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Five questions with Quentin Debavelaere Regional GM UK, Benelux, Scandinavia, Middle East at Malt
We interviewed Quentin Debavelaere, Regional General Manager UK, Benelux, Scandinavia and Middle East at Malt, to better understand the company’s strategy and ambitions in the UK. He shares his perspective on the key differences between the freelance markets in the UK and France, Malt’s growing role in shaping the future of work, and how AI is already transforming the freelance economy. From the evolving relationship between traditional employment and freelancing to Malt’s next steps for expansion, this conversation sheds light on the challenges and opportunities facing both businesses and independent professionals today.
1. What was Malt’s strategy for entering the UK market, and what are the key differences between the UK and French freelance markets?
Malt’s vision in the UK is to connect highly skilled, experienced freelancers with companies looking for agility and flexibility. We support organisations who face various skills gaps (long hiring time, parental leave, turnover, access to experts) by staffing independent contractors in a couple of days. We also provide a lot of flexibility to organisations who can’t recruit permanent roles. For example, in my own team I have a fractional B2B marketing manager 2 days per week, a recruiter 3 days per week, and a legal officer 2 days per month. When launching a new country like the UK our four-stage entry strategy involves: first, building a foundational community of 5,000 contractors to establish initial marketplace liquidity; second, leveraging existing global contracts by engaging local subsidiaries (as we do with 80% of the CAC40 in France); third, implementing targeted marketing and sales to attract mid-sized UK companies; and finally, pursuing large UK organisations with over 5,000 employees. This mirrors what’s worked in Spain and Germany for example that I launched in 2017 and 2019.
However, the UK has its own unique challenges. The market is very mature for one. It’s a EUR 100 billion opportunity for Malt vs EUR 45 billion in France. But competition is intense. There are 23,000 recruitment agencies in the UK, and each of them provide both headhunting services (permanent roles) and freelancers. Second, confidence among UK freelancers is markedly lower than in France. According to our latest Freelancing in Europe 2024 report, only 65% of UK freelancers feel confident about their long-term future, compared to 75% in France and 86% in Germany. This is largely due to structural issues like IR35, which has led some companies to ban UK freelancers entirely, while others opt to work with European freelancers to avoid legal complexity. In contrast, France has introduced tax breaks and incentives for freelancers, fuelling a more supportive environment.
Despite this, the UK freelance market is highly experienced: 64% of UK freelancers have over seven years of salaried employment experience, which is higher than any other country surveyed. This positions the UK as a mature market in terms of talent quality and opportunities for organisations to turn to these experienced professionals.
2. How has the perception of freelancing evolved among businesses in recent years, and what role does Malt play in driving this shift?
The market has evolved massively in France and Spain. 10 years ago in France I had to explain to my client what a freelancer was… Now we receive a Request For Proposal from a large company every 2 weeks to list a freelance platform in parallel of their traditional providers (IT consulting companies, digital agencies, recruitment agencies.) I am convinced that Malt was instrumental in evangelising the market.
It’s totally normal, businesses are increasingly viewing freelancers not as temporary stopgaps but as strategic partners who offer critical, on-demand skills. The perception has shifted from resource filling to skills-focused sourcing, especially in areas undergoing high disruption like Tech & Data, Business Consulting and Communications. Freelancers now occupy roles 25% more disrupted than the labour market average, indicating businesses turn to freelancers for precisely the roles that demand the most agility and innovation. This shift has been reinforced by Malt’s positioning and community: the platform aggregates a highly skilled pool of freelancers, 93% of whom have prior full-time experience, with 53% having worked in salaried roles for more than seven years. We are confident in our vision to redefine freelancing as a long-term, values-led career path rather than a fallback option.
We are also noticing that over half of freelancers have been working with the same client over two years. This indicates that clients not just use freelancers for short-term projects, but make them part of their long-term business strategy. It’s encouraging to see more and more freelancers join Malt every day – to date, we have over 25,800 freelancers on our platform in the UK, and more than 500,000 in France. One important thing to mention is that this shift is not only driven by demand. Younger generations on the labor market like Millennials and Gen Z actively seek freedom and flexibility. And freelancing is the ultimate form of freedom ! If you want to access top talents, you need to be open to freelancing.
3. With Malt investing in AI, how do you see it shaping the future of freelancing? What opportunities and challenges does AI present for both freelancers and businesses?
AI is already reshaping the freelance market by accelerating project matching, enhancing client-freelancer collaboration, and creating demand for entirely new skillsets. We have a team of 5 data scientists working on our Algorithm and we build our own language model to improve our matching. Freelancers are also embracing this shift – our report shows they spend an average of 4–6 hours a week on upskilling, with AI-related skills increasingly in focus. In fact, 53% of freelancers have added new skills or certifications to their profile within a year of joining the platform, many in AI-heavy domains like data science, cloud engineering and cybersecurity. We also see the emergence of new skills on the platform like “prompt engineer” or “AI consultants” helping companies transform their internal processes with new AI solutions.
Automation and machines didn’t kill jobs during the industrial revolution, they just repositioned the workforce on different tasks. Powerpoint and excel didn’t kill consulting jobs either, they allowed consultants to do more analysis, and much more slides (not sure it’s a good thing). The risk is higher for gig economy platforms like Fiverr or Upwork with millions of offshore freelancers as they mostly deliver small tasks for SMEs and entrepreneurs who are more likely to shift to AI (ex. Translation, writing SEO articles, a young startup logo, create a landing page or the V1 of your ecommerce website). For businesses, AI offers a more strategic approach to workforce planning, helping identify the precise skills needed, and streamline the onboarding of external talent. At Malt we also use AI to improve all our internal processes (more info here blog.malt.engineering/from-ai-assistant-to-ai-agents-malts-journey-in-building-ai-tools-for-internal-efficiency-9198b41fd7d1)
4. What are Malt’s next steps for expansion, and which industries or regions are a priority?
We have global ambitions so North America is definitely on the radar for Malt. But we just launched the Middle East, the UK is still in its infancy and there is still a lot of work to do in Germany. We won’t cross the Atlantic before being the undisputed leader in Europe. In terms of industries we have historically always been very strong in Energy, Media, Industry and Pharmaceuticals. The UK is a huge platform for life sciences and Private Equity and it’s where we see the strongest growth in 2024 and 2025
5. How do you see the relationship between traditional employment and freelancing evolving? More broadly, what does the future of the freelance economy look like?
We don’t believe that “tomorrow everyone will be a freelancer”. It’s catchy but unrealistic. As a freelancer you are an entrepreneur, you are a sales, an accountant, and a marketing manager, and you don’t know when you will get paid (unless you work through Malt, we pay in 10 days.) It’s simply not made for everyone ! However the line between traditional employment and freelancing is blurring. Companies are moving toward a “Total Talent Vision”, combining permanent roles with freelance specialists to stay agile. Freelancers are now seen as complementary, not competitive to in-house teams. Ultimately, the aim is not to replace full-time staff, but to ensure the right expertise is available at the right time. Freelancing itself is no longer seen as a stopgap. Across Europe, 90% of freelancers are not actively looking for full-time employment, and 67.5% say freelancing is a deliberate career choice, not driven by external necessity. Even in the UK, where confidence is lower, the model continues to appeal to those prioritising work-life balance and meaningful work.
Around 8% of French workers are freelancers, it’s 15% in the UK and 30% in the US. There is definitely more potential, the freelance economy is expected to grow in volume and influence. As UK organisations continue to go through change, freelancers - especially those in highly disrupted skill areas - will be key to driving innovation. The challenge for organisations will be less about finding talent and more about building the systems and culture to meaningfully integrate them.
Malt is a platform that connects businesses with freelancers, finding the perfect match for every project.