HUM - Wellness Sectore niche for BNPL

Today's announcement was quite an interesting read with respects to the strategy of HUM positioning itself as preferred bnpl for larger value transactions such as Dental, Audiology, Cosmetic and Mobility.  It was mentioned the value of these opportunities is often more than retail purchases of discretionary items.

The other neat thing, is how HUM has been integrated into the Dental Quoting sofware as exclusive finance provider.

Worth a read IMO

HUM – road testing Bundll almost two weeks in

 Disclaimer: this update is not intended to be advice nor promotion of the product offering which is Bundll, but rather, and entirely for the purpose of evaluating the product for its potential take up in the market place as an Investor in HUM.  Should you decided to trial or take up the Bundll product you should do so in full consideration of the product features and your own financial circumstances.

So I come to the end of my initial Bundll period (11 days because I joined mid-cycle instead of the normal 7 days) having been able to pretty much use Bundll as a payment option as and whenever I wanted to.  During the trial I have spent a total of $204.99 and have an end of period balance of $156.02.

Spending was able to include:

Tap n Go using G-Pay

·       Grocery items at both Coles and Woolworth

·       Petrol  fill up

·       Pharmacy items at a Chemist

·       Non-grocery items at Target and Kmart stores

Online card payments

·       Download and monthly subscription to an app on Google Play store

Funding PayPal purchases

·       Registered and renewed a domain name or two

·       Split a bill with someone

So about the only thing I haven’t been able to do is withdraw cash out of an ATM (of course it’s not designed to be that though) during the course of my normal daily spending habits.

Going forward after this initial Bundll spending period, I will fall into the normal cycle where my spending Bundll period will be wrapped up every 7 days, and I will have a further 14 days following that to choose one of the payment courses of action, whilst my next 7 day spending Bundll commences.

I have landed on the view that Bundll is more than a BNPL offering, it is more like a digital wallet which offers not just the ability to Tap n Go or quote a card number online, but also serves as a spending diary over the course of my Bundll period (which is how I summarised the above spending) and in addition to that functionality the app also offers a Personal Budgeting section where my spending can be tracked against pre-determined budget levels per spending category if I choose to monitor that.

As noted above , I spent just over $200 but have a balance $156, I was easily able to make same day payments against my Bundll purchases quite simply by initiating them entirely from within the app itself.

So I am now at the end of this period with the $156 balance and a remaining limit of $843 to spend going forward ($1000 is the default approved Bundll limit upon joining), but having to choose which option to take as a BNPL action over the next 14 day payment period:

·       Pay out in full

·       Elect to Snooze the payment with a minimal $20 payment towards the balance for a $2.50 snooze fee (or free Snooze if you have one)

·       Superbundll into 6 fortnightly payments

For the purpose of the trial I am going to elect to pay down a portion and then Snooze the remainder.  The way that I envisage a customer using a Snooze would be  towards the end of their 14 day pay period, effectively extending the Later aspects of the BNPL payment.  Although I do have a few ‘free snoozes’ in my Snooze Pot, for the purpose of the trial I am going to pay the Snooze fee to see how the payment of the fee and minimum payment is processed.

With the exception of the $2.50 Snooze fee (waived if you use free Snoozes), nothing yet has cost me any more than the value of my purchases themselves, so akin to an interest free period if you like.

I am interested to see what notifications and reminders are prompted to me by the Bundll app during the payment and snooze period, from a responsible lender and customer centric offering perspective.

So with a HUM Investor’s hat back on:

·       A $2.50 snooze fee for an up to $1000 balance is at least a 0.25% fee on balance per 14 days of 7 days of spending, in my case against $156 that same $2.50 would equate to a 1.6% fee

·       It certainly is convenient and has the flexibility of being able to be used anywhere so the Total Addressable Market is of course significant

·       Bundll is a point of difference offering to simply splitting BNPL purchases into equal instalments

·       Most shop staff have not heard of Bundll, at the same time they wouldn’t have even known I was using Bundll had I not sounded them out as to their familiarity.

·       I have not seen a single instance of advertising for Bundll on any platform

It does seem like an opportunity for HUM to make inroads into market share, and I would be expecting that the profile of the product offering is increased, rather than simply relying upon social network apps sharing between friends with the incentivised ‘earn a free Snooze’

The Bundll website is here www.bundll.com for further information

HUM - the Bundll BNPL offerring is very seamless

I decided to 'road test' the simplicity of becoming a customer of HUM's bnpl offering named Bundll  (ie Bundle all your small purchases for pay later)

Initially I was skeptical, but I started to really became impressed when at the conclusion of signing up on my mobile phone (a 5 minute effort) my new Bundll bnpl (a digital credit card backed by Mastercard) was instantly available and was also added to my payment options in my Google G-Pay app.

So stop an think about that for a second, here's a bnpl provider tapping into a customer's already 'tap n go' spending habits.

So yes, I continued my trial by dropping down the local shops for some milk and bread etc from Woolies and a separate purchase a few minutes later from Coles for a fruit juice, in total having spent a little over $30.

The paying side of things was seamless having to simply select my Bundll 'card' on G-Pay, and importantly the merchant (the two retailers in this example) didn't need to offer me any special payment options, nor were they paying any merchant fees to partake in Bundll as a bnpl, as I simply used their everyday standard tap n go via my phone and their existing in place payment technology.

So back to Bundll, I now have two small purchases in my current 2 week spending cycle, with the app telling me exactly what I spent where and when these fall due (the current bundll period), and how much of my instantly approved $1000 limit I have left to draw down.

This was all very easy and as I've said seamless.

The app also offers the option to 'snooze' my pedning bundled payment, normally for a $5 fee, but I have accumulated a couple of free snoozes. I believe I can be credited snoozes via referring friends etc etc

There's a good write up and marketing video for Bundll here, it's quite catchy and targeted towards millenials.

If HUM can do the marketing and promotion well, getting Bundll out to the masses in that target audience, this should be a bit of a no brainer and a very convenient 'go to' for the customer when they need to either do that splurge or choose to postpone a payment, or are simply a little low on cash in their pay cycle.

I think I'll actually be keeping my Bundll card in my digital G-Pay wallet beyond this little 'rubber hitting the road' research effort.

The main takeaway for me is actually on the merchant side, as they do not have to be signed up to accept Bundll payments as the whole idea is premised upon it being a digital MasterCard in that context.

So for HUM, if it can figure out and also engage with merchants to educate them into becoming proxy Bundll sales people as in "have you got Bundll it only takes 5 minutes to sign up for" that might assist coming from things at the that side too.

Interesting

HUM - CEO interview on Ausbiz

On the same day as the share price dipped, despite the profitable half being reported, CEO Rebecca James featured on Ausbiz here explaining the business and the growth strategy

I recently revisited the HUMM product offerings in the investor presentation and inturn this interview, so maybe others would appreciate being directed to it also.

A pretty upbeat explanation and unwaivering committment to the expansion plans.

Rebecca tackles the regulation narrative too that lingers the BNPL space

HUM - Investor Update FY21H1 - expansion plans

Just reading through the Investor Update announcement

Beside being a profitable BNPL player, the presentation comes accross quite well:

• no debt on balance sheet
• BNPL App Downloads metrics on the rise
• reasonable list of impressive merchants
• catchy mobile app designs per product offering
• current monopoly in Ireland
• Expansion Plans into the the UK and Canada being actioned during H2

I've seen worse in the BNPL space that's for sure