Fintech Impact

Jason talks to Mohamad Sawwaf, Co-founder and CEO of Manzil. Manzil is a Canadian-based Islamic banking and finance platform. In today’s episode, he is going to talk about Islamic finance and how he is using Fintech as a platform for distributing Islamic finance in schools. Episode Highlights:1.15: Manzil was created to fill the gap of the 1.6 million Muslims here in Canada to get into homeownership and wealth management solutions and start to build their wealth for the first time.5.05: No one is talking about any desire to circumvent the tax code. It is to recognize that the tax code is designed to allow certain things like home purchases to happen in a way that is not going to be punitive from a tax perspective, says Jason. 8.27: Murabaha is a cost-plus situation. Therefore, this is the number one stipulation for entering into these transactions or focusing on asset-backed or asset-based transactions.11.00: There is a massive misconception about recourse on the asset. If you have an asset that hasn’t fully paid off, you have full recourse on that asset. Sell it off, make yourself whole again, and give it back to the client whatever is left. There’s nothing wrong with that, says Sawwaf.17.54: Jason asks, what else is lacking in the current ecosystem that needs to be brought to the table for people who need to borrow or operate in a whole all manner? 19.35: Funding and capital attraction into programs is a genuine big concern that we’re still solving. We do have access to retail-based capital, but at the institutional level, we need to get that good cost in place and launch this at scale, says Sawwaf.22.40: The endowment fund is the largest globally, and one of my friend who went to Harvard was getting a loan from the endowment fund. But the rules around him paying back are super egregious. So you cannot pay this back early even if you want to.3 Key PointsWhen you think about Islamic financial solutions, there is a religious component to how these structures are derived and executed in the marketplace. We can go over the theory, and in theory, everything sounds fine, says Sawwaf.16.01: We are a 100% digital platform. This is the only way to penetrate our community across the country without establishing bricks and mortar, retail branches, or offices that the typical financial institution would do, explains Sawwaf.There are so many advisors down there who specialize in dealing with student debt because every program in a word for forgiveness has all kinds of complexities. Tweetable Quotes“You can’t take money from me because money lending in Islam is not a commodity. You can’t earn money from money, and it’s not allowed.” - Mohamad Sawwaf“Christianity got around the usury laws within the Bible, which was to discount bonds originally.” – Jason“Talk to me about the risk mitigation for the non-primary party in diminishing Musharakah or declining balance type of transaction.” – JasonResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorMohamad Sawwaf: Website  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Steve Sanduski, Co-founder of ROL Advisor. ROL Advisor is an online platform that helps advisors or helps coach advisors through a process to help clients focus on return on life as opposed to returning on their investments.Episode Highlights:0.54: Steve explains that they decided to create a new legal entity, hired some developers, and created digital tools that they call the ROL advisor, which stands for return on life. And the focus is really on helping financial advisors become life advisors essentially.1.50: Jason says that the returns are one thing, but at the end of the day, one thing matters are getting what you want out of life.2.13: What we are doing here at ROL advisor revolves around the discovery process. We think of discovery not as a one-and-done process but as an ongoing process throughout the life of the relationship, says Steve. 7.06: There is a series of 20 statements in the ROL index. These twenty statements are divided into ten categories, such as whether or not a person is getting a return on his/her schooling, housing, or accomplishments.8.20: The ten aspects are broken down into three categories, and then we give a score on a scale of 1 to 100 for each of those three categories, well-being, progress, and freedom, says Steve. 10.19: When advisors are working with a client not as an asset under management or not as dollar signs but working with them one on one as a human being for whom you can add some value and for someone that you care about, and at the end of the day that is what the client’s going to remember, says Steve. 12.07: We have six broad categories of life transitions, and within each of these six categories, we have anywhere from maybe five to ten life transitions related to each of those categories, explains Steve.26.32: Steve wants to have a superpower of taking in all of the information from many different areas and sources so that he can synthesize and reconfigure it and communicate it back out in such a way that many people can understand it and benefit from it. 3 Key PointsOften, financial advisors get a little frustrated when they see the behavior of their client, and they can’t understand why the client is doing this thing or why they are not doing something that they know is good for them, says Steve.Technology can augment the conversation like our tools are doing, but ultimately it is about the advisor and the depth of the connection, empathy, and understanding they have with clients, says Steve.Most financial advisors have been successful over the past few years because the markets have been good, so getting them to try and adopt a new way of doing business has been a little bit difficult because they are happy with what they are doing.Tweetable Quotes“So much of our current behavior is influenced and derived from our formative years’ experiences.” – Steve“It is just human nature that we want to keep doing what we are doing, particularly if we are successful.” - SteveResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorSteve Sanduski – Linkedin | Website  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Laurent Bensemana, President of Ndex Systems. Ndex systems is a portfolio management software providing clean or scrubbed data for the industry. Ndex is a custodial-based company established in 1999. Laurent’s original objective was to build the ideal assistant for the financial industry. They never saw a distinction between money managers for retail brokers, discounters, product manufacturers.Episode Highlights:3.11: To expand our coverage, we have to ingest data from any source because clients don’t have all of their wealth with one firm, says Laurent.5.45: The client wants to pay for advice, but they don’t want to pay for the data entry. So we started offering that to the accounting industry to help them quickly reconcile and normalize the data to feed it into their accounting systems, says Laurent.13.15: If you want to have the best in class for everything, it’s not going to be one product. It’s going to be something that integrates the best in class, says Jason17.25 The value that gets built off a platform is greater than the value of the cost of the platform itself.19.00: Ndex gives a firm commitment and puts it on paper that your data is your data. Laurent explains that they are not here to sell data to any other group. What they do with a user’s data is they feed the application to capitalize on the Ndex tools and provide the data to whomever the user instructs them to.23.22: The financial industry, as the independent, believes in the human contact of the financial sector and how important it is in the comfort it brings to the investor. 26.52: Laurent says that they are not looking to compete with another technology platform. They are open and want to work with their competing technology platforms to alleviate their arduous tasks and focus on things that are much more interesting and unique to their offering. 3 Key PointsNdex has become a data bridge no matter where the data resides or what format it resides in. We can ingest the data, reconcile it, normalize it, and put it out to use either Ndex or peripheral tools that are best in their particular market segment, acclaims Laurent.Easily 50% of what we do, whether development or business orientation, is our colleague’s and clients’ feedback, says Laurent.The financial industry’s competition is not the financial firm next door. The financial industry competition is with Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Amazon.Tweetable Quotes“One of the greatest compliments we get from the custody industry is that they tell us clients who deal with Ndex seldomly call them for data issues because we clean up their data. However, we understand that their task is also complicated and demanding.” – Laurent“Plaid and other data aggregators have figured out how to tie into different bank accounts worldwide, cleanse that data and give someone a standard data format.” – JasonResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLaurent Bensemana – Website  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Kison Patel, Co-founder, and CEO of M&A Science. M&A science produces a product called Deal Room, a platform for monitoring the entire life cycle of an M&A deal. M&A science is a company with multiple product lines covering education and technology for managing the M&A process focused around making M&A more of a collaborative people focus process.Episode Highlights:2.00: Kison says that they originally focused on diligence management. The traditional way was using an Excel tracker to request documentation from the company you are acquiring and then follow up with clarification questions. 6.10: In the early days, you used to have physical data rooms if you look at business. You had the banker boxes and had somebody to guard the access to get to this room. So you would have to fly in to review the documents, scan them, and put them on the server, says Kison.11.00: Jason asks, where did a lot of M&A learning come from? Is that coming from success stories you played, or are HR people coming and playing a role in this? 13.10: Kison explains that they are working directly with corporations because they had more stake, and they had to own the results. So if they can help them produce better results, that was a big win for them. 19.23: Jason asks Kison if you have one wish for something that can change in your company or industry as a whole, what would have been? 19.33: 90 plus percent of the time, when we look at problems, it is just some communication breakdown. Better reminders and more transparency on good frameworks work well on communication, says Kison.22.52: The challenge is getting the right skilled people to keep evolving the company. It becomes such a big emphasis on hiring because it allows you to get the talent in to optimize operations and help optimize the customer experience. 3 Key PointsEach organization is there to serve its customers. For us, the acquisition is what ultimately will mean for the customers, how we serve them and how we will come together to help them better, says Kison.A skill we don’t learn enough in school is sitting back and figuring out the obstacles. If you want to learn how to do that, spend some time teaching, says Jason.HR piece is probably one of the biggest challenges that we are coming across today, and it’s tough because that’s part of the muscles you got to develop, says Kison.Tweetable Quotes“As you go through a deal process, there is a leader in the very front end that is running around hunting the deal, doing the negotiation stuff.” – Kison“Some projects manually manage tracking stuff and can be completely automated. And it is not so much about replacing the rolls or limiting the rolls. It is more about shifting from activity that’s not valuable.” – Kison“Sometimes, part of the problem is we don’t necessarily equate the sufficient degree of time required to communicate properly.” - JasonResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorKison Patel – Linkedin | Website  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Dave Connolly, co-founder, and CEO of Knudge. Knudge is an automated client communication and collaboration tool that ensures that financial planning and advice are done digitally and effectively.Episode Highlights:0.40: Knudge is trying to solve a shared pain point in the industry, helping clients take action on the advice given. Knudge is a platform that allows advisors to have a repeatable process for assigning action items to their clients, says Dave.04.59: Jason suggests that at the end of the day, a financial plan without implementation is equivalent to just expensive toilet paper. It’s pretty much pointless.06.05: Dave says that we are learning that advisors are using knudge, providing some voiceover around the use of knudge with their clients in the meeting, and explaining that they are using this new technology to help ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.08.03: We have integrations with Red Tail and wealth box. We’re working on integrations with other CRMs, and either way, we have a CSV import, so it’s really easy to bring your contacts into knudge, says Dave.14.04: Knudge allows recipients to specify their preferred time of day to receive reminders. In addition to that, they can specify a specific day or time to receive a notification about that item on any discrete action item. 16.50: We set out to build this platform that allows advice and has a repeatable process for managing the client action items and automating all follow-ups. We are getting great feedback from our clients that it’s working, says Dave.18.15: In Knudge, putting all action items into a list and having due dates associated with them, knudge can provide peace of mind for both clients and advisors, says Dave.26.03: Knudge is not a back-office tool. It’s taking your CRM and contacts and making them real users on the other side who receive communications from you via this automated platform.3 Key PointsThe things that have long-term implications on your overall financial well-being require some guidance earlier in life.Knudge is not different than what you would put into an email. It has got a title details section and then parameters around when you want it to post and how you want the reminders to go.Not many companies are bold enough to put their full road map and future road map on their website and let people vote on it, says Jason.Tweetable Quotes“Everyone being busy these days and having a trusted advisor reminding you to take action on your work things that are easy to kick down the road or ignore are welcome.” – Dave“I don’t know where to start as an advisor, so talk to me about getting started. I want to facilitate all the reminders that you’re doing.” – Jason“Once you have established a diversified and properly managed portfolio, the planning side has far more ROI in terms of time spent on someone’s life.” - JasonResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorDave Connolly – Linkedin  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Will Trout from Javelin Strategy and Research. He is the director of Digital Wealth Management. We brought him on the show to talk about some of the bigger trends in the wealth and assessment market and how they are potentially going to transform the industry in the next ten years.Episode Highlights:00.48: Will says that as the name implies, and from a technology standpoint, we focus on strategy for financial services institutions and large fintech providers and look at the intersection of strategy and technology as to how firms can advance their competitive position using tech.09.04: Will says that the friction that inhibited advisor access to private capital investments still largely remains. iCapital and Cais alone will not solve this problem, particularly when it comes to private equity.15.48: To productize direct indexing, you can kind of rule about how it scale and overcomes margins, but the most direct indexing strategies are built around the public equity markets, suggests Will. 16.31: To move towards retirement income focus demographics are pushing, the boomer generation is retiring, yields are low, and that are fueling interest in annuities and marketplace, says Jason.21.16: Industry as a whole needs to figure out ways to pull back and truly look at the complete lifestyle picture of the entire client and consider when it comes time to design whatever portfolio they’re investing in traditional markets, suggests Jason.25.58 Jason asks that the planning industry, with the advent of things like financial therapy and other concepts around financial wellness, is saying we have reached the point where we can be taking care of people’s assets, but now, how do we give them the ultimate version of their lives? 31.16: There is a lot of demand where the firm’s wealth managers fall short on life coaching and addressing the human frailties that define us all, says Will.39.03: More relationship-centric advisors trying to diversify into monetized areas rely on their CRM. But, there is a strong split between CRM at the enterprise level and the sales forces that offer a ton of functionality, says Will3 Key HighlightsThe definition of alternative investment is changing, but the theme is the same: looking for something different and something new. But the question remains, though, how can financial advisors access these new instruments, says Will.The growth of platforms like Simon markets has started offering structured notes and bank issues equities and now offering all sorts of non-securities products for most annuities, says Will.In the Financial therapy association or some specific people in the industry, speak out on the need for personal advice and write about dealing with people in grief, crisis, etc., says Jason.Tweetable Quotes“We can also survey financial advisors on an ongoing basis that serves as the fuel that drives our insights and works in support of our clients.” – Will Trout“We created systems to make it cheaper for the people who can’t afford to pay people who know how to give the advice.” – Jason“The therapist might be more adept at figuring out the real emotional issues, which will only help enhance the advisor’s experience.” – JasonResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Jud Macrill, Co-Founder of Milemarker. Milemarker is a data solution company that helps financial services companies in an IaaS (Integration as a Service) specifically integrate data across many different platforms to get things talking to each other.Episode Highlights:00.36: Milemarker is born out of many years of frustration in the financial services industry. 5.02 Macril says that they find themselves more helping companies achieve a data warehouse experience whether they want to aspire toward a data lake or not. This is because data lakes are fundamentally unstructured data. 6.04: Jud says they see a huge opportunity to take every piece of information in their license data and help a client start to be actionable, experiential, and ultimately automated and efficient. 8.24: Jud says that they provide software which is our API technology, our data cloud, and our ETL processing in which the rules engine says, here is what your data is doing and when and how quickly it refreshes.11.01: Jason asks, with cloud-enabling COBOL, are you giving a solution for a problem that shouldn’t exist first? Because no one in the 1950s thought that this COBOL stuff would be used in the 2020s.13.25: Jason inquires, what kind of case studies do you have to show that you have saved X number of hours or provided X number of abilities for someone to scale larger?14.34: Jud suggested that they should be limiting the liability inside the firm by automating everything possible so that people can be more onward and upward in terms of their day-to-day.24.16: Jason asks what advice would you give to people who maybe don’t qualify the level to work with you or want to get started at taking control of their data and standardizing their digital processes?26.51: Companies in the future will have to be stock 1, stock 2 ISO certified, and understanding what that means today will dramatically improve your long-term value, says Jud.3 Key HighlightsJud is a creative person and has been a marketing officer at multiple firms, and his entire goal is to help financial services companies that are inherently creative to achieve creativity with data and solutions that they need.The future of a financial advisor is made inside a financial services company, and the maximum of time is going to be spent on cloud collaboration than you even realize.If you are unwilling to invest the time to standardize and create a process or recording or something repeatable out of financial service, you are just not solving your solution, suggest Jason.Tweetable Quotes“If you have a node code system that you can integrate APIs into, let’s do it. We will continue making it a more efficient experience for people to use their data.” – Jud“People often have a tough time expressing what they want, and getting into financial tools and understanding them allows them to say, this is what I wanted.” – Jud“You have to have people that have the tenacity to grow and build and prove themselves and are constantly looking for an edge.” - JudResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorJud Macrill – Website  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Sebastian Skwarek, co-founder of PreciseFP. PreciseFP was a guest way back on episode 26 in the summer of 2018 with Co-Founder Don Whalen. Don talked about their digital onboarding platform or digital data gathering platform for financial advisors.Episode Highlights:1.25: Sebastian explains PreciseFP is the virtual data gathering and client onboarding platform, provides the ability to customize a client journey fully, bring data in-house, and then share that data with the tools that advisors use.2.22: There are many features with PreciseFP, but the key feature is that the advisors who come to PreciseFP are ready to use block finders and personalized and customizable fact-finders ready to use as the box. 10.12: Either CRM or financial planning software if we do not integrate with a given financial software, so either way, you will be able to move the data from a client-facing application, which is PreciseFP, into your CRM and then into financial planning software.12.08: Sebastian says that they wanted to make sure what they were implementing, the features they were released, should be used by advisers. It is not something they came up with because they thought these would be helpful. 14.00: Jason says that the big news with you guys is that you got acquired earlier this year by Docupace. Can you speak to that? 20.53: Sebastian says that they are proud of their customer support because this is where we meet our clients. We will always give you a walk-through the minute you sign up. We are going to reach out to you within 48 hours. We are going to schedule a meeting with you to make sure you understand what you are getting into and how easy it is to navigate through PreciseFP. 24.03: Sebastian says that we can implement everything, but we want to make the system easy to use and manageable at the end of the day. We wanted to bring a difference in a benefit to invite.3 Key HighlightsThe main features of PreciseFP is to build a journey from start to finish and automated components that are the fact-finders, PDF markers; it is a CRM or financial planning software.Sebastian says that they want to make and enable the right tech that they can use within your practice. Data gathering is one thing, and then managing that information once it comes to you elegantly and adequately on a bucket.Sebastian says that they are building a fantastic ecosystem that will become a norm within the wealth industry. There is more to come in the next six months.Tweetable Quotes“Lead generation pieces are built interactive client engagements that you can take out of the box as we give them from a template library or build your own.” – Sebastian“You cannot ever compare Google forms or fillable PDFs because the difference is first impression counts with your clients.” – Sebastian“Everybody requests different things, and balancing what’s right and what will not work is a real challenge.” – SebastianResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorSebastian Skwarek – Linkedin Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today is the 2021 year in review show and Jason brought back his colleague and occasional guest host, Guy Anderson, to interview him on the course of events and what happened in the past year. Episode Highlights:00.42: This is our second year in review, and Jason has done over 200 podcasts now in the fintech space. No one in the country understands the Fintech landscape better than you, says Guy04.08 Jason says that data tells other institutions about who it is you are. That data allows the current bank or financial institution to make decisions regarding services and products and other things that you can offer you. 06.10: We need to think about the ability to create technology that truly is client-centric in its focus, and to do that, we need to be able to access the data securely and effectively. 10.52: Swift data is a platform for securely storing your data. With this, if you have open banking, you can store everything. You could technically leave it in the institution connecting institutions or can extract it and keep it yourself, says Jason.20.38: Jason says Holistiplan came on the scene couple of years ago. It takes up pdfs with a tax return, spits out a user-friendly report, let people know what’s going on with the tax return, and is also a helpful tool for demonstrating value and helping clients.24.51: Microsoft working on HoloLens doesn’t even have monitors anymore. This is where they headsets and have monitors rendered in front of them.28.31: The difference between fractional ownership and blockchain is that blockchain being divisible means that they have to take zero-risk by its nature. 30.08: When you think about your choices as an owner of a real estate property or your own home for accessing the capital within that property, it is minimal borrowing, says Jason.31.22: Diversification can own fractional real estate worldwide, and it’s finally coming to markets and finally coming true, says the guy.3 Key HighlightsGuy asks Jason, you had a podcast with a company called Flinks, who are they, and who are some of the other prominent players in the open banking space? People talk about as mass proliferated Bitcoin is. However, there is still friction and anything that reduces friction access for the common person or investment accounts or whatever it is, gets the rewards, says Jason.NFT, Non-fungible tokens are proof of ownership of something on a blockchain. So, in theory, your house could be NFT, says Jason.Tweetable Quotes“In Swift data technically, the network verifies the data amongst itself and its validity. Theoretically, it is possible for something that we call disclosure list disclosure.” – Jason“Holistiplan technology is now far more accessible and far more accurate than standard things, especially the tax forms.” – Jason“The governments worldwide need to empower consumers, protect them, and encourage competition. The rates to our data should be enshrined into law.” – JasonResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorPodcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to James Rockwood, founder, and CEO of Capintel. Capintel is an investment analytics company that tells you how your performance looks and does all kinds of proposal building, automation, and team collaboration tools that reduce the heavy lifting and let us go back to focusing more time on what matters that’s the one on one time with our clients. Episode Highlights:00.42: Capintel is an investment comparison proposal platform for financial advisors that help them organize how they present and pitch investment products to their customers. 06.15: Jason says that industry people focus on demonstrating how smart they are to the client instead of speaking their language.09.00: Most advisors deal with tons of different metrics and data. They have complex reasons for recommending fund A versus fund B or portfolio A versus portfolio B, says James. 11.40: One of the bigger things going on around the world is they move towards even greater transparency and regulatory reform around any number of things, says Jason.16.08: Client focus forms will be good for the industry. It will be excellent once we get through the specificity of understanding, like how much information is enough, says James.21.41: It is interesting how in the 80s, the advisors had all the access, and now you could argue that retail clients have slightly more access because they can now access these random securities like NFTs in crypto, says James.26.00: In 2022, Canadian fintech startups will be able to submit a three to five-minute video to pitch their idea. We will provide them with access or select companies with slightly used MacBook Pros and then introductions to some of our Angel investors, says James.3 Key Highlights:Capintel has a product management component where you can build your models. Then, you will organize it the way you want and make that into capital by entering the codes, the fund tickers, and allocations.Financial goals are not met with a single financial product. Instead, it is a combination of financial products like a mixture of investments, insurance, willingness, date planning all over the place, says James.The amount of change required in regulation for financial advisors from a reporting perspective or a record-keeping perspective is massive and shouldn’t be underestimated. In addition, people had to make huge changes to their day-to-day workflow to be able to do it.Tweetable Quotes:“Being able to strike the right balance between informative and easily digestible is hard. Simplicity itself is a beautiful art but difficult.” – Jason“We are excited to be trying to build up more advisors’ abilities to address that holistic wealth problem because it will be a combination of the advisor’s judgment and knowledge of the client.” – James“People will be looking more and more for broader-based advice instead of Hollistic traditional investment management role.” - JamesResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorJames Rockwood – Linkedin Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.