OpenMoney founder ‘sad, angry and embarrassed’ as chaos grips fintech

Anthony Morrow, founder of OpenMoney, has hit back at claims that the non-payment of pensions, salaries and taxes happened while he was running the business.

Speaking to TheBusinessDesk.com in response to claims by would-be new owners Patrick Leahy and Will Mallard that staff weren’t paid prior to them taking control of the financial advice platform in April, Morrow said this was not true. 

“I’m aware of the problems here around non-payment of pensions, salaries and taxes to HMRC. I can categorically say that this wasn’t the case prior to the sale in April (unless the management team were lying to me and I have no reason at all to think that) and the first issue to come to light was the one almost immediately after the deal where people were late being paid by 3 days,” he said.

Morrow wasn’t the only person associated with OpenMoney to react angrily to comments made by Leahy to TheBusinessDesk.com earlier this week when he claimed a rescue of the loss making fintech business was in the offing from “sources close to home”.

Leahy and Mallard, agreed to takeover the distressed business and applied to place the business into a Conditional Voluntary Arrangement. They told TheBusinessDesk.com in May that processes were underway to let 50 staff go, leaving a vastly reduced workforce from the 100 at its peak.

No filings have been made to that effect and staff have complained their redundancy payments and processes have been botched.

On condition of anonymity one former senior staff member said: “the lack of empathy is astounding.”

Another said: “These people will do anything in their power to pay as little as possible to the people they owe money to.”

Morrow was particularly bruised by Leahy’s comments and the assurances he said he had received that the one-time great hope of Manchester’s financial technology sector could be brought back from the brink after founder Duncan Cameron pulled the funding plug.  

Morrow added: “Clearly the plans and funding parties they had in place at the time of sale have dragged on or not worked as planned, or probably a combination of the two. I know they are working with FCA to get things approved and sorted and I hope that this includes funding to resolve all this.” 

Morrow also claimed that OpenMoney has been “run into the ground” a comment that is certain to raise further eyebrows.

“As the person who set this business up to be a positive employer, as well as help people with the least make the best decision with what they have, then how the business has been run into the ground over the last 12 months makes me both sad and angry and not a little embarrassed,” he said. 

Separately, the failure to pay pension contributions has been referred to The Pensions Regulator. TheBusinessDesk.com has seen correspondence that enforcement action is underway to ensure payments are made to contracted employees.

Leahy confirmed that pension payments hadn’t been made and that his team were in touch with HMRC and “the regulator”.

When he was reminded of his legal duty to pay salaries and pensions, he replied:  “We have a legal duty to pay lots of people. We are shaping the business to ensure they are all paid.”

Leahy’s comment that triggered the most anger from former staff was: “quite a lot of people who are losing their jobs and are quite disgruntled about that. Which is fair enough. There have been lots of people who have not been paid. The vast, vast majority were not paid before we took over the business.”

Although they can’t comment on individual cases, in a statement a spokeswoman for The Pensions Regulator outlined what staff should expect from employers. 

It said: “Every employer in the UK is required to assess and place eligible staff into a pension scheme and to contribute towards it under automatic enrolment rules (Pensions Act 2008).

“As regulator, our role is to ensure employers comply with their duties and to protect pension savers’ money. Under legislation, pension schemes are responsible for monitoring contributions due and received, and for undertaking any initial activity to recover late or missing pension contributions.

“If the scheme is unable to resolve the matter, they report any materially significant missing pension contributions to TPR and we then take a proportionate, risk-based approach to assess the appropriate response and intervention.

“If employers fail to comply, we have various powers available to us. Compliance notices are generally the first step in our graduated compliance regime. See our How We Enforce guide for a full rundown of the powers available to us.”

A fintech business, Open Money was set up by Anthony Morrow in 2017 with the backing of former MoneySuperMarket founder Duncan Cameron. Morrow has been seeking a buyer for the loss making business after Cameron pulled all funding at the end of March giving his former business partner the almost impossible task of finding an alternative funder.

According to the last set of filed accounts the shareholders capital stands at £28m, indicating how much investment Cameron and Morrow have sunk into the business which lost £9.3m in 2021 on turnover of just £593k.

Cameron sold his 47% stake in the Chester-based price comparison site to co-founder Simon Nixon in June 2007 for £162m.