You may have seen ads at bus stops around the Shore recently in which BNZ promotes its support of Money Sweetspot. This community purpose-driven start-up, created by North Shore resident Sasha Lockley, is making waves in the financial services community just two years since its inception. Christine Young talked to Sasha, to find out how her charity-supporting, debt consolidation business came about and what’s making Money Sweetspot soar.
Sasha Lockley was a forensic accountant for the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) before moving on to become head of operations for a large New Zealand finance company. In October 2019, she had what she calls a 'matrix moment' while driving home across Auckland Harbour Bridge after a choir practice. (This multi-talented woman is also a classical singer.) “What would happen if finance companies could understand that bad things happen to good people?” She asked herself.
Sasha knew about bad things happening to good people: her family came from a poor area in the UK, and the stories of many of her finance company clients were stories like her family’s. The bus company her father worked for went under and the family was bankrupt; she remembers hiding in the back rooms of their house from debt collectors. And her mother died early. ”Both were good people who had bad things happen to them.”
Sasha has had her own share of bad patches. While working at the SFO, she had a mental breakdown, she says. "I felt the world would be better off I was not in it. I was a good person that a bad thing happened to. But when bad things happen to good people, the financial system does bad things.”
She wanted to change that. During that October 2019 drive over the bridge she decided there should be a sweet spot, “a financial services organisation that acknowledged the human-ness of its clients.”
She would have to leave her job, to research exactly how she could achieve this dream. But how to tell her family that she was leaving a job paying more than anyone in the family had ever seen or imagined? She felt she needed permission.
She applied for an Edmund Hillary Fellowship (EHF), a programme that provides exceptional entrepreneurs, investors and startup teams with a platform on which to incubate global impact ventures. Just two months after her 'matrix moment', in December 2019, she was awarded one of the coveted fellowships, and became part of a global community of more than 500 EHF recipients. The fellowship allowed her to actively connect with other Fellows, and gave her the confidence to step out on her own. In March 2020, she left her job and had time to think and research how to create, what was in her head already called, Money Sweetspot.
“I did lots of listening, for about a year,” she says, as she grappled with how to design and execute something meaningful. During this time, she stayed on a marae in Tolaga Bay, at the invitation of a peer from her EHF cohort. Already on the board of Friendship House in South Auckland (Sasha is now the chair) and on the board of Lifewise, this visit allowed her to gain further insights into what a solution might be to the problem of debt in what is generally deemed an impoverished area.
The visit to Tolaga Bay was 'life changing,' Sasha says. “I realised it was an area of abundance, not of scarcity.” And she didn’t like, and actively spoke out against, the views of some of the cohort, who offered what they saw as quick solutions to things that needed 'fixing' without understanding the community context in which they were created.
Sasha’s solution was a commitment to focus on lending with heart – a 'financial reset' that consolidates a person’s debts, on terms that are firm yet realistic, at interest rates far less than many were paying to banks, finance companies or loan sharks.
“My intention was not to displace good people doing good things,” she says. “I wanted to magnify the things already happening.”
Money Sweetspot was formed with co-founder Meurig Chapman, who has a background in the banking industry. Where Sasha is the visionary, Meurig is 'super data-driven, my opposite'. Initially she was going to hire him to do some data analysis. They then discovered they had a shared mission and that they could 'do this together'.
Even with a co-founder alongside her, building Money Sweetspot was hard, Sasha confesses. “This is a perceived success story,” she says, “but it was a journey with many tears and missteps…. I wish more people involved with new businesses were open about the failings and the challenges it takes.
"There were many steps when I thought I was losing my marbles, putting my family’s financial future at risk.” If entrepreneurs talked more about the challenges, she believes others could learn that failure is not permanent, and that while the entrepreneurship journey may be hard, it is also worth embarking on.
It took three years, encompassing a major spine operation and Covid, before Money Sweetspot was launched. “I was trying to raise money for a social impact project that is a lender. Imagine pitching that to investors!” With support from The Tindall Foundation, Christian Savings (a financial institution), Anglican Care Waiapu, and BNZ, she finally raised $1.5 million to build Money Sweetspot as a largely digital entity, with just five staff, and begin her mission to 'disrupt predatory lending'.
BNZ also advanced an initial loan facility of $5 million so Money Sweetspot could start making loans. The first loan was made in December 2022, and Money Sweetspot has, in the last eight months, provided $5.4 million in financial resets to a wide variety of people – New Zealanders of all ages and ethnicities for whom the financial juggle had become a struggle.
“We can help people with debt consolidation at lower costs,” says Sasha. “We are genuinely trying to do things differently.”
Key to this difference is linking loans to financial education, as well as to community giving. If clients undertake any of the financial education modules available through Money Sweetspot, they receive Sweetspot points that can be credited as a dollar amount to reduce their loan balance or to a savings account for a rainy day.
The community aspect is equally innovative. “People apply for a loan, and we bundle their debts. Their commitment is to avoid new debts and repay on time.” If people do this, Money Sweetspot credits them with $100 a year to donate to the charity of their choice through The Good Registry. Sasha believes this approach to education and to charitable giving works. “If you give people a choice, they engage,” she says.
Money Sweetspot works actively with the financial mentoring community, credit unions, other large businesses, the micro-finance community and banks, all of whom refer clients. To date, Money Sweetspot has had over 700 applications for a financial reset, and has approved 250. Clients pay on average 13% interest compared with up to 50% some were paying previously. “People collectively have saved an estimated $1.5 million just by coming to us.”
Money Sweetspot can’t help everyone – but everyone who applies gets access to the financial education modules; so far 2,500 modules have been accessed. And if someone’s application is declined, Money Sweetspot helps to connect the applicant with other organisations who can help.
Money Sweetspot has been built from Sasha’s clear vision and purpose, through solid research and building strong relationships across the financial and financial mentoring sectors. At the heart of her business is a desire to 'bring the humanity back to business'. Given its success to date, there is little doubt that Sasha will achieve her aim to have lent $35 million by March next year, through continuing to build relationships with financial organisations, mentors and 'impact investors', and continuing her ethos of 'reaching people in the community in a way that resonates with the community'.
