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Anthony: Hello, I’m talking with Charles from Custodian. Charles, tell me what does Custodian do?
Charles: Well, it’s for the car community, something which I’m deeply passionate about. And whilst it’s very easy to be passionate about cars, particularly specialist cars and car ownership, the ownership experience is pretty painful.
And that’s exactly what Custodian solves. We’re an ecosystem for collector communities and we provide tooling to streamline the asset ownership experience, starting with cars. In the future, we’ll do other collectible asset classes as well.
Anthony: So what got you to wake up one day and go, we need to build Custodian?
Charles: Back in 2019, just before Covid, I realized that, as I said, that every other part of my life has some technology or an app for helping out. But for car ownership, there wasn’t effective technology. All the investment focus on the tech side had been focused on the transaction, i.e. marketplaces, not on the ownership experience.
Anthony: Sounds great. So how does this work? I’ve got my cool car. What do I do? How do I sign up? What benefits do I get?
Charles: Absolutely. There’s three key components that we do. We have ownership tooling so you can streamline all the digital history of your car, put in your invoices, documentation.
We’ve got task management systems. You get reminders for when your service is due, your maintenance, your insurance, your renewal.
We’ve got a data room facility where you can see diligence documentation around a car when you come to buy it.
But also we’ve got a marketplace. We’ve got a marketplace now where we’re coming up to 3,000 specialist cars for sale. So you can buy and sell cars through our platform. We’re partnered with 60 of the top dealers in the UK. And then we have our brokered services.
Anthony: Right, so for a car owner, sounds like a great set of benefits. How do you make money? What’s the business model?
Charles: Our business model is an insurtech model at the moment. So we are an insurance broker, we’re FCA regulated in the UK, and we make commission on the insurance premiums that come through our platform.
Anthony: So last question, why should an investor invest in Custodian? How large a market it is? Over to you.
Charles: So there’s 43 million collectible vehicles in the US, there’s 12 million in the EU and there’s 3 million in the UK. And if you look at, for example, the insurance premiums in the US, it’s 12 to 15 billion dollars a year just for collectible cars, 1.25 billion in the UK.
And what we’re finding right now is we’re not just insuring people’s specialist cars, but also their everyday vehicles. So it’s an even bigger market. And right now, people in the community have to pick up the phone and speak to the incumbents. It’s a very antiquated process.
And what we’re providing is a digital solution, where people that want that digital experience can do it through Custodian in a really streamlined manner, as well as benefiting from preferential rates potentially, if we can see that you really care for your car and you’re an enthusiast.
Anthony: Alright, thank you, Charles. It’s been brilliant talking.
