Fintech Impact

During the 14th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, interviews Paolo Sironi, Fintech thought leader and author who currently works at IBM Watson Financial Services at the IBM Industry Academy. Paolo shares information that he has gained about our relationship with money, how it is changing, and the ways in which Fintech plays a role in that relationship.●01:06: – Paolo Sironi is Italian, splitting his time between Frankfort Germany and Milan Italy.●01:19 – Through his role at the IBM Watson Financial Services at the IBM Industry Academy, he works with a 100-person team worldwide that engaged in conversations with the Fintech industries.●03:35 – Paolo began his career in banking as the head of quantitative business management for financial institutions for about 15 years, then moved to Germany in 2008 pushing towards Fintech, and in 2012 IBM brought his Fintech and brought him into their fold.●10:00 – The global financial crisis demonstrated to a lot of investors that the regulators have to toughen the rules so that more value is transferred to the investors.●12:56 – Companies have the opportunity to revise their business model from transaction volumes to services with added value for the clients where the relationship is more valuable than the experience.●16:09 – Silicon Valley missed the ball when it has come to Fintech because they approach it with the same psychology that makes customers purchase through Amazon.com, and they think this equally applies to financial and insurance products.●22:22 – Paying is more engaging than posting pictures because it is something we all have to do. ●29:27 – IBM uses the phrase “cognitive” instead of “artificial intelligence” when referring to A.I.●33:31 – What clients buy from financial advisors is not performance or risk, the client pays for the comfort of making a financial decision. That’s why they need a conversation, which builds trust.●38:02 – WeChat, a multi-purpose Chinese social network got a license this year to sell investment funds directly.●39:29 – Disruptive innovation is when an industry is saturated and customers don’t understand the value proposition any longer—and someone comes along offering a cheaper and/or simpler to use solution. While sustaining innovation is offering an improved version of your product.●48:37 – With the goal of retirement, you have to make many decisions before: saving, investing, insuring, lending, and donating.●50:40 – The next global financial crisis may be triggered by retirement because our retirement system is very imbalanced everywhere. Investing will need to start earlier.●52:07 – Paolo Sironi has written several financial technology books: “FinTech Innovation: From Robo-Advisors to Goal Based Investing and Gamification,” “Modern Portfolio Management: From Markowitz to Probabilistic Scenario Optimization,” and “MiFID II: Value-Generation for Investors.”3 Key Points:1.The United States is where technology was born. Europe focuses on regulation. China concentrates on the business model.2.Digital is a “pull” technology because it is demand-driven and investing and insurance is a “push” technology because it is offer driven.3.Disruptive innovation is when an industry is saturated and customers don’t understand the value proposition any longer—and someone comes along offering a cheaper and/or simpler to use solution. Sustaining innovation is offering an improved version of your product.Tweetable Quotes:-“In the U.S., in particular, technology was born, and still this is the case largely speaking. Europe likes regulation which is important. China is the business model.” –Paolo Sironi.-“This industry has to change from a transaction mechanism where you make money by selling products which have an embedded commission or fee, into packaging those products into something which is called advice that the clients are willing to pay for transparently.” –Paolo Sironi.-“The cost can bite your sandwich, while the risk can eat your lunch.” –Paolo Sironi.Resources Mentioned:●Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook●LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn●Paolo Sironi– LinkedIn for Paolo Sironi●Website – Website for Paolo Sironi Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the 13th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira interviews David Katz, the Executive Vice President of Benecaid, a traditional health benefits platform where he runs a separate division called Honeybee their digital platform for their delivery of benefit solutions for advisors, underwriters, lawyers, and end-to-end users. David shares his journey to the creating of Honeybee, how it has progressed, and the industry problems that it is addressing.●     01:31 – Honeybee is designed to allow employers to set up benefits account for their employees, health and allowance accounts, and the employees can use those account to personalize their benefits.●     01:54 – David started his career as a lawyer practicing corporate commercial law for a little over four years.●     05:39 – He really enjoyed the marketing and customer acquisition side.●     06:01 – David focused on building an online community with Porfolios.com or professional commercial artists for advertising projects—with over 80,000 creatives on the platform. ●     10:41 – People using learn about benefits once you get your first job.●     12:52 – When he looked at Honeybee the focus was on the problems that they have to solve: rising cost of benefits, multigenerational problem, lack of perceived value of these plans, and an employer’s culture.●     17:17 – Companies can get to Honeybee a number of ways, but it starts with the advisor, who can have Honeybee on a tablet, do a video conference, or just send a link to a client who can self-serve.●     17:47 – Employers provide some information about size and demographics of their company, match them with products, have them configure their group into “hives,” the employer sets up a health account, pick or not pick a dental plan, decide if you will add more for family, and funding for each hive.●     26:32 – Bundling has made things easier for Honeybee.●     29:03 – Allowance categories adds benefits for items such as kids, fitness and pets.●     33:48 – Their offer network which gets create by the employee works similar to affiliate marketing networks. ●     35:39 – Honeybee has a per employee per month fee for the company from about $12.50-$20 with a portion of that going to the advisor.●     38:34 – Honeybee wasn’t funding through bootstrapping for through VCs.●     41:22 – Obstacles have stemmed around product, coming from the carriers.●     44:31 – David Katz is excited that they can integrate with every form of business productivity software.3 Key Points:1. Honeybee focused on the problems that they have to solve: rising cost of benefits, multigenerational problem, lack of perceived value of these plans, and an employer’s culture.2. Data sharing is a huge component of where Honeybee is going, but in a measured way.3. The steps for Honeybee set-up include: employers provide some information about size and demographics of their company, match them with products, have them configure their group into “hives,” the employer sets up a health account, pick or not pick a dental plan, decide if you will add more for family, and funding for each hive.Tweetable Quotes:-   “Honeybee is designed to allow employers to set up benefits account for their employees, health and allowance accounts, and the employees can use those account to personalize their benefits.” –David Katz.-   “You really have to think hard about distribution, and really understand what sells online, what transacts offline, and where the different value points are.” – David Katz.-   “Nothing gets on our platform if it doesn’t help the employer.” – David Katz.Resources Mentioned:·        Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook·        LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn·        Honeybee – Website for Honeybee Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:During the 3rd episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira interviews Pawel Brzeminski, the founder and CEO of Snap Projections, a new and exciting Canadian software solution to assist financial planners. They discuss the scope of Snap Projections, as well as tools and challenges facing the Canadian market.●     01:31 – Snap Projections is a financial planning software for Canadian financial advisors, investment managers, and financial planners.●     02:12 – Pawel came to Canada over 15 years ago and has a technical background in software engineering,●     03:45 – In late 2014, he started building the product, and launched in May 2015.●     06:34 – There are a lot of complex moving pieces with preparing financial plans for clients that Snap Projections assists with in order to make the progress simpler.●     09:30 – The software was made to be effective, easy to use, easy to communicate to the client, robust, accurate, transparent, customizable, and interactive.●     13:38 – After entering data, users are able to copy a scenario and test it out.●     17:45 – Funding is a challenge company has faced, being that they are independent without any equity partners in it. They also have over 500 feature requests on their list.●     23:59 – Wealth transfer involving “baby boomers” is causing people to ask themselves if they will have enough money to live off of.●     24:40 – Snap Projections has a sustainability feature to calculate how much they can spend to live a long-term sustainable lifestyle.●     28:14 – They try to focus on monitoring what financial advisors need, not what their competitors are doing, because they don’t want to make the same mistakes that they may make.●     29:33 – Snap Projections’ podcast is called “Growing Your Financial Advisor Practice” and Jason Pereira is on episode 6.3 Key Points:1. The software was made to be effective, easy to use, easy to communicate to the client, robust, accurate, transparent, customizable, and interactive.2. Wealth transfer involving “baby boomers” is causing people to ask themselves is if they will have enough to live off of.3. They try to focus on monitoring what financial advisors need, not what their competitors are doing, because they don’t want to make the same mistakes that they may make.Tweetable Quotes:-   “Europeans and people in Canada here, and the U.S. as well, they think about money differently…for example, there is not a lot of credit card use in European.” – Pawel Brzeminski.-   “Education actually, the advisor can help increase the financial literacy of the client…the refer ability goes up.” – Pawel Brzeminski.-   “We both have the “Baby Boomer” population in Canada and the U.S. And that wealth transfer that we’ve been hearing about in this industry forever is finally starting to happen.” – Jason Pereira.Resources Mentioned:● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn           ● Snap Projections – Website for Snap Projections           ● Pawel Brzeminski – LinkedIn for Pawel Brzeminski           ● Podcast for Snap Projections – Snap Projections podcast featuring Jason Pereira Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary: This is the 11th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, and Jason Pereira interviews Clayton Feick, the Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Quandl, a big data company in the financial space that sells data points to vendors. Forbes has names Quandl one of the top 50 Fintech companies to watch. Clayton shares information about what separates Quandl from their competitors, how they are providing value in the fintech space, and what exactly alternative data is. ●     01:41 – Quandl is the leading provider of alternative data in the world. They also                    provide financial and economic data.●     02:04 – Clayton has been involved with Quandl for about two years, and spent a                    decade at Thomson Reuters prior to that.●     02:31 – Quandl is a proudly Canadian company, based in Toronto.●     03:56 – Alternative data is information that has never been used before in capital                    markets or in financial services, and packaging it up or extracting insight                    from it can give an investor an edge.●     08:19 – Quandl launched a product around the tracking of Tesla sales.●     15:18 – They have a smart data science team that try to think like a hedge fund                    while evaluating data, with half Quandl’s team focused on data                    engineering, data science, and development.●     22:55 – There are huge possibilities to use data for government, sociological                     studies, and how humanity actually acts—not how we claim they act.●     26:21 – Quandl has billions and billions of API calls every month, and store all their                    data in the cloud. They have revenue-sharing agreements with vendors.●     31:46 – Two venture capital firms that participated in their two fund-raising rounds:                    August Capital and Nexus Ventures.●     32:31 – They are constantly focusing on finding new forms of data that is insightful                    and unique.●     36:33 – Quandl gets excited when they find new data sets that the world has never                    seen before.●     37:40 – The Economist wrote an article called: “Data is the new Oil.” Data is everywhere, and news to be properly mined and refined to be as useful as oil.●     38:00 – Quandl was the only Canadian firm on Forbes’ Top 50 Fintech companies                    list for 2018. 3 Key Points:1. Alternative data is information that has never been used before in capital markets or in financial services, and packaging it up or extracting insight from it that can give an investor an edge.2. Quandl has over 250,000 individuals that are consuming data from us on a regular basis.3. Quandl was the only Canadian firm on Forbes’ Top 50 Fintech companies list for 2018. Tweetable Quotes:-     “We have over 250,000 individuals that are consuming data from us on a regular       basis.” – Clayton Feick.-     “More and more firms are making the decision to get into alternative data, get into       the technologies behind it and data science.” – Clayton Feick.-     “You see some of the regulations in Europe around MiFID II and sell side firms need       to now charge for their research, it can’t be bundled with trading commissions.” –       Clayton Feick.  Resources Mentioned:● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial● Quandl – Website for Quandl● LinkedIn – Clayton Feick’s LinkedIn page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:In this 10th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira interviews Aly Dhalla, the CEO and Founder of Finaeo, a platform to help independent advisors make their job easier with digital toolkits connected to a back office to work through their front office needs—from prospect to policy in one workflow. Aly shares what Finaeo’s goals are, who their core audience is, and their technological prospective to financial planning.●     02:01 – Aly Dhalla introduces what Finaeo is.●     02:31 – Aly shares information about his professional background as a financial advisor.●     04:20 – Finaeo began delivering quotes via chat bot to provide them on demand.●     06:00 – Three targets for Finaeo include:                    1.) Early advisors who are 0-2 years in the industry looking for infrastructure.                    2.) Growth stage advisors with 3-5 years in the industry making $75,000-$125,000 annually in income.                    3.) Advisors towards the end of their career that are looking to exit in 3-5 years.●     06:59 – Finaeo software process involves an initial needs analysis form for an advisor’s client, who can then log into the software and use the opportunity builder stage. The system sets up auto reminders.●     11:45 – Finaeo currently does logic-driven data analysis, mining it for patterns.●     15:52 – Finaeo is willing to partner with their competition.●     17:29 – Connectivity with carriers is the number one issue that Finaeo is facing●     19:17 – They will remain very focused on insurance distribution.●     23:52 – Bionic advisor manta stands for the culmination of human and machine, with machine taking over computation, administration, and workflow. The human component handles building relationships and giving advice.●     26:33 – Finaeo is free for advisors to work with the CRM software.●     29:38 – Clients tend to find Finaeo through referrals, blogs, eBooks, podcasts, and webinars.●     31:33 – As far as capital they have raised, the first $250,000 came from financial advisors, another $500,000 from the tech community and industry influencers. Their partner that lead their seed round of $2.25 million became Impression Ventures.●     35:54 – Their first product was built by a single engineer in three months●     38:26 – Faneo’a team is currently 14 full-time people (11 in Toronto, 3 in Vancouver) and are looking to grow to 20 by the end of 2018, with most of them in engineering.3 Key Points:1.  Three targets for Finaeo include:                    1.) Early advisors (0-2 years in the industry)                    2.) Growth stage advisors (3-5 years in the industry)                    3.) Elder advisors (looking to exit in 3-5 years.)2.  Bionic advisor manta stands for the culmination of human and machine,     with machine taking over computation, administration, and workflow. The     human component handles building relationships and giving advice.3.  Finaeo’s first capital was $250,000 from angel financial advisors, another $500,000 from the tech community, and their partner that lead their seed round of $2.25 million became Impression Ventures.Tweetable Quotes:-    “Our end-state goal is to be digitally bolted onto every insurance company and provide an open Amazon-style marketplace, where advisors can pick and choose from a suite of products.” – Aly Dhalla.-    “We think that machine learning is going to drive the next generation of advisor, and help them scale.” – Aly Dhalla. -    “Technology is the future of distribution, is the future of compliance, is the future of communication with clients.” – Aly Dhalla. Resources Mentioned:● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial● Finaeo – Website for Finaeo● LinkedIn – Aly Dhalla’s LinkedIn page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:In this 9th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Rona Birenbaum, a Toronto-based financial planner, and the CEO of Viviplan, a Canadian Robo planner that uses technology to more effectively provide financial planning to clients and a better price point. They chat about how Rona came to create Viviplan, what it aims to do for financial planning, and how it is growing.01:09 – Rona sums up Viviplan.●01:27 –Viviplan came out of Rona’s experience as a fee only financial planner for over 20 years.●02:37 – Viviplan was accepted into the Ryerson DMZ-BMO Fintech Accelerator program in the summer of 2017.●04:27 – Clients go through a rigorous but friendly onboarding process to gather the information to develop a comprehensive, tax-sensitive, goal-driven financial plan●07:03 – The onboarding is all developed in-house.●09:13 –Public relations coverage in The Globe and Mail and MoneySense has helped get the word out marketing-wise—along with podcast appearances.●11:33 – To handle that overflow of inquiries and interest Viviplan is hiring another full-time planner.●13:27 – College graduates trained for financial planning are coming to the realization that the only available jobs are sales jobs.●18:14 – Viviplan doesn’t have in-house implementation, and they want to keep product and advice separate.●20:58 –For the comprehensive plan clients get feedback, education, information, and direction on all aspects of their financial life. There are also lighter plans for people with less questions, without a full analysis.●23:14 – Feedback from early users has been enthusiastic.●26:17 – The biggest challenge is money. Rona is currently financing the company personally. Also, she desires the right partner that will fit in smoothly.●29:26 – She is excited about building out a network of trusted professionals nation-wide.3 Key Points:1. Viviplan clients go through a rigorous but friendly onboarding process to gather the information to develop a comprehensive, tax-sensitive, goal-driven financial plan2.College graduates trained for financial planning are realizing that the only available jobs are sales jobs.3.Viviplan doesn’t have in-house implementation, and they want to keep product and advice separate.Tweetable Quotes:-“In order to do planning, you’ve got to sell.” – Rona Birenbaum.-“Technology in my view, will not replace the need for people in financial planning.” – Rona Birenbaum.-“We want to build out a platform of trusted professionals, vetted professionals, that our clients can then go to, and feel confident that they’re going to get the service to they need to implement what we have recommended.” – Rona Birenbaum.Resources Mentioned:●LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn●Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook●Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial●Viviplan – Website for Viviplan●Twitter – Rona Birenbaum’s Twitter page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:During the 8th episode, Jason Pereira, interviews a colleague of his by the name of Zaheer Merali. Zaheer is an entrepreneur, investor, and consultant to several start-ups and has worked with many technology companies. Jason talks with Zaheer about the past and present evolution of financial planning solutions.●   01:08 – Zaheer works primarily with venture funds and start-ups in the Fintech space and healthcare.●   03:15 – He studied in school for seven years in the consulting space: strategy consulting across North American in multiple industries like renewable energy, healthcare, mining, media, insurance, and fast food.●   03:40 – Zaheer worked for seven years at Scotia Bank with some time spent in wealth management.●   05:29 – We have gone from one financial platform to tech stack and service stack solutions.●   11:19 – Several new software stacks are built as a backend with an API to a frontend.●   12:24 – Extreme growth in financial planning software is exploding.●   17:50– Blockchain is here to stay, offering new ways of working with back office systems. ●   22:24 – There is value in honing in on one problem and developing it further.●   23:45 – You can’t transfer money between banks in the United States and Canada on weekends is because the servers aren’t open—they keep bankers’ hours.●   28:50 – The automation of workflows is leading to efficiency gains.●   31:10 – What is our career path in financial planning?●   35:08 – We are seeing compression on how much customers are willing to pay, what kind of fees can be charged, and what services need to be included.3 Key Points:1. Some popular financial planning software in the United States didn’t exist three years ago, some that two years ago had 2-3% market share, and today has close to 10% market share.2. There is a ton of value in picking off one problem to work on and expanding that piece.3. You can’t transfer money between banks in the United States and Canada on weekends is because the servers aren’t open.Tweetable Quotes:-  “Many of the new software stacks you’ll see are basically built as a backend with an API to a frontend.” – Zaheer Merali.-  “We sometimes take the easy route of mistaking consistency of look and feel as an indication of quality.” – Zaheer Merali.-  “Blockchain is here to stay.” – Zaheer MeraliResources Mentioned:● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn● Zaheer Merali – Zaheer Merali’s LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:In this 7th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Yon Perullo, the CEO of RiXtrema, a United States-based fintech that specializes in helping financial advisors build their practice and assist with the fiduciary responsibilities that they face in their practice.Show Notes:●01:01 – RiXtrema started in risk-management in the financial advisement space and evolved into many areas of fiduciary risk management.●01:32 –Yon began his career as a Director of Quantitative Analytics at FactSet and moved to managing hedge funds and mutual funds.●03:29 – Yon came to RiXtrema as an early adopter.●04:11 – RiXtrema created the Portfolio Crash Test for advisors to load their portfolios for their clients to get robust scenario testing.●10:48 – One of the tools that was developed out of the Portfolio Crash Test is called the IRA Fiduciary Optimizer.●13:40 –The 401kFiduciary Optimizer is another tool that RiXtrema developed that can, among other things help advisors prospect, to help for new customers.●18:10 – One of the big selling points behind RiXtrema’s fiduciary tools are that participants have potentially better outcomes at lower costs.●21:49 – The acquisition of Larkspur included their Planishere software that is a searchable, online database of qualified plans,●22:22 – The Executive Tab which is a list of the executives at the firm that you are trying to reach.●25:59 –The Annuity Optimizer allows advisors, or anybody, to compare an existing annuity and the cost of rolling into another annuity.●34:27 – Yon’s role currently is to pull the reigns back a little on development, and focus on integrating what they have already created, and leveraging it into other avenues.3 Key Points:1. RiXtrema provided the Portfolio Crash Test for advisors to load their portfolios for their clients to get strong scenario testing.2. RiXtrema’s acquisition of Larkspur included their Planishere software that is a searchable, online database of qualified plans.3. The Annuity Optimizer makes it possible for advisors to compare an existing annuity and the cost of rolling into another annuity.Tweetable Quotes:-“Clients want simplicity in the way their workflow happens.“ – Yon Perullo-“We just launched something in the two tools that we are calling the Executive Tab, which is a list of the executives at the firm that you are trying to reach.“ – Yon Perullo-“The paradox of choice: everybody wants to have all the options available to them.Then they are just going to default to whatever is easiest.“ – Jason Pereira.Resources Mentioned:●LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn●Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook●Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial●RiXtrema– Website for RiXtrema Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:In this 6th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Shawn Brayman, the CEO of PlanPlus, a prominent Canadian source of financial planning software. Jason and Shawn discuss how PlanPlus has grown, their focus on research, and how to evolve financial planning services ethically for their customers.Show Notes:●     01:23 – PlanPlus is Canadian-based company doing financial planning with a                     multi-currency, multi-jurisdictional, and multi-lingual global platform—                     focused on research and best-practices.●     02:48 – PlanPlus spun out from a larger Hewlett Packard ISV back                    in about 1985.●     05:14 – PlanPlus acquired FinaMetrica from Australia, the home of risk tolerance                    testing.●     05:49 – In 2001, PlanPlus went to the cloud early.●     06:42 – They have planners in 20-30 counties and about 50 that are supported                     with the software.●     11:34 – The merger with PlanPlus and FinaMetrica currently involved 60-70 of                    PlanPlus’ clients using FinaMetrica.●     21:10 – Fintech is a redefinition of how we can apply technology.●     26:33 – Millennials are used to immediacy. If Amazon can ship purchases in the                    same day, why does it take so long to pull together data for financial                    planners?●     30:30 – Amazon is talking about getting into checking accounts.●     32:27 – PlanPlus’ has a research commitment to focus on science and not personal                    biases.●     38:42 – The Journal of Financial Planning and the Financial Services Review by                    the Academy of Financial Services are the key industry journals.●     40:07 – Canada is in the bottom 10% on planet Earth for what they charge in                    embedded fees.●     44:15 – In Australia, only 25% of financial planners pass the competency test. 3 Key Points:1 PlanPlus acquired FinaMetrica from Australia, the home of risk tolerance  testing.2. Millennials are used to immediacy. Data for financial planners needs to catch up to that faster speed.3. The Journal of Financial Planning and the Financial Services Review by the Academy of Financial Services are the top industry journals. Tweetable Quotes:-     “Basically, PlanPlus was actually a spin-out from a larger Hewlett Packard ISV back       in about 1985.“ – Shawn Brayman-     “Customer-wise, we have planners or advisors…running around 20 to 30 different       countries.“ – Shawn Brayman-     “Canada is in the bottom 10% on planet Earth for what we charge in embedded        fees.” – Shawn BraymanResources Mentioned:● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial● LinkedIn – Shawn Brayman’s LinkedIn page● Twitter – Shawn Brayman’s Twitter page● PlanPlus – Shawn Brayman's Twitter page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:In this 5th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Cato Pastoll, the Co-Founder and CEO of Lending Loop – an alternative lending source. Lending Loop mixes peer-to-peer lending with crowdsourcing along with artificial intelligence. Find out the story from Cato Pastoll about how in 15 months Lending Loop has managed to give out over $16 million in loans – and has an average monthly business growth of 20%. Show Notes:●     01:02 – Lending Loop is an online lending marketplace. They connect                    Canadian investors that are looking for more attractive returns on their                    savings with small businesses that are looking for a more affordable source                    of financing. ●     01:34 – Both of Cato’s parents were small business owners, which taught him the                    difficulties in finding financing. These lending platforms have been popular                    in the UK since 2005 and since 2008 in the US, but not in Canada. Lending                    Loop started in 2016.●     04:00 – Marketplaces aren’t easy to start or scale – and it has been hard to do in                    Canada because of the regulatory hurdles.●     05:14 – Lending Loop lets you sign up as a lender or a borrower. They curate                    applications, review them, and make sure they are credit-worthy. Only 10%                    approval rate, over $16 million lent and about $2 million per month with a                    20% monthly growth rate.●     06:24 – Loans are crowdsourced, you can pledge as little as $25 towards a loan.                    You can build a portfolio with $2,500 across 100 different companies if you                    wanted to.●     07:44 – You are able to establish the criteria for the types of businesses you lend                    to. Their auto-lend platform will allocate your money for you. Regular bank                    deposits into Lending Loop are possible.●     08:45 – The rates range from 5.9% to the mid-20%.●     10:46 – QuickBooks is integrated with Lending Loop.●     13:12 – Lending Loop makes money from an origination fee of between 2.5 to 6.5%                   of the loan as a one-time fee, as well as a spread of a 1.5% annual fee                   on every repayment.●     14:20 – Businesses are given a letter grade based on the risk of repaying their                       loans – which also determines their interest rate, with worst percentage                    being only about 10% risk of default.●     16:33 – All of their success and all of their failures are posted directly on their                    website for full transparency. The largest loan to date has been about                    $200,000.●     17:44 – The main focus is to scale the platform.●     19:04 – The market reception and demand has been great. There has been                    skepticism from the more traditional members of the industry.●     20:38 – Low investments have allowed people to try it out to make sure it is real –                    then invest more later.●     22:05 – Businesses provides a summary of what they are looking to use                    the money for, what the business does, why they are safe to lend to, a little                    bit about their financial performance.●     24:26 – The challenges have included: general awareness, and providing financial                    literacy for people.●     26:42 – Lending Loop currently has a team of 20.●     30:47 – The demographics of the borrowers: no industry makes up more than 9%                    of the portfolio and lenders have been coast to coast.●     35:00 – After building it out, seed capital came from family and friend – then a first                    round of funding.3 Key Points:1 Only 10% approval rate, over $16 million lent and about $2 million per month with a  20% monthly growth rate.2. You can set the criteria for the types of businesses you lend to. Their auto-lend platform will allocate your money for you.3. All successes and failures are posted on the Lending Loop website for full transparency.Tweetable Quotes:-     “We actually only approve about 10% of the businesses that are applying for        financing with us .“ – Cato Pastoll  -     “You can set the criteria for the types of businesses you want to lend to .“ – Cato Pastoll  -     “So the business provides a write-up and a summary of what they are looking to use       the money for, what the business does, why they are safe to lend to, a little bit       about their financial performance.“ – Cato Pastoll  Resources Mentioned:● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial● Lending Loop – Jason Pereira’s Facebook● Cato Pastoll – LinkedIn page for Cato Pastoll   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.