Unbiased is an online service which connects individuals with trusted and impartial financial advisers. Since its launch in 2009, it has helped more than 10 million consumers who can choose from 27,000 financial professionals featured on the platform.
Founder Karen Barrett, whose career background is in the financial sector, came up with the idea after her son was born with a serious heart defect that went undiagnosed for four weeks. Karen recalls the time vividly, “In the middle of worrying about whether he was going to be OK, I was also anxious about practical things such as: Do I have health insurance? Will I be able to go back to work? If so, when is that likely to be? Will I need to stop working permanently to care for Dominic? If so, how will we manage financially? I was faced with an unexpected situation and found myself to be completely unprepared.”
Karen’s son is now a healthy teenager but coming through this traumatic period only fuelled her sense of determination. Feeling she had a good idea and nothing to lose, she started Unbiased.
The fintech company has grown rapidly since its early days, raising £5.6m through Series A funding in January 2020 and now employing a team of 70. Karen has been shortlisted for the Great British Business Woman of the Year and was a finalist in the Great British Entrepreneur Awards in the Scale-Up Entrepreneur of the Year category. Unbiased was also recently included in private bank JP Morgan’s Top 200 Female-Powered businesses, ranking 19th.
Karen’s passion is to make independent, trusted financial advice available to all. However, if she could wave a wand to change one thing, it would be to persuade more women to start managing their own finances. She says, “Married women or those in a partnership often take time out of the workplace to have children and it’s not uncommon for them to stop pension payments because they can’t afford them. But with higher rates of divorce, it’s not a given that things are going to end up how they expected, so they could be putting themselves in a very precarious position. Women need to play an active part in managing their money and making choices about where to save and spend.”
From buying a house to planning for retirement, Unbiased cuts through the clutter and makes it easy for people to get the right adviser, the right guidance and the right tools. Access the millions of people coming to the platform by joining Unbiased. Choose the types of enquiries you want, save time on finding new clients and control how you grow your business. From individual advisers to large companies, we help grow thousands of businesses with the volume and quality of leads they require.
