Those Beyond started life as the tech lab of fintech unicorn Thought Machine, supplying cloud-based core banking systems to the world’s biggest banks.
Now, after setting off in a different direction to its former parent, it is on an innovation journey that started with a product not aimed at the JP Morgans or the Lloyds Banks of this world, but at four- to six-year-old children.
This contrasting customer base reveals the vast opportunities to use financial technology to improve people’s lives and invigorate the banking sector.
With its first product, Nestlums (pictured above), a digital and physical version of a piggy bank that is on the shelves at John Lewis, Those Beyond is ready to help fuel the “Apple-ification of banking”, according to Mark Warwick, CEO and founder of the company.
Before founding Those Beyond, Warwick was chief design officer at Thought Machine, where he spent seven years helping with the “Google-isation” of banking.
Warwick was one of the early employees at Thought Machine, which was established in 2014 by former Google head of text-to-speech Paul Taylor, along with other former employees of the tech giant.
It offers an all-in-one cloud-based core banking software, known as VaultOS, which helps solve the biggest IT challenge for banks, replacing the legacy systems that are holding them back.
It was hailed as the future and an opportunity for large, traditional banks to throw off the shackles of legacy systems and, like their digital-focused challengers, harness the latest technologies.
Cool apps
One aspect of Thought Machine’s approach to the market was to demonstrate, through its labs, some of the “cool” apps it could build on top of its cloud platform that banks could offer customers. Thought Machine Labs was a 12-person studio led by Warwick.
It’s great to do cloud-based banking, but it’s even better if you do cloud-based banking and win more customers out of it Mark Warwick, Those Beyond
“It was a really interesting way of helping Thought Machine get into the market. We would invent things on top of the platform and demo them to banks,” he tells Computer Weekly.
These included an app that enabled customers to “chip away at their mortgages”. Other creations included software to “hyper-personalise loans” and a digital piggy bank, says Warwick.
He says these types of creations, which were made possible by the Thought Machine platform, would demonstrate what “cool software” the company could deliver.
“It’s great to do cloud-based banking, but it’s even better if you do cloud-based banking and win more customers out of it,” says Warwick.
Those Beyond was created out of Thought Machine Labs in 2021, when Warwick left the company but took the whole labs department with him.
“I remember speaking to the board and the investors and saying, ‘look we have done our job, we have helped banks understand what the Thought Machine platform does, but the platform is now selling itself and you don’t need us’,” he recalls.
“Thought Machine had already built an impressive list of customers, including banking giants JP Morgan and Lloyds Banking Group. It was a really nice moment in the board where they agreed and we span out, with Thought Machine investors owning shares in us,” adds Warwick.
Concept to creation
After receiving early investment, Those Beyond, with an even mix of software engineers and designers, took about five consumer product concepts with it.
Its first product, Nestlums, was originally “a toy that plugged into the Thought Machine platform”. It sparked an idea for Warwick. “The piggy bank is dead. Kids these days see their parents tapping phones, and parents these days just don’t have coins and notes,” he says.
“In the past, the piggy bank was the best way for young kids to learn financial literacy. I had young kids at the time, and they didn’t know what money was, but what if they had this toy that tells them how much money they have when they shake it?”
Thought Machine never launched the product, but Warwick says whenever he discussed the idea with a bank, they loved it because “it’s not the kid that is buying the toy, but the parents”, who are perfect customers of banks, with potential needs for mortgages and loans.
He adds: “It never got launched, and I still say today that many of the products we had were too far ahead of their time because banks move so slowly.”
Those Beyond took it from idea to product as an experiment to test the boundaries. Coined a “pocket money pet”, this first version of Nestlums is aimed at very young children from four to six years old. The toy enables parents to keep track of how much pocket money they have given their children. “This is so simple and it doesn’t even connect to a bank, but is a pocket money tracker.”
The aim of this first-generation launch is to prove it in the market, says Warwick. “These kids are so young and they are getting money from parents and grandparents and the like, and this is a way for parents to keep track of it. We thought let’s try it and see if the idea has any legs.”
Mark Warwick, CEO and founder of Those Beyond
Warwick said the first challenge was to manufacture the toy and get it certified before finding a retailer to sell it.
Nestlums was a John Lewis bestseller four weeks in a row in December 2024.Alan Wright, buying manager for toys and books at the retailer, says: “Nestlums cleverly reinvents the traditional piggy bank for the modern era, when people use less cash in their daily lives.”
The second generation of Nestlums will be subscription-based and will connect to a bank account via open banking.
Warwick says the company is “biding its time” on other product concepts, which he describes as “heavier”, such as enabling people to chip away at mortgages and the hyper-personalisation of loans.
Fashion in finance
Despite fintech being well established, he says there are aspects of banking that still offer opportunities for disruption. “There is nothing better than working in a sector that hasn’t matured yet in terms of art and emotion. Other sectors did it quickly. Computing used to be beige boxes, megahertz, RAM, and then we got things like Apple, which changed things,” he adds.
“It has already started in banking, with Monzo and its pink bank card. It was the coolest-looking bank card in town, and it suddenly became fashionable. Never before had banking been fashionable,” says Warwick.
While Thought Machine, which provides an IT engine for banks, was inspired by Google, the likes of Those Beyond want Apple-inspired banking. “All the different areas, from kids’ banking to mortgages, are ready for Apple-ification,” says Warwick. “There is no better a playground than one like banking that is void of any emotion or fashion.”