. Obviously, I was born and raised in Wigan, and I generally have a fantastic upbringing, when I was a big family, of a family, from Ireland, have family from from we're going to get a massive family growing up very, very fun upbringing, very, very lucky to have had so many family members around me that that loved me and brought me up really well. And so yeah, it was you say it was working class. It was Wiggins, an old man in sound, but still very much that kind of mentality. So no one particularly had a lot of money, but he never felt that because everyone's in the same position. So it felt great, to be honest. You know, I can't really, I can't claim to be like, you know, downplay and be all like, you know, saying it was it was too hard and things like that. Yeah, I mean, compared to some people show up, but it was a adequate upbringing. I love Wigan. I've actually moved back after 11 years in London. I've moved back recently because I missed it so much. I love I love being around my family and friends and people from Wigan, like just for people that are listening that are not familiar with the the geography of like Lancashire in the northwest. It's right next door to Bolton. So if you know Peter K, that's what everyone in Wiggins like, basically. So my dad doesn't find PK is funny because he knows 50 Peter K is at the pub is what he said to me and in my dad's is funny as him in his own right, you know what I mean? Some people are just jokers you know, the getting on with life. They work hard. They play hard. That's the kind of the place it is basically and I missed it. I missed I missed the energy, the people. And so I said what's your point, though, the major thing that I think is all comes back down to on every single issue more or less is the education system in this country. If I think about my school years of my high school years in Wigan, luckily for me, my mom, my mom brought me up very, very military fashion. Basically, she was very, very strict with me, she she would do things like this sounds like child cruelty, but I'm going to tell her Sorry, mom, but it still be in good stead before my tea every night. Sort of nasty. Call it infinity. So sorry about that. Anyway, for your dinner, she would make me sit on the kitchen counter and recite my times tables all the way through to my nine times tables, each number all the way through flawlessly, and then I would have my food basically. So she used to make me do my English literature homework, I would write in pencil first. And if it was flawless, then I would write it in pen and then I would write it in pen in the book. So I have to do my homework at least three times for every piece of homework I had. So you created this Like, hard working lunatic character, basically. And she did it on purpose because she was like, I don't want him to get in, you know, be hanging around with like by groups people, every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I was doing a spot for a team, because that would keep me out of trouble. I didn't know, I didn't know that, that didn't know, that's what she was doing. But, you know, rugby, football, whatever I was playing for two or three football teams at one point, you know, I was just always playing sport. And that was her way of keeping me out of trouble and keeping on the straight and narrow. But anyway, the education system, it was I mean, it was fine, I was lucky enough that I was in the top set for everything, basically. And what seemed to happen at that school, there was 10 sets for every class. And the top set, got the best teachers. And if you say set three, and below, they just let you languish, and do whatever. So it was like, you only got a good education, if you happen to already be good, which is ridiculous, really, if you think about it, but you never got taught anything that was any in any way useful for your life. So there was no financial education or political education. I'm very, very interested in politics and politics at a level ended up doing politics at level, and it's part of my degree as well. But there was no economics, politics, finance, there was no like, here's how the world works. Here's how to think about things. It was all nonsense. And I think because of that you didn't engage the kids all at school, I only worked hard out of fear of letting my parents down and add a couple of teachers that were brilliant for me. So I was afraid of letting them down as well. So I did well for them, really, I wasn't personally interested in anything that was doing. But it was that fear of letting people down that I worked and to be honest, fear drives me majorly, still, like fear of not doing well fear of being on the street, down the street. Now I've gotten my parents, but it's true fear of failure is still very, very much embedded into my character, but the script to your A Levels equally as nonsense and abstract that English language, English literature, French and politics, that's not doing me any good, really. And then my degree, which was politics, and criminology, and then I entered the real world. I was like, I know nothing. Basically, I know nothing about anything. And I started at Barclays. And I couldn't even work out percentages on my calculator. That's not even a joke. It's not even a joke. I don't know how I got on that graduate scheme. I have no idea. I think, honestly, Matt and I have joked that we were some quota. Because you had like 50 people, there was Harvard, Princeton, these amazing schools in Singapore, you had very wealthy families and their children were on it very, very powerful people's families. I won't name names, but the mattone me in the corner, like What the hell's going on? It was the first time I saw anyone wearing a little pinky ring. I was like, why is it why these lads wearing these little rings? And as I asked my family crest, Dad, we have a family crest. Now, obviously not so bad. I think I think the education that's why of all his faults, and you could name a lot of them. Tony Blair was great in a lot of respects, because education, education, education was his mantra was his focus. Because that is how you open people's eyes to everything, as how you preparing for the future, that unlocks like, all the stuff of like the, you know, the typical thing that I felt growing up was all that's not for us, or we don't go to London, or we don't work in those industries, you get a proper job. And that's not for us kind of mentality, you change all that mentality. And as a consequence, you change social mobility, and you change people's view of their life and their career and what's possible for them by opening up the their eyes to stuff so yeah, I don't know how that's it's hard to change, because obviously government run thing, and it's, you know, it's it's glacial to change, but education is so important. So important. And I was lucky that I had, I would, I would never have gone to do an A level or a degree. And I told him this, if it wasn't for my English literature teacher, he kind of changed my life in a lot of respects. And I wrote in my letter to explain to him a few years ago, they basically changed my life, have a look back, when when my dad told me all the basics, hard work, the polite turn up, etc, repeat, repeat. But he he taught me intellectual curiosity and to think for myself. And he did it in a way that I don't think a lot of people who are from that relatively normal background get exposure to so there's a there's a charity in London called debate mates. And what they do is they go into working class areas of London, and they teach the kids debate in which they do at private schools, right? They obviously debate topics and what it what it teaches you is how to construct an argument how to oppose an argument, self confidence, public speaking, standing up in front of your peers, you never get any of that. But my essential to teachers sometimes would come in and go, right, we're not doing the curriculum today. We're going to split the room up. And here's the subject, you're going to debate for it. You're going to debate against it. I had no idea what I was doing at the time, but we loved it. And it was like a challenge. And it just unlocked things in my mind. And then that set me off on a path of like questioning stuff, and we are eternally grateful for him. So if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't I would have gotten on a trade. So I remember having a conversation with my dad and my dad was like, Don't do that. But I've worked in the construction industry. He was like you've got a chance to go on to college and a level that we never did. So you've got to go and do it. If it wasn't for my dad, and maybe my teacher, my life would have been, you know, very, very, very, very different to what it is now. So that's look really, but that that teacher and but yeah, a lot of people don't get that. And it's because education systems doesn't really give you anything at all. And I think that's where that's where abandoning people, and that's where we're really messing up.
Peter Bell:
40:20
Yeah, and I couldn't agree more with regards to the education education education piece, because if you, if you look at the small tweaks you can do I know, they tried to do a lot with respect to academies and stuff. And I know, there's also a debate that people have in respect to private schools versus public and like, should they be scrapped? Should they not? I think, wider, it's more so actually, you know, you talk about not being able to do percentages, like actually teaching people maths properly, that's actually you know, relevant to a job, that that'd be useful. Definitely a political education. Because anybody that is like, switched on, you don't need to be switched on, to be honest, in respect to politics, you just need to have a memory. And you look back to kind of 97, when Blair came in, like they came in, it's almost like what we see now is exactly the same slim debates with the time they were talking about, like, corruption back then they were talking about a lot of the problems that we see at this point in time was also back then. And Blair came in and started talking about, you know, Britain deserve better New Labour, new, new hope, like, it's simple messages. But ultimately, actually, when do we do choose to elect a government, we have to hold them accountable for their actions. And, you know, like anybody that's listening to the Queen's speech the other day, that's just like a refurb of previous narratives, that it's not doing anything for us. So we need to like decide, as we go forward. How do we hold our MPs accountable? Like I would say, the public spoken in the local elections, I'm very much intrigued as to where we go next. In that respect, I won't go too deep into
Tom McGillycuddy:
42:00
things like ours. Remember, I learned at college, I chose politics. And I started doing those, those lessons. And I was like, what the different voting systems in different countries? We have a voting system that's called this, and it does this. And here's the pros and the cons of it. I was like, well, because you just get brought up like this, is it? This is the way it is. And because you don't know alternative, so Germany does it quite differently. They have an element of PR in the Oh, no. Okay, what's what's PR, and then you just got, you go down these different routes. And that's the great failure, I think there's an you could argue it's intentional, see why there's an element of it, because you don't want an electorate that's going to rip up their voice. But yeah, failing people in those things, you've got to find all those things out for yourself, basically, or get taught if you choose it and let your education otherwise, the vast majority of people never find out.
Peter Bell:
42:51
But I've mentioned it in previous podcasts, like, there's things such as, like the great resignation that's taken place at the moment. There's things like the effects of the COVID pandemic that took place preceding that this the realities of Brexit and also the continuation of realities of Brexit, as we see at the moment, like, one thing that happens in moments of change is largely people actually reflect on their lives and reflect on change and start questioning why. And you know, that the what's behind that? And I think there's a lot to be said, of what Simon Sinek talks about in start with, why if you start with why things are taking place, and if you like, if you understand there is a different way, then there's an awful lot you can do as an individual in respect to ushering in change not only from a personal level, but also from a wider societal level as well. And I think, you know, where are we at the moment? I think we're at the moment of just a debate, right, where we're starting the conversations, people are really educating themselves on what's important and why. And I think further, further down the line, we will see the kind of change that a lot of us have been clamouring for for a long period of time. But it takes time. Right?
Tom McGillycuddy:
43:58
It takes time. But you're right. I mean, like, if it wasn't for the financial crisis of 2008, we wouldn't have made the change in the banking sector that we needed to make, you could argue that this form of investing that we do, wouldn't have had it people grew up in that financial crisis was people were like, why are we doing it this way? Isn't there a better way? And it started this like questioning of what was the purpose of investing? What's the purpose of financial services, and impact investing kind of properly, obviously existed before that, but it started to rise more afterwards, people started to think about using these things as a tool. So yes, I think massive change comes from these big moments, these big crises, and you see what happened with COVID. Recently, people started to change their question, the question their relationship with work, what they want from their lives. It always comes from these big moments. So I'm hopeful. I'm an optimist. I'm an optimist. Like
Peter Bell:
44:49
you mentioned, you move back from like, back to Wigan from London, we moved up to Newcastle from London. And
Tom McGillycuddy:
44:55
why not? That's why right now, yeah,
Peter Bell:
44:57
there's an awful lot of people that kind of did make that shift and Yeah, you know, like technology has opened up. So reality is that you can work with whoever whenever and this huge possibility. So I think rather than Yeah, like we are in a true moment of turbulence, but rather than kind of be mired down by thinking that you know, you've you feel helpless look, look around for areas of hope and educate yourself and understand that what is possible by kind of a utilising your voice for change and also be what was possible if you use your time to educate yourself on the history and also the future and what it may actually evolve into. And I think if you do that, you can put yourself on a journey for development that you'll You won't regret, you'll you'll start seeing the world in a in a much more brighter way. And you'll start impacting the world around you in a much more bright away. And the more and more people that go in this kind of change journey, the better our future will become as a whole. So I think there's loads of positivity, positivity respect to where we're going. So just close out because I could talk to you all day.
Tom McGillycuddy:
45:56
Yeah. You just said that's, that's perfect. I love that. Just to
Peter Bell:
46:00
close out is there any like Final thoughts or key takeaways you'd like to leave with our audience?
Tom McGillycuddy:
46:05
Today, we've talked a lot about a lot of stuff. I'll talk shop for a second from, from so 5000 perspective on who the audience is, and who's listening. If you don't invest, you know, it is open to you. And I think everyone should invest long term for the future. It's one of the key ways that you can secure your own future way out into retirement or out to the future. And you should do it in a way that builds a future you want to retire into. You know, so invest in the companies that you think doing stuff that's good for the world. Hopefully, that's where those but that's the message from me. And I think the more people do that, the better for them, the better for themselves, and the better for everyone else as well. It's a win win.
Peter Bell:
46:42
No, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you. Enjoyed it.
Voice Over Artist:
46:50
Thank you for listening to the purpose made podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to purpose made wherever you normally get your podcasts to hear the latest news and views. You can also find and follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter or contact Peter directly to connect, inquire about purpose made, or request to be featured on the podcast. We look forward to welcoming you back soon for another episode.
