Published June 2026

Marshmallow is a place for doers. We have a bias for action and always prioritise the work that will drive the most impact.

One of our values is ‘we maximise impact, fast’, and a great example of this value in action was building and launching Car Finance from scratch in just eight months. The team were told it couldn't be done in such a short timeframe, but with sharp focus, ruthless prioritisation and relentless execution, they proved otherwise.

We chatted to Faris, General Manager of Car Finance, about the process of building it, what they learned, and how living this value every day helped them reach their ambitious goal…

Hi Faris! Tell us a bit about your Marshmallow journey.

I've been at Marshmallow for four and a half years. I joined as a Group Product Manager and worked my way up to Product Director overseeing customer retention, understanding what drives growth and where we were losing it. That gave me a close view of what our customer base needed beyond car insurance.

In summer 2024, after becoming profitable, we made our first big bet on a new product — taking Marshmallow from an insurtech to a broader fintech. Car Finance was the natural first move, and when the opportunity came up to lead it from scratch, I jumped at the chance.

Why did we choose Car Finance? What customer problem does it solve?

Car Finance kept coming to the top for two reasons.

First, We had rich insights from thousands of customer conversations, and when we looked at what products they told us they wanted us to provide, Car Finance kept coming to the top of the list. Many of our customers don't get a single loan offer from other lenders, due to not having a UK credit score when they arrive here, and this blocks many of them from getting a car they can use to drive to work or get their kids to school.

Second, we knew we had a real advantage. We'd spent years understanding cars, assessing risk, and building data on how to underwrite New to UK customers well in our insurance business. We felt confident we could apply those same insights to a lending business.

Our mission at Marshmallow is to make migration easy — we want migrants to have the same access to car finance, at the same prices, as anyone born in the UK. We knew we could deliver it better than anyone.

Tell us about the team - both when it formed and what it looks like now.

Most of the founding team were already at Marshmallow, keen to get involved in building something new from scratch. David, our Co-Founder and Chief Architect, leads engineering for the Car Finance team. Joining us were Heather, Matt, Rowan and Ben: talented, highly driven people who wanted to build something from nothing. We knew how to build and we knew how to move fast. But we were missing specialist car finance expertise. Toby, our Head of Credit Risk, brought that. Someone who knows the market inside out.

Now, the team is around 15 people, made up of both internal moves and external hires. The common thread is still the same: people who back themselves, take ownership, and get things done without waiting to be asked. No one says 'that isn't my problem'. Everyone cares deeply about the success of the product, gets stuck in, and constantly finds ways to optimise what we're doing. We also use AI wherever we can to reduce manual work and scope out opportunities, and that's important for everyone whether they're working in a tech or operational role.

You built the product from scratch in eight months. What did you actually know when you started?

Honestly, very little. We knew there was a large market and that people spend a lot on car finance, enough to sustain a real business. Everything else was part of the journey. But I think that's the ethos: understand that there's a problem, then back yourself to find a way to solve it, whatever it takes.

With only eight months, you couldn't build everything. How did you decide what made the cut?

A couple of principles guided us. First, only build what you know customers will absolutely need, nothing speculative. Second, we thought about where we could have a distinctive advantage. For us, that was pricing and decisioning, so we built those models from scratch and put a lot of our effort there.

We also made a deliberate call to launch with just one distribution partner to start with, rather than trying to serve everyone or integrate with multiple systems from day one. That made our engineering roadmap a lot simpler and allowed us to get our product live more quickly.

Overall, we had to challenge ourselves on every decision. Do we really need this for the MVP? Can we simplify this? How can we do this quicker?

And how did you keep the team moving forwards rather than getting pulled into the weeds?

We picked an ambitious launch date with only a small amount of planning to figure out if it was ‘realistic’, and then we just ran at it. Some industry experts told us we'd never be able to get live so quickly. But an unreasonable timeline forces you to deprioritise anything that isn't essential. That was a massive learning.

We also took over a corner of the office and blocked it off with screens because we wanted to create our own accelerated micro culture within Marshmallow. We wanted a high level of focus and dedication towards the goals we were uniquely accountable to. We had goals on the wall, a countdown visible at all times, and we were in the office nearly 5 days a week. When you're constantly reminded of how much time you have left, you prioritise ruthlessly.

Moving fast is important, but in a regulated industry we can't be reckless. How did you balance that?

We took the time to actually understand the regulation ourselves. We read through FCA guidance, read through the contracts, rather than just handing it to a lawyer. That empowers the whole team to make good decisions without it becoming a business-versus-compliance dynamic. We're also lucky to work alongside a Legal and Compliance team who could help us navigate areas of ambiguity.

And honestly, if you start with the customer first and you’re building something with great outcomes for them, you usually find that the regulation will be on your side. We were so certain that we were building something people needed, and that made everything clearer.

As the business started to scale, everyone had to wear multiple hats. What did that look like?

Since launch, the Car Finance business has felt completely different every two months. The growth has been hard to keep up with. At points we've had the whole team jumping into customer service and underwriting, with engineers replying to customer queries. But I think that's a good thing: it means everyone builds a real understanding of customers and their needs, not just their own corner of the business.

The team is now expanding to keep pace with the growth, and every few months it feels like a different landscape with new challenges to solve.

What are your biggest learnings from building a product from scratch in eight months?

A few things stand out for me.

One: it's more about hard work than genius. Each individual thing you need to do isn't that hard. You just need the self-belief and drive to actually do it. Everyone in your team needs to roll up their sleeves, take ownership, and dive in head first. Every day.

Two: if you set yourself a target that feels punchy, and you’ve got the right team around you, you'll usually get there, or pretty close. It also helps that when everyone's all in together, it's genuinely fun, even if it’s hard. Enjoying the work matters more than people think.

Three: if you start from a real customer need, everything else falls into place. You know people will want what you're building, and that gives you energy.

“Maximise impact, fast" is one of our values that really came to life here. What does mean it to you personally?

Do everything today if you can do it today - don’t wait. In every conversation, find a way to increase urgency and drive action. Those small actions every day compound over time.

But it's much easier when you're surrounded by people doing the same thing. Being a motivated person in a business full of people who slow you down is exhausting. At Marshmallow, it's something we expect of everyone, and that makes all the difference.

A lot of people comment on how the pace of delivery here is incredibly fast. What else is unique about Marshmallow's culture?

When I joined, I was genuinely surprised that the values on the wall actually reflected the way we operate - more than anywhere I'd worked before - and that’s still how I feel today.

And the level of ownership is unlike anything I've experienced. For eight months, we had complete freedom to run at a new product without anyone looming over us. Most businesses wouldn't allow that, but it's what let us move as fast as we did.

Any final thoughts before we go?

I want to say a huge thank you to all of the people across Marshmallow who helped to make the Car Finance launch happen. Although there was a core team of us working on it tirelessly every day, there were so many other people who worked on it for days, weeks or even months on top of their day-to-day jobs on the Car Insurance side of the business.

Whether it was Finance, Legal, Compliance, Ops, or Pricing, everyone leaned in to help us launch on time, and it really made me feel proud to be part of Marshmallow.