Fintech Impact

In today's 250th episode we have guest host, Guy Anderson to interview Jason Pereira. Guy asks Jason what he has learned till now and where he is going from this point. Episode Highlights2.08: There are a lot of integrations in the US market, but Jason would actually refer to a lot of those integrations as borderline superficial.3.25: As per Jason there are a couple of ways to look at big trends. We can contrast the US market versus elsewhere because in US market everybody got baseline technology.4.35: If you went too far and just focused on digitizing and optimizing your process without focusing on how you can provide deeper, greater value to a client, you didn't do yourself a service in that regard, says Jason.5.24: In the developing markets, Jason is seeing a lot of unique and interesting ways of trying to get more people access to financial services, which is enormously important.8.40: The longer you depend on a system the more likely you are to depend on it for a longer period of time, says Jason.9.23: One of the single biggest bottlenecks with old systems is the inability to get the data open and out and then put into something elsewhere.11.28: Netflix and all that were big examples of technology uptake during COVID where people were using streaming systems. Jason explains whether he saw an uptake in Fintech adoption during COVID or not. 16.54: Flow charts technology to basically make a decision or to basically confirm that the planning solution you make is solid, that is foundationally found fantastic nudge.21.55: To monetize open banking, they're going to figure out a way to monetize it through the companies that are giving it to you, which is going to basically come back to you through fees, says Jason.23.31: When Jason started four and half years ago, Fintech was new term and we were in a big hype cycle at the time and he was seeing solutions left, right and center, novel things and different ideas but that's slowed down because the industry had hit maturity plateau at this point.28.33: Jason sees a world where money or decisions with money are going to be minute and the challenge is that this is a cognitive burden on humanity. 31.45: Google basically gives you every financial service for free and monetizing out the data and that should be scared to every sector of finance. 3 Key PointsJason talks about the challenges that he has seen in the sector that perhaps are limiting the advance of some of the Fintech companies.  When it comes to how to digitally transform businesses, many institutions don't have internal people that can think at higher level and nor the incentives designed to do that, says Jason.In Canada Jason had released the paper on open banking framework and when he started reading it, he stopped reading it very quickly because timeline set out was completely unrealistic.Tweetable Quotes"There is a lack of surprisingly digital on-boarding systems that exist in any country." – Jason"There is no way that we are going to meet the demand for developers in the future." – Jason"It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks sometimes." - JasonResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Brooker Belcourt, Founder of Covey; an online platform for new inspiring portfolio managers to earn credibility by sharing their best ideas online in order to establish a track record and hopefully establish a career input for the management.Episode Highlights1.20: Covey seeks to solve the problem of finding investment analysts by creating a community to find and reward the best investment analysts so that we can all copy them and generate higher returns.3.07: People use Covey as a way to get into investing or to learn more about it or to play with virtual cash before playing with real cash and they use it to earn rewards.4.19: Covey tracks 50 matrix in real time and you have a shareable portfolio that's like probably the most robust mock portfolio software online right now. 7.09: Brooker explains that they post all trades to an immutable ledger so that the client won't have to hire auditors to come and verify their fidelity account or their e-trade account, which is actually really expensive.10.03: Brooker has observed that the great managers, great analysts tend to stay great and it has been described in academic research as the phenomenon called performance persistence.11.27: There are a ton of barriers to entry to becoming a great investment analyst. If you went to some big investment bank, you could probably become an investment analyst. But otherwise, if you're great, you may not be discovered, says Brooker.13.47: Brooker have received a lot of interest from the hedge funds to buy their analyst data and what we have to do though is structure the right deal that benefits the community of people who contributed that data.15.08: Brooker says that they had to think with their community how do they actually identify who is an amazing investment analyst and they came up with five or six metrics and looked across things like total return of course.18.57: Doing something that is totally new for you and getting VCs on board was probably the highest hurdle for us, says Brooker.3 Key PointsBrooker explains why community database information is valuable to others than to the people who are looking in Covey's ideas.In 2023, we are going to be launching the Covey copy trading style product that allows you to invest in the top analyst list, says BrookerBrooker explains how that entire reward mechanism allocates rewards to the different analysts. Is it just based solely on short term performance over a period of time or are there other metrics taken to consideration?Tweetable Quotes"It always struck me as odd that where this data rich world is investing and yet we have no way of like sorting through the masses to find the best." – Brooker"We are going to build more infrastructure to make it easier for people to follow and get the benefits of following the best people and little branches of investing.' – Brooker"If we built a fund around the top analyst and their ideas, we could allow anyone to invest in that front and then we can compensate some of the undiscovered investment analysts who otherwise wouldn't have been able to manage money." - BrookerResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Ari Brojde, Founder and CEO of Estateably, a leading provider of digital solutions for the North American trust and estates industry. Episode Highlights0.50: Estateably is a Canadian estate administration software that makes sure that when your loved one passes away the owner's burden, that is, the administrative work left behind by an estate is dealt with in a quick, efficient, and accurate way in order to get the thing closed as soon as possible.08.23: In August Estateably was nominated as software the year and the Trust in the space states category and Canadian Lawyer magazine in October and in December of 2021 they gained 140 professional customers. So it was, it was a great year for Estateably in 2021 and they have managed to continue on that success in 2022. 14.18: If a company is using Estateably, they are going to be able to work with you as the executor to get all the necessary inputs that are required throughout the entire estate administration process, they are going to collect information about the deceased, where they lived, where they died, where they married, all they kind of important information that goes into the probate application process. They are going to get information about the beneficiaries. 17.41: Ari says that there are sometimes between 100 and 150 different tasks that are associated with the completion of an estate and what's critical for people is to be able to stay on top. As an executor Estateably may not always be open on your desktop and so it's very important to be able to have the deadlines that are to be met and to get e-mail reminders sent to your g-mail will simplify things. 21.12: Estateably's is Canada's first real estate administration solution based in the cloud. Ari shares how sometimes they would go for demos and companies would sign-up just by hearing that they are a cloud-based solution.3 Key PointsAri talks about what happens when someone passes away and what it's like to have to settle in the state and what needs to be done? Ari explains how Overall there are about 420 hours and statistics show of manual administrative work that needs to be accomplished.By using Estateably, the user will be able to prefill all the forms, all the letters that are required to go out to those service providers to cancel accounts, and it's going to save at least ten times the amount of time that it would take to do everything manually. One of the features of Estateably is Gmail Calendar Integration. Ari talks about why that's important and what it accomplishes? Tweetable Quotes"When we asked the people that trust companies to show us what kind of software they use, their eyes kind of glazed over and they said, what are you talking about?" - Ari "A power of attorney is just a different form of fiduciary relationship and takes much to be able to tweak the original platform to be able to create a new product line." - Ari ResourcesFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorAri – LinkedIn  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Wilbur Swan, CEO of Catchlight. It is a company that uses AI to help advisors basically find and close better leads. Episode Highlights0.50: Catchlight plays a new kind of solution for advisors which focus on what we call lead optimization, which is common in other industries, but new to financial advisors, says Wilbur.4.13: Fidelity Labs started with infidelity in 2005 and had a mix of roles in almost 20-year period of working with the businesses to accelerate ideas called as digital acceleration, as well as incubating an entirely new concept, called as full staff incubation. 5.20: Fidelity Labs for those who haven't seen it is a good combination of subject matter expertise, resources and of course money to help with the ideas for innovation, says Jason. 6.08: Wilbur's company is now as of T3 publicly launched and available for advisors to subscribe to and it's an ongoing relationship with Fidelity Labs.10.08: The advisor gets into our web UI, uploads a spreadsheet that includes all of their leads and system then goes toward taking the core data about leads and we enrich it using the same type of data partners that large companies typically use to understand their marketing, says Wilbur. 14.15: With machine learning models we split models capturing like does the person have the means that they would need financial advice? Do they have complexity in their life and are they encountering life invents that suggest how the timing is good for the advisor to pitch that prospect, explains Wilbur. 16.05: When you aggregate the data across state advisors or across several advisers is super interesting to marketing people who are thinking about personalization, says Wilbur. 19.04: Wilbur is particularly focused right now on a tip of the iceberg and easy solution for advisors to use around how do you gauge better with one-to-one prospects.21.07: Wilbur says that they are growing really quickly. Just a few months ago they posted 20 open roles and still they are looking for many more.23.06: Financial advisors provide really valuable service and Wilbur would love to see them be able to provide it to more people at greater scale via Catchlight.3 Key PointsIf you can unlock the potential of your advisors in the marketing and selling, they are doing, it makes them more efficient in terms of use of their time, says Wilbur. Catchlight's UI output is almost similar to what Google search does. Its page ranks the best matches for you at the top of page so you can focus on the best places to find your effort.Fidelity and Fidelity partnership bring to bear large amounts of data to study to figure out how Salesforce actually works.Tweetable Quotes"We aim to help advisors improve growth through AI powered insights on three things like who should they call, how should they pitch them and what should they pitch them." - Wilbur "We are also continually improving. In our learning model our data science team is constantly evolving in the background to best identify the prospects for a given advisor." - Wilbur "You are soaking up a ton of data from publicly available sources and serving up against that next best prospect." – JasonResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Shirin Oreizy, Founder and CEO of Next Step, an award-winning Behavioral Design Agency with offices in San Francisco, CA & Boston, MA.Episode Highlights1.00: Next step is a behavioral design agency because we sit at this intersection of leverage and being able sentence and how we help our clients design and their marketing and product experiences for their clients and ultimately, we are trying to help them better understand how people really making decisions about the brand or so that they can ultimately drive better engagement or adoption for their products and solutions, says Shirin. 3.01: Shirin explains what behavioral science is. It's the study of how people really make decisions. We put the emphasis on the word really because there is another field of study called economics that we all have heard about that also looks at decision making.5.47: Typically, when we work with startups, we are helping them create lifts anywhere from 30% to 300%, says Shirin. 7.35: Shirin explains that she is helping startups who have found early product market fit and now need help scaling or if they’ve plattued and need to get unstuck.10.39: What we are really trying to do is figure out these different behavioral science  principles, which one of them has legs to it? Which one of them do we think is going to work for you and your situation? explains Shirin19.34: Shirin says that as humans we have evolved to remember stories. We haven't evolved to remember random facts and figures and features. 22.08: Shirin explains that their goal is to determine where can we introduce these Behavioral Science based nudges in the marketing or product for the biggest impact relative to effort and how we  can remove friction from the behavior we want users to take. 23.25: Jason says that the first things he discovered when he got into his business were it's a lot harder to make people move in inch than you would ever think. 29.01: There is a special offer for listeners of this podcast. Shirin has an offer limited to 3 startups per month where they will do a free behavioral science consult w their team. Listeners have to mention that they have heard about Next Steps that through FI podcasts and fill out their online form on https://hellonextstep.com/.3 Key PointsShirin explains why behavioral science is important for startups and how her Behavioral Design Agency is helping them? Shirin explains how her company's starting point, or the testing is all principles and ideas that have already been proven out in research in academia. Shirin and Jason talk about a few cases where Shirin's company helped startups increase their top funnel. Tweetable Quotes"I was always looking to figure out how we can create a more data-driven way to help our clients with their marketing efforts and growth efforts." - Shirin Oreizy"We have had a lot of great success working with technology companies, bringing it to life." - Shirin Oreizy"It's about that person's individual journey that leads to their version of rational decisions." - JasonResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason Pereira talks to Michael Butler, President & CEO Grasshopper Bank. The company began operations in 2019 & is a client-first digital bank serving small businesses, start-ups, & investors supporting them across the innovation economy.Episode Highlights1.14: Grasshopper Bank was a digital bank that was formed about 12 months before the pandemic hit with its primary purpose was to deliver digital financial solutions into the business and innovation economy and that was its formation and the primary purpose 4.19: In March, Grasshopper Bank launched a totally digital treasury management solution for small businesses. 6.52: One of the biggest, hottest growing parts of ventures fintech and to the extent that we are, we consider ourselves more of a fintech with a bank charter, we think there is a real kind of alignment of mindset as it relates to working with these companies, we have a great deal of knowledge of how FinTech’s work because of using them on platforms or evaluating them for a variety of different purposes.7.27: Business becomes another leg of this stool in which if you are in the venture capital business and you are promoting a fintech, trying to get them aligned to a bank that they have a banking as a service relationship for them is an accelerator to the growth of the portfolio company, which then goes back to the success of the venture firm.16.12: Michael could never get enough of is entrepreneurial thinking and creativity. He thinks that the world becomes a better place when we can manage entrepreneurial thinking and creative thinking and better things come from it.16.49: Michael did a a deep dive evaluation of people and make sure people were enrolled, that they wanted to be in, that they were capable of being in, that they understood the strategy and were excited about executing against it. 3 Key PointsMichael explains how they differ and solve the problem of banking for the small Business Innovation economy. Michael Butler has got the company website and they have basically resections, banking, lending and fintech in particular. Michael says that they capture the deposits that are leaving the industry by creating relationships with fintech companies and then the other leg of the stool is we want to be involved in other lending activities that are associated with the business and innovation economy, not just venture but.Tweetable Quotes“Banks have a hard time due to its historical kind of tight regulatory environment and its ability to attract top talent on the technology side and to deliver industry-leading technology solutions.” - Michael Butler“We have embraced the fintech movement and we use a partnership model to create our platforms and create the experiences that we think we need for our customers.” - Michael Butler “So that's where the demand comes from this, this combination of industries shifting into more of technology-oriented products and services, small business and then the people who are running those businesses and their psychographics related to being technophiles versus not and demanding a digital solution.” - Michael ButlerResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason Pereira talks to Akshay Singh, Founder & CEO of Indyfin; the investor experience platform that has redefined the way consumers find, research, review, & interact with financial advisors.Episode Highlights1.08: Indyfin is about simplistically setting independence like yelp meets mash.com, but for wealth management, if you think about Indyfin, the most important thing is helping financial advisors and the potential clients establish trust with each other, no platform online or marketplace online digitally is able to do that, says Akshay. 5.45: Google has figured out that user data or user feedback, what these clients are saying is super important. So, Google is able to identify a lot of these keywords that people are putting in their searches and match that up with the profile of these advisors.12.23: There is other data-driven information along the lines of how much assets did visor manage, how many households and then there are in depth ratings around various skills that divisor has state planning, financial planning, managing investments, taxes, retirement, followed by in depth reviews from all of the published reviews that this advisor has, says Akshay.17.36: Indyfin also offers affiliate partnerships where Akshay and his team are getting some consumers from and again, they go through the matchmaking experience, and they connect the consumer to the advisors. 19.33: Advisors are kind of finding this data to be super helpful. The next stage that we find that kind of once advisors go live with their profile, they obviously have a public profile and that is very exciting, but then when they start to find it. They starting to rank for certain words and that's super exciting. 26.02: Akshay's vision is in the future; financial advisors would actually be doing zero marketing and that's something that we really believe in and we are just helping the industry transition to that place.3 Key PointsIndyfin is giving financial advisors a platform that they can count on to help them collect feedback from their existing clients in a highly structured manner. Through Indyfin how the advisor's benefit is that any prospective client who is going to show up on devices calendar for a meeting to make sure that they are qualified and in the process of their sharing information withIndyfin, which may be helpful for the advisor to show up for the meeting, Indyfin will select that information. It's purely administrative and Indyfin basically gets all that information, explains Akshay.The most powerful form of business are referrals and those are getting harder and harder, and they are also not very structured. Second most powerful thing is validation and referrals, validation. Tweetable Quotes"I have been solving the same problem from the beginning, which is how do we help consumers better manage their finances." - Akshay "I know we will get to the testimonials; we will get to the growth. But getting the fundamentals right is so important and hear what's driving everything is client feedback." - Akshay "My job is advisor would be so much even more fun that's you've got to identify who those net promoters are and be able to ask them for the referral." - AkshayResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason Pereira talks to David Whitcomb, VP of Product at MX. It is an aggregator of aggregators in that it provides tech companies & traditional finance companies with a way of accessing a common data format across multiple different data aggregation companies & kind of pulls into data from all includes above and spits it up. Episode Highlights1.00: MX not only connects with other aggregators, but the company also connects directly with some of the biggest things in North America for direct API access. 6.08: Once the data is refined and is in enhanced state, MX creates personal financial management tools out of it. 9.00: To the average consumer, they are starting to see if they haven't seen the new grading technology in MX which allows them to put the transactions from the bank account or their investment accounts into an app or into a dashboard or into some other places, says Jason. 10.15: MX has created a ton of intelligence around grabbing different data models, specifically around the council transactions. Normalizing the transactions, adding content to it around categorization classification of what the transaction is so that when a user of MX product or service gets the output of that account transaction we have, we've normalized all of it and have an often typically enhanced it so that it's more readable and more usable for whatever is being built, says David. 14.04: Everyone is getting into the payments world, which means a person is connecting their accounts at lots of different places and in many cases those connections then create a council of their own, says David. 25.02: With the shifts in the way payments are being made or with the shifts in the way consumers are engaging payments, we sell a lot of data that can enable our stuff. We are accessing account numbers, routing numbers to enable some of those use cases. We see that by ensuring that the data we have is leveraged in the right ways. 3 Key PointsDavid and Jason discuss about data normalization. When data is received directly from the bank, VN, API, or via another aggregator, the data is in often different formats. It often has different values added into it or different parameters to that transaction; David explains how MX helps to simplify the entire process. David shares how they use multiple layers of analysis. They have been using human intelligence in conjunction with computer analysis for the past decade.David explains what proprietary and competitive advantage is and what is the consumers data. Tweetable Quotes"So historically, personal financial management has been what I would say is called financial literacy." - David"I think a lot of people are finding themselves there, and with tools like MX offers, it allows you to centralize that stuff more quickly so that you can effectively manage." - DavidResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorDavid Whitcomb – LinkedIn | Website  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason Pereira talks to Shep Hickey, founder, and CEO of Bryzos. It is an online steel marketplace. Any kind of marketplaces are financial solution, and Shep incorporated Fintech solutions into the platform itself.Episode Highlights1.03: Bryzos is an online steel marketplace that has Fintech features that allow a buyer or seller to go all the way with procure to pay.2.17: Bryzos absolute origin is really about creating a solution for the daily grind of sourcing, bringing and getting sales down the road.4.28: The mill distributor who are making some materials are primarily on the sell side and on the buy side you also have distribution like there have an offline customer that needs something.5.00: The mechanics for Shep remain unchanged even if someone needs a couple foot of steel or few miles of pipe.6.40: Shep is reducing the opportunity for human error by reducing the amount of time. They have a structured way for buyers to enter what they need versus what Bryzos makes for them.8.11: For every single seller you have as a buyer, you have one to one relationship, which is an enormous amount of administrative, says Shep. 9.02: When Shep and his team were sitting down to solve and create a real end to end solution, it was always known that they had to create a buy now, pay later solution.10.51: Buy now pay later, Shep offered primarily through the vendors. He discusses whether they offer another facility for those vendors who are willing to do that?11.30: Someone who is really understanding working capital, they are outsourcing their credit risk at no cost, says Shep.13.51: Energy related steel is one of the most complicated things to trade online because it is so heavily specific and there's also sort of subjective piece, says Shep. 17.50: There is no way that industrial products are not bought and sold online. Buyer has no clue who seller is and the reason that was able to occur is because we removed all the financial risk and that's exciting, says Shep. 3 Key PointsTraditional process is that buyers come in, they create a bill material, they get sent out to the sellers, the sellers will quote it, and deal be created. It's really the buyers creating the demand, says Shep.Shep talks about how they facilitate the financial transaction deal side.Shep talks about where he sees the steel industry, whether it is going beyond just the steel side at this point or not.Tweetable Quotes"I don't believe in the end that Bryzos is just a steel platform. This is an industrial goods trading platform." – Shep"We have completely allowed the seller to outsource any credit risk when it comes to selling their products." - Shep"We have a whole module that manages and neutralizes the risk of the movement of goods and money. It allows reconciling inline versus what happens traditionally when you ship something." - ShepResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorShep Hickey – Website  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason Pereira talks to Tyrone Ross, CEO and Co-Founder of Turnqey Labs. The company is a new fintech that's looking to solve the problem of crypto reporting within traditional finance.Episode Highlights1.00: Turnqey is an API suite that is geared to be an integrator aggregator in the marketplace for all things crypto asset data. The end goal is to harness the power of data and analytics to develop a more durable, equitable, transparent financial system.4.52: Tyrone was at Eaglebrook Advisors. Tyrone helped Chris King start Eaglebrook, which is an estimating platform for crypto for advisors. 5.59: Turn division for Turnqey had always been in Tyrone's head. He knew that building UI immediately puts you in competition with everyone else that has UI, and advisors love dashboards clients.07.24: At Turnqey, Tyrone is building infrastructure layers.12.01: If you look at the data, it shows between the 2019 and 2020 tax year, crypto transactions tripled, 362% increase, says Tyrone. 13.51: Tyrone talks about the feedback mechanism that he is developing between the RA and Turnqey.14.25: The investors that Tyrone will be working with the 25- to 45-year-old segment, ideally in that 100,000 to like 5 million segments.16.32: One of the things that Tyrone wanted to do this time around with his start up that he didn't do last time was to have customers before the launch.17.10: The goal for Turnqey is that they are selling B2B and not going directly to the platforms.19.15: Tyrone is a purist. He believes in crypto assets and crypto networks. For those who grew up like him, it had to operate outside the traditional financial system. 19.53: An ETF is only going to benefit the people that are very upset that we don't have, one who is privileged, wealthy elite people who don't need it, says Tyrone. 21.33: Tyrone has established a new company. He has established the reporting structure and made sure that the APIs work and provide feedback. Next part for him would be to develop some type of risk management space. 23.54: Tyrone says that everyone knew how easy it was to work with people who don't fit the actual profile of a wealth management client, so now it would like to expand on that a little bit. 3 Key PointsTyrone talks about the breakdown of the integrator aggregator marketplace.Turnqey Labs not only monitor location change, but they also monitor cost base. Tyrone talks about crypto ETS, he explains his thesis and shares his viewpoints. Tweetable Quotes"You are basically talking like the number of transactions. Client's transactions are one thing, transactions leaving the place their custody to different places, including private wallets. Now we are talking about something incredibly complex." - Jason "The next Gen investor, the next Gen RA, nobody is building it and I know it because, I was traveling around the country and, meeting awesome people and going to some of the largest RA platforms." - Tyrone"If someone can't pay us, we are going to give them a virtual family office experience like all of our clients are going to get." - TyroneResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.