‘Not everyone needs an adviser to start investing’
Not everyone needs an adviser to start investing, many just need the education and learning to start them on their journey, according to Elisabeth Prager and Nitika Vyas, founders of Aila Money.
Speaking to FT Adviser, Prager and Vyas discussed their app Aila Money which they founded in a bid to help close the gender wealth gap.
The app, which is free, launched in January 2025 and is described by Vyas and Prager as a person’s “money PT”.
“We are liking ourselves to a personal trainer, because what we want to do is allow women to achieve their life goals with confidence.
“How we do this is by helping women understand where they currently are, such as their net worth and net incomes, and then showing them what percentile they are in compared to the rest of the UK and their age groups. Then we centre everything around the life they want,” Vyas explained.
Users are given personalised education about their budget, investing, insurance and savings to help achieve the goals they have set.
“We then do some action tracking where we tell users this is how much you need to put away in savings or investments in order to achieve the goals you have set in the timeframes you want. We then follow up with people to see whether they have put that money away for those goals,” Vyas added.
The app also has a marketplace of mortgage brokers, investment advisers, solicitors and financial coaches, that users can be referred to if they decide they need further support.
We’re here to close that gender wealth gap. We’re here to get women more comfortable with their finances.
“We recognise that everyone has different needs,” Vyas said.
In its test version, Aila Money had 200 users and had people who had never invested, invest £250,000 in total.
Some 90 per cent of users said their financial confidence grew as a result of using the app, according to Prager.
“We’re here to close that gender wealth gap. We’re here to get women more comfortable with their finances,” she added.
In terms of how Aila Money differs from other budgeting apps on the market, Prager said it was the level of personalisation users received as well as the holistic approach that is applied to each user.
“We’re not like traditional budgeting apps, because [ . . . ] we look at you much more holistically. So the first components we’ve rolled out are budgeting, saving and investing.
We look at you much more holistically because we have both the digital and this human component with the adviser marketplace, which very few of the other apps have.
“Now we’re looking at the protection side of things and the debt side of things as the next step on our product roadmap.
“We have both the digital and human component with the adviser marketplace, which very few of the other apps have.
“We differentiate, because we make not only the guidance accessible, but then when somebody says, ‘I do need more’, they have a trusted, vetted place where they can turn to,” Prager explained.
Adviser marketplace
Vyas discussed how she and Prager wanted to ensure the advisers that worked with them could serve women.
“Women traditionally haven’t felt spoken to or felt the advice was relatable, and quite frankly, sometimes felt like things were being mansplained to them and didn’t feel comfortable going to these advisers.
“So we want to make sure that we have advisers who serve women. That doesn’t mean they’re all women, but that they are inclusive of women and understand women’s different needs,” she explained.
We want to make sure that we have advisers who serve women. That doesn’t mean that they’re all women, but that they are inclusive of women and understand women’s different needs
Prager provided an example of someone in their community who used a female broker and how this differed to their experience with a male broker.
She said: “This lady was single and pregnant, and was thinking about getting a larger house because she wanted a spare room for her child. She went to her broker who did all of the calculations.
“The calculations were correct, but he leveraged her to the max. She was in private equity, she was working lots of hours, so she could have very easily got the bigger house and the bigger mortgage.
“She then went to a female mortgage broker, who said the maths was right, and the other broker had not done anything wrong, but that she had no idea what comet was about to hit her earth in terms of how much childcare she was really going to need, not just during her work day but after hours.
“The female broker said to her, ‘you don’t know if you will want to stay in this big job, because you might want to spend more time with your child’. So she thankfully got that advice and decided to stay in her house.”
Vyas went on to say that even though the app was in its early stages, those who were using it were then spurred on to access advice through Aila’s marketplace.
The reason we started Aila is because at some point in your life, you get to a point where you have multiple competing goals that you need to think about financially.
“There are parts of our learning modules where we’re saying if you want further information, here are our coaches or advisers who can help you further. So we are seeing people ask about that.
“Our app is in a very early stage but when we’ve got the open banking, open finance data, we can then really relate it back to people’s behaviors and say, ‘do you want to work on this behavior with a coach or adviser?’ But we’ve already seen uptake on people asking for both,” she explained.
Not exclusive to women
Despite the app being targeted at women, Prager and Vyas wanted to make clear Aila Money was open to anyone.
According to the founders, the majority of users are in their late 20s into their early to mid 40s.
Prager said: “The reason we started Aila is because at some point in your life, you get to a point where you have multiple competing goals that you need to think about financially.
“That is when people engage with us, it’s when they have multiple life goals that they know are coming in the next five years.
“Whether that’s buying their first property, getting married, having a career change – they are trying to work towards these things and work out how they can make it happen,” Vyas added.
It’s about women being independent. It’s about them knowing and being very conscious about the choices they make.
The reason Vyas and Prager made the app free was to allow anyone with any levels of income to have access to financial guidance and education.
“The big issue is that investment advisers will not look at you until you have £250,000 investable assets. And yet, we’re being told you need to start early because of compounding. You need to be starting in your 20s.
“And that’s the main gap we’re trying to help people with and we are very clear in the fact that not everyone needs an adviser. There are people who can do our module, do our learnings and do it themselves.
“It’s about women being independent. It’s about them knowing and being very conscious about the choices they make.
“There’s nothing wrong with delegating your investment choices to an adviser that is also proactively making a decision, but you are independently from a place of knowledge, figuring out what works for you and your current situation, and acting on that,” Vyas said.
alina.khan@ft.com
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