A countercultural shift towards financial independence

Events like the Global Financial Crisis and, more recently, Covid have accelerated a countercultural movement towards financial independence through forms of income outside of a salary. Alongside the growth of the gig and creator economies, millennial and Gen Z workers are investing in shares with the goal of retiring early. In 2020, over 40% of millennials and Gen Z invested in shares outside of their superannuation.

Pearler is an investing platform with a mission of helping users achieve financial independence through long-term, passive investing. Rather than riding the Robinhood wave, Pearler users are incentivised to invest through low cost index funds so they can achieve long-term returns, with the performance of funds measured over a 10-year period and brokerage free ETFs when users invest for at least 1 year.

For founder Nick Nicolaides, Pearler brings together the best of robo-advice and trading platforms through an online community where investors can share and learn from each other’s journey towards financial independence.

“We’re in this period of innovation where everyone seems focused on gamifying trading by making investing exciting and getting people into the market quickly. Pearler’s focus on financial independence is more about being long-term goal oriented, not having to time the market and using diversified managed funds to help get you there. To celebrate financial independence, we bring together the automation tools of robo-advice with the choice of trading platforms through a unique social wealth platform, where users can invest as easily as possible.”

Nick Nicolaides, Founder @ Pearler

Financial data for seamless investing

As an investment platform, Pearler promises to make responsible investing easier, always. By partnering with Basiq, Pearler has real-time and ongoing connectivity to a user’s banking information and the ability to pre-check account details and funds in preventing failed deposits for a seamless investment experience.

“We’re an investing platform, and we want to harness data to remove the typical barriers or friction in the investing process, be it avoiding insufficient funds or speeding up the process. If people want to invest and know they have the money, then we want to make sure they can do that as easily as possible.”

Nick Nicolaides, Founder @ Pearler

Finfluencers and content as a competitive advantage

Beyond the ability to invest, what sets Pearler apart is that it’s also a social platform. Social content as a source of competitive advantage isn’t new. For some of the most popular apps like TikTok and Instagram, user generated content such as images and short-form videos are the main source of value. By working together with ‘finfluencers’ to build a community of like-minded investors, Pearler is able to leverage content as a source of competitive advantage and achieve long-term user engagement, with 69% of users either reading, listening or discussing their wealth on a weekly basis.

For Pearler, finfluencers like Strong Money Australia [an early content creator in the Aussie FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement)], were important right from user-testing to being active members of the Pearler community:

“Right from the beginning we were showing them mockups and got them to look at what we were designing from pricing to all sorts of things. And then we took it a step further, getting insights from them on what they were sharing with their audiences. So we thought, if they’ve got a blog, Twitter and Instagram, how can we add to that?”

Nick Nicolaides, Founder @ Pearler

The result is a win-win situation, one that provides influencers and content creators with another asset to engage their audience and build their brand, whilst also providing users with the ability to follow the investing journey of those they trust. Just as Canva provides templates for designs, Pearler provides templates for investing, combining this with data-driven insights to help users make and execute informed investment decisions.

With over 15,000 users already signed up, Pearler are just about about to launch a mobile app! Head to the Pearler website to get started on your journey to financial independence.

For more on how Pearler uses Basiq to connect to pre-check account details and funds from over 100 institutions head to our website.