Hapi rolls out UK savings and investments app for parents
Hapi, a London-based challenger tapping adults who want to start saving and investing for their children’s futures, has begun rolling out its app to its first customers.
The firm has obtained Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) approval as an “appointed representative” – a status it landed around two weeks ago. Hapi can say it runs regulated activities and acts as a directly authorised agent of the regulator.
Rebecca Stelea, Youssef Darwich, Sigurjon Isaksson and Adrian Gostling
The start-up is backed by Entrepreneur First, which also backs artificial intelligence (AI) finance assistant Cleo, and cryptocurrency start-up Donut.
Hapi’s founders include Youssef Darwich and Sigurjon Isaksson. Hapi CEO Darwich is one of the former operation head at Tide, the UK’s challenger business banking services.
He also spent more than three years in RBS’ markets arm, where he analysed debt.
Whilst Isaksson, Hapi’s chief technology officer, previously worked as an engineer at Eigen Technologies.
The start-up also employs Rebecca Stelea as its marketing and growth lead, who carries experience from Badoo, Deliveroo, and Lime. As well as Adrian Gostling, its lead engineer, who has spent the majority of his career leading engineering at PressRun, a firm which converts print magazines into digital tablet magazine form.
Hapi’s creation
In a LinkedIn post published in November, Darwich explains the origins of Hapi. Built off the back of feedback from as many as 500 parents, development started in the first half of 2020.
The two founders met through Entrepreneur First, sharing interests both in finance and fantasy football.
They began building Hapi seven weeks into the Entrepreneur First programme, which gave the fintech £200,000 in funding – alongside a collection of angel investors.
At one point, the start-up spent two whole weeks building a database of the fees of all the private schools in the UK, which it then transferred onto a visual map.
Hapi calls itself “the first wealth management app built with families in mind”.
It initially intended to be up and running in January, pushing it a month behind schedule.
The long-term plan is to become a fully regulated financial adviser, expanding on its current, FCA-issued appointed representative status.
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