Fintech Impact

On today’s episode, Jason is going to talk to David Reeve CEO of InvestorCOM. The company is a provider of regulatory compliance software and communications solutions for wealth managers, asset managers, and insurers in the financial services industry.  Episode Highlights:00.34: InvestorCom has been around for over 25 years. For the last decade, we have been working exclusively in the wealth management industry and specifically helping wealth firms deal with new regulations, says David.01.35: David says they managed documents for industries like wealth management and other financial services sectors that are very document heavy. The business really evolved from one of managing physical documents to digital documents and now software. 01.59: The western world of wealth compliance is all about disclosure, typically residing in documents.03.27: There has been a lot of regulatory change in the last couple of years US, Canada, around the world, and Australia for certain, and this has been almost unprecedented to the degree to which we have seen such compliance to wave rollout, Jason says.04.45 David explains what they try and do is work with firms to digitize processes and make some of the cost go away so one can, not just layer on additional people to comply with these new regulatory requirements.05.54: There are a couple things firms are adopting digitization more broadly, and then that is jumping over the fence into the compliance department, says David.08.01: In a practice management standpoint, if you are developing model portfolios and rolling that across your entire firm and then validating those portfolio decisions on a semi-frequent basis, you are ok, says David.09.38: It is a world of increasing complexity, and as per David what the regulators are saying is we need to create some standards around how products and advice are recommended. 10.58 Jason says that when the numbers update, that is all changed next month, and this has been a real challenge. They must have been turning to say, not only how do you help us do this, but what are we supposed to be doing in the first place?12.32: David says as a firm, we were getting some really good feedback on these peer rating concepts, and we are trying to create that standard as a front for the industry.15.32: It is exciting to be able to help clients comply, check the box often, build relationships with their clients by having more informed disclosure in doing all of this in a reasonably economical way, says David.17.12: We will be working on digital platforms that also enable or connect to all kinds of stuff in different sources, says Jason.19.12: According to David, moving some of the diligence up to pre-trade is a pretty big opportunity for the industry. 20.10: Jason asks, “If you were to sum up the overarching trends you see around the world and the bigger challenges in terms of regulation, then, by all means, tell the listeners how you are solving or helping people with this work?22.50: When you get into some of the requirements where you need to have advisors change behavior, that is where regulatory becomes much more challenging, says David.23.45: As a partner to firms, you need to start thinking about elements of making technology as invisible as possible.24.10: The whole area around adoption and encouraging adoption, making technology as light and invisible as possible is vitally important as we move forward, and of course, fortunately, technology is moving in that direction as well. 24.41: Technology is not your strategy; technology needs to enable your strategy, which is what last upon people looking for magic or solar bullet. 3 Key Points:There is a bit of debate in the industry whether compliance should be disclosure-driven or whether it should. Regulators should be looking at other aspects within the sector, but the reality is compliance.The industry matures as data is available as standards are available. It is a tremendous opportunity for the regulators to encourage the industry to adopt some of the standards and leverage technology to comply.Traditional wealth firms are enjoying B2B model, and the user experience is dramatically better and more efficient.Tweetable Quotes:“There is a huge wave of new regulations that add at the retail well space in the last several years, and we really positioned ourselves as providing compliance pain relief with the technology that we provide to our clients.” – David“The industries are starting to recognize the value of technology as being actually a competitive advantage because you don’t need to layer on additional people plus you can meet your compliance requirements without interrupting the workflow of the advisor.” – David“The regulators are a little more focused on the traditional brokerage model where products are being sold, and they are concerned about potential conflicts of interest in that Channel.” – David“If we don’t deliver solutions that provide high value to our clients and they’re going to buy them.” – DavidIt is not about putting the work on the advisor anymore; it is about creating a workflow for an advisor to be able to go through with his little friction.” - JasonResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInDavid Reeve: LinkedIn Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today’s episode, Jason is going to talk to Trevor Greenway Founder and CEO of InterVal. It is a dual-sided platform that is predicated on the democratization of valuation. The company believes that business owners and their key advisors deserve to have access to key metric and the leading indicators that are driving it at all times. Episode Highlights:01.06: Earlier, Trevor was in consultancy for about 11 years. The entire model is predicated on helping business owners earlier in the process, making any less of an emotional readiness type decision and something where they can be more proactive. 01.39: During the consultancy stint, Trevor found out that the commoditization of advice regarding accounting and banks is driven by when can I bring value at a specific point in time? But that specific point in time was usually too late 02.20: It was just through the manual process as a consultancy that Trevor and his team began developing automated tools. 03.35: At some point, you may be thinking about the exit or how much the business is worth or fill forms that say your business’s worth. Everybody is really operating in this giant black box without constant feedback about the market value. They are most probably the largest asset they have is. 05.13: Trevor talks about the awareness of one’s overall financial health. As result, they thought it was always backwards that the value of one’s business, which first SMEs is typically their largest asset is the black box that no one is aware of, so they are making contributions in the form of growing their business trying to invest in certain elements of it, so they are doing that part. 07.15: Trevor explains what ultimate KPI is? He advises one needs to where they stand today, and then it is that measurement over time, and its implications on all of the other advisory relationships, whether that be tax planning, insurance, wealth advisory, or funding financial planning. They are all integrated, and we have to be able to educate the business owner and their advisors around this key metric. 09.02: For those that have not yet converted to the role of cloud accounting, which allows Trevor and his teams to regularly extract that accounting data upon which to provide regular analysis to update valuation provider evaluation at onset and other key metrics and qualitative. 11.09: Trevor explains how they have numerous KPI metrics and analyses to tell the consumer how they are doing it. Things like current ratio, inventory ratio, inventory turnover, then benchmarking that against like industry. 13.02: Trevor built a proprietary algorithm based on history. They took dozens of due diligence processes and deconstructed them into common areas where prospective purchasers will look at the end regardless of how far you are away from leaving. 15.00: Business owners understand the qualitative factors that, while they may not directly impact the valuation, they impact the risk factors associated with that valuation.16.14: Trevor explains how their job is to create a discovery mechanism for those looking to deliver value.17.01: Your financial statements are not entirely indicative of your free and clear cash flow, so you think the easiest example is you have a business owner who is either overpaying or underpaying themselves relative to what it would cost to replace that skill set, says Trevor.20.00: Trevor explains how they want to help business owners; once they understand that, they talk about that end state. 22.02: Explaining ripple effect Trevor says it doesn’t just impact the business owner. It doesn’t just impact their account, and it has an impact on their legal structure. It has an impact on their tax planning. It has an impact on their financial plan, and their insurance products assessed that they that are necessitated to protect them. 25.23: If you want to deep dive and learn more and learn as much as you want, but in a matter of minutes, you can get what you need, and balance between compact complexity and simplicity in this space is will probably remain a challenge.3 Key Points:Trevor narrates about his corporate journey and how he developed automated tools. They built a tool for their own internal purposes; once they built it, a bunch of people wanted to license it.Trevor explains how they are tapping upon other databases of publicly available information on transactions to come to that based on industry. Jason talks about the two types of investors. The strategic buyers who basically just want to be involved, and then there are investment Buyers who just want to own the business and essentially have no operational need to run the business. Then there are ones who actually want to run the business. Tweetable Quotes:“It is our goal and our mission to help business owners and their advisors create awareness.” - Trevor Greenway“Everybody is working in a giant black-box without constantly knowing the market value.” - Jason PereiraEverything else that they do from a financial planning perspective is so critical. If you set a financial plan based on something that was wrong and then never revisited again, it is like a broken clock, except it was never right a second time.” - Jason Pereira“We pull APIs from cloud accounting data/” - Trevor GreenwayOur system concurrently runs three models - capitalized earnings, capitalized cashflows. and book value approaches on every business.” - Trevor Greenway“You are doing things that others aren’t that is impeding your growth.” - Jason PereiraResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInTrevor Greenway: LinkedIn Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today’s episode, Jason is going to talk to Hans Zandhuis, President of Ally Lending (Acquired Health Credit Services) at Ally. Hans is working on the point-of-sale lending arm of Ally Financial and Ally Bank. The company has been around for four to six years. It started as a credit services court, but they were only lending in the medical environment; later, Ally wired us in October of 2019 and continued growing and standing. Episode Highlights:02.05: Hans Zandhuis and two other founders Matt McKenna and Clark Burget, started the business in June of 2015. They self-funded it and grew through the platform, brought on a number of other institutions to kind of be their balance sheet partners, and then grew the business. 02.31: In October of 2019, Hans’s company was in the medical space; basically, they were in the doctors and office inception of the business; that was how do we help consumers pay for health care? 03.21: Hans’ company was acquired in 2019; they started looking at other markets and moved into home improvement in May 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. In early 2021 they piloted in retail markets. 03.34: Hans shares how long it took him to reach the 400 million in total lending.05.02: Hans explains, when it comes to lending from traditional banks, the reality is we are typically talking much larger numbers than $750. We are talking about mortgages on your house. We are talking about personal lines of credit, several thousand, and at that moment in time, when you have that expense that presents itself to you.06.29: Consumers are really starting to move towards, and because of that you look overall at the general line of credit continuing to grow at 15 to 20% clip per year.07.02: We also saw that consumers kept their credit cards for either emergency; if their dryer goes out, they go for a vacation. So, they don’t want to have no credit facility that limits their ability to vacation.09.01: Hans explains how they make the process so seamless and simple that the consumer just adds in sometimes?11.04: Talking about value props, Hans says it is about how do we integrate into consumers so when investing in the technology, we are investing in our APIs we are investing in, how we integrate into multiple platforms across multiple verticals.12.45: Hans further adds that we will look to develop a better understanding of how we are making decisions around that, so we start talking about where we are investing as a technology. He says, “To me it is all around the B2B predominantly around the B2B but obviously the experience for the consumer as well pricing for consumers.”14.37: Talking about technological advancement, Jason says, “Please tell me why I am authenticating with a squiggle of ink? This makes no sense to me but in fairness, I think it was about three years ago. I think the credit card companies changed their terms of service. That fraud was the responsibility of the weakest point in the chain. So, everybody went around and updated their machines to basically support touchless pay and that kind of helped create the infrastructure to support everything, so you know, fear of lawsuit or fear of being stuck with the fraud is a great motivator.”16.45: Jason asks, “Talk to me about the initial feedback you garnered from the vendors you went to specifically start off with the medical industry, and then we will move over to renovations. But were they skeptical? When they first saw it? What was there was the resistance that you encountered, and then when they adopted it, what was the feedback from there?19.29: Hans talks about their approval process specifically; it has to do something with underwriting. He earlier mentioned risk-based pricing.21.00: Jason says, “I have seen all kinds of academically supported reports where basically these risk ratings are being developed to such a level of proficiency that there, compared to the FICO score, they are far superior lending to people who would never otherwise qualify at a given rate.”23.46: Jason inquires, “Talk to me about the expansion from medical. Why were renovations the next logical place to go? Or what else did you consider? Where do you want to go next?23.49: Hans affirms, “When you look at consumers and where they are spending their money. There is 1.3 trillion spent. You basically have number one in your largest. Then you have home improvement, then medical, and then you have kind of travel, so those are the pockets where consumers are spending their dollars.”30.40: Hans says, “While the market has the speed of change in this space is incredible, and it just feels like in the last two years that we were clipping along and probably a good 50-60 mile per hour rate and now we are sitting at 100. Everyone is running, and so that is great; it offers a ton of opportunity, but you just have to pick up the pace.”3 Key Points:Hans Zandhuis talks about the history of the company and what led to its foundation and eventual merging with Ally.Hans explains, “What are packages that they think are important to understand for their consumers?” Do consumers and providers work around creating marketing campaigns to both the consumers and the providers?” Hans talks about the challenges he encountered in developing a point of sale underwriting model and how he basically got people to agree at the right number as fast as possible. Tweetable Quotes:“We generally think there is kind of a word instalment loan only. So, in that instalment loan, you kind of look at what is your minimum that you would do a six month or three-month promotions.”- Hans Zandhuis“I don’t think anyone gets a credit card bill and doesn’t feel a little bit of guilt, whereas.” - Jason Pereira“Money is a motivator; it is one of those things where your start point determines your trajectory.”- Jason Pereira“Signing the documents, it is pretty simple, we think it is an extremely simple process, and so as you go through that we found that was probably one with the was the most important attribute.” - Hans ZandhuisResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInHans Zandhuis: Website | LinkedIn Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today’s episode, Jason is going to talk to Eric Fulwiler - Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer at 11 FS. It is a well-known consultant in the financial services space that specifically helps traditional financial institutions launched digital products. Episode Highlights:1.46: Talking about 11 FS, Eric says, “We are five and a half years old now. We work with traditional financial service institutions to help them essentially navigate digital challenges and opportunities in their industry.” 2.12: Eric explains, “We do a lot on the strategy side and open big banks, insurance companies, payment providers, wealth management businesses, navigate those changes, where the opportunities where the challenge is coming from.” 2.52: Eric explains about the product called PULSE, a library of Fintech user journeys from around the world. 3.50: “We got some really smart people in the company and many smart people in the industry that we know. We try to bring them together and give them a platform to share what they know and hopefully add value to their financial service professionals.” Says Eric.7.40: Jason says in Fintech all came in on an angle that came in with a method of monetization that challenges your model. Because at the end of the day, part of their value proposition had to be on cost. 8.35: 11-FS is really a fintech company, but we work with traditional organizations and financial services, and so it is really interesting to see the different perspectives and approaches that start-up to traditional companies take to everything, explains Eric.8.54 Eric: The start-ups can grow faster in many cases because of the approach they take to marketing and their go-to-market. The more relevant, modern, and current your marketing approach is, the better the result will be able to drive.10.18: Marketing is the function within an organization that should be closest to the customer. It is what connects the products to the customers you’re building it for and trying to reach, and many Fintech do this well.11.50: Good marketing communicates the story of your business in a way that is compelling, relevant, and differentiated, and so that’s what any CMO or any business needs to be focused on. 14.35: Jason affirms, in terms of marketing, companies will not do the extreme things necessarily because they don’t want to alienate the mass market that big cultivated for so long.16.16: Jason points out that some fintech in this world has kind of cornered the mind on market share in certain demographics and functions, and that is unbelievably valuable because now they have become a default. 18.43: Jason asks, “How much do you think the negative hangover of 2008 the global financial crisis kind of impacts the demographic marketing, basically inhibit the willingness of that demographic or eagerness that demographic to work with traditional vendors?”20.05: Eric says that the second-best marketing is people who you know and trust already telling you that you should do something, and you see a lot of these Fintech taking that approach. 23.40: Many banks are just trying to throw everything they do at you in a digital experience in one shot because they think more is better, or that’s their competitive mode, says Jason.24.15 Eric: Technology companies in general, think about how you have the attention and the connection with the customer? When they are building apps, it is not just about delivering, but how you can make the experience one that people enjoy.3 Key Points:11 FS is the layer on top of the technology that delivers the intelligence value-adding experience to the end consumer that will differentiate successful propositions from not successful propositions. What we are trying to build with Foundry is the level on top to really be able to enable those intelligent propositions, which is really what everybody should be going for.Modern marketing within start-ups and Fintech is about adding value, whereas traditional marketing is more about extracting value. It’s about how do you get this customer to do that thing. The business and the brand that delivers more value is going to deliver Better Business results in the long term.Fintech, by the nature of being small, is usually shaving off a piece of the market so they can be more specific in how they communicate and what they say they offer. Fintech is certainly digital-first in the marketing approach that they deliver, and that allows them to be more relevant because they can segment their audiences better.  Tweetable Quotes:“The start-ups can grow faster in many cases because of the approach they take to marketing and their go-to-market.” – Eric“Marketing is the function within an organization that should be closest to the customer.” – Eric“The company that is closest to the customer and has the most trust is the company that will win in the long term.” – Eric“You know having any business is about the people at the end of the day.” - EricResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInEric Fulwiler – LinkedIn Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today’s show, Jason is going to talk to Vieje Piauwasdy, director of equity strategy for Secfi. It is an online platform that allows employees of private companies to monetize their options and cash out before waiting for an exit from the company.   Episode Highlights:00.52: At Secfi, we help employees with their stock options. The company was started just four years ago. We have worked with hundreds of thousands of employees ranging from start-ups from the seed level to pre-IPO companies, says Vieje.2.45: The education part of Vieje’s mission is to help educate employees, help them understand their equity, and make the best decisions. Second, we do provide financing solutions for these employees as well. 4.10: Jason asks, “In your company if you are getting richly rewarded on in shares, and if you are not publicly traded and the timeline for exit is not known, how old you make the most of that and get out?” 5.29: Equity was a very taboo topic. It is something you don’t talk with co-workers, or it is kind of like talking about your salary, says Vieje.6.41: Private company valuations are very subjective, especially in this day and age where valuation numbers are thrown out.7.30: Most people are at their first or possibly second start-up, and they don’t know what their shares are worth. So here at Secifi, we really operate off, and we obviously add a financing solution to all this, but it all starts with education, says Vieje.9.28: Jason inquires, “We have got some sort of reasonable valuation on stock options, and you want to exercise them. So how do you help facilitate the exercising of this?” 11.12 Vieje explains, “The reason we are able to assume the downside in these positions is that we only work with fast growing start-ups with the reasonable means to exit.” 13.02: When it comes to rates and how we set those rates, that quite greatly depends on a company we work with, says Vieje.15.22 Vieje says that their financing is set up for individuals who want to go on their shares.16.41: If you are in a fast-growing start-up, then single-digit rates of interest are irrelevant compared to the vastly double-digit growth rates of the equity, says Jason.18.39: Vieje explains, the idea behind our rates is financing. We structure it so that individuals will have more cash in their pocket if the company has a pretty good exit. 19.24: Jason asks, “Talk to me about consumer reactions so far, and how is the adoption rate? How is the value reacting this? This is something that’s a welcome change because this is not an uncommon problem in Titan Tech world.” 20.08: Vieje says everyone should have access to something. The regulatory nature of stock options makes it a pretty crappy instrument all around. 23.43: Vieje reiterates, “We take a fiduciary approach to everything that we do. Team Equity strategist work with every individual.”24.14: Jason inquires, “If you had one wish do something get changed in your company or the industry as a whole, what would it be?” 24.20: Vieje wishes he could take out every one of these bad reputations of brokers and people just looking to make a buck off you. 25.17: Jason asks, “What has been the biggest challenge in the company to where it is today?”26.17: As per Vieje, understanding an industry that brings something new out to the world. Financing stock options is a completely new industry.27.13: Jason asks, “What excites you the most about what it is you are working on keeps you getting up every morning to keep on fighting the good fight?” 27.20 As per Vieje the best part about this job is the joy and happiness you can provide to an individual that you can only imagine. 3 Key Points: Vieje says, we provide as much information to service individuals as possible, giving data we have, giving the information on our platform, and let us stop and make a decision for valuation or equity. Vieje explains both liquidity and the option exercise are structured the same way. If we gave $1,000,000 in cash and cured by the shares, this situation wouldn’t be toward exercise options and taxes. Vieje highlights that Secfi is working greatly depending on where you are within the stage to company. We have no idea what the markets will look like, but if they believe in the upside of their company, then the company is going to have a good exit.  Tweetable Quotes:“No matter how much you plan around equity, sometimes your company grows a little too fast.”- Vieje“A lot of people, unfortunately, don’t plan properly and start talking to advisors for equity.” – Vieje“Not all employees are valued the same way just like this salary issue.” – Jason“There is a lot of risk you’re taking out of the table for individuals and putting on yourself what is being taken in return.” – Jason “Sometimes financing does not make sense for everyone.” – ViejeResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInVieje Piauwasdy – Website | LinkedIn Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today’s episode, Jason Pereira talks to Peter Lord - CEO of Codat. It is a platform that is building next-generation products and services for SMEs with easy, real-time data connectivity to their financial software. The company is building smart solutions that save time, money and enhance the customer experience in a matter of hours.Episode Highlights:00.30: Peter explains, “We help our clients who are large financial companies connected to the software used by their small business customers. We connect to accounting software things like Xero, Sage, QuickBooks E-commerce software, payments and marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, etc.” 00.50 Jason affirms, “You are a savior for financial institutions because you built the integration pieces yourself. It’s not a make your integration, but essentially, you’re making it easier for people to access all that through one portal versus multiple different API instances.” 01.50: Peter studied at Southampton University as a software engineer and moved into a product role. Through that personal experience, he saw the need to automate processes.02.10: They built their business where small businesses applying for a loan had to submit financial statements and ledgers in PDF agreements. Peter and his company replaced the manual process of Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage accounting.03.41 Jason inquires,” How many different integrations have you built for different technology?” 04.00 Jason: asks, “Talk to me about some of the challenges of the amount of data you have got to basically make accessible on one platform. Give me one example in accounting software.” 04.18: Peter replies, “We cover everything from high-level financials, digital Ledger, that property loss or balance sheet reports examples right down to the transaction level detail is in the journal.” 07.45 Peter says, “There is a new client finding, new spaces for technology every week.”09.33 Jason inquires, “Codat is just an open API at this point, or are you moving data between different systems; is that something that the end consumer is doing? or is that something that you have actually built; a bunch about the shelf integrations form?”10.35: Peter shares his mission is to make life easier for small businesses, and that’s what drives in right movement.11.54: Jason asks, “Overall, this is not a small piece of work that I am curious about; any statistics on how much data you are actually parsing for people at this point?”12.40 Peter explains they are now introducing elements of lending or capital financing.13.30 Jason reiterates, “You know the value of data, right. I’m sure you thought of the number of ways that you can move it around and basically collected for these people. But small businesses are going to find ways to solve their problems with your solution that you never dreamt of so, that makes a lot of sense.” 17.00 Jason asks Peter, “What’s been the biggest challenge in the company to where it is today?” 17.07: Peter shares the biggest challenge faced by them was to hire the right people.18.05: Peter explains that they are making products, so it’s building something, building our products, continuing to see expanding and budget in the hands of more users and more users for us. 3 Key Points:Peter talks about the creation of Codat. “What leads to its founding, and what problem are they trying to address?” Jason asks Peter, “Talk to me about the different verticals that you are basically involved in. You have over 100 clients at this point around the world. What are the different use cases they have used before?”Peter shares, “What’s the feedback they are getting from the companies that choose to partner with Codat. What are they saying in terms of the amount of time and effort, and development costs? Tweetable Quotes:“For our clients, it’s not just the extraction or pulling of that data, but we also take the push of data back into the software packages to help our clients reconcile what’s going on in their products with business customers and other systems of record.” - Peter Lord“There are all sorts of different ways that small businesses use their accounting software running on.” - Peter Lord“People are so important, and the company is our team, and so we make sure that we have been hiring the best people.” - Peter LordResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInPeter Lord: Website | LinkedIn Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today’s episode, Jason Pereira talks to Dr. Stephen Taylor - Assistant Professor of Finance at New Jersey Institute of Technology. He has worked in the financial services industry at Bloomberg, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Morgan Stanley, and Tudor Investment Corporation. In this podcast, they will discuss a couple of emerging trends, specifically in fintech and fintech education.Episode Highlights:00.35: Steven is in the line of teaching for the past four years. He is from a bit of an orthodox ethnic background. He has gained a lot of practical experience in the past while working with Morgan Stanley, Bloomberg etc. 1.09 Jason curiously asks Steven, “What led you to teaching?”1.29: Steven talks about his career journey and shares about his knack for academia from a very early stage in life. 1.57: Jason says, “Today we are going to talk about emerging fintech trends.” He asks Steven to share the three big emerging fintech trends.2.11: Steven shares his insightful views of the big trends in the fintech trends. 2.43: He says peer-to-peer insurance is an area that’s just starting to expand; second on his list is asset management. Third, in his list is digital sharing of training strategies through various platforms.3.10: Steven says his views are more from theoretical design aspects; he does not know much about the regulation side. 3.15: While giving an example, Steven says, “Suppose within your immediate family you implicitly insure yourself. You have an accident, and your father might help you out with $200. This approach is a lot more cost-effective rather than going through the claims process where there are half a dozen people involved and overhead costs.” He shares his concern that “How do you formalize the insurance in a way that it is more than just family and friends’ agreement?”4.06: Jason says, “People are often shocked and amazed by the size of the insurance industry in general. When you think about how many people are employed, by how many people specifically on the distribution side is the actual underwriting, and eventually called reinsurance space.” 4.38: Jason further adds, “Reinsurance space isn’t that big really, but this is a distribution onerous.” He says that “I could see there is a tremendous amount of overhead.” 4.40: Jason asks Steven, “In the theoretical context, how does peer to peer software that is just solely through digital distribution and lack of need for sales agents? and how would this product be discovered and basically applied or opted into by both sides of the transaction?”5.00: Steven says he might like ideal visualization because it won’t manifest itself for decades to come or anything remotely close to it is. He says, “I would like to see it go to more of a setting where you get matched with people, you have similar risk profiles as yourself, and this could be done like pulling out a questionnaire survey.”7.48: Talking about the digital investment side, Jason says, “We have the big waves of the Robo advisors coming in, threatening too deep to destroy the traditional models.” 10.14: Steven says, “I would like to see what institutional hedge fund investor is five years ago to the day where there are certain limitations, but now you’re going to have hundreds of different opportunities to get into eventually, and it’s going to be a better space for everyone.”11.13 Jason inquires, “We are talking about a pile of stock because of XYZ and do the short squeeze. But you’re talking about something far more sophisticated, right? You’re talking about like no is sharing the quantitative algorithms, and what not for trading is that the uppercase?”11.34: Steven affirms, “I think the prototype for this right now is a platform called QuantConnect. they provide data infrastructure they provide back testing infrastructure, and you basically just cut up your algorithm in Python, and they’ll give you performance measures.”12.28: Steven shares the challenges and competition faced by students in the Fintech industry. He says, “By the time you finish school, you should be able to code; knowing excel is just not enough.”15.07: While providing an explanation for what programming is, Steven says, “If you learn to program well, you can automate basically all the tedious aspects of your job and then focus on the ones that really require human and electrical thoughts.”17.18: Steven says the biggest challenge in terms of getting a job for a student is to convince your hiring manager that you’re able to take a deeper dive into ideas, and you’re able to take on projects and ownership around them. 3 Key Points:Jason and Steven are going to talk about emerging fintech trends.  While talking about the challenges in the Fintech industry, Jason inquires, “How is educating people in finance changed in light of the proliferation of fintech? Steven talks in detail about the one thing that he would like to change in the Fintech industry; that is simpler regulation.Tweetable Quotes:“The more transparency you add to any system, the better the overall costs go down.” - Stephen Taylor“Technology and software are eating the world, and they’re slowly starting to eat the world of financial education as well.” - Jason Pereira“I always love people concept of proficiency, and my favorite question in the interview is give me an example of the most complex macro we’ve ever built. I always get a blank stare.” - Jason PereiraResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInStephen Taylor: Website Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s episode is slightly different as Jason is not interviewing a Fintech but an artist - Krista Kim. She made global headlines as being the first artist to sell a virtual home via a non-fungible token (NFT). Krista Kim is a contemporary artist and founder of the Techism movement and a global ambassador for the Superworld and creator of the Mars House, and a talented artist. In today’s podcast, they will discuss “How technology is changing both the distribution and implementation of art?”Episode Highlights:1.10: Krista introduces herself as a digital artist, started creating digital artwork in 2013. While using smartphones, Krista observed how people were completely changing the dynamics of their social interactions because of social media platforms and how social media platforms were inferring cultures.1.18: As an artist, she thought, “We need to ensure that people are free thinkers going forward in the 21st century and beyond, but the big question was how do you do that?2.45: Krista says, “We have to have a daily practice of meditation because we have to strengthen our prefrontal cortex. It’s a muscle that actually keeps us as freethinkers so that we’re not perpetually addicted to our phones.”4.45: Jason refers to the filter bubbles that people have created; they only hear what they want to hear. 06.00 Jason says that they are going to discuss NFTS, digital art, and the metaverse in today’s episode. He says that unlike cryptocurrencies, where the entire idea is to make transactions with them potentially, which is something called fungibility, the ability to spend something in one place versus the other. NFT or non-fungible token is a token that denotes value or ownership of something specific, and in this case one of the biggest use cases has been in the art realm.06.44: Jason inquires, “How did you get into NFT? What was the opportunity you saw that you clearly harvested?”7.10: Krista talks about her journey as a digital artist and her research on the blockchain of art. She became whitelisted as it gave power to the digital artist to sell their art properly as a rare piece of work.7.45: Personally, Krista felt that NFT was giving digital artists the power to sell their art properly as a rare piece of work, one or limited series. But an artist can control its rarity, and that is everything for a work of art.10.11: Jason says, “What we’re seeing is just again another technology and especially Internet technology, basically starting to apply itself through yet another medium or another vertical of an industry which is artwork.”11.06: Krista explains the difference between NFT and a copy of the NFT.11.40 Jason denotes that “People have a hard time wrapping their head around digital currencies.” He gives an example of the games like Diablo or World of Warcraft, where even before there were markets that were built into these things, people were selling armor or weapons on eBay and transacting real currency and then meeting virtually to deliver on the actual product sold. 12.36: Krista affirms Jason’s views and asks him to look at Mars house. She shares why Mars houses became such a global story? It is because it really is a marker, overtime, and it is the harbinger for our augmented reality lifestyle that is coming around the corner. XR lifestyle. The Metaverse NFTs are going into the metaverse, and that is the next generation. 17.00: According to Krista XR experience is essential for brands moving forward in order to really connect with this generation and their communities in an authentic and meaningful way. 17.45 Jason says, “Virtual environments are becoming more and more engaging and more and more desired to be participated in, especially amongst young generations.” 19.58 Krista explains, “We are selling virtual plots of land that are basically mapped geographically onto the real world. Then we also have the actual interface that allows people to upload our digital 3D assets into the room space. So, you could imagine what concerts or Disneyland would be like with 3D digital NFT creating an immersive experience for you and your family like you could literally dance with Mickey Mouse or raise a pet Simba and you could wear the Elsa dress right, and they’re all kinds of incredible projects because the apple, the apple glasses, are coming out in a year.21.08: While talking about big events, Krista says, “Many people were making so many wasteful decisions for these events that can easily be a solvable, beautiful, more amazing experience in AR. 22.03: The fact that you can make friends and have playdates and kids in Egypt and visit the pyramids and learn all about it. That’s the future of education and travel, says Krista.27.15 Krista is glad that she found a collector on Super Rare. She says luckily, “In the community, we have a lot of visionaries and futurists, and art on the Internet is a consortium of collectors, and they are investing in the future.” 30.01: According to Krista, “We should have a healthy ecosystem, and that is facilitated through people who support the work. She adds,” I believe that the major change that we are seeing because of the NFT market is that their percentages are being lowered for 50%, maybe 30 to 20%, something a little bit fairer to the Creator and also the resale, royalties, and NFT markets.” 30.08: For super rare, Krista says, “Where I am based, we get a 10% royalty per resale on the secondary market, and I think that tradition and that new system will be also adopted in the traditional art world where it hasn’t.” 32.27: Krista shares, “How as a digital artist, it was kind of difficult to get mainstream art world support of her work.”3 Key Points:Krista shares the importance of discussing arts and humanities in the boardrooms. She points out the value of discussions and collaborations so that companies not only have engineers and entrepreneurs but also people who understand the human touch. Krista talks about the major power shift that NFT gives to the digital artists. They get an opportunity to market their work directly to the buyers and not have intermediaries get the gallery system and the traditional art system.Jason and Krista talk about the next generation technologies and how the world or facilities can be improved using technology. Tweetable Quotes:“Smartphones are addictive devices - We don’t want to be addicted. We want to be free thinkers and sovereigntist human beings.” - Krista Kim“There is an experiential shift going into XR, and that’s where NFTS are going.” - Krista Kim“We actually promote the democratization of ownership of the world, and we actually want people to monetize from the activity on their plots of land that they own because we are selling virtual.” - Krista Kim“It is important to create responsible things that make the world better and more beautiful.” - Krista Kim“You can’t rely on the traditional arts system to actually facilitate any sort of innovation” - Krista KimResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInKrista Kim: Website Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Host Jason Pereira talks to Kevin Lozer - Co-Founder of Holistiplan; it is a financial planning software that focuses specifically on tax planning. It generates a PDF version of your tax return and extracts all the verifiable information and actual data. Episode Highlights:0.52: Kevin explains about Holistiplan – it is tax planning software for advisors built by advisors. It allows an advisor to upload a PDF tax return and get a client deliverable prepopulated scenario and then screen and identify some planning opportunities all again with just uploading a previous year’s tax returns. 1.12: What Holistiplan really does is automate a tax return review. Then all of the work that succeeds that tax return review that advisors do, typically requires a whole lot of data entry. Historically, the company has taken that data entry out of the picture, and now advisors can just spend the time focusing on conversing with the client about their tax situation.1.19: Kevin says the idea to launch the Holistiplan started to percolate years ago. Roger Pine and Kevin had really put pen to paper and came up with the idea of uploading documents, providing an expert system, providing opportunities, and providing observations that many advisors across the country traditionally make.04.43: Jason curiously inquired about the feedback Holistiplan gets from advisors who implemented this type of software, like where they find the most significant benefit.04.52: Kevin shares when it comes to receiving feedback, it really breaks down into two different types of advisors. “One is advisors or firms that haven’t been doing tax planning. Secondly, we see clients wanting more out of the fees they’re paying advisors than investment advice. They are looking for a more robust, comprehensive relationship from advisors.” 05.51: Kevin explains the simple process of Holistiplan, clients can upload their financial data, and within a minute, the software digests all that pulled data, summarizing it in a client deliverable. Tons of firms are using it just for this feature. Upload or return get a client summary that the clients can understand that advisors can review with the clients. The report also provides planning opportunities that the software identified from that tax return. 06.55: Kevin says, “There is a whole other subset of advisors out there that actually do the quantification of planning opportunities like Roth conversion strategies, donor-advised funds, all kinds of different tax planning opportunities that we look at from a planning perspective. 07.05: Holistiplan also provides a forecasting tool - a scenario analysis prepopulated with the previous year’s data. So instead of spending the first 20 to 30 minutes entering data from the tax return into a calculator or tax software, now one can just copy it over from the prior year. Clients can make some edits to the fields and start doing complex strategies like Roth conversions or qualified charitable distributions, all kinds of tens and hundreds of different things that you can do from a tax planning perspective. 10.31: Jason is really impressed with the features of Holistiplan. He says to Kevin that “You are providing information on tax brackets where they are in terms of relative to phaseouts, right? So, because of that, the tools make it so much easier to understand tax planning.”11.11: Kevin says there are 75 to 100 different planning opportunities in the software, and they keep updating the algorithms.11.45: Holistiplan shares a visual report with 8 or 10 or 12 bullet point items based on that specific tax return. With this tool now clients can read through the 100-page document all by themselves12.15: Jason inquires, “What effort did Kevin and Roger put in to launch Holistiplan?”12.30: Kevin explains how friends and advisors in the financial industry helped them with their valuable feedback and improved the end result of the software.13.04: Kevin says, “Our initial prototype was to upload or return and just get the bullet point observations, but all those like visualization things that we talked about earlier, the emoji phaseout and whether they’re over-under or in those phaseouts, all that stuff was from other advisors as we started to roll this out.”13.41: While explaining their roll-out strategy, Kevin says, “We rolled out a product that wasn’t 100% complete; this was intentional. We wanted to get feedback and crowdsource some of the ideas, and now that we’ve got thousands and thousands of advisors using it, the feedback comes in fast and furious.”15.00: One thing that Holistiplan launched early this year was the tax-prepped letter, which is closing the communication loop between advisor, CPA, and client. Kevin shares “Advisors who are doing tax planning with or without holistic plan come up with some good pretty good observations and opportunities and then execute those and get all that work done before December 31st so that it all counts for this tax year it’s called Roth conversion or qualified charitable distributions.18.05: Jason affirms that when launching Holistiplan, Kevin picked a vertical of the financial planning world that has a lot of depth. 20.38: Talking about the unique work that Kevin and his company are doing, Jason remarks, “Taxation is a one-foot-wide spectrum of the entire financial planning spectrum, but you’re going in mile deep on that.”22.00: Kevin shares his vision to reach out to a lot more consumers. He says that it was part of what got him excited about Holistiplan and the software in general.24.40: Kevin says scaling the company has been the biggest challenge that they have faced so far. A year ago, we were 3 people, and now we are 15 people, and all of this during a pandemic.3 Key Points:Kevin shares interesting insights on the history of Holistiplan. Where did this come about? What was the opportunity to sell? Kevin explains how Holistiplan advisors won’t need a checklist anymore with hundreds of different things to look for in the tax return.Jason inquires, “How much of your road map can you share with me at this point?” Kevin says, “We are staying at the tax planning world for the foreseeable future.”Tweetable Quotes:“Holistiplan has taken data entry out of the picture, and now advisors can really just spend the time focusing on conversing with the client about their tax situation.” - Kevin Lozer“When it comes to tax planning visuals are far more effective than communicating in words.”- Jason Pereira“Not only do people not want to code things twice, but advisors also don’t want to enter the same data two or three or four different times into their various software programs either, so removing the extra data entry part was Holistiplan’s initial work.” - Kevin LozerResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInKevin Lozer – Website | LinkedIn Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Host Jason Pereira talks to Atif Saddiqi - Founder/CEO at Branch. It is a fintech that allows employees to access the money they earned before pay-check. Episode Highlights: 0.30: Atif says Branch is a payment platform that helps businesses accelerate payments to the workers to empower them. 1.27: Jason asks Atif to share about the history of Branch and what brings him to launch it?1.40: Atif has founded the company way back in 2016. This was started from his own experience as an hourly worker. 1.59: While working as an hourly worker, Atif found that a common pain point for workers is always looking for ways to earn more income.2.14: Branch was initially launched as a mobile B2B product. Over time they kept improving the process. 4.22: “A lot of employers we work with still cuts paper cheques; they don’t have a reliable way to deposit money,” says Atif. 4.31: Atif explains how Branch helps employers by providing cost-effective solutions.5.59: People can use Branch as a banking service, affirms Atif06.31: Jason inquiries from an employer’s standpoint how does Branch helps in cash flow?7.54: Atif talks about the Digital Tips, Wallets, Reimbursements, and other user-friendly services that Branch offers. 08.29: As per a recent statistic, Atif has read that there are workers who are still living pay-check to pay-check.08.48: Atif talks about the new business models that are being introduced for the benefit of various classes of workers. 10.19: Atif elaborates on the user feedback that his company has received and how its services are used. 12.32: Currently, Atif and his team are looking for saving solutions that are automated. 13.49: Jason asks about the success rate data of “Branch”.14.20: When discussing revenue strategy, Atif says that the company primarily relies on interchange revenue. 17.00: Atif talks about various target sectors and how employers benefit from Branch’s services. 18.39: Jason talks about the cognitive burden of living pay-check to pay-check. 20.11: Atif talks about the most significant challenge that he has faced so far in Branch. 3 Key Points:Atif talks about his company Branch, the reason behind its launch, and how it is benefitting employees as a modernized employer payments technology.Jason curiously inquiries about the user feedback and success story of “Branch.” When talking about their target sectors, Atif says a large staff is operating in restaurants and hospitals. This helps them to tap into a large employee population.Tweetable Quotes: “Assessing your wages should be free.” - Atif Saddiqi“Employers see Branch is a uniform solution to pay all their contractor.” - Atif Saddiqi“We have to do mental aerobics when opening a bank account.” - Jason Pereira Resources Mentioned:Atif Saddiqi: Website Facebook – Jason Pereira’s FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedInPodcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.