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When Brendan Malone first joined Raiz Invest over a decade ago, the fledgling micro-investment platform was little more than a bold idea that technology could democratise investing for everyday Australians.
Back in 2016, the company was known as Acorns Grow Australia, the local offshoot of the U.S.-based Acorns Grow platform. The original founding team in Australia played a pivotal role in launching the local version of the company’s trademark app, whose mission was and remains: to help Australians grow their wealth.
The app allows customers to round-up any card-based purchase to the nearest $1, $2 or $3. That small change is then tipped into a personalised fund that invests in a range of third-party exchange-traded funds from providers including BlackRock and State Street.
In 2019 Malone stepped up from his role as chief operating officer to become head of the Australian business, which had been rebranded Raiz Invest Australia and listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.
In 2022 he was appointed Group CEO and Managing Director.
“When I joined Raiz, it was a small start-up, so I took on a wide range of responsibilities,” Malone says.
“As the business has grown, I’ve been able to shift my focus towards team leadership and strategic direction.”
It is a shift that reflects not just the evolution of Raiz, but of Malone himself.
In his former role at the Royal Bank of Scotland leading large teams in London and across the Asia-Pacific, he was used to operating at scale, managing complexity, and navigating highly regulated environments. This gave him a strong operational foundation, but it also taught him the importance of resilience and adaptability. Eventually he wanted to build something from the ground up.
When he joined Raiz, it was the opposite environment - a start-up with no safety net - but his global experiences have helped him build structure and discipline into the business as it has grown.
“Over the past year, I have built out our senior leadership team by bringing in experienced leaders, now that the business has reached a scale that can support them,” he says.
“I thrive in environments with larger, aligned and passionate leadership teams, something that Raiz is now well positioned to offer.”
Today, Raiz has more than 325,000 monthly active customers. The platform is built on a high-volume, low-margin model that turns small, regular deposits into long-term investment portfolios.
It was also the first regulated managed investment scheme in Australia to provide an optional allocation to bitcoin for retail investors.
It is a very different approach to most fintechs and wealth platforms.
“Most high-margin financial products tend to target wealthier customers, with fewer users but significantly higher ARPU, often as a percentage of FUM or through higher annual fees.
What sets us apart is that our model is difficult to replicate. We’ve built a mass market product designed to help everyday Australians grow their wealth,” Malone says, noting it is now deeply embedded in the daily routines of its users.
“The business is not only a profitable and scalable but also positioned for strong future growth, both organically and through potential M&A. That gives us a real competitive edge, from both a customer and marketing standpoint, as well as from an investment and market perspective.”
It is one built not in boardrooms, but in the belief that fintech should serve people, not just portfolios. He says helping customers through their financial journey “is core to everything we do.”
“We are consistently driven by innovation, passion and a clear purpose to help everyday Australians reach their financial goals,” he says.
“We listen to our customers and listen to each other.”
At the heart of Raiz’s roadmap is a powerful embrace of artificial intelligence (AI) not as a gimmick, but as a strategic enabler.
The firm is one of the few Australian fintechs using generative AI in a way that is not just cosmetic, but rather to segment users, anticipate behaviours, and tailor messaging based on real-time data.
“We have already integrated generative AI into our marketing strategies, helping us deliver more personalised and targeted campaigns that are improving conversion and retention,” Malone says.
This use of AI allows Raiz to tailor communications to individual financial goals, behaviours and preferences. Whether that is encouraging users to increase their round-ups, reminding them to contribute to a Raiz Super account, or recommending new investment tools like Raiz Jars, Kids or Raiz Rewards.
The former is an add-on feature that enables clients to manage multiple investment goals within one account, which has seen more than 5,000 jars and over 50,000 Kids portfolios created since they have been launched. The latter is an Australian-first platform that converts retailer loyalty points into investable cash, seamlessly integrated into the user’s portfolio.
“Looking ahead, we will continue to embed best practice AI tools and automation into all product development, where appropriate,” Malone says.
Looking ahead, as automation becomes more advanced, Raiz believes it will continue to drive down the fees and profits fintech companies can charge for their services.
That is a real issue, especially for businesses built on high margins.
But Malone sees an even bigger shift coming in the industry that most people are not really talking about yet: the rise of embedded financial data infrastructure. This goes beyond embedded finance, such as buy-now-pay-later products, in-app insurance, or loans inside retail apps.
What he believes is coming next is an invisible layer of data intelligence that sits behind those services, anticipating user needs and adjusting in real time, all invisible to the naked eye.
“This embedded data intelligence will turn financial services into invisible, predictive layers inside non-financial platforms (like retail, logistics, SaaS etc),” he says.
He believes this kind of predictive, behind-the-scenes infrastructure could reshape the industry, offering a future where finance becomes almost invisible but more powerful than ever. Yet Raiz will not deviate from its core mission to intentionally grow alongside its users, evolving the platform as their needs change over time.
“Our goal at Raiz is to grow the product offering with our customer lifecycle growth by having the right product offering for every stage of a customer’s financial services journey,” he says.
“Our commitment to financial education will assist all Australians through their financial services product requirements.”
Malone’s leadership of Raiz is also inspired by the most personal of experiences: the birth of his daughter, Isobel.
Born in 2022 at just 29 weeks gestation, Isobel weighed a fragile 1,295 grams and measured only 36cm in length. She spent her first 12 weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Royal Hospital for Women in Sydney.
“Isobel’s first 12 weeks was a massive experience in both (his wife) Belinda’s and my lives. Being in the NICU was surreal,” he says.
The family’s story is intimately linked to the work of Running for Premature Babies, a charity that funds life-saving neonatal equipment for hospitals across Australia,
It ensures that sick and premature babies, wherever they are born, will have access to the neonatal equipment needed to save their lives. Raiz actively supports the charity, with employees participating in fundraising events.
It has now raised over $7 million since 2006 and has provided over 135 pieces of life-saving equipment to hospitals in every State and Territory of Australia. In Isobel’s case, that included the humidicrib and ventilator that kept her alive in her most vulnerable hours.
“To see what a foundation like Running for Premature Babies has done for the families of all the little ones that go through the NICU is unbelievable,” Malone says.
“The donations have supplied a lot of the major equipment that has helped so many. It means a lot.
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