Cem Eyi, Co-Founder at The Beanstalk App On Winning Best JISA 2026

AI Generated Transcript

Holly Mead (00:03)
Welcome to Good Money Guide. My name’s Holly Mead and today we are talking to Cem Eyi, co-founder at the Beanstalk app, which has just been voted best junior ISA in our 2026 investing awards. Congratulations.

Cem Eyi (00:17)
Thank you very much. We’re very happy to win it again.

Holly Mead (00:20)
Again, as well, repeat offender.

Cem Eyi (00:23)
Yeah, I think it’s our fourth time. So delighted. We’re all about junior Isis. That’s the focus for Beanstalk. And so we’re glad to have that recognized.

Holly Mead (00:31)
So for the uninitiated, tell us bit more about Beanstalk and what’s happening at the business at the moment.

Cem Eyi (00:37)
So Beanstalk is a very simple app-based junior iso, stocks and shares junior iso obviously, very simple fund choice. have a cash fund and a shares fund and users can choose what allocation they want, their contributions allocated between those two funds. If they don’t know what to pick, we’ll default it to 60-40 to something that’s balanced. We make it really easy for parents to sign up, open accounts, open all their kids’ accounts and then invite others to be donors to those accounts. So typically you’ll see the grandparents being invited in.

or sometimes the other spouse. ⁓ And Beanstalk’s growing well here with very little kind of marketing. We’re getting growth in customers, growth in AUM and contributions, which we’re delighted for. ⁓ And we’ve just released some new features recently on the app, a more improved performance section and account history summary. ⁓ And we released a full view donor permission. for example, I’ve got the GIS set up for my youngest. My wife said…

contributor on that account but she can see all of the balance and all of the history. My mum’s all selling to the account but she can only see her contribution so I can choose what donors can see what information.

Holly Mead (01:47)
hit the grandparents against each other then and just tell them each that the other one’s contributing more. It’s the perfect investment strategy.

Cem Eyi (01:55)
Yeah,

exactly. you get a little bit of competition going on between them.

Holly Mead (01:59)
Yeah,

it’s like fantasy football but for families’ investing strategies.

Cem Eyi (02:04)
Yeah, yeah, could you? We’d have to think that.

Holly Mead (02:06)
So I am curious as to what sort of split you see between the cash and the investment one.

Cem Eyi (02:12)
Yeah. So typically it’s people leave it at the default option. And then as they get a little bit more familiar with the product and see the kind of returns that have been happening, we’ll see them. It actually varies by the age of the child as well. So the younger the child, the more likely the allocation is going to be into the shares fund. do see some parents kind of doing the life styling themselves on the products. The child approaches 18, so they’ll move it more into the cash fund to reduce risk and volatility.

So it’s kind of a mixed bag, but generally what we see is people tend to leave it at the balanced 60-40, the defaults do. Someone will change it. Very few we see tending to do the kind of reaction to a market change and that’s not the way to kind of really manage a long-term investment account to change your allocations on the fly when you see something go up or down. So we don’t see that kind of behavior very often.

Holly Mead (03:08)
find the ability to balance a portfolio quite interesting because I think quite often parents feel they have to make a binary choice and have a cash iser or an investment iser for their child. And then we see that what happens is a lot of them go into cash and then we know that the returns aren’t going to be as good.

Cem Eyi (03:26)
Yeah, so I mean, I don’t think cash junior writers should be a thing. think especially if you’ve got a young child that you’re trying to save for. Almost certainly over an 18 year horizon, your returns from investment are likely to be kind of returns from cash after inflation. But you do see that lots of parents will kind of opt for a cash junior writer. That’s changing recently, I think.

cash fund is not cash, it’s still a stocks and shares junior ISO, it’s a money market fund. So we’re not trying to give you a cash ISO and a stocks and shares ISO, it is a stocks and shares junior ISO. But yeah, if we could find a way to lobby the appropriate people to scrap cash ISOs, I would be in favour of that. don’t see the point of them.

Holly Mead (04:16)
Yeah. So you mentioned you’ve got children yourself, are they fully invested up or how do you handle theirs?

Cem Eyi (04:21)
Yep. So my eldest has actually kind of missed the, there used to be a thing called the Child Trust Fund. So he, he wasn’t eligible for one of those. So we actually never opened him an account. Also, I had him when I was very young. you know, poor, poor eldest kid didn’t really have anything from us. My middle daughter, we got given the Child Trust Fund. You know, at the time we were putting a little bit of money every month in it. It was a paper-based product. We didn’t know what was going on with it. And then kind of years later, my career took me

down the path of actually launching Beanstalk. And so she was one of the first accounts that we transferred over and moved into Junior ISA. And that was very kind of helpful and handy for us because when she went to university, that allowed us to cover a lot of the student debt that she’d taken out at the time to go to uni. ⁓ I don’t know if you kind of, know, lots of news at the moment about Plan 2 student debt and how kids are not really set up to… ⁓

pay those off very easily because the rate at which they pay them back, depending on their income, the interest is growing faster than their repayments on a lot of those plans and that’s a big issue. So we’re very glad that we were able to do that. And then my youngest has obviously got a beanstalk junior ISA and we’re just putting in, we’re putting money in, grandparents putting money in, aunts and uncles putting money in. We tell them not to buy them gifts at birthdays anymore because we can get them the gifts that they want ourselves. If they want to make a contribution, they can put it into their JISA.

Holly Mead (05:50)
I love that you’ve had three different experiences there, all of nothing. I’m just from junior high so you’re almost the perfect guinea pig to have made this product that means.

Cem Eyi (06:00)
It could be, yeah. With our son, it’s not like we didn’t have to find some money to help him out after 18 anyway. We still had to find that money from someone. just wish we were a little bit more, had the foresight or had the encouragement to do what we did with the child trust. And that definitely changed our behavior to go do something when I was very young, to do something I probably wouldn’t have normally done at the time. I am…

grateful that we had at least one kid, you know, guided into making those, making that decision at the time that we probably wouldn’t have made. And that’s kind of a little bit about the premise behind Beanstalk is to help all families kind of try and make whatever they can do. You know, we don’t have any minimum regular contribution requirement. can set up an account, you can drop money in as and when you like. Grandparents can put money in, it can be birthdays, it can be gifts. We’re trying to make it easy and not off putting because

I know that I would have been off at a very young age of saying I’m going to sign up for 30 or 40 or 50 pound a month forever, know, or for 18 years, which is might as well be ever. So ⁓ we’re just trying to make it really easy. Make that barriers to entry really low and then kind of get them on. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to reach one, two, three, four, five, whatever your goal is, it’s better than nothing. ⁓ And yeah, I hope that’s what we’re trying to do.

Holly Mead (07:24)
think one thing that sometimes puts parents off of opening a junior writer is that fear that they’re going to just take it at age 18 and go to the pub or go to Ibiza or put it all on read. have you had those conversations to…

Cem Eyi (07:40)
With my kids. Well, so first of all, I think it’s a little bit of an irrational fear, but it’s one that I hear quite often from people with or without kids, you know, both them. Having an account that you’re putting money in regularly for them actually allows you to start having that conversation with them from whenever you think the appropriate age is 12, 13, 14. We were showing Kara her account from those teenage years, showing where the contributions were coming from.

And so you can kind of prime them. So it’s not just like 18, here’s something that you never knew about, here’s a chunk of money. And so that really, I think helps them to have the right attitude towards that money and treat it with the kind of respect it deserves. It’s not just a freebie, it’s money that the whole family been saving for you for a long time. And it’s a particular purpose. When we look at the, we’ve had a handful of junior ISIS mature. Most of our, most of our ISIS are for younger children, but obviously we’ve had some that have matured now.

And when we look at what’s happened with those, if ⁓ the parent never really engaged with the product and only had a few hundred pounds in, we’ll often see that that gets withdrawn. But the gyses that have got several thousand pounds in them, we’re not seeing those get withdrawn ⁓ immediately in large chunk. Often they’re just staying there and they’re not making any more contributions, but they’re allowing it to grow. So clearly the parents had that conversation with the child, this is for a deposit, this is for your student.

loan or whatever. So I think it’s, you’d rather have the chance to teach your kid with a real life account and give them that knowledge and experience, I think, then you’re going to have to find the money for them at 18 anyway. you know, it might as well be something that you’ve introduced to them for years.

Holly Mead (09:30)
Yeah, absolutely. So thinking ahead in terms of investment themes this year, what’s on your mind as an investor and how should we think about that differently when we’re investing for children?

Cem Eyi (09:43)
Yeah, I tend not to think about investment things. think that, you know, there are a group of people that obviously, you know, want to know what, you know, picking stocks. I did a mistake of picking stocks when I was in my early twenties with the little stocks and shares ISA I had. And I thought I was very well diversified. had, you know, all kinds of stocks from different sectors in my ISA. But what I didn’t realise is all those companies were UK companies because I didn’t, you know, it didn’t occur to me that I could, you

put other companies into that thing. So even though I thought I had a well-diversified ISA portfolio, I didn’t. And so personally, I think if you’re trying to save for your child’s long-term future, a well-diversified, low-cost global shares fund, you’re not going to go wrong. And if you’re trying to optimize for the last percent of growth or the last bit of, you know, the last thing, you know,

That’s not something that we’re trying to solve for people with Beanstalk. And so I just kind of ignored, ignore that side of the market. There are other products and providers out there that will serve that need very well. I think that not so much an investing theme, but just what I hope will happen is the trend for parents to open stocks and shares junior-isys continues to increase. And they look for simple good value propositions like ours. And I hope that trend increases.

Holly Mead (11:07)
mean, do you think there’s anything that could be done by the government to encourage that? You know, we’ve heard talk of bringing back some version of the child trust fund and it has to be invested this time or helicopter money.

Cem Eyi (11:20)
Yeah, so I think the chances of that happening anytime soon are quite low, but look to what’s going on in the United States with the baby bond account, putting a thousand pounds into each child born in the US into an investment account that’s going to help them set them up when they’re 18. I do think it’s something that we should be considering, although I don’t think you should be waiting around for the government to kind of kick that off for you. You can go do that now.

I do think there’s probably some leveling of the playing field that could be done around risk warnings. So I’m all for risk warnings, you know, when you’re about investment products, your capital’s at risk, whatever. When you’re going for an interest-sparing product, let’s have some warnings around that as well. The interest rate may not keep pace with inflation and your purchasing power may be eroded over time. That would be arming people with the right level of information so that they can really make an informed choice. At the moment, I think it’s just a little bit unbalanced.

Holly Mead (12:20)
Is there anything you would change about junior ISIS that you think could make them more appealing? Do we need to see the allowance go up?

Cem Eyi (12:27)
so I think the, you know, not, I don’t know, very few people are maxing out their junior Isers within Beanstalk. There are some, you know, that clearly, they clearly do that and would put more if the allowance is higher. I think the main thing I would say, what is the point of a cash junior Iser? ⁓ especially if you’re opening up for, you know, a one or two or three year old, that’s up to 18 years in a, in an interest bearing product. I don’t really see the point of them.

Holly Mead (12:55)
So going back to the Beanstalk app, what one thing or feature that someone can use in there that will enhance their experience that they can do very easily today?

Cem Eyi (13:06)
So we’ve obviously talked about inviting grandparents, having them as link donors, having them the ability to contribute. ⁓ Another feature within Beanstalk we have is our cash back service through KidStart. So you can earn money back when you shop at partner retailers and that money gets automatically put into your kids junior. So it’s kind of money that you would have got for just doing your regular purchasing, your shopping anyway. And so for example, one of the unique

offers that we have through Beanstalk is our customers get 1 % back on their octopus energy bills, which goes straight into their kids junior Isis. it gets automatically split between all your children.

Holly Mead (13:44)
Split that if you have more than

That’s

a way to start a sibling war otherwise, isn’t it?

Cem Eyi (13:51)
No, luckily people just leave it.

Holly Mead (13:53)
Just going around turning the heating up because they know it’s going into their eyes. And you watch the thermostat. And what is that you see in the app or your customer base, even more broadly, a common mistake that people are making?

Cem Eyi (14:09)
I don’t really see much mistakes around our customer base that people are making, but I think the main kind of mistake around Trillin Savings is people just not starting, people doing nothing. The main choice is to do nothing for people. And that was what the CTF or the Child Trust Fund kind of really got that fixed by just making the default option to have an account. ⁓ So the main mistake is thinking that you can wing it till they’re 18 or that you’re going to find

going win the lottery somehow between now and then. You’ve got to find the money for them at some point. You might as well start earlier when you’ve got that maximum time period of compounding and investment returns to do their thing.

Holly Mead (14:50)
How do you think parents can balance that with also, you know, trying to use their own nicer allowance and also just paying the bill?

Cem Eyi (14:56)
Yeah,

it’s tough, right? you know, people should definitely consider what they can afford. you know, it’s the usual thing, isn’t it? You know, what’s your cash savings for kind of emergency fund? Are you paying down high interest, unsecured debt? And then you start thinking around, you know, what are your goals and objectives? Are you saving for yourself for long term? Are you saving for your kids for long term? So that’s something that I think people do need to, I don’t think it’s that complicated. It’s pretty, pretty easy. You can kind of figure out.

what your emergency fund needs to be and what your goals are. But yeah, there are some people that would say, you know, I would only consider investing in a JISA after I’ve maxed out my ISA. Fine, you know, but there’s also the neat thing about the JISA is it is locked away for the child. It is in their name. You can’t kind of raid their piggy bank as it were. And grandparents often like the fact that it’s locked away for the child so that the parents can’t get their mitts on it.

and raid it if they need to. So it serves a different purpose and it’s up to people to decide what’s best for them and their family.

Holly Mead (16:03)
So on to your personal investments, if we may. You already mentioned a mistake. What’s one of your more successful investment choices over the years?

Cem Eyi (16:12)
⁓ so while my stick, my mistake was actually buying a whole load of bank stocks in 2007. and then I think that the, ⁓ you know, the, sensible thing that I did was as soon as I started working out of university, kind of, ⁓ you know, maxing out my pension contributions for the company pension fund and choosing it to go into the, the higher risk kind of portfolio, ⁓ not because I was

Holly Mead (16:21)
Yes. Okay.

Cem Eyi (16:41)
smart and knew what I was doing, but I was just, you know, let’s go for the high risk one. And that’s kind of worked out pretty well after 30 years of working and moving pensions around. I’ve had singularly bad luck in terms of individual stock picking. And like I said before, I just don’t have the time and energy to go in and do that. I don’t think most people do. So, you know, the low cost, well diversified fund strategies worked for me. I’ll keep sticking with that.

Holly Mead (17:11)
How bad did the bank stock thing go?

Cem Eyi (17:13)
⁓ yeah,

pretty bad. I think I blocked it out now it’s been so long.

Holly Mead (17:19)
So for anyone who’s, you know, trying to learn about investing, whether it’s for themselves or for their child, is there a book you’d recommend?

Cem Eyi (17:28)
Yeah, I was thinking about this one because I don’t think what you need to learn fits in a book. I think it could fit on a page really. And we talked a little bit about making sure you have an emergency fund, making sure you’re paying down your high value debt and then thinking about whether you need, are you saving for the next five months, five years, 15, it’s that time horizon and objective. And I think after that, you just got to worry about is it the fees and how, what are the overall costs and charges.

So don’t think a book really does that. think it could all fit on the page where there is a book, it’s called Your Money Makeover Mindset by Andy Atherton. And it’s going actually more into some of the kind of behavioral and psychological drivers of why people make bad and good decisions with their money that are often linked to their individual fear and greed responses. And so it’s actually kind of trying to go a little bit a level deeper, you know.

why do you overspend or why do you have risk aversion and so kind of looking at yourself and trying to link that to your own subconscious attitudes and behaviours that might not even be related to money at all, it could be related to all sorts of things about your personalities. So I that’s an interesting book, but in terms of the core principles, I think they could fit on a page.

Holly Mead (18:44)
Did that book flag anything within you to yourself?

Cem Eyi (18:48)
well, so, so what, what, I think what it flagged in with me is I love a deal. So I was telling you about the two for one that I got off my dogs. So I love a great deal. ⁓ and so my natural response to things like when there’s some, you know, a market crash or a market downturn, whatever it’s like, that’s something that I was buying regularly. That’s now suddenly got cheaper. And so rather than having a fear-based response.

Holly Mead (18:56)
Ha ha.

It’s

a great investment attitude.

Cem Eyi (19:15)
I a payroll based response to it, which is great. My regular contribution is now buying me more units in this thing. In fact, I might buy some more. So I… Okay. But I love to get a deal. So that to me is this kind of, I like to get a deal. And so I view downturns as it’s chance to get a deal on something that otherwise would have been priced at its usual rate.

Holly Mead (19:24)
Costco of the investment world.

Cem Eyi (19:41)
Whereas I know other people will see that and have a fear-based response and it’s like, okay, now I need to make a knee-jerk decision and perhaps lock in that loss that I’ve just, that otherwise would have been a paper loss.

Holly Mead (19:52)
Love that. So overall for anyone thinking about starting with a junior ISA, what would be your biggest tip or piece of advice?

Cem Eyi (20:01)
Well, if you’re thinking about starting, great. You’re already kind of ahead of 85 % of the other parents. So great. Think about it. Go do your research. Ask your grandparents. They’ve often got a little bit more experience when it comes to investing versus saving. So take on board their advice and ⁓ find something that’s going to work for you. And hopefully you’ll check out Beanstalk as well. But yeah, if you’re thinking about it, you’re already a step ahead of most parents.

Holly Mead (20:26)
And Beanstalk is six years old, old enough to have enjoyed compound interest for quite some time. What is coming up for the company over the next month or months or years?

Cem Eyi (20:39)
⁓ So, should we continue to grow and develop the app a little bit? There’s some new features that we may be looking at in terms of how we allow people to earn that cash back that I was talking about. So that might be on the horizon, continuing with the kind app improvements and app updates, making sure that everything’s kind of easy and clear. We want everything to be really simple. ⁓ So we’re just going to keep doing what we’ve been doing for the last six years.

Holly Mead (21:07)
Do you think apps like this, we can make that next generation a nation of investors where perhaps those of us that have gone before have not really had that introduction to it?

Cem Eyi (21:17)
So I look at my older kids and I think they’re definitely more savvy and switched on and for a large part of their life, they grew up in a zero interest rate environment, right? So, you know, even they would have had a nationwide savings account or whatever at this point, you know, throughout their teens and they would have seen that the interest rate was next to nothing. That’s changed now slightly with interest rates, but I think a lot of them have already aware that

investing is different to saving. Yep, it’s risky and it’s volatile, but they’re aware of that. And that wasn’t something that I was, ⁓ I don’t think that was as ⁓ easy to access when I was kind of growing up. I think the youngsters are people that will be all right. I think they’re aware of these things more than their parents’ generation were. And hopefully they’ll, if they’ve had junior ISIS, they’re obviously going to be switched on to what’s going on. And that would be a great start for them for the rest of their life.

Holly Mead (22:11)
Well, thank you so much for your time and congratulations again.

Cem Eyi (22:14)
Thank you very much, Holly, and thank you for everyone who voted for us.

Holly Mead (22:18)
Thank you for joining us and if you are a Beanstalk customer, head over to the Good Money Guide review page and let us know all about your experiences. Thank you.