We didn’t have a grand opening, there is no jingle, and it’s really hard work – but it’s work that matters.

We knew it would be a challenge – but we were surprised at some of the early feedback. It was very different from what we had expected. I’m glad we went deep with our clients early on – it saved us a lot of wasted time trying to solve problems that we thought were important but were not high priorities for our end users.

We thought small business was screaming out for us to launch Lendly Pay. The stark reality was many small business owners had no idea about car salary packaging, how it worked for them as employers and how employee benefits were being used by large corporates and the public service to attract the best talent and to lift employee engagement.

We knew our product was good and knew we had the right people on the bus.

We’d come from a background in big fleet and were acutely aware of the pain points and the barriers to entry. We saw how sales increasingly promised more and more to win key accounts and how waves of extra support staff were brought in to churn out all the extra reporting that nobody ever read. How that pushed up costs and how those costs were passed onto employees – but not to the large companies who had the negotiating power and size to flex their corporate muscle – the extra operating costs were recovered from the bottom tier of employers. We felt these employers deserved better.

Kit and I believe that Lendly Pay is the place where small business isn’t made to feel small. We deliberately seek to partner with employers of up to 300 employees – it’s the right size for us. We get to know the leadership team and engage with their business in a way that is just not possible in big fleet.

As a small business, offering Lendly Pay to your team can be one of the biggest advantages you have when it comes to attracting and hiring talent, employee productivity, and retention.

We’re building a better business by making better things.