Just Group buys stake in firm that helps older workers

Just Group, the retirement finance specialist, has snapped up a stake in a business providing services to help workers over the age of 50.

Lyndsey Simpson founded 55/Redefined in 2021 to help businesses to get to grips with the challenges of an ageing population and to retain and support their existing employees. It also hosts a digital jobs board listing opportunities for older workers.

Simpson, 46, said she had previously tried to attract venture capital investment but without any luck, despite her track record of successfully setting up several businesses.

“At no point, despite two and a half years of trying, have I ever secured venture capital funding,” said Simpson, who previously ran an HR consultancy, owned a bar and restaurant and began her career at Barclays. The launch of 55/Redefined is her first foray into technology, which had discouraged some potential investors when she initially pitched it to them in 2021, she said.

“Many of the conversations were focused around the fact that I cannot lead a tech business if I’m not a tech founder. Their immediate thing would be, ‘Well, if we’re going to invest, obviously we’d replace you as CEO.’ They weren’t exactly selling it to me.” She went on to raise £3.3 million from individual investors.

Having known how difficult her first round of rounding was (Simpson pitched to more than 80 investors to get the business going in 2021), for the new investment she decided to try a different tack.

“We do need institutional investors because we need more than helpful individuals and their money. We need to access data and scale. Just Group has 650,000 customers in our target demographic and they’re developing financial products for people in this phase of life.”

Customers of 55/Redefined already include Barclays, Diageo, Amazon and Axa and the company will achieve sales of £1 million this year. Its existing services include an over-50s job board, which comes with career support and advice. It will use the new funds to further develop its coaching and age insights platform, which it says helps companies to “predict, influence, and leverage their over-50s workforce”.

As part of the deal, David Cooper, Just Group’s marketing and distribution director, will join the board, alongside a senior director from LinkedIn, the social media platform for professionals.

Simpson, who owns 36 per cent of the company, said there was a clear business case for why companies needed to hold on to older workers for longer. “The reason that we’re working with Barclays or Amazon is not because they want to be nice to older people, t’s because they can see that they produce better products, they get better net promoter scores, they get better outcomes, they get better growth and they reduce their cost [if they employ more of them].”