Podcast: Dani Palmer at Loqbox

Our latest Industry Leaders episode features Dani Palmer, Chief Marketing Officer at Loqbox, a mission-led business focused on financial health. They help enhance people’s financial profile, knowledge and security. This enables them to build healthy, lifelong financial habits, and improve their relationship with money.

Dani brings us into her way of thinking, and the enormous challenges in society that Loqbox are helping to address. It's a brilliant story of a modern financial services brand.

Listen to the full episode below or search Industry Leaders wherever you get your podcast

You can also read the interview below: 

Sorcha

Hello and welcome to the Industry Leaders Podcast. I'm Sorcha O'Boyle and on the show with me today is Dani Palmer, CMO at the financial well-being business, Loqbox.

Dani is a real marketing leader who's built teams from scratch. She's helped scale high growth businesses. So I'm really, really excited to have her here. Dani, welcome to the pod. How are you?

Dani

Oh, thank you so much for having me here. I'm really well, to say thanks. How are you doing?

Sorcha

I'm good, thank you. So I wonder, for anyone who's listening, could you tell us what is Loqbox, for anyone who hasn't heard of it before?

Dani

So I'll start with the problem that we're here to solve. To add a bit of context, so we are here to tackle something universal, but deeply personal, and that's money. So everyone interacts with it, yet so few of us have a happy, healthy relationship with it.

And that can weigh heavy. I mean, here are some really sobering facts. So money is the leading cause of stress in the UK.

Over half of adults don't have enough emergency savings. It's the number one reason that couples argue or even divorce. The cost of living is rising.

And you don't need me to tell you that, because it's in our news every single day, and we're all feeling the pinch there. There are actually now 20 million people in financially vulnerable circumstances in the UK, and that number has grown massively over the last few years. So at Loqbox, we believe that it doesn't have to be this way.

We are a financial wellbeing business with a mission to give everyone access to a richer life, whatever richer means to you. So maybe that's buying your first home, maybe it's travelling the world, or simply feeling at ease when you check your bank account. I mean, I would ask you what helps you to feel financially well?

Sorcha

Well, looking at your website, a lot of the stuff is about buying your first home. Are you aimed primarily towards people in their late 20s, early 30s, or are you full lifestyle? Who is your kind of customer?

Dani

Yeah, so I would largely say that our main base is made up of people in their 20s and 30s, largely with aspirational goals. Home ownership is a really common one. It's also a really, really difficult one.

So we often see that people join Loqbox at a trigger point in their life where they have a big life milestone, life goal that they want to achieve, where there is a big financial implication to achieving it, right? And we're here to enable that. We provide a whole range of tools to help people build credit, grow savings, and importantly, learn how it all works.

We really believe that money should be empowering and not intimidating. So we have already helped over a million people start building that relationship with money. And yeah, we're just getting started.

And we know it's working because 80% of people who have used Loqbox say they feel more motivated, confident, or knowledgeable about money after using Loqbox.

Sorcha

Wow, that's an incredibly high number.

Dani

Yeah, it's huge. Yeah.

Sorcha

And when people come to you, do you find that, you know, it's that kind of financial literacy that is maybe they're struggling with? Because it seems to me like you do a lot of kind of educational content in a way that's very accessible, you know, because it's simple English for something that can be really complex when you try to investigate it by yourself. Do you think that financial literacy is a thing that's kind of lacking?

Dani

100%. I mean, money is a very complicated subject. So it's certainly not the only thing, but it is a big one.

I mean, I find it absolutely wild that in 2025, we are still throwing people out of schools, universities, colleges into one of the most complex financial systems in the world and kind of just expecting them to figure it out, right? So the idea that being around money your whole life means you'll somehow magically know what to do with it is complete nonsense. I mean, imagine if we did the same with driving, right?

So something like, here you go, kids, you've seen the car before. Here are the keys. It's a two ton metal death machine. Don't fuck it up.

Sorcha

Yeah.

Dani

It's totally laughable. But that's exactly what we do with money. And if it were anything else in our lives, in our world that had so much like impact on our lives, we'd expect training, licenses, qualifications, support to keep us safe with it, right?

You know, our co-founder, Thomas, talks about leaving school knowing pi to x digits, but having no clue what APR, AER, or how standing orders work, things like that. And he's not alone. And the result is that, of course, people make mistakes with money.

We're not set up to succeed with it. And many people have stories here, right? So they feel shame.

They blame themselves. But it's not their fault. They weren't set up to succeed.

Sorcha

Yeah, that's funny. As you're talking, I remember being at school and being taught how to fill out a check. And I think that's the only financial education I ever got at school.

You know, who does checks anymore?

Dani

Yeah, exactly. How long was it relevant for anyway?

Sorcha

Yeah, I mean, I was probably 14. I don't think I've ever written a check.

Dani

I don't think I've ever written a check either.

Sorcha

Yeah. So how do you engage with people? You've already referenced, obviously, you know, cost of living crisis.

There are a lot of people who are really just surviving paycheck to paycheck. How do you land your message with people who are maybe in that kind of like mid-20s stage? Maybe they're not thinking about their pension or, you know, buying a home.

How do you get them to kind of resonate with you guys? How do you land that message for that group?

Dani

It is really hard. And not just for that group, right? Engaging anyone around money can be hard.

Why? Because everything we've just spoken through, it can be really uncomfortable. So there can be a lot of avoidant behaviours around it.

And for many people, personal finance is still such a taboo topic. You know, generally, we're more comfortable talking about sex than we are money. For, I guess, the younger generations, social media can make that much worse.

Just endless comparisons and constant pressure. But I really like to think about like the body confidence movement. So just as we have really embraced one size doesn't fit all there, like how can we do the same with money?

So it's really about championing and celebrating individuality, empowering people to own their own financial journey and showing that it's okay to do things your way. In fact, actually, you know, it's not just okay. It's glorious, like it's freedom, right?

So what we are doing is making personal finance more fun, more approachable, easy and human. We really want to help people replace that shame with confidence and show them that their relationship with money can be empowering. And this word empowering comes up a lot in the feedback that we get from our members.

I'm biased, but ultimately, I think that what we do is really, really cool. And I want to help other people see that. So things that do work really well is when we have real people talking about their real stories, their experiences with money and their feelings with it, and like opening up and encouraging people to talk about it, you know, we think is really a first step towards helping people to confidently engage with with money.

Sorcha

Yeah, because it's kind of an unusual combination of finance and fun, you know, like, from a consumer point of view, those two things don't normally go together. Like if you think of kind of traditional, say, banking campaigns and things, they tend to be those kind of like cool tone blue things, you know, it's very safe, it's kind of a bit bland, but you guys are doing something quite different, which I think is really interesting. So what was it about Loqbox that kind of interested you?

Because you were there just under a year, am I right?

Dani

No, I've actually been here, it'll be five years in July, which is a lifetime in sort of scale up time, right?

Sorcha

Oh, huge, huge.

Dani

So what made me want to be part of the team, I have always loved the thrill of startups and scale ups, you know, it's coming in and building something from scratch, figuring things out as we go. It's really where that creativity meets opportunity. And that is, I guess, really my jam.

But with Loqbox, it's also been so much more than that. So yes, of course, the mission really speaks to me helping people to live the better, richer lives by removing the shame and stress around money. And also viewing it as sort of creative ingredient to use in creating the lives that we want, right?

That's huge. I mean, just imagine what's up for grabs if we can build a world where people really do have a better relationship with money. Since joining though, what's really kept me here, and I used to roll my eyes at the cliche, that it's all around about people, because I just not experienced that before, really.

But here it is true. I feel such a sense of belonging that I think is really rare. And it's the sense of, you know, yeah, of course, individually, myself, we can achieve amazing things.

But actually, together, working with the team, we can do so much more. And the appetite and enthusiasm here to take on the big challenges to embrace, I guess, failing confidently to sort of grow and celebrate the wins along the way. I love that, like, I feel it's so rewarding.

And I get a lot of both satisfaction and growth from that as well.

Sorcha

And tell me about building out your team. So when you started, you started in a marketing function, did you, at Loqbox?

Dani

Yes.

Sorcha

Yes. So were you kind of a lone ranger at that stage? Or were there a few people there?

How have you built the team over time?

Dani

Well, of course, being scale up business, it's changed, you know, the business I joined coming up five years ago is very different to the business today in every way. And yeah, certainly with building out the team needs change, and also the art of the possible changes over the time as well. So that has been an exciting journey yet going from me to building out lots of different specialisms in the marketing department, like covering everything from insights to creative and copy to partners, we have a number of disciplines and sort of specialisms in the team, which is incredible, because it means that we can mix that all together and come up with some really exciting things.

We also really embrace multifunctional working across the business too. And all of those departments have also had their own journeys. So yeah, for me, a really incredible journey.

It's the dream job, dream opportunity, getting to do that and all the people that you meet as the team grows. On the less, I guess, sexy side of it is that you build out processes and things that work. But as you scale, they have a certain shelf life.

So constantly looking at this thing used to work really well for us, and now no longer work. So what should we do next? And of course, that transitioning from what we did before to what we do next is, I guess, a constant endeavor.

Sorcha

Yeah, of course. It's funny, even listening to you, I can really see how genuinely passionate you are about it. It's really cool.

And can you tell me when you're hiring somebody for your marketing team? What kind of skills do you look for? I know, obviously, this will vary over, you know, if you're doing performance marketing versus creative, but I guess in terms of kind of mindset and attitude, maybe, what kind of things do you look for?

Dani

Yeah, so I will ask the question about how individuals that I'm speaking to through a recruitment process can help us to really grow values at Loqbox. So we have five of these:

• Relentless curiosity, that's, of course, all about learning and asking questions,
• Impact, impact, impact, both in terms of delivering on our mission and really achieving the results that we want to see.
• Being fearless, don't think you can work in a scale up, certainly with such a culture of experimentation and not have a certain amount of fearlessness.
• Collaborate to elevate. So yeah, really speaking about how teams across business come together and
• Kindness is clarity, which is about open communication, largely. So a look at how individuals may help us to grow that.

Also, we are a high growth scale up, right? And I love it. It really is my jam, but it's not for everyone.

So really being honest at interview about what it is like to work here, where people find it easy, where people find it challenging and therefore the characteristics that we look for being very adaptable. You know, change is a constant. I often talk about, we can phrase this as growth.

Everyone's searching for growth, right? But growth is change. So being in that constant state of change and being comfortable with that is important.

Being proactive. So thinking about things that each individual can do, ideas that they might have, that they love learning and trying new things. So I might ask in interviews things like, talk to me about something that you've learned recently.

That's really important. And I think it's about considering the team as a whole. So not just hiring the individual, but with building a team, thinking about the strengths we already have and how each person we add is going to complement and elevate that collective performance.

It's about creating that group that works better together than they ever could on their own. Most of us spend, I mean, this is a scary thing, right? Most of us spend more waking hours on this planet with our colleagues than we do our friends and families.

So finding people to be on the journey with and making that experience cohesive is really important and cohesive as in like we're working seamlessly together and we're united and aligned.

Sorcha

And if you were to speak to somebody who's kind of in a similar position to you, who's looking to grow their team, often when you get these kinds of high-skill businesses, trust is so important and trusting your team and being able to take a risk with people and, you know, send them on their way and have belief in them. I guess it's probably a hard thing to kind of quantify. When you're speaking to somebody in an interview, is there a moment where you just kind of, you feel that they embody these values that you've spoken about, you know, that they are going to be adaptable, they are going to be happy and comfortable with change and that kind of open curiosity?

Is it something that you kind of feel from a person?

Dani

Yeah, so the conversation, right? So trust, it is exactly that. And for me, a large part of trust comes from openness and honesty.

So, you know, let's remember that recruitment, interviews, it's as much for candidates to find out if this is like somewhere that's going to work for them and where they're going to be happy and with the right people as it is the other way around. And really embrace that in interview and remind people of that and lots of time for their questions too. So getting to the heart of like, of everything we've spoken through, you know, what sounds great, but also what sounds not so great, like, where are you worried?

And I feel much more trusting of someone who goes, this sounds great, but actually these details, you know, how might we do that? Or how could this work or who else is in the team? That for me gives me confidence that people are proactive because we're into problem solving.

We've got great self awareness. We're communicating openly. I have far more trust for someone that sticks their hand up and goes, “I don't know, can you talk it through with me?” or “I've made a mistake” or whatever it is than I don't know, the bravado.

Sorcha

Yeah, yeah. And that kind of links into what we were saying about the culture of experimentation as well, which I think in marketing is such an, I mean, in every job is important, but I think in marketing in particular. Just because it's so quick and it changes so quickly and customers have such high expectations, but such busy lives, so trying to really land with somebody who's got like, three kids and a job and a house and maybe their dad isn't well or whatever it is, so trying to land your stuff with that person. I think the most successful marketing teams are those teams that really do allow people to fail confidently, like you said, which is just hugely valuable for, obviously for the brand, you know, you learn through failure and, you know, so on, but it's also for building trust within the team.

I think it's huge.

Dani

Yeah. And speaking about time poor people, juggling a million things at home, we are also those people, right? We also have our financial goals.

We're also on our journey doing the chaos of life and shaping it as best we can into what we hope it can be. So we, in that way, very much like empathise with the people we seek to serve and also walk that journey with them.

Sorcha

Yeah. And am I right in saying that you launched your first TV ad recently?

Dani

We did. Yes. That was a really cool experience for me personally as well, because I'd never done anything like that before also.

So very exciting to go from, you know, five years ago, we're just sort of building out what marketing could look like for Loqbox and experimenting with channels all the way up until doing our first TV ads. So when I joined saying to a friend's family, oh, I'm joining the team at Loqbox. Nowadays, a lot of people will be like, oh, cool.

I saw your ad on the bus or I use it. That's really cool and fulfilling and satisfying. And yes, the TV ads are connected to TV.

We are experimenting again, Netflix, Disney Plus, 4AD. So that's really cool to see.

Sorcha

And what was that process like?

Dani

We did it in the setting of a wider winter campaign. So it's related to other activities that we do on different channels. So I guess the process started with the concept, you know, this campaign is “Your money, your moves.”

So it's everything I'm speaking about is celebrating the individual and their particular financial journey and how they want to move through that. And to sort of communicate that we chose break dancing, break dancers, you know, it's all about the movement, the flow, the self-styled confidence. It looks cool.

There's a flavour of nostalgia in there as well. We use quite a lot of AI to help us mock up what it would look like, I guess, to get visual on it, which was quite a funny experience because I remember us sitting around looking at some particular imagery that AI generated for us. I was like, what's not quite right with this picture?

Then it hit me that the person had three arms. I imagine that certainly helps quite a lot with break dancing. It certainly helped me to do it better.

And then we used a lot of insights as we went through testing our storyboards, seeing how it landed, what people were saying, trust factors, memorability, all of these sorts of things. Worked with some amazing partners and agencies in delivering this as well. You know, for us internally, it feels like a really big milestone moment for us in our marketing and as a business.

So lots of celebrating that and excitement around it and buzz internally for the team too.

Sorcha

And have you seen it yourself in the wild, just when you've been watching Netflix or anything?

Dani

I haven't seen the ads, but I have had people sending me, like the really cool thing is I have a lot of people sending me that, I've just seen it in the screen, which is really, really cool. You know, our Slack channels are quite alive with selfies with the bus or people sending their little screenshots through. So that's really, really cool.

Sorcha

Yeah. It's kind of something about moving to TV that does feel like a big, big, big milestone, isn't it?

Dani

Yeah.

Sorcha

As much as we talk about social media and digital, there is something about TV.

Dani

Yeah, definitely. Almost famous.

Sorcha

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So how much do you use AI in your work then?

Do you use it kind of like as an ideas kind of thing when you're thinking about new campaigns or things? And how have you adapted to it? Slowly.

Dani

I think that that's fair to say. So I'm very keen the team experiments with AI at work and I do too myself for loads of things. And I really buy into this belief that it's not, I don't think necessarily AI that's going to take anyone's job, but maybe someone who is using AI effectively to enhance their impact, maybe.

So largely the team's using various tools to speed up work. Yeah. Bounce ideas around, you know, spoken about using it for placeholder creatives, which I think is really useful to sort of visualise what work could look like.

It's almost that seeing is believing and then tweak it before investing the time and effort in shooting it or whatever it might be. We will use it to process data and form insights. It's quite quick to do that.

Although we do recognise about when it might have hallucinations and not entirely brilliantly get a grip on, I guess, what the point is to be had. To polish up copy. I think that's quite a common one, right?

I will often sort of copy and paste stuff and be like, how does this sound? Like a little sense check as well. And even if I read its response and go, no, I preferred my version, then that's still valuable for me because it gives me that confidence, I guess.

But sometimes it comes up with some useful edits. I use a AI note taker, which I am quite addicted to in calls. So we are remote first and hybrid working. So adding that to the call is great because it means that people don't have to look at my, I guess, the top of my head while I'm writing notes. I can be like fully with them in the call or the opposite. Like it doesn't mean that I have not got any notes afterwards.

And yeah, it does like summaries of actions as well, which is great for reminding and holding us accountable. You know, a lot happens in the day and that's like a really nice hack and shortcut, I guess, for those things. There are loads of new AI features in existing tools.

I feel like every tool we've ever had now purports to have an AI feature. And we're certainly playing with those too. But that is the term I would use for it.

We're still very much playing around with it and exploring where it might add value for us, very much in the discovery phase and still learning. Are you using AI tools much?

Sorcha

Yeah, a bit. I mean, I guess part of the, is obviously really does speed up work. Like you said, I find it useful that maybe like the start of a project, you know, when you're kind of like, I've got all these ideas, I'm going to pop down my ones, then see what ChatGPT comes up with or whatever it is comes up with.

And then usually there's a bit of crossover or we'll not have an idea that I guess I do have concerns over the sustainability part of AI as well. Like it just uses up so much energy. So I think we probably do need to think about how to use it responsibly, like anything, you know, any kind of technology.

But I think you're right. It's the combination of like artificial intelligence and then actual intelligence as well. You know, because like when it does come up with its hallucinations, you need someone who has the critical thinking skills to say, no, that's nonsense.

This is what's right.

Dani

Yeah. And I think we get quite easily confused as humans. It feels like that's talking back to us.

Yeah, it's quite uncanny. Yeah, it's quite uncanny. But often whether it's a scrape of search results or I mean, I often use it for search actually, instead of Googling now.

But yeah, we're very much in early days for sure. And completely agree with all those points about sustainability and safe usage.

Sorcha

Yeah. But then I think it's really interesting in a medical sphere because I have no kind of medical background at all. But I have seen a number of studies where it's being used as the diagnostic tool and it's just speeding up diagnoses.

You know, it can scan for breast cancer, and it's more accurate than a probably overworked team who are standing in a hospital. You know, so if you can use it like that, it's just it's phenomenal.

Dani

Oh, I'm so excited about the impacts on health that it could have. And it makes so much sense that it would be good for the pattern recognition, which is also, I guess, where we are toying with insights as well. But yeah, on a much bigger, I guess, like global and humanitarian level, the healthcare implications could be huge.

Sorcha

Yeah, for sure. And we've gone slightly off topic. Yeah, it's really interesting.

But I suppose to come back to Loqbox, where if you're kind of looking to the next kind of year or two, because I get it sounds like you're such an ambitious business with like loads of great ideas, loads of energy. What are the kind of things that you're kind of like looking forward to for the next couple of months?

Dani

Reaching more people, like Loqbox can help so many people achieve the big goals, feel better, the things that we've already spoken about today. And really, for me, it's just about reaching, not just, reaching more people, like helping them to benefit from this. You know, I really love seeing all the stories that we get from our members and goals that they've used Loqbox to help them achieve.

And that is so satisfying. Like money just is such a big problem. And in a time where it's on people's minds more than ever, and it's more difficult than ever with cost of living.

Loqbox really is more powerful than ever for consumers. So getting it in more people's hands is what I want to continue doing.

Sorcha

It sounds like the business is very close to the customer. It sounds like you've got a really, really close relationship. Like you can see it on the website, you can see your Trust Pilot, their testimonial videos.

I am guessing that was probably always the case in this business, the way it was set up. Is that true? Or is it something that like you guys are like, every day we must be as close to the customer as possible?

Dani

Yeah, so I would say totally true from the beginning. And every day you need to be as close to the customer as possible. Because of course, as you scale and you add more and more things you're doing in the business operationally, there's complexity in the same way that we actively scale our culture and our values and bring them to life every day.

For me, a total foundation of how I operate as a marketer is being member first. So as we've grown, that's meant that we can reach more people in more ways and be closer to them in more ways, whether that's in new features that we can offer or in going out to speak to them, or doing Vox Pops. So it's something that is true to us and has been with us from the beginning.

That's something that we also do every day and look to evolve and grow on. So I don't think we'll ever reach the limit of like how obsessed with our members that we can be and looking for new ways to continue helping them. And of course, things change all the time, right?

The economy changes, our views change, what we need changes. So making sure that we're not missing a beat with the people we seek to serve and still providing that value to them and ultimately empowering them to access those rich lives is something that we actively every day work on.

Sorcha

Brilliant. Dani, thank you so much. Really, really enjoyed chatting to you.

Dani

Oh, you too. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Sorcha

Very delighted. That was Dani Palmer, CMO of Loqbox. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Industry Leaders podcast.

And don't forget, you can catch up on all of our previous episodes wherever you get your podcasts. That's it for now. So from me, Sorcha O'Boyle, and all of us at more2, take care and bye-bye.