Bristol entrepreneur to join cost of living taskforce

The co-chief executive and co-founder of UK financial wellbeing business, Loqbox, has joined the Cost-of-Living Taskforce under the auspices of Business in the Community (BITC).

As part of the Taskforce,  Bristol based Gregor Mowat joins a cohort of several influential and passionate senior executives, committed to deliver the vision that the UK business community demonstrates a world-leading response to the cost-of-living crisis.

With Gregor’s appointment, the Cost-of-Living Taskforce will benefit from his extensive entrepreneurial track record infused with socially responsible principles, and his deep commitment to improving people’s financial health in an era of rising costs that are impacting individual and household finances.

With its vision of building a fairer and greener world, BITC’s purpose is to inspire, engage and challenge purposeful leaders to take practical action to mobilise their collective strength as a force for good in society, and has been supported by The King for over 40 years.

BITC’s Cost-of-Living Taskforce proactively supports those most disadvantaged and vulnerable in society, using the crisis as a catalyst to make the UK fairer and greener together. This taskforce of diverse leaders will shape the outputs for the campaign and innovate together to drive action across business at pace and scale.

BITC works with thousands of business leaders, and its network represents over seven million people — more than 20% of the UK workforce. Over the last few years, around 10 million people have benefited from its various initiatives to transform lives in the most deprived places in the country.

Gregor is an established fintech and consumer finance entrepreneur with an impressive pedigree of executive and non-executive board positions under his belt.

Prior to co-founding Loqbox, Gregor was a senior partner with KPMG in different practices around the world. Working with some of the largest financial institutions in the world during his time with KPMG, Gregor has seen first-hand the devastating effect that different financial systems can have on those who struggle to access them, which galvanised his fellow Co-CEO and co-founder, Tom Eyre, and him to co-found Loqbox in 2017.

Gregor said: “The BITC Cost-of-Living Taskforce is a vital initiative that is proactively responding to the rapidly rising cost of living in the UK. We are in an unprecedented era of sustained high inflation and energy costs, stagnant wage growth and precarious economic circumstances putting people’s budgets under mounting pressure. The cost-of-living crisis affects everyone. Yes, it affects middle-class people, but we should understand that it disproportionately hurts poorer demographics. Middle class people may need to change their supermarket, whereas people in poorer demographics are deciding whether to skip a meal.

“At Loqbox we specifically deal with a significant number of people who have been unduly badly affected by the cost of living. What I’m hoping to do is bring insights from our members to the BITC, to help them inform some of the decisions they make, some of the inputs given to government, and some of the initiatives that my Taskforce colleagues take back to their own companies. Some of that data could include feedback from our members on the extent to which they’re having to make difficult choices. Do people need access to credit more than they needed before? What sort of credit are we hearing that they are looking for? Have they been seeking near prime credit versus very subprime credit? Has that increased or changed?

“There is an imperative for businesses to engage with this issue as it affects everyone, including of course company employees. If you look after your employees really well, and support them financially, physically and mentally, they will be more likely to stay and do a good job for you, your productivity will be good and your business will thrive. Improving people’s financial wellbeing is at the heart of everything we stand for, and with my Taskforce colleagues, we will strive to create the change we want to see to help the financially disadvantaged in our society.”