Who is ANNA Money?
With the recent announcement that ANNA Money has acquired spend management platform Cape, you might be wondering what ANNA does, how it works and what it’s like as a company. Here’s the lowdown on all things ANNA…
What is ANNA?
ANNA Money is an AI-powered business account and tax app for small businesses. Supporting more than 100,000 UK businesses, ANNA’s vision is to make life easier for small business owners by handling the admin so they can focus on growing their businesses. That involves everything from generating invoices and chasing payments to receipt scanning and pots that let you set aside money for tax.
Saving small businesses time and money
ANNA was launched in 2017 after the founders noticed how much small business owners struggled with their admin. Financial admin is complicated, expensive, and time consuming and is a big barrier to people starting their own business. Freelancers and SME owners are incredibly busy but they end up spending half their time on admin.
Research by Accountancy Age found that micro businesses in the UK spend 97 working days doing financial admin manually (37% of all workdays in a year) as well as spending several thousand pounds per year outsourcing financial admin to an accountant.
ANNA estimates that small businesses spend 10-15 hours a week on business admin, but with ANNA’s clever automation it’s more like 10 minutes a week. This frees SME owners up to work ‘on’ their business, rather than ‘in’ it.
AI super powers
How exactly does ANNA save SMEs time? Customers don’t have to search the app in order to find the right functionality to accomplish a task: they just type what they want to do into the chat - whether it’s sending an invoice or uploading a receipt. 80% of these messages are processed automatically by the AI ANNA bot and customers receive an immediate reply.
ANNA has always tried to create an experience that’s more like having a personal assistant than just a collection of services - the equivalent of a helpful, intuitive assistant like Jeeves the butler.
Exceptional customer service
On the occasions when the ANNA bot can’t help, customers are seamlessly passed on to the ‘human’ customer support team. The average wait time is under a minute and you can check this on the Live Status tracker. You might also want to check out ANNA’s customer reviews on Trustpilot - it is rated ‘excellent’ with a score of 4.6/5.
Bringing the fun to finance
ANNA takes a fun approach to branding, which sets itself apart from other fintechs. The website and app are full of hand-drawn cartoon animals and the brand launched with a TV advert about the search for the perfect miaow. There’s a “miaowing” debit card (when the user makes a contactless payment, the app notification is a miaow) and, when a business gets paid, the ANNA app makes a happy woofing sound. The woof isn’t just a gimmick – dogs really like chasing things and ANNA chases invoices.
What’s next in Australia?
ANNA and Cape share a common vision: to redefine the landscape of financial administration work for all business owners. Over the coming weeks and months there may be some changes as Cape integrates with the ANNA platform but the plan is to combine resources so that the brand is more equipped than ever to deliver products that exceed customer expectations. Exciting opportunities lie ahead!
