'Customers are thinking about the situation they need to resolve, not the name of the loan that might help them do it': Fraser MacDougall, Untangled

FR: You joined Ampla Finance as director of marketing last year and have since helped oversee its transition to Untangled. Tell us a little about your background, what attracted you to the business and what your role involves.

I have been lucky enough to work with some fantastic businesses in my career, both in professional marketing agencies and, latterly, in financial services. The leap to client-side is one I probably think I could have made earlier, as I love the challenge of developing customer and commercial propositions that work in such a regulated environment.

I spent a fantastic seven years across brand, marketing, product and, more recently, as marketing director. That gave me a broad view of how brand, customer experience, technology and commercial strategy all have to support one another because customers don’t experience those things separately. They simply experience the business.

The opportunity at Ampla was interesting because there was already a strong specialist proposition, but there was also a recognition that the business needed to evolve. We were not simply changing the name. There were really three strands running together: creating a new brand, investing in the technology and platform behind it, and building the foundations for future growth into complementary areas of specialist lending.

My role is about pulling those strands together, making sure the brand, proposition, customer journey and commercial strategy all move in the same direction.

FR: Untangled has now completed its transition from Ampla Finance. Why did the business need a completely new identity rather than simply refreshing the existing brand?

I think the honest answer is that the business we were trying to build had begun to move beyond the way Ampla was understood.

Ampla had built a strong reputation in legal finance, particularly around probate and family law, and that expertise remains hugely important to us. But when we looked at why customers were coming to us, they were rarely thinking in terms of a lending product. They were dealing with a situation that had become complicated or delayed and wanted to know what options were available to help them move it forward.

The industry naturally organises itself around products because that’s how lenders operate, but customers don’t think that way. Examples include someone going through a divorce who needs help with legal fees, a beneficiary waiting for an inheritance, or an executor dealing with costs before an estate can be settled. They’re thinking about the situation they need to resolve, not the name of the loan that might help them do it.

Untangled reflects that much better. It’s about bringing clarity and momentum to difficult situations, while giving us a brand that can grow with the business.

That doesn’t mean changing the name magically changes everything. If anything, launching the brand is the point where you have to start proving the experience lives up to the promise.

FR: The new website is organised around the situations customers are facing rather than individual lending products. Why was that such an important part of the transition?

Because people shouldn’t need a working knowledge of specialist lending before they can understand whether somebody may be able to help them.

I believe the market has a habit of making complicated situations sound even more complicated. We use language that makes perfect sense internally, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything to someone dealing with a divorce, probate or another difficult situation. They don’t want to work out which financial product they need; they want to understand what help is available to them and how they can move forward.

We wanted to start with the situation instead. Whether that’s probate, a family matter or a property transaction that’s become stuck, we can then explain where funding may help and what the next steps look like.

Making something genuinely simple actually involves a lot of work behind the scenes. The important thing isn’t just having a cleaner website; it’s making sure the thinking behind it carries through into the conversations, the process and the customer experience.

We’ll keep refining that because we won’t get everything right on day one. Listening and responding to what our customers need will help us do better every day.

FR: Technology is a significant part of Untangled’s future plans. What role should it play in specialist finance?

Technology should remove friction, improve consistency and give people better information, but it should never become the purpose of the exercise.

Financial services sometimes talks about technology as though installing a new platform automatically creates a better customer experience. It doesn’t. A poor process delivered more quickly is still a poor process.

For us, technology should make interactions easier, whether that’s through clearer journeys, better visibility or allowing our people to spend more time on the parts of a case that require judgement and empathy.

That’s especially important in legal finance because there are often emotional and practical complexities behind every enquiry. Technology shouldn’t replace those conversations. It should make them better.

As we grow into complementary areas of specialist lending, the platform gives us a flexible foundation rather than simply bolting more products onto the business.

FR: Untangled continues to specialise in legal finance but has ambitions to expand into complementary specialist lending markets. How do you grow the proposition without losing what makes the business distinctive?

I think it comes back to being really clear about the problem we’re trying to solve. Growth on its own isn’t particularly interesting. You can add products and enter new markets, but unless those additions make sense alongside the purpose of the business, you risk becoming harder rather than easier to understand.

The opportunity for Untangled is that the thinking behind the brand extends beyond a single product. Whether it’s probate, a family matter or another time-sensitive situation, customers often have a valuable asset, a clear outcome they’re trying to reach and something preventing them from getting there.

As we grow, we need to keep asking whether a new proposition genuinely fits that purpose, whether we have the expertise to deliver it properly, whether we can explain it simply and whether it offers fair value and delivers the right outcomes for customers. There will always be opportunities, but the more valuable discipline is deciding which ones genuinely belong within the business we’re building.

FR: Looking ahead, what would success look like for Untangled over the next 12 months?

Success is the brand becoming better understood across the intermediary and legal markets, continuing to grow our legal finance proposition and using the technology and platform we’ve built to create a noticeably better experience for customers and professional partners.

We also want to make sensible progress into complementary areas of specialist lending, but without trying to do everything at once.

The bigger measure, though, is whether we live up to the thinking behind the name. If customers, brokers and legal professionals see Untangled as a business that understands the pressure behind a case and gives people a practical way forward, I’d be very happy with that first year.