CoGo: The app that makes sure your spending matches your values

Hazel Sheffield speaks to minds behind the fintech start-up that uses open banking to support companies that pay the Living Wage

Ben Gleisner (right) and the CoGo team with their living wage scores

Workers up and down the country got a pre-Christmas pay rise on Tuesday when the Living Wage Foundation, a non-profit organisation run by Citizens UK, announced employees must earn a minimum of £9.30 (£10.75 in London) in order to afford to eat and pay bills – a pay rise of 20p and 30p, respectively.

That means employers like Crystal Palace Football Club, the insurer Hiscox, Welsh Water, London City Airport and 6,000 other organisations that are part of the Living Wage Foundation will pass on the pay rise to their employees, benefiting around 210,000 workers. The rate is judged to be the minimum necessary for someone to get by, calculated using the cost of food, clothing and household bills.

For Ben Gleisner, the founder of “ethical recommendation engine” CoGo, it also marks the start of a new chapter. CoGo, which started out as a directory of “good businesses”, will now help users switch their spending to those businesses. The process began with Living Wage Week, which started on Monday, when CoGo began showing users with linked bank accounts what proportion of their spending is with companies that pay the living wage – and then recommend alternatives to help users boost their spending with companies that pay their employees fairly.

“We’re starting with the living wage because it’s the issue of the moment – it’s a yes or no issue,” Gleisner says. “But in the next iteration you will press a button to have the last month of your data analysed to see where your carbon output is high or low and how to offset it. That’s a game-changer.”

Katherine Chapman, director of the Living Wage Foundation, says having information about living wage employers in one app should make decisions easier for consumers. “Whether you’re buying a coffee, a new sofa or going out for a meal, you’re able to put your money where it counts, and know that you’re also supporting employers who pay their staff the real living wage,” she says.

CoGo connects companies accredited for good practice on certain issues – such as donating to charity or adopting the living wage – by recommending them to 20,000 CoGo users. The app features 15,000 businesses across the UK and is benefiting from a shift in corporate values as companies look to boost their ethical and sustainability credentials. Almost two-thirds (62 per cent) of consumers want companies to take a stand on ethical issues, according to a study by Accenture, while Unilever has calculated the size of the market for brands that make their sustainability credentials clear to be worth €966bn (£828bn) a year.

CoGo has attracted significant interest from the fintech community since it launched a pilot in the UK in November 2018, becoming the first business to join Google’s Tech for Good programme and becoming a resident on the Google Campus. It is also one of nine businesses selected to take up a fellowship with the Finance Innovation Lab, which incubates new business models and promotes creative thinking. The business raised £1m in a funding round in September with the Conduit Connect, an investment platform in London.

Eva-Maria Dimitriadis, founding partner, said CoGo was one of 41 companies selected out of 320 in the past year to join their platform. “There are businesses solving issues related to climate change, water sustainability, education, infant mortality, healthcare, and the death of the high street,” Dimitriadis says. “CoGo really resonated with the Conduit community. This is a place where everyone looks to make sustainable and ethical choices in every aspect of life.”

We’re starting with the living wage because it’s the issue of the moment – it’s a yes or no issue. But in the next iteration you will press a button to have the last month of your data analysed to see where your carbon output is high or low and how to offset it. That’s a game-changer

Ben Gleisner and CoGo co-founder Melissa Keys came up with the idea for an app that could help people align their spending with their values 10 years ago. The two friends had met studying for masters degrees at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. After graduating, they both entered the civil service: Ben as an economist for the New Zealand Treasury and Melissa for the Ministry for the Environment. “We were public sector people, but we wanted to do something that was actually changing the world,” Gleisner says. So they started a charity called Conscious Consumer, which identified cafes where you could bring your own cup, or grocers that sold free-range meats.

In 2011, they launched the product as an app, billing it as the “Google for good business”. But a key change came just a year later when the product changed from a simple directory for good business, where you could search for businesses in your location, to collecting data about people’s financial transactions.

By 2015, CoGo integrated Amex, Visa and Mastercard data into the app in New Zealand, effectively becoming a fintech start-up, and turned ownership over to a company that would allow them to raise money. But New Zealand is yet to have open banking, a system introduced in the UK that forces banks to allow their customers to share their financial information with other authorised providers.

The advent of open banking in the UK gave CoGo a huge opportunity. Open banking has allowed CoGo to introduce features that allow users to personalise the app to their values.

“When we think about good business we think about what economics calls an externality: that is knowing your customer’s price point, how good the quality is and whether the business is having an impact on society,” Gleisner explains. “But we’ve moved away from that. It’s not about telling you somewhere is a good business but finding out your values. My brother is vegan and my mum worked in unions and cares about wages, so they both have a different idea of a good business.”

When a user fires up the app, they are asked to select what matters to them from a list of 12 certifications that includes organic, carbon-conscious, vegan, sustainable sourcing, co-operative, social enterprises, fair trade and, of course, living wage. So far, CoGo has been adding businesses that have been independently verified by other organisations. “We are an aggregator of more than 130 certifications and accreditations, including the Carbon Trust, Social Enterprise UK, FSC certified, MSC certified,” Gleisner says. “We’re a bit like a gatekeeper.”

In the much longer term, CoGo is eyeing expansion to the US. “We have ambitions to be a very big, game-changing idea,” he says. Even longer term, Gleisner dreams of devolving ownership of the app back to the users in a platform co-op model. “It’s the users’ data you’re making money off, so you should sell it back to the users. That’s a fair business model – and it’s also one that will really thrive.”