After winning the Best in Show title at this year’s Catwalk, we sat down with Afternoon CEO and co-founder Crawford Taylor to chat data and AI in advice, the tech ‘millefeuille’ and the problem Afternoon is trying to solve.
The idea for Afternoon, which brings together data and AI for advice firms, all started when Crawford Taylor was thinking about his own future.
Having started his career as a consulting actuary, Crawford spent over a decade at global professional services firms Willis Towers Watson and Marsh McLennan before going on to become a senior partner at Hymans Robertson.
He ended up advising some of the biggest defined benefit pension funds in the UK across tens of thousands of employees past and present.
So he was more well versed than most in what it takes to fund retirement. But when considering his own planning, he then started thinking about income drawdown, and the complexity and cost that go with it.
He says: “I started doing some analysis and realised there’s actually not that many products in the market that have really solved the post-retirement piece. And even with the pre-retirement piece, I still think there’s work to do.
“Speaking to financial advisers though, it struck me that there was a much bigger problem at hand, not just income drawdown. It was the whole data issue. Data sitting in filing cabinets and CRM systems and cashflow management tools.
“None of these tools talk to each other. And if they do, it’s only for little bits of data and plastering over the cracks.”
Crawford decided this was the issue he wanted to tackle.
Since co-founding the business in 2024, he has seen many new entrants in the tech and AI space, and he says a lot of them have a great story to tell. The challenge, he says, is that while many companies are addressing a piece of the jigsaw, they tend to add to existing tech stacks rather than streamline the process.
What Afternoon does
Afternoon describes itself as a “data and AI first operating system”, automating the advice process across data, meetings, reports and more.
The styling is deliberate. “We don’t see ourselves as a CRM. We can do everything a CRM does, within reason. But that’s why we call it a new operating system, rather than a CRM. It’s quite differentiated.”
The priority at the beginning was improving the quality of the data. The initial thought was to do this electronically, but the volume of paper-based data sitting in fact-finds or old pension statements meant the ability to upload and extract data had to come first.
“When Google came out, we learned to search for things differently. It was the same with the advent of Claude and ChatGPT. What we’ve built is a different, better way for advisers to work.”
The team at Afternoon were keen to understand and work with the data held across advice firms at a granular level. For example, not just generic client ‘assets’, but what kind of a pension, DB or DC, the underlying components of a particular DB scheme, and so on. Crawford says being across that level of detail means a better quality output.
After they were confident in the data element of the process, the next stage was to build AI to do specific advice-related tasks, such as automating meetings and suitability reports.
Dismantling the layers
Afternoon is actually Crawford’s second start-up. His first, Nude Finance, was a goal-based savings and investment app which helped people buy their first home. A tie-up with mortgage and savings company Tembo Money ultimately led to it acquiring Nude in February 2024.
His fellow co-founders, Francesco Vanduynslager and Ryan Sephton (chief technology officer and chief AI officer respectively) joined him from Nude to launch Afternoon.
After “bootstrapping as much as we could”, last year they raised money from London venture capital firm Twin Path Ventures along with some angel investors, two of whom had previously backed Nude. Afternoon recently carried out another fundraising round from its existing backers.
Crawford says advice professionals can use the system in a modular way if they only want to automate parts of the advice process, or adopt the whole range of services with firms’ data in one place and AI carrying out specific tasks.
He says the current approach of adding different bits of kit to an existing tech stack is on shaky ground.
“The way it’s built up with tech upon tech upon tech, it’s like that French pastry millefeuille. And when you press it down, it all just crumbles. It feels a bit like that just now.
“When Google came out, we learned to search for things differently. Now you don’t look in encyclopaedias in the same way as before. You Google things, it’s become a verb. In the same way, with the advent of Claude and ChatGPT, we’re using search in a different way. What we’ve built is a different, better way for advisers to work.”
What’s been built, and what’s to come
In the spirit of not wanting to add unnecessary layers, Afternoon says integrations already exist with 26 platforms, as well as calendar and email integrations through Google and Outlook, and further integrations through open banking and open finance. The plan is to also integrate with pension dashboards when these are rolled out.
Recent developments within the system include report writing, integrated meetings and being able to ask questions of the firm’s data, such as preparing a dashboard of a client’s net worth.
The next four priority areas are cashflow modelling, income reconciliation and management, regulatory reporting and a client portal.
“We’ve done a lot of work on all of them, but let’s not kid ourselves on, we’ve got a 12-month plan to launch it all. That said, cashflow modelling was in for next year and has already been built, so could be released early.”
Crawford says he entered Catwalk as a way of getting recognition for Afternoon.
“It’s about getting industry credibility. The lang cat has got huge credibility, and the team are seen as experts. Getting that industry feedback and getting judged was hugely valuable to us. Right now it’s about getting our customers to love what we’ve built and then tell all their friends. In the same way, if the lang cat and the lang cat audience get to love it, then they will tell all their friends. Getting that credibility means a lot to us.”
