2018 finalists lunch – London and The South

This week we gathered in the elegant dining room of our sponsor, the private bank Julius Baer, to meet the regional finalists from London and the South for The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor of the Year Award. Our host was David Durlacher, chief executive of Julius Baer International, and with him were Tracey Reddings, the bank’s head of front office, and half a dozen colleagues. Our guests represented seven of the ten regional finalists. Each was asked to talk informally, for five minutes, about their business’s potential for disruption and growth. Here’s some of what we learned.

Carwow is an online platform that ‘takes the hassle out of new-car buying’ from franchise dealerships. Head of Innovation Vanessa Lenssen told us many dealers and some manufacturers are ‘stuck in the 1950s’, that the trade as a whole ‘doesn’t welcome disruption’ — in consequence, ‘customers are not getting a fair deal’. But one in four car buyers now looks at Carwow, 6.6