Fintech Impact

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.

Jason talks to Deven Hurt about the company Prediction strike of which Deven is the CEO and Co-Founder. Prediction Strike is a sports betting platform that treats athletes like stocks.Episode Highlights:00.45: Deven says, prediction strike is a sports stock market that allows users to buy and sell shares of athletes as if they were stocks. He said that they want people to start feeling like they are investing in players and using their sports knowledge as an investment.08.06: Jason says, based on the market dynamics, you probably always will play the role of the market maker for players with liquidity below a certain level and bench players whom no one knows their first name outside of their city.11.31: Jason affirms, as you guys are creating a market price, there will be some transparency in how you do it and specifically in the earnings. 19.26: Deven says we have started to work on partnering with athletes, and a big thing that we have told all the athletes is we want you to do whatever you want to do. 21.20: Deven explains that they are doing NFL, NBA, UFC right now, which has been exciting, and the next phase is going to be expanding esports. They have baseball and global soccer or global football as the priority.23.05: Academics will be very curious to see how market dynamics play out and the number of papers just being written off to see your behavior in terms of valuation and market clearing, says Jason.25.23: Jason asks, if you had one wish you could change in your company or industry as a whole, what would it be?28.44: Jason says, in Prediction strike, if you are willing to put the money in, you can have whatever draft team you ever want regardless of who else is playing the game, and that’s a key differentiator. 3 Key HighlightsDeven explains how prediction strike works and how it is different from other sports betting options out there.The interesting thing about traditional fantasy is you can’t necessarily get access to players you want. Whereas in prediction strike, you could construct whatever team you want. You just have to be willing to pay the price to get them on your team, says Jason.Athletic lives are short. In most cases, very few convert them into marketable brands that can be carried on after they retire, says Jason.Tweetable Quotes“The fan perception of athletes is so funny in how that matches up with how the players play, and sometimes it doesn’t.” – Deven“The amount of random jets and giants players who get traded is spectacular, and it’s just because they are so dialed into that hometown and hometown effect is real.” - Deven “I learned that it takes almost $200 million to go through the licensing if you want to operate as an online sports bet.” - DevenResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorDeven Hurt – Linkedin | Website Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Steve Boms, executive director of the Financial Data and Technology Association, a.k.a. FDATA. FDATA is a global trade association started in 2013 - 2014 in the UK. Episode Highlights:05.38: Steve says, you don’t need to understand the mechanism of how electricity is traveling from the power plant through the transformer into your house. Similarly, we have to think about open banking. But you need to know what happens if something goes wrong.07.52: Open banking is all about competition, and it is all about a more inclusive, more accessible financial services system that meets you as the consumer where you are rather than it being dictated to you by a large financial institution. 17.45: Steve says you can let the industry figure out the standard and the technology to make it work. And this is how the third-party bank gets approved to play in the sandbox. 18.31: Home automation is nowhere near what it could be because you have to worry about these things, says Jason.19.25: If you talk to the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK, some of the regulators that were part of the implementation of this will be the first to tell you that we didn’t get this all correct, and we knew we weren’t going to get it all correct, says Steve.25.18: The future of any large bank, if they are smart enough, is to adopt the revolution to becoming banking as a service platform as fast as humanly possible to seize that opportunity. But executives aren’t rewarded for that kind of innovative thinking and banking unfortunate traditionally, says Jason.3 Key Points:Open banking is the digitization of financial services. It is a free and competitive marketplace for a consumer to decide which service provider you want to choose and provide you with the product or financial service. That service provider can be a bank, or it can be a nonbank.Steve says that the President of the United States earlier this year put out an executive order on competition, and this was one of the things he called out that even in the US, where you have 10,000 financial institutions and thousands of fintech, there is still not enough competition and we are not meeting the promise of just how innovative, and competitive this marketplace could be. We need to have open banking, and the government will have to mandate it. In Canada, a lot of our group’s conversations with the Department of Finance have been around keeping the Canadian financial services regime competitive against Europe and the UK, as they are catapulting ahead on open banking, and Canada hasn’t.Tweetable Quotes:“In theory, the government only has one concern: what is the best case for our constituents and our economy more broadly, and our view is that data is the best outcome.” – Steve“Never underestimate an institution’s ability to be spiteful if it’s not in their best interest to be cooperative, and this is where legislation matters.” – Jason“When you bring in a set of companies or use cases that are not regulated or supervised to the extent that a large national financial institution’s initial reaction is this is unsafe.” - SteveResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorSteve Boms – Website  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s episode is a recording of a brief intro that Jason gave to the recent Canadian advisor Tech Expo. It was the first financial advisor technology expo of its type in Canada, and that was put on by the Financial planning association Canada, for which Jason is the President.Episode Highlights:00.56: Digital transformation is about taking your practice and digitizing it, and reaping the benefits of digitization, efficiency, scalability, and hands-on experiences for both you and your consumer.01.12: Which of us doesn’t want to do the less heavy lifting, make more money, and provide clients?02.06 There are always opportunities around the outskirts of core technologies, and you need to treat your business like a business and think about how you can enhance it. 02.35: The dealers are too busy worrying about the mass audience in core technologies. So they are not going to get things like your booking scheduling systems. 03.01: If you don’t know what is out there in the marketplace or what others have done, it is tough to figure out what you are going to do for yourself. 4.00 Technology is meant to support your business strategy. Don’t go looking for the solution to your problem if you haven’t figured out your problem correctly. 5.57: Once you have identified what you do, look for repetitive things that take a lot of time and keep you away from facing clients. Because those are the ones that are the most useful to automate basically, and those are the ones that are most likely to have solutions. 07.07 Most important is to invest the time to learn and onboard the technology. Set aside time to understand the technology and then realize it so much and so well that you can turn around and train your staff on it.11.08: The day tomorrow and the next day are all about you. It’s all about technologies that you can choose and deliver.3 Key Points:The first tip is that you need to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset to start the visual transformation, says Jason.There are tools for the problems that are better handled through technology than by human beings. Human beings are good at figuring out complex relationships between things.Advisors digitized can transfer over all their systems with a couple of usernames, and everything is done at a premium.Tweetable Quotes:“There are so many little solutions out there that cost a couple of dollars per month to solve problems that are taking hours per week away from you.”“Some advisors don’t listen to you, steal you using E signature, don’t have a CRM, and don’t care about innovating any other stuff.”Resources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorPodcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.