Petros, grew up in Cyprus before moving to London to pursue a business career in financial services. Before embarking on a full-time MBA program at LBS spread over two years, Petros worked for Ernst & Young, the global leader in tax and advisory services.
The married 30-year-old says that the highlight of his MBA has been its London location. “My highlight has been gaining exposure to the London start-up scene and visiting the premises of start-up companies,” he said.
Petros currently works as an Equity Research Analyst at Fidelity Worldwide Investment and his need to send money abroad while studying in London brought him to use Transferwise – the online money exchange that was founded by two former INSEAD MBAs.
MBA graduate Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Käärmann, the current CEO, founded the company out of a need to send money to other parts of Europe while living in London for, among other things, mortgage payments.
Petros decided to “give it a chance” after hearing of it through his interest in start-up companies. Describing his experiences with the service, he said: “It’s friendly to use as opposed to other services. It has EXCELLENT customer service (same day replies to enquiries) and it’s cheap, fast and trustworthy.”
Victor Trokoudes, who completed an MBA at INSEAD in 2012 after graduating from Harvard University, is now a Business Developer at Transferwise. While studying, Victor used Transferwise and was so impressed with the service that he joined the team after graduation. “It’s cheaper, faster, better and easier to use than other services,” he said. “MBAs will save a lot of money and will have way less of a headache.”
Victor describes Transferwise as “MBA heavy” and they currently employ other MBAs at their London offices. Another twenty employees are based in Estonia and Ukraine. “We have a lot of people with professional backgrounds that are working in London using us - which is why post-MBAs are the perfect fit,” he said. “Due to demand”, he continued, Transferwise current offers transfers in GBP, EUR, USD, CAD, AUD, DKK, SEK, PLN, CHF, NOK, HUF and GEL currencies.
Although sending money to and from Cyprus using the service, Petros says that he would like to see Transferwise “move into the travel-money space”, in which companies offer to exchange different currencies for people whom are travelling abroad. He added: “Also, I am looking forward to seeing Transferwise moving into more currencies.”
As part of their interest in giving back to MBAs, Transferwise have offered to give BusinessBecause members the first 7.5k of their transactions free of charge. You can take advantage of this offer by visiting their website at: http://transferwise.com/
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