Building a World First Financial Autopilot

Building the Future of Personal Finance

In this episode of FinTech Focus TV, Toby welcomes a transformative voice in the FinTech sector, Laura Cornely, CEO and Co-Founder of Count Finance. As a trailblazer in the WealthTech space, Laura shares how her company is creating the first regulated and fully automated financial advisor. The conversation offers deep insights into financial services innovation, startup life, regulation, market gaps, and how to build a mission-driven FinTech business from the ground up. It is a story of risk-taking, purpose, and precision, and it showcases why businesses like Count Finance are at the frontier of what comes next in digital finance.

From Private Equity to FinTech Pioneer: A Founder's Journey

Laura’s background is far from conventional. Originally from the western part of Germany, she spent the early stages of her career in private equity, venture capital, strategic consultancy, and rating. Yet despite this traditional financial services pedigree, her move into entrepreneurship stemmed from something deeply personal: people around her, friends, family, even colleagues, consistently reached out to her for advice on simple financial matters. They wanted to know what an ETF was, how to begin investing, and how to manage their money. These requests persisted for nearly a decade, and after moving to the UK, they only increased.

What struck Laura was the universality of the problem. Despite working in finance herself, she did not come from a financially savvy family and had to learn the hard way. So why were so many people, smart, capable professionals, still lost when it came to managing their finances? The more she explored, the clearer it became: there was a vast, underserved population that couldn’t access high-quality financial advice. And that’s where Count was born.

Count Finance: A Fully Automated, Regulated Financial Advisor

Count Finance is not just another app. It is the UK’s first regulated, fully digital and fully automated financial advisor. Laura and her team are building a product that gives users access to holistic, bespoke financial guidance, just like a traditional advisor would, but in an app-based, scalable, and affordable way. According to Laura, the model replicates the experience people used to have when visiting a bank branch: one go-to expert who could guide them through savings, investing, insurance, pensions, and beyond.

What makes Count unique is its ambition to bring everything together. In a market now crowded with specialist apps for budgeting, investing, and tracking expenses, users often find themselves overwhelmed by fragmentation. Count aims to unify this fractured ecosystem and return the individual to the centre of their financial journey.

Why the WealthTech Industry Needs Disruption

Laura and Toby explore the current state of the financial advisory industry, which Laura describes as “more on the conservative side.” While the sector has seen financial innovation, challenger banks, robo-advisors, and budgeting platforms, much of that innovation has focused on individual verticals. Laura argues that these tools have, in many ways, fragmented the customer experience. Instead of holistic advice, users now juggle multiple services that don’t communicate with each other, which often leaves them even more confused about their overall financial situation.

Count is solving that problem by bringing everything back under one roof, using technology to simulate the experience of a human financial advisor, only automated, accessible, and scalable. Laura’s goal is to make quality financial guidance affordable and available to the millions of people currently left out of the system.

Hyper-Personalisation and the Human in the Machine

Toby highlights how industries such as retail and e-commerce have mastered personalisation, yet finance has lagged. Laura agrees. In finance, “personalised” often means nothing more than inserting your name into an email. Count Finance is taking this a step further by creating truly tailored financial advice that adapts to the individual’s goals, income, assets, and life circumstances.

She points out that most financial tools are still focused on selling products rather than serving people. Count flips that model on its head. The product starts by asking users who they are, not what they want to buy. It’s a user-first experience rather than a product-first one. For Count, real personalisation is not a gimmick, it’s foundational.

Bridging the UK Advice Gap with Scalable Solutions

Laura draws attention to the “UK Advice Gap,” a term used to describe the millions of people who don’t have access to traditional financial advisors. In the UK, financial advisors often only take on clients with assets worth £50,000–£100,000 or more. Laura shares her own experience of being turned away, despite earning a six-figure salary, simply because she didn’t have enough assets under management.

The market, as it stands, is broken into three categories. First, traditional financial advisors offer high-touch, tailored advice but only serve the wealthy. Second, trading platforms require the user to know what they’re doing, which isn’t always the case. Third, robo-advisors provide low-cost services but are often generic, with off-the-shelf portfolios and no individual guidance. Count aims to fill the enormous gap between these options by offering something both personalised and affordable.

Building Technology That Meets Regulatory Standards

One of the most impressive aspects of Count’s story is its regulatory approval. Count Finance is part of the FCA’s Regulatory Sandbox, a controlled environment that allows innovative businesses to test products with close regulatory oversight. Laura explains that this gives Count six months of intensive monitoring from the FCA, after which the goal is to gain full authorisation.

Crucially, Count is not powered by generative AI. Instead, its algorithm is rule-based, transparent, and explainable. Laura explains that the FCA is unlikely to approve AI-driven models that lack traceability, especially when dealing with sensitive financial advice. By building an automated system that offers bespoke recommendations with clear audit trails, Count has managed to achieve something no one else in the UK market has done.

The Founding Team Behind Count Finance

The story of Count is also a story of strong co-foundership. Laura’s co-founder is also her husband, a portfolio manager at a hedge fund and now working at a wealth fund. He had already built much of the initial codebase for his own personal use, and together they developed it into a commercial product. They were joined early on by a CTO who Laura describes as a “stroke of luck,” bringing in complementary skills and a shared passion for the mission.

The trio forms a well-balanced team with technical, strategic, and operational experience. According to Laura, success came not just from skills, but from having a shared belief in the mission and a culture of collaboration. As Toby notes, building a great team is more important than building a great product, and Laura agrees, the product evolves, but the team must be strong from the outset.

From Beta List to Seed Round: The Next Stage of Growth

At the time of recording, Count Finance was just two weeks away from its product launch in the FCA sandbox. Laura discusses the company’s successful pre-seed funding round and its current seed round raise. The funds will be used for scaling the team, growing the user base, marketing, and expanding the product features to include pensions, mortgages, and debt management.

Laura acknowledges that the current investment climate is more risk-averse than it was during the high-growth cycles of 2021–2022. While this can be frustrating, she notes that it also forces startups to build more sustainable, profit-focused businesses. Her focus is on proving traction quickly, keeping costs under control, and working with the right investment partners.

Choosing the Right VC Partners for Long-Term Success

Having worked in venture capital herself, Laura brings a rare perspective to fundraising. She knows what makes businesses investable and what can derail them. She emphasises the importance of alignment between founders and VCs, not just on growth targets, but on values, mission, and working styles. Too often, she notes, startups get pushed into hyper-growth plans that aren’t right for the business, simply because that’s what the investor demands.

At Count, Laura is focused on finding partners who care about the product, the people, and the long-term impact, not just short-term metrics. She wants investors who are collaborative, enthusiastic, and user-focused. And from her background in strategic consultancy and fund ratings, she knows how to ask the right questions to ensure that alignment.

A Vision for International Expansion and Financial Inclusion

The long-term vision for Count Finance is ambitious. Once FCA authorisation is secured, Laura plans to expand into other European markets that face similar financial advice challenges. While this means additional regulatory hurdles, she believes Count is well-placed to take its model global. The team has already identified priority countries, and the groundwork for internationalisation is underway.

In the UK, Count’s feature roadmap includes pension consolidation, mortgage integration, and debt management tools, all designed to further simplify the financial lives of users. The goal is to create a one-stop shop for all personal finance needs, delivered through an intuitive, compliant, and fully automated platform.

Why Count Finance Is a Great Place to Work

Toby ends the episode by asking Laura what makes Count Finance a great place to work. Laura is clear that it’s not just about having a big mission, it’s about building a culture where people feel trusted, supported, and inspired. Her CTO reportedly loves Mondays, and that says everything about the environment they’re cultivating.

Count is designed to be a business that adapts to its people, not the other way around. Laura believes companies should be structured to suit the individuals in them, rather than forcing employees into rigid frameworks. It’s an approach rooted in empathy and pragmatism, and one that aligns perfectly with Count’s user-centric ethos.

A Case Study in FinTech Innovation, Team Building, and Market Fit

For FinTech recruitment professionals and companies alike, Count’s story is a case study in how to do things right. The founding team is strong and diverse, the problem is clearly defined, the market demand is evident, and the regulatory approach is rigorous. At Harrington Starr, we work closely with FinTech firms to find the kind of talent that can drive this level of innovation, and this episode illustrates exactly what great leadership, culture, and clarity of vision look like in action.

From product development and regulatory strategy to fundraising and hiring, Laura Cornely offers a masterclass in what it means to be a modern FinTech founder. She’s not only building a business, she’s building a movement to make financial advice truly inclusive.