Neil Robertson, Co-Founder and Director, Nanta Partners

Today we're delighted to speak with Neil, Co-Founder and Director of Nanta Partners, a new senior-only communications consultancy built for businesses operating at the frontier of innovation. With over 60 years of combined experience advising high-growth technology companies, Neil and his co-founders are helping fintech leaders understand that how the market perceives them materially affects valuation, partnerships, hiring and customer trust.

PR is often seriously misunderstood by FinTech founders and company executives so I wanted to make sure I published a series of perspectives from leaders in the field. Neil from Nanta Partners most definitely qualifies. Over the past 15+ years I've watched him and his colleagues shape completely new brands into industry behemoths. Contrary to popular belief, you don't just phone up a PR company and ask to be featured in the FT next week. Across my career I've seen the power of brilliant PR, not just to open business-development-doors but to add zeros to valuations.

The launch of Neil's new firm, together with co-founders Nicky and Anna, was a good opportunity for me to grab him and ask if he'd take some time to give some views for the benefit of the FinTech Profile audience. I'm delighted he said yes!

My questions are in bold - over to you Neil:

Congratulations on the launch of Nanta Partners — can you give us an introduction to yourself and the new agency? What's your background, and what kind of clients are you working with?

Between us, Nicky, Anna and I have spent over 60 years advising high-growth technology companies and their investors on how to use communications to drive commercial outcomes. That's included everything from early-stage fintechs through to deep-tech scale-ups, venture capital firms and corporates.

Nanta Partners is a senior-only communications consultancy built specifically for businesses operating at the frontier of innovation. We work directly with founders and leadership teams to shape the narrative behind their strategy and then execute with precision.

Our clients range from fintech platforms like PayCaptain, through to industrial AI, quantum and defence technology and security businesses. The common thread is ambition. Some are building category-defining companies and understand that how the market perceives them materially affects valuation, partnerships, hiring and customer trust.

What made you take the leap to start your own PR firm, and why now? What gap did you see in fintech communications?

After two decades building other agencies, we wanted to create something deliberately different: partner-led, highly focused, and tightly aligned to commercial impact.

We often see a tendency to prioritise noise over narrative, companies chasing coverage without a clear strategic arc. Fintech has matured. Investors, regulators and customers are more sophisticated. That requires sharper positioning, deeper sector understanding, and advisers who can sit at the table with the CFO and the board, not just draft a press release.

The timing felt right because the market is recalibrating. Capital is more disciplined, profitability matters, and credibility is everything.

Your first client pitch to us is PayCaptain — a B-Corp certified payroll platform that delivered £17.5m in early wage access last year. What drew you to working with them?

Three things.

• First, the substance. Delivering £17.5m in early wage access to over 55,000 employees, speaks to the very real financial pressures in the workforce and a tangible solution.
• Second, the positioning. PayCaptain sits at the intersection of fintech, employment and financial wellbeing. It allows us to tell a far richer story.
• Third, the leadership mindset. They care deeply about being well-run, sustainable and values-driven. The B-Corp status underpins how they operate.

For us, that combination of commercial performance and social impact is powerful and credible.

A lot of fintech founders treat PR as an afterthought — something they bolt on after a funding round. What's the cost of that approach?

The cost is usually paid in valuation, trust and time.

If you only appear in the media when you've raised money, your narrative becomes transactional. You're seen as a funding story rather than a market-shaping business.

It also means you're building awareness reactively instead of proactively. By the time you need customers, partnerships or regulatory goodwill, you're starting from scratch.

The most effective fintech brands treat communications as infrastructure, something that compounds over time. It shapes how investors benchmark you, how journalists interpret your data, and how customers evaluate risk.

Earned media vs paid media — in the fintech space specifically, why does earned media still matter when companies can just buy attention?

Fintech operates in a trust-sensitive environment. You're handling people's money, data and livelihoods.

Paid media can generate reach. Earned media builds credibility.

When a respected journalist interrogates your model, your numbers and your leadership, and still decides your story stands up, that validation carries weight with regulators, investors and enterprise buyers in a way advertising cannot replicate.

The most sophisticated fintechs use both. Paid channels amplify. Earned media anchors reputation.

What's the one thing you'd love fintech CEOs to ask you, but they almost never do?

"How do we want to be perceived three years from now, and what needs to happen today to earn that?"

Most conversations start with, "Can you get us coverage next month?"

The more strategic question is about long-term positioning. Are you building a financial wellbeing platform, a payments company, or the operating system for employer-led finance? The answer should inform everything from media strategy to thought leadership to partnerships.

What's the most common mistake fintech companies make when trying to tell their story to the market?

Confusing product features with narrative.

Saying you have faster onboarding, better UX or smarter automation isn't a story. The market wants to understand why you exist, what structural problem you're solving, why that matters, what the market opportunity is and why you're different in a way that endures.

The second mistake is copying Silicon Valley tropes that don't translate to the UK or European regulatory environment. Context matters.

If a fintech founder came to you with a great product but zero media presence, where would you tell them to start?

Start with clarity.

We'd define:

• The core problem you solve.
• The audience that feels it most acutely.
• The proof points that demonstrate traction.
• The credible spokespeople who can articulate the vision.

Then we'd build a narrative platform and map it to a phased media strategy, beginning with targeted briefings and sector-specific titles before scaling into national business press.

Momentum is built deliberately. It's rarely accidental.

How do interested companies find out more and engage with Nanta Partners?

The simplest route is a direct conversation.

We work with a limited number of clients at any one time, so the starting point is usually a strategic discussion about objectives, growth stage and ambition. If there's alignment, we shape a programme that ties communications directly to commercial milestones, whether that's fundraising, market entry, recruitment or reputation building.

You can find us at www.nantapartners.com or connect with Anna, Nicky or I directly on LinkedIn.

Thanks to Neil for taking the time to share these insights with us. You can learn more about Nanta Partners and connect with the team on their website.