Reply To: Watson’s Daily 13/12/2021 edition

[Xenia Baranova]

Hi Andrew!

I think (and hope) that Bumper will succeed in the long run!

I think that dividing up the cost of car repairs will attract young (under 30 years old) car owners to use the app. As car repairs are a cost that can come unexpected to consumers and often is outside of their monthly budgets many people who cannot afford the upfront cost can become frequent users of the app.

Repairing your car is often a necessity, so I view Bumper differently than Klarna, whose consumers pay in instalments predominantly for clothes that they might not need. I don’t see consumers getting into debt in the same way as you would with Klarna, where you could buy a lot of expensive clothes in one go if you wanted to. With car repairs, you will only pay for the repairs that are identified to get your car working again. 🙂

As long as customers pay back the money owed and Bumper grows its user base I think it should be successful. I think Porsche and Jaguar Land Rover are the right companies to have invested in it because they will know the car market better than generalist Klarna or Afterpay! The Omicron variant might drive consumers to repair their existing second-hand cars as they wouldn’t want to buy a new one with the current astronomical prices (although the car parts aren’t cheap either!). Overall though, I do think they are set up for long term success.