-By Tayo Oyedeji
After I retired as the CEO of a multinational, I went on a tour teaching personal finance classes in Nairobi, Lagos, London, and Johannesburg. After each class, people would walk out to me saying ‘I am not sure if I fully understand personal finance, but I wish there was a company that simplified it just like you did.’ The requests came in their dozens and each time, we would do a mental search of companies that existed to solve this problem. There were almost none.
So one day, just on a whim, I asked my social media community if they would be interested in an investment company that simplified personal finance and helped them build wealth.
I asked, ‘I’m thinking of starting an investment company, would you be interested in getting more details?’ Within an hour, 200 people had said yes.
Over the next eight months, we took our time to build a product that would fill this gaping hole. We had seen that people wanted investment products that were clutter-free and allowed them to have peace of mind as their wealth grew. They didn’t want something that would require their daily attention, yet they wanted some assurance that every day was better than the previous day. Several people had complained of investment products that were here today, gone tomorrow and this uncertainty had become a cause for concern to the average African. We knew that for our product to meet this need, it had to be safe and accessible to everybody.
Those two functions — safety and accessibility — were the foundation upon which we built Overwood. We intentionally laid a foundation for an investment firm that would be here in 50 years and for several generations. So on December 16, 2019, Overwood was born.
Before we went live, we put out an invite for people to test our platform and give feedback on our model. We were expecting 5 or 10 people to sign up for the test run. A few days after the invite went out, 135 people signed up and invested their money with Overwood. It was a short test, running from December 2019 to January 2020, but it was enough to show that we had a product that worked. We’ve been growing gradually ever since. Right now, we have just over 4000 investors who have signed up on our platform. That’s 4000 people who are either actively learning from us or seeing their funds grow on a daily basis.
Some Challenges We’ve Faced
The biggest challenge we faced in building Overwood was laying out the strategy for what it would be. We knew that people wanted a clearer understanding of finance and a product that would help them grow their wealth safely and reliably. So, the first idea for Overwood was an advisory service where our professional advisors would talk to people about the best investment options for them. We worked on that model for a few months until we realized that our clients prefer a firm that would manage their investments on their behalf. We also knew that the accessibility goal would be impaired by this model. We also had the idea to build a tech-driven app that would allow people to subscribe to investment products using their debit cards. However, lots of people were doing that and they were primarily focused on the big cities in Africa, where digital access to money is more prevalent. If we were to build a truly African investment management firm, it would need to be a hybrid online/offline product.
How We Invest
At Overwood, we invest in safe and high-yield instruments. Our three areas of focus are money market, stock/capital, and credit-backed instruments. We pool and diversify investors’ funds in a way that spreads risk and preserves the safety of funds. At every point in time, we have 60 to 100 instruments in our portfolio that allows us to maintain the business even if one of them defaults.
Our Value
We have optimized our products so that people never lose money. We affirm that no matter what happens, even if the economy goes crazy, people will not lose their money, and we’ve never lost a dime. We’ve paid back almost half a billion Naira to our clients and provided fee-free access to funds for every client who needed money during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Overwood is not a flash in the pan. We will be here in 100 years so that the children and grandchildren of our clients can enjoy the proceeds of their investments.
