An interview with Moneysupermarket founder Simon Nixon

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business
MONEYSUPERMARKET.COM FOUNDER SIMON
NIXON MAY HAVE TAKEN A STEP BACK FROM
HIS GROUNDBREAKING PRICE COMPARISON
SITE, BUT HE’S NOT SLOWING DOWN. HE
TELLS KATE WHITE ABOUT HIS NEW BUSINESS
Investing in
the right sites
IN LUXURY HOLIDAY LETS, SIMONESCAPES
W hen Simon Nixon founded price comparison website
Moneysupermarket.com, he had no idea that 14 years later,
mortgages, that should improve your home sales.
“It really worked, and we found that I could get a lot of
he’d be floating it on the stock market for £850 million. people mortgages who thought they couldn’t get them. I
“I didn’t even consider it,” says the 45-year-old started getting quite a lot of business from these builders,
entrepreneur, who talks quickly and animatedly, with an and I became top salesperson in the office, just by thinking
infectious enthusiasm. “I never sat down and drew up a big laterally.”
business plan. I just thought, this is something that Soon he spotted another gap in the market. “At that time
customers are going to want.” there was nothing to help me, as a mortgage adviser, to find
Today Nixon, who still owns a 54 per cent stake in the the best deal for my clients. I had to phone round all the
company, is worth a cool £536 million, according to this different banks and building societies, which I thought was
year’s Sunday Times Rich List – not bad for a man who grew crazy.”
up in a town in Wales with some of the highest Nixon bought an Apple Mac and then designed and
unemployment levels in Britain. began printing a fortnightly mortgage magazine for brokers,
Born in Nottinghamshire, Nixon’s father’s job designing which compiled all the available mortgage rates into one
parts for jets in the RAF led the family to relocate to Germany publication. In just four months, he was earning enough
before finally settling in Connah’s Quay, which Nixon describes money to quit his job in sales.
as “a humble little working-class town in North Wales”. As computers became widespread, the magazine was
“We were totally working class,” he says. “My dad always replaced with a disk. “It sounds archaic now,” he laughs.
had work, but he was supporting a family of me, my brother “But it really took off, and it saved me loads of money
and my mother. We weren’t on the breadline by any stretch because rather than printing a magazine, we just sent a disk
of the imagination, but money was tight.” out in the post.”
Nixon’s mother died when he was just 18, which he Then the disk became a modem. “The brokers couldn’t
believes is partly what has driven him to achieve so much. do without it, they were totally reliant on us,” says Nixon. “If
“If you lose your mum, you’ve got no one to fall back on,” he our servers went down with an issue for a few hours, they
says. “So you’ve really got to make it on your own.” couldn’t work.”
He enrolled at Nottingham University after leaving school, By this time it seemed as though the company couldn’t
but dropped out of his accountancy degree after two years. grow any further. “The business plateaued – we had about
“I loved being a student, the social life and the 10,000 subscribers, 60 staff and I was looking for where we
independence. But I really hated the course and had no could take it,” says Nixon.
passion for it. It just wasn’t for me,” he says. Then he spotted an opportunity that would change his
“I loved writing poetry and essays and I should have business forever. Broadband was becoming widely available
pursued that. But I felt if I’d done an English degree, it would in the UK, replacing the exasperatingly slow dial-up modems
have been so hard to get work. You’d have to become a with a service that was ten times faster and didn’t disrupt the
writer or a journalist, and it’s so competitive.” phone line.
Faced with a two-week ultimatum from his father to either “I thought, wouldn’t it be great to take our mortgage-
find work or get kicked out of the house, he scoured the job sourcing product, put it online and empower consumers by
section of the local newspaper, where he spotted an advert allowing them to compare mortgages?” says Nixon. “They
for a financial consultant role. could fill in their criteria, see what was available, and find the
“I didn’t even know what it meant, but it said ‘unlimited best deal.”
earnings’. I was 20 and I thought, that sounds really good. He named the website Moneysupermarket.com and in
Then I realised ‘financial consultant’ was a high-powered 1999, it was launched online. “We changed the marketplace,
name for a mortgage salesperson.” because providers had to start cutting their rates to compete
He got the job and ended up “sticking at it for a bit” to for customers for the first time,” he says. “We’d brought
please his dad, but in spite of his initial ambivalence, it wasn’t transparency.”
long before he discovered he had a real talent for sales. The website, which makes its money through commission
SIMON NIXON “At that time, a lot of people wanted to buy a property fees from banks, quickly expanded to include other financial
but they couldn’t find a mortgage,” he explains. “So I did a products, such as loans, credit cards, savings and current
deal with a local builder and said, if I can help your clients get accounts, as well as spin-off website Travelsupermarket. ៑

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business
“I knew it wasn’t only about how well we executed the
idea,” says Nixon, “but also, we had to grow it really fast and
put the accelerator down, because people were going to
copy us, and they have done.
“You’ve got Confused and GoCompare and so on, but
they came to the market a lot later than us, and because we
had first-mover advantage, we’re still the biggest price
comparison website in the world.”
Floating the business was the “right thing”, he says. “A lot
of our staff had shareholdings in the business, and the only
way for them to take money out was for us to float it. So I
owed it to the staff who had worked really hard.”
Today Moneysupermarket has a workforce of 600, and
after two years as chief executive, Nixon is now deputy
chairman. However, far from scaling back his workload, he
has used the extra time to start up another business.
SimonEscapes is a luxury holiday lets company, with a
portfolio of cherry-picked properties redeveloped to the
highest standard. They range from a country house in the
Cotswolds to a villa in Deià, Mallorca, a favourite of Andrew
Lloyd Webber.
“The idea for SimonEscapes came from the fact that all
my money was tied up in Moneysupermarket, which was a
virtual internet business that I couldn’t touch or feel,” says
Nixon.
“When I floated it on the stock market, I sold a lot of my
shares and took some money off the table. Obviously I
needed to invest it, so I thought, why not put a chunk of it
into bricks and mortar?”
“I’ve always been really passionate about visiting great
locations. I thought it would be great if I could combine that
with property, by building and renovating really high-end
holiday lets.”
One of the latest properties he is developing is a
beachside house in Barbados. “I go to Barbados every two
or three months now to meet with the architect, the interior
designer and the project managers, to make sure
everything’s on track,” he says.
“After an eight-hour flight from the UK where I’ve left
behind a blizzard of snow and rain, when I get off the plane
in Barbados, the first thing I do is go to the sea, dip my
toe in the water and I feel like I’m relaxing and I’m away
from it all.”
In spite of his immense success, the entrepreneur
describes himself as an insecure person. “Entrepreneurs are
driven by insecurity,” he says. “What drives me is not
success, it’s fear of failure.
“I feel guilty when I’m not working, which is a terrible
habit. If I was on the beach all day every day, I’d feel so “[Moneysupermarket.com]
guilty.” And besides, he points out, working on changed the marketplace,
SimonEscapes isn’t exactly a grind. because providers had to
“I don’t see going to Barbados as a hardship,” he laughs. start cutting their rates to
“I’ll get up at seven in the morning, go for a swim in the sea, compete for customers
have a nice breakfast and then my meeting will start at half for the first time. We’d
nine on the beach. brought transparency”
“I’m more balanced now, I don’t work 14-hour days in an Simon Nixon
office,” he adds. “I’m out and about, and I enjoy that a lot
more.
“I probably work almost as many hours as I used to
because I’m always thinking, but I’m thinking and working in
really nice environments and combining what I love – travel to
nice places and good food – with work I enjoy. It’s the best of BUSINESS: Erik Brown
both worlds.” erik.brown@pubbiz.com