Christina Melling is the co-founder of Stipendium, an online platform with a suite of products that make moving house, remortgaging and writing a will cheaper, quicker and simpler.
She was recently listed in the Telegraph NatWest’s Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs to Watch and shares her own inspirational Lancashire woman in business story.
Stipendium aims to make it quicker, cheaper and simpler to buy a house, remortgage and get a will, all while reducing stress and making each journey educational and with the abilities to gift the products to friends or family and reward any of the products by way of employee benefit, allowing employers to invest in and futureproof the lifecycles of their employees in a new way.
A year ago, I took the leap into starting my own business having spotted a gap in the market throughout my time working in both law and wealth management. Having become very familiar with fintech and proptech, I realised that nobody had streamlined the house-buying or remortgaging journeys to make them more accessible, cheaper, quicker and easier for the nation’s current and future homeowners.
Statistics around financial stress in the UK have always worried me, yet they have become worse, not better, and so I set out to make a change to this. This is where Stipendium began. Stipendium is a platform with a suite of multi-faceted tools that address house-buying, remortgaging, will-writing, conveyancing, benefit calculation all in one place.
Better yet, I have integrated a redemption function into the tool so that any of these products can be bought individually, gifted to another, or rewarded by way of employee benefit.
Launching a suite of products in such a short space of time and being listed in the Telegraph NatWest’s Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs to Watch in my first year of business.
My proudest achievement has been shouting about the business from every corner and making the most of every opportunity that has come my way. I take great pride knowing that we stand for something new and innovative which has the potential to change the nation’s attitude towards buying a house
There has been so much and I have kept a diary of all my business learnings from over the course of the last twelve months. The best piece of guidance was to continue to surround myself with positive-minded business owners, learn from them, listen to them and ask lots of questions.
Knowing that Stipendium has products that people can genuinely benefit from. I am so passionate and determined to fill the financial education gap and provide the nation with more cost effective, time efficient and stress-free ways of tackling life events.
Wellbeing has been at the forefront of my mind throughout the year. Part way through the year I made a decision to completely transform my eating habits and invest in nutrition. It is the best thing I could have done. My three tips are:
Get to know your target market; their behaviours, geographic patterns, ages, habits, how patterns change throughout the year. Data is power. You will have bad days. Embrace them. Nobody can promote you or your business better than you. www.stipendium.io
Would you like to see your business grow? So would we. To speak to someone from the Growth Hub about business support, contact Boost online or call 0800 488 0057.
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