Episode 28 - Tuomas Toivonen
In this episode, I sit down with Tuomas Toivonen, founder and CEO of Holvi.
Guests
Show notes
In this episode, I sit down with Tuomas Toivonen, founder and CEO of Holvi.
Tuomas Toivonen, Co-founder and CEO at Holvi, has over 15 years of experience advising governments and global mobile operators on payment systems. Tuomas saw the need for a better banking solution for small businesses in Europe. This drove him to create Holvi – a banking-service designed to meet the unique needs of SMEs.
Holvi is an Helsinki based digital bank, offering small businesses, from freelancers to micro businesses and growing startups, a home for their finances. With a business account and Mastercard, invoicing and bookkeeping tools all in one place, Holvi simplifies the time-consuming distractions of financial admin, helping small business owners to manage their balance.
With him, we talked about the experience of launching a neobank in the nordics, the different funding environment in fintech between 2012 and 202, but also the main challenges in financial services in the current environment.
In this episode
Tuomas Toivonen tells the story of Holvi, the Finnish business account for freelancers and small companies: founded in 2011, acquired by BBVA in 2016, and bought back by its team in 2021. He explains how Holvi reached profitability by cutting costs and ending free accounts, why he favours deeply harmonised EU rules such as e-invoicing standards, and how neobanks will win larger companies product by product. He also sees stablecoins opening global access to dollars.
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Holvi
- 2:58E-invoicing and EU fragmentation
- 6:08Differences across European markets
- 9:07How Holvi started
- 12:01Early funding
- 13:52Joining BBVA
- 17:27How trust in neobanks was built
- 20:44The management buyout
- 22:22Profitability and ending free accounts
- 26:58Nonprofits as a growth channel
- 30:35Where neobanking is heading
- 33:40Stablecoins and dollar access
- 36:59Winning larger companies
- 39:20AI at Holvi
Key facts
Holvi was founded in Finland in 2011 and obtained a pan-European licence in 2014.
Holvi gives freelancers and small businesses a current account, debit and credit cards, 18 currencies, payment acquiring, invoicing and e-invoicing, an online store, expense management and a cash-flow forecast.
Holvi was the first Finnish company in Seedcamp, and Speedinvest became its first institutional investor in 2014.
BBVA acquired 100% of Holvi at the start of 2016, when it had fewer than 20 people; it grew to about 150 under BBVA.
Holvi's team bought the company back from BBVA in a management buyout at the start of 2021; it is fully team-owned.
After the buyout Holvi cut its team from about 150 to 65 to reach profitability; it now has about 130 people and is solidly profitable, with Finland, Germany and Austria as main markets.
Holvi ended fully free accounts; the customers who left over the fee had been generating about 1.80 euros a month on average.
Holvi serves nonprofit associations, which spread awareness of its brand.
Everyone at Holvi has access to several AI tools under a compliant-use policy, and an internal platform gives product teams a range of LLMs.
Holvi favours deeply harmonised EU regulation; EU directives leave too much to member states, fragmenting markets such as e-invoicing.
Smaller EU markets implement rules with Europe in mind, while large markets tend to add their own variations.
Neobanks will increasingly serve companies of 50–250 employees, winning them product by product, starting with areas like foreign exchange.
Stablecoins are opening access to the US-dollar financial system to people anywhere.
Questions and answers
Why did Holvi join BBVA?
Fundraising in 2015 was hard for an unproven neobank, and BBVA provided the resources to scale for five years.
How was trust in neobanks built?
Through time, longevity and profitability, plus general comfort with digital services.
Why should businesses have more than one bank?
Resilience: a cyber attack or bank failure, as with Silicon Valley Bank, should not stop payroll.