Event: FINTECH Circle Autumn Drinks 2025
Date: 27th September 2025
Author: FINTECH Circle
September meant it was time for our Annual FINTECH Circle “Autumn Drinks” which brought together our community of leading Fintech entrepreneurs, investors, and financial services professionals from across the UK.
More than 72 guests came together for an evening of Fintech discovery, networking, sharing ideas, making friends and looking for partnerships to scale up their businesses.
The event was hosted by our partner MHA trusted advisor to ambitious companies.
After the initial welcome drinks, FINTECH Circle’s Chair Susanne Chishti opened the evening, followed by keynotes from David Hume, Independent Financial Adviser and Chartered Wealth Manager, and Paul Mansfield, an Investment Manager and Chartered FCSI.
Then the panel started consisting of:
- Helena Wardle, of Money Means
- Chris Blundell, of MHA
- Moderated by Susanne Chishti, Chair of FINTECH Circle
Keynote – David Hume:
David began by telling us all about MHA – which is the UK presence of Baker Tilly, with over 2,000 employees overall. He told us about MHA Wealth; that’s a part of MHA, which has over 600 employees based here in the London Head Office.
He explained he is an independent financial adviser (IFA) working at MHA Wealth. As an independent advisor, he told us that MHA are one of the few companies offering integrated financial planning, wealth management, tax advice, and audit services.
This puts him in an evitable position to collaborate with colleagues for a comprehensive service. MHA Wealth aims to provide holistic advice and is a forward-thinking company investing in tech.
He explained they are currently trialling AI in our processes to offer a superior service, working with companies such as Saturn and Aveni, which specialise in this the financial planning advice area. They also use a leading cash flow modelling tool, which brings clients’ wealth and planning to life, and recently invested in MoneyInfo, a top client portal. MHA is committed to not just providing advice – but constantly seeking ways to improve their offering for a superior service to their clients.
David explained his expertise is in overall independent financial advice, as well as alternative investment options such as VCTs. He has been advising for over 35 years and one thing that has not changed is he expressed we’re all going to die one day. But…
“If I can really ask you, if nothing else from today’s presentation, please take away and consider your situation. What would be the situation for your family if you were to die?” And also, very importantly, what would happen to your business?
MHA specialises in giving this advice and being independent. He explained a number of protection options worth considering through your business:
“Not many business owners have heard of a Relevant Life policy… that’s your own life cover for your family written in trust. However, your company will pay the premiums and it will end up costing you around 50% of the equivalent personal life policy after all the tax savings.
So if you have a business and you have the ability and the monies to pay for life cover for the senior employees, yourself, maybe someone else, it’s a big benefit for you to consider that. You also have to consider what impact would the death of a key person. That may be you, that may be one of your colleagues.”
He also discussed:
“If you died: It may be the receptionist who has all the contacts. Whoever that keyperson is, what impact will that have, that death, to the business?
Will it continue to be able to run?
Will the profitability be significantly impacted?
Also, a shareholder. What shareholder agreement do you have in place if you have other shareholders apart from yourself?
Will your partner or spouse receive value on your death?
Who would inherit the shares if you didn’t have money to be able to pay them?
Would you want to be sitting and running a business with them in the future?”
David explained you can organise policies which would ensure you have liquid assets to be able to pay them the value of the shares.
He also mentioned if you have your own company, you can pay up to the annual allowance of £60,000 per annum. And even if you’re paying yourself a nominal salary, such as £10,000 or £12,000, you can still pay from the business a contribution of £60,000 as part of your overall remuneration package.
So although pensions, they have been in the news quite a bit, as they may be subject to IHT in the future. It’s still one of the most tax efficient ways of withdrawing monies from the business for your future benefit. Other tips included:
“…It is important to review any plans that you have at the moment. So I’ve covered the protection and retirement planning. Tax efficient saving.”
David also explained that as he is an advisor he can provide you with advice on all different types of investment structure. So those can include ISAs as a starting point or individual savings accounts.
“…If you’re not doing those at the moment, you can save up to £20,000 a year. I would encourage you to consider these if you have cash savings available.”
However, because pensions are now so restricted, then people are looking at alternative investment structures such as venture capital trusts, VCTs, or enterprise investment schemes or seed investment schemes as well.
He can give advice to clients on that side. But it does come with a bit of a health warning. They are higher risk investments, but you do normally benefit not only from 30% tax relief, but other tax benefits as well.
“You may, some of you in the room, be looking for investment from VCT, EIS companies. I know that Chris and his team do also talk about those opportunities of investment and the structure of the business, looking at attracting, rewarding, and maintaining employees”.
Finally, David told our audience that it’s really planning ahead for a business sale. He advised NOT to leave it until the last minute. it’s really important you get a good team working with you in the early days. Because how you structure your remuneration before the sale can affect the sale price. It’s looking at how will you have sufficient to live from on that sale. MHA Wealth can assist with cash flow modelling to show you how long your wealth would last.
Next, we heard form Paul Mansfield, Model Portfolio Service Lead & Bespoke DFM. Chartered FCSI.
Keynote: Paul Mansfield
Paul spoke about how he can assist the audience in building wealth over time. Paul Mansfield explained he works with David and the financial planning team at MHA Wealth. MHA Wealth have a number of advisors across the country and they are independent and continually fighting for their business as an investment manager.
Paul told the audience:
“We run two services. So we run a bespoke discretionary service and a model portfolio service.”
He explained:
“…The market is split between model portfolio services and multi-asset open ended investment companies, and more traditional bespoke investment management services. Model portfolio services are a one size fits many approach. They don’t have personalisation, but they’re effectively an investment manager’s best ideas at very low cost – 0.25%.”
He discussed they also run a bespoke, tailored service. These are much more personalised strategies for individuals. They often consider tax implications.
“Lots of clients have ethical preferences, specific income requirements, or they need to balance their risk in portfolios for a variety of different reasons, which I’ll touch on in a moment.”
Paul illustrated the situation of a tech entrepreneur (obviously leaning towards the audience here) who has a lot of money obviously tied up in their personal private company and they are in need of diversification, obviously a lot of risk concentrates in one area and MHA tailors portfolios to manage that risk.
“…So we will introduce strategies, asset allocation, in order to dampen risk in their portfolio so they are less risky in their personal life. In fact, we often find people, entrepreneurs by nature, seem to want to continue to press that risk, and we often build up portfolios that have more tech in than they originally had, but that would be an example.”
MHA has a strong process for building our tactical asset allocation, positioning and portfolios. And he touched on MHA’s sentiment and positioning with the portfolios, mainly because thats what everyone enjoys hearing about.
“So in essence, we know as investors and investment professionals that are trying to gain an edge in the market, that more often than not, or very often, we’ll be betting against that consensus herd mentality in order to achieve abnormal returns relative to the market. So that’s our starting point in this part of our process.”
“And here, just for interest’s sake, some of the consensus narratives in the market which we would challenge at the moment. and which have proved this enough for in our portfolios. The first being that equity markets are expensive.”
“I don’t know how many of you read the news or keep up with financial markets, but the general narrative is that PE, price to earnings ratios are very high, particularly adjusted price to earnings ratios are high from a historical point of view, and the natural inclination is that, or the natural expectations, those valuations will revert and go to cheaper levels in the future. So people or investors are scared as a whole.”
However, we believe equity markets represent winners and losers, and mean reversion is a strategy better employed in fixed income markets. The bull market in equities appears to have further to go…
“…We’ve seen the 2020 COVID crisis, we’ve seen the 21-22, the fastest inflation and interest cycle in history. More recently we’ve seen Trump tariffs, the election of Trump in this tariff regime. And we’ve seen the US bomb Iran. And in different times, in isolation, those events may have caused this bull market to stutter or even slip into a bear market, but that hasn’t happened.”
MHA Wealth is the trading name of MHA Wealth Ltd, a company registered in England (1916615) with registered office at The Pinnacle, 150 Midsummer Boulevard, Milton Keynes, MK9 1LZ. MHA Wealth is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) with registered number 143715 and is a member of the London Stock Exchange. MHA Wealth is a member of the MHA group. Further information on the MHA group can be found at here.
This communication is for general information only, is a marketing communication, and is not intended to be individual investment advice, a recommendation, tax, or legal advice. The views expressed in this article are those of MHA Wealth or its staff and should not be considered as advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a particular investment or product. In particular, the information provided will not address your personal circumstances, objectives, and attitude towards risk.
Next Susanne introduced our Panel
Helena Wardle, the CEO and founder of Money Means, and also Chris Blundell, partner at MHA. Talking about both how to create and launch an AI startup…
Susanne Chishti:
“…And so I want to invite now two speakers to me on stage. And Chris, to share your expertise, how to reward employees in the most tax-efficient ways. So maybe if we start with Helena.”
Helena Wardle:
“Hi, I’m Helena Wardle, I’m in charge of financial pilot, I’m the founder of Money Means, and so Money Means is building the first AI financial advisor, so yes, it’s exciting.
Chris Blundell:
“I’m Chris Blundell, tax partner in MHA, you’ve heard what that’s all about, but I’ve been a tax advisor, tax partner for the best part of 30 odd years. Way, way, way ago in England Revenue, brought it to the HMRC, I started off there, but through Big Four, been a partner here for the past 15 years, advising on tax, particularly share incentives, particularly employment taxes for companies of all sizes, whether a start-up, whether an OMB, whether mid-size, whether international, whether listed or whatever.
All those clients I’ve advised on. So hopefully from the questions I’ll get from Suzanne, I’ll give you some insight into how you can run your businesses better. And as she was saying, focus on your own position because you can run your business as much best as I can. But it’s about how you can think about tax saving and tax efficiency.”
Susanne Chishti:
“…Helena, maybe if you give a little bit of an overview of how you launched MoneyMeans and how you developed an AI-led financial Assistant.“
Helena Wardle:
“…Effectively, I saw the challenge with people getting access to financial advice, because… especially when you’re younger, you’re starting out, you’re still building wealth, there’s very little options to get help, and it was common that I was helping people at the later stages of their career, and I realised that a lot of the times people were telling me “ I wish I did this sooner” – and the reality is to help out there, financial advice is not readily accessible to most people.
Only less than 10% of you can actually access it, but it’s mind-blowing important and I can only say that to you because I have worked with hundreds of clients and what these guys are doing is phenomenal. That is really life-changing.”
“…Now the challenge is how do you recreate a relational aspect because it’s a lot more than what people think. Financial advisors don’t just tell you where to invest your money, it’s a big part of it, but as explained, there’s lots of steps in it. It’s helping you work out, like Google Maps, you are here, you need to get there, how do you actually go there?
And that sort of process in itself is not just shoving it into an investment, it’s very personal and very relational.
So I set out to solve that problem.
So I’m not, I didn’t want to be a tech entrepreneur. I’m a financial planner by the profession, but that’s what I ended up having to do because the solutions didn’t exist. But we needed to put robustness into it. because it’s heavily regulated for the right reasons. It needs to get the right outcomes for people. So that process has taken four years.
It’s been a tough journey and it’s been a journey that has been enormously rewarding because this space will disrupt everything that we do. The top use of AI today is therapy. So for people to think the relational aspect of service industries is not reputable is flawed.
So we’ve evidenced that because we’ve taken our AI model through the financial advisor qualifications, that the qualifications advisors in the UK have to do, and we’ve benchmarked it against ChatGPT. So if you ask ChatGPT for advice, if you don’t understand advice really well, you will judge the responses okay.”
“…The challenge is it just doesn’t know anything about you, and it’s not going to do any work to find that out, because AI predicts a response that you want to hear that’s effectively how it works, so we… built to work with the flaws of AI and really navigated that with other technology solutions as a combined sort of solution.
So AI ChatGPT failed the exams, it didn’t pass it, which is going to be released in the press tomorrow. And AI, our AI model Ada, AI digital advisor aced it. So she scored actually better than human advisors and not saying anything about that either, but you’ve expected to because it’s, you know, got a lot more power behind it than our brains.
But that’s also the mission behind it
To help millions of people actually get good outcomes and help that all make a difference.”
Susan then asked Chris:
“Coming to you, we’ve got lots of founders here in the room, and we’ve had so many new text changes in the last few years.
Can you summarize what is the best way still to launch a business in the world?”
Chris Blundell:
“…I think the strategy is, with all businesses, it’s about taking from the start to the middle to the end. And it’s about claiming, as you set the business up, companies are a better way of doing things, usually than being a sole trader or as being a partnership.”
“Partnerships have their place, LLPs do, but on the whole, most people choose companies because companies are the best way forward.”
“Because…
1) They provide you with protection as an investor, as an owner, your losses are limited to what you put into the company. And as well, the tax rate in a company is lower than as an individual. So as a partnership, or as a partner in a partnership like myself, or as a sole trader, you will be paying 45% tax and national insurance on top of that.
Whereas in a company, the rate is 20, 25%. Admittedly, the company, once it makes profits, when it gets to that point, the money’s going to be in the company and the next trick is how to get the money out of the company in such a way as to be tax efficient. While it’s in the company, the best way forward is always just to claim the expenses that you can.”
“…So whether that’s claiming capital allowances and annual investment allowance, that’s 100% in both cases, on anything you want to, any tech, any equipment that you purchase, you can run it off against the business. And even if you’re making a loss, don’t worry about that because the loss, the capital allowances that you make will continue to be a loss to be carried forward to be offset against future profits as and when you make them.”
“…And obviously you’re all in the business of making profits in the future and that will happen in time.”
“In terms of other things to do, as David mentioned it, putting money into a pension is a good way, once you’re making profits, rather than paying tax on that, put it into a pension plan up to the £60,000 limit. then that ends up being a tax-free way of doing things.
Yes, the money is then tied up on a pension, and that has downsides. Can’t access it, can’t access it, till yoy are 55.
Inheritance tax is going to be due on it now, thanks to the thanks to thanks to Rachel Reeves, as in 2027, all money in a pension plan previously was inheritable tax, IHT free.”
Chris continued:
“…Inheritance tax free won’t be in the future, but nonetheless, you would have tax efficiency by putting it into a pension. Where it’s going to be invested and essentially what Helena was saying, but vital for anyone, myself included, my own financial advisor, to have a plan as to what I’m going to retire, when I’m going to retire, what I’m going to retire on, and how much money I need.”
“…Many people I hear, even in businesses, talking about “I’ve got I’ve got a house, that’s going to be my pension, I’ll sell the house and that will be my pension.” – Yes, that’s a possibility, but surely the better way of doing it is putting money into an exchange-traded fund that Paul was talking abou earlier.
“…It will grow and as it grows you will end up finding with compound interest, compound rates, that becomes a hugely valuable asset to you towards the end, provided that you don’t have to pay inheritance tax on it.”
“So it’s kind of those things you need to think about is claiming all the reliefs that you can.”
“… But once you’ve got to how to exit, and exit may be a long way off, it’s around having what you’ve got in the 1st place, the best thing you’ve got, that is shares. Shares give you capital gains tax rates when you come to sell them, whether to a third-party buyer, whether to an employee ownership trust or whatever.
Capital gains tax rates are at 24% at the minute. They’ve gone up from 20%. And if you qualify for what used to be known as entrepreneurs relief, now business asset disposal relief, essentially for an unquoted company, shares will qualify for that, is a tax rate that is now 14%, but only for this year, it’s 18% next year when it will go up, but nonetheless still better than 24%.”
So having shares is the best thing to do in terms of an exit.”
Susanne: What other things can you do?
Chris:
“ Well, the things, it’s essentially doing, do I liquidate the company? That’s another way of doing it. At some point in the future, I’ve built up value in the company, I liquidate it. That also is a capital gains taxable event. But other than that, extracting money as you’re going along, tax efficiency has largely been sort of legislated out of existence in a sense.
Whether you take the money out, how do I get my money out?
I get it out either as a salary or bonus. That’s going to be taxed at an effective rate of 50-odd percent % when you take into account the kind of interplay between corporation tax relief and what you’re going to be taking out.
Similarly with a dividend, same thing, it’s around about 55% is the effective rate.
Better is to take it out as either interest, so if you loan money into the company, then you take the interest out, get interest on that loan tax rate, it’s still 45%, but it’s obviously better than 54%.
Or it’s rent, so if you allow your company to use the premises, that you acquire the premises and you rent that premises to them, that again, taking rent out is again more tax efficient than taking salary out or taking other things out.”
Susanne:
“So now we’re coming to one topic, I know which is very important to all of you who are CEOs and who’ve got employees and team members below you. Which is:
Q: How can the company reward its employees and founders in the most tax-efficient way in terms of bonuses, employee benefits, options, shares?
And so I wanted to ask Helena first in terms of how do you do it in practice, because you’ve got a large team. We just talked about great tech developers.
Q: How do you keep your team motivated and incentivized?”
Helena Wardle:
“…I pay them well, it’s one. So that we pay close or as close to market rates as we can. So the one thing I can share is we’ve been running for 4 years and we’ve only just issued the share option.”
“So before I started the business, I pretty much interviewed as many founders as I could finally would give me time and I asked them to tell me all the mistakes they made and share options and giving them too early, giving too many is one that all of them told me.”
“So I have not been stingy, I’ve just been very careful. Your first 3, 4, 5 years of your business, you’re very likely to fail. I’m sorry to say that, but that’s true because statistics show that. Startups are not worth anything once they’ve got, until they get revenue. So do not give share options out, in my opinion, and in my experience, until you have revenue or you reach revenue, because if you do, you’re giving something away that’s almost worth nothing.”
“… That is what I’ve learned, and that’s what I think is really, really important that I learned from other founders. So you can do share options, and if you incentivize people early, do that because they’re gonna be in your business until you exit. So that is actually rare to find, so unless it’s a co-founder, that’s not actually that easy.”
“…Even employee number one, I wouldn’t throw shares at them because they don’t value it. They value it once they can see the business will have a route to succeeding. That’s what I’ve learned from my team and you get their buy-in. So we talked through share options and how they work, what it actually means to the team before we issued it, to really understand if they value it. And even now I would say half my team do, the rest don’t. So that’s the truth because people don’t B, understand it. B, see the value in it. So the first lesson I’ve learned is pay people well because that’s what they’re there for.”
“But also the other thing I think is really interesting is that you need to give people opportunities to progress. We are working with really cutting edge tech. Every single person in our business is AI first, which means they use AI to enhance their jobs. They are learning more from our business than any other job they would have. That is enormously valuable to people.”
“…So understand what value you’re adding to your employees. It’s not always mandatory. Are you giving them a learning opportunity they will not find anywhere else? And if you do, that’s big value to it. And people will take salary cuts for that, like two senior leaders have. You know, they buy 45 grand under market rate because they are learning more than they will ever learn in any other business. So that’s really valuable.”
“…The other thing is normal employee benefits, like the stuff they talked about, is not expensive. Like it is not hugely expensive and people value it because it shows you care. So we have got really strong benefits. We have sick pay, income protection, you know, these guys could talk to you about that. We have death and service, which is really rare for a startup at our stage and it doesn’t cost us the earth, it’s almost no money.
We also make sure that we sort of really have a session and talk about employee benefits and really explain it to the team, and we issue valuations for the share option, because if you can’t put a value to it, what are they actually having? people don’t buy into it if they can’t see what’s in it for me, and you have to bring that to life. So I don’t know if that’s helpful.
That’s definitely my experience. But I will really say that it was across the board and it was more than 10 founders I spoke to. Be very careful with issuing options too quickly.”
Susanne:
“…Fantastic advice, Helena. Thank you. And maybe if I can ask Chris next now. So let’s assume you know you want to launch, it’s at the right time of the startup.
Q: How do you do it? Actually, how do you launch options and share options in the most tax efficient way?”
Chris Blundell
“…I think it is about communicating with your employees. It’s not people do think it’s a magic thing of giving people share options. You understand what they are, they will be motivated by it, but they’re not going to be motivated by it unless there’s a communication as to one, do they value it?”
Next Susanne invited the Fintech CEO’s in the audience to introduce themselves…
Then we had drinks and canapes and enjoyed some informal networking, where lots of business cards were passed and connection made.
Make sure you check out the Gallery below:
Thank you once again to the entire community for bringing your positive energy, laughter, and fellowship to the FINTECH Circle Autumn Drinks. Your enthusiasm and genuine connections truly made the occasion a roaring success.
Looking forward to more gatherings and shared moments in the future.
Until then, “Cheers” to the wonderful memories we created together!
The Team at FINTECH Circle
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