Fintech Impact

Jason talks to John Lenker, founder and Chief Vision Officer of the marketing firm and Kevin deLaplante Partner & Chief Knowledge Officer. Lenker is a growth consulting firm that specializes in assisting early-stage startups in achieving product-market fit and establishing a recognizable brand before their launch. They emphasize on the challenges startups encounter, including a lack of market analysis and a tendency to prioritize technical development over other critical aspects of their business. Linker aims to help startups navigate these challenges and achieve their growth goals.Episode Highlights 05:19: Kevin mentions that some startups exhibit what he refers to as "pathological behavior," which involves making decisions that are not in their long-term rational self-interest, such as burning through limited funds or making poor decisions.06:02: Some startups, especially those with an engineering perspective, focus solely on building their technology because they believe it will revolutionize the market.07:42: John talks about the importance of early-stage analysis and planning in the fintech industry to avoid common pitfalls and challenges faced by startups.08:41: John explains that they sophisticated tools and financial models, including customer lifetime value simulation engines, to guide early-stage decision-making for fintech startups.17:02: John shares a real-life example of an individual who worked for a major platform company for several years.3 Key PointsJohn highlights one of the primary reasons startups fail in their endeavors, which is a lack of proper market opportunity analysis. He emphasizes the importance of examining the need in the marketplace, identifying the target audience and buyers, assessing the competitive landscape, and understanding the current solutions available and their market adoption status.John talks about the importance of thorough market research, timing, and branding in the success of entrepreneurial ventures, including fintech startups.The discussion emphasizes the process of crafting a brand that becomes the undeniable solution in the market.Tweetable Quotes“Many entrepreneurs have not fully thought through their business situation, making it essential to guide them in clarifying their goals and increasing the likelihood of achieving them.” – John“There is often a disconnect between how the client perceives the problem and the reality, which becomes apparent through discussions and discovery processes.” – John“Branding involves making people believe in you and your initiative, which creates a tailwind for your work.” – JohnResources Mentioned: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.

Jason interviews Julie Littlechild, the founder and CEO of Absolute Engagement. Julie is a renowned speaker and expert in client engagement within the financial advisory sector. She has recently launched the Absolute Engagement Engine, which brings her ideas on client engagement to life.Episode Highlights 00:58: Absolute Engine is designed to help financial advisors connect more deeply with their prospects and clients efficiently and consistently.06:31: Many advisors have recognized the importance of aspects such as Confidence, Concerns, Outlook, and Preferences; structuring the conversation in the format of a questionnaire can be a challenge, says Julie. 10:04: Julie explains that opportunities to uncover engagement and growth emerge for several reasons. These opportunities can arise based on how a client presents themselves at a given point in time, such as their confidence level during a review or introductory meeting.15:02: Jason emphasizes the importance of delving deeper to understand clients better, considering that many clients haven't thought deeply about their goals.16:44: Julie explains that their focus is on creating a leading indicator of future issues rather than identifying clients who are already on their way out.19:13: Jason highlights the common issue in the industry where discussions often devolve into fee arguments because clients may not fully understand the value of the services provided.24:40: Jason and Julie discuss the motivation behind developing their platform and the goals they hoped to achieve.29:26: Jason and Julie emphasized the value of asking meaningful questions and co-creating value with clients.3 Key PointsJason underscores the importance of demonstrating the softer, more human aspects of care and concern in financial advisory interactions.Julie and Jason discuss the exciting possibilities with the data generated by the Absolute Engagement Engine.Julie and Jason discuss various aspects of the financial advisory industry, particularly focusing on a platform designed to help financial advisors understand and improve client sentiment.Tweetable Quotes“Capturing the fluid and evolving sentiments of clients, which can vary between couples and change over time, posed a significant challenge.” – Julie“Absolute Engagement Engine provides a structured way to address important topics such as Confidence, Concerns, Outlook and Preferences.” – Julie“AI automates more routine tasks; the focus should shift towards the psychological aspects of financial planning.” – Jason“Using technology is just one part of the equation, and advisors need to develop the soft skills and knowledge to have deeper, more effective conversations with clients when using the platform's insights.” – Julie“The platform not only provides efficiency for advisors but also delivers real value by helping clients navigate their financial journeys more effectively.” – JulieResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Steven Wasick, Founder of infoSentience, an automation company specializing in using artificial intelligence to enhance data analytics and communication in financial markets. infoSentience’s software can analyze any data set, identify key insights, and communicate them effectively, similar to a human analyst or journalist. This episode explores the innovative technology and applications that infoSentience brings to the world of finance.Episode Highlights 01:16: infoSentience’s key product extends beyond finance and into the sports industry. They provide fantasy sports reports for CBS Sports and cover sports leagues like the NBA and NFL.06:54: infoSentience’s approach leverages the power of conceptual understanding to efficiently process and communicate complex information, making it valuable not only in the sports industry but also in various other domains.08:02: Unlike template-based approaches where you simply fill predefined slots, infoSentience’s system accounts for the complexity of relationships between concepts. It doesn't rely on predefined structures, making it more adaptable and capable of handling intricate narratives.17:02: Steve discusses the different metrics and improvements that various clients have seen through their collaboration with infoSentience.25:51: Steve shares his motivation to continue pushing forward after overcoming technology challenges and reaching a point where they can showcase their work effectively.3 Key PointsinfoSentience’s system employs a rules-based approach to mimic human conceptual understanding, allowing it to process and communicate information effectively while avoiding the pitfalls of irrelevant or repetitive content.infoSentience recognizes the need for vertical-specific customization, they also aim to establish common models and approaches to address fundamental analytical inquiries that apply broadly across different clients and industries.Steve highlights the challenges associated with data analysis, data synthesis, and integrating data from different sources, suggesting that these are complex areas where their technology can shine.Tweetable Quotes“When reading poorly written or robotic content, readers often encounter irrelevant or confusing information that forces their brains to pause and question its significance. This disrupts the flow of understanding and can be frustrating.” - Steven Wasick“infoSentience’s future could involve integrating their technology into larger organizations to enhance data-related capabilities.” - Steven Wasick“Having a clearer understanding of data and its nuances from the beginning would be beneficial for infoSentience and similar companies that rely on data for their services.” - Steven WasickResources Mentioned: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.

Jason talks to Stephen Chen, founder, and CEO of New Retirement. It is an online platform that facilitates financial institutions in offering DIY financial planning experiences to their existing or potential customers. The platform is designed to enhance and complement their existing financial services. Stephen describes New Retirement as essentially creating a "TurboTax for financial planning." Initially, the company began as a consumer-facing platform before transitioning into its current role of supporting financial institutions in providing comprehensive financial planning solutions.Episode Highlights 03:25: Jason acknowledges that Stephen Chen's approach with New Retirement is a much better approach compared to some other concepts he has encountered.04:07: Stephen talks about the evolution of New Retirement's business model. Initially, the company was bootstrapped and started as a subscription service for consumers. However, it became evident that this model wasn't inherently scalable for venture capital investment.05:36: This strategic shift from a consumer-centric model to enterprise partnerships has allowed New Retirement to scale and generate more revenue.11:08: Stephen emphasizes the importance of providing tools and education to help people gain a sense of financial control and visibility into their future financial security.18:08: Stephen highlights the importance of design in the software's success, making it user-friendly and accessible to a broad audience.3 Key PointsStephen shares individuals today are more educated and informed about their financial situations due to the internet. This increased knowledge enables them to have richer and more efficient conversations with financial advisors or coaches.Just as travel agents still exist but coexist with online travel booking tools like Kayak, Stephen believes that financial advisors will continue to play a vital role. However, he emphasizes the need for more advisors and lower-cost options to make financial planning accessible to a broader audience.Stephen discusses the importance of design in New Retirement's software, emphasizing that it needs to be intuitive and user-friendly, like the success of the iPhone with its consumer-grade design. He mentions that they are continually improving their software and focusing on data and AI to enhance the user experience.Tweetable Quotes“New Retirement collaborates with various players in the financial ecosystem to streamline and improve the efficiency of services offered to their target demographic.” – Stephen“Behavioral coaching also plays a significant role in helping individuals avoid major financial mistakes and execute their financial decisions effectively.” – Stephen“Large companies, including Fortune 100 firms, have now begun to appreciate the value of financial planning.” – StephenResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorNew Retirement Website Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Owen Winkelmolen, Founder/CEO of Adviice, a financial planning tool in Canada. It is a client-facing financial planning platform designed to support fee-for-service advisors and all advisors in general. It enables clients and advisors to collaborate in building a financial plan. The origin of Adviice, can be traced back to Owen's financial planning practice, Plan Easy, which he founded in 2018. The discussion touches upon the challenges faced by those in the financial planning space, especially when it comes to handling payments, subscriptions, and client retention.Episode Highlights 0.41: Adviice is a platform that manages the entire client engagement process, including onboarding, payment processing, discovery, document uploads, planning, recommendations, implementation, and tracking, all within a single platform.6.25: Owen explains that the onboarding process in Advice is designed to be user-friendly and efficient, with yes-no questions and multiple-choice questions that are easy for clients to answer.7.20: What sets Adviice apart is its client-facing approach. Clients actively participate in the discovery process by providing information and uploading documents, and the platform's tailored design turns this into a streamlined and personalized "fill in the blank" exercise.12:05: Regarding white labeling, the Adviice platform allows advisors and companies to fully brand the platform as their own.16:23: The Adviice platform incorporates a range of visual tools and features to enhance the financial planning experience and provide valuable insights to clients.3 Key PointsWhat sets Adviice apart from many other financial planning software platforms is its emphasis on workflow and planning tools.The platform's client-facing nature, combined with the ability to mark completed actions and interact with the plan regularly, fosters ongoing engagement and collaboration between clients and advisors. This approach ensures that financial planning becomes an ongoing, dynamic process rather than a one-time event, ultimately leading to better financial outcomes for clients.The discussion emphasizes the importance of shifting from a one-time financial planning model to an ongoing and collaborative planning experience. It's recognized that the real value in financial planning lies in the continuous planning process, which takes into account the changing circumstances and goals of clients over time.Tweetable Quotes"Planning software may start with the planning tool itself, and the front-end (client acquisition, payments, etc.) and back-end (modeling) are secondary considerations." - Owen Winkelmolen"The use of visual tools like the Sankey diagram and the contextualization of financial data are essential for helping clients truly understand their financial situation and the impact of various scenarios." - Owen Winkelmolen"The ability to white-label and customize the platform for different niches and client segments is a testament to its flexibility and usability" -Jason. Resources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://www.planeasy.ca/owen-winkelmolen/Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Fintech Impact, host Jason welcomes back repeat guest Trevor Greenway, the founder of interVal. Trevor discusses how interVal's software platform assists financial advisors, accountants, and other professionals in valuing businesses. The platform provides estimates of business value, guides clients in the right direction, and helps them optimize their largest asset.Episode Highlights 02:36: Jason inquires about the process of business valuation for financial advisors and others who want to help clients determine their business's worth.03:57: The conversation highlights the crucial aspects of raising awareness among business owners, enabling advisors to add value, and ultimately working together to create a well-planned and cohesive future. interVal's automated discovery process plays a pivotal role in achieving these goals.04:19: Jason emphasizes that conveying the value of something is one aspect, but explaining the reasons behind its value and providing strategies for improvement is even more significant.06:02: The discussion delves into the nuances of enterprise value growth and highlights the importance of understanding and optimizing value drivers beyond simple top-line revenue increases.14:15: Trevor highlighted the importance of focusing on optimizing business health and informed decision-making for business owners.20:49: interVal is actively navigating the dynamic landscape of technological adoption and increasing business owner expectations. 3 Key PointsJason and Trevor's conversation highlights the power of understanding "why" and "how" in addition to the value of data-driven insights. It also underscores the critical role advisors play in leveraging these insights to guide business owners toward growth and improvement.The discussion emphasizes interVal's flexibility in valuation frequency and data integration, highlighting the platform's ability to accommodate partners' preferences while delivering valuable insights for making informed decisions.Trevor highlighted the complexity of business valuations and how various factors can influence the perceived value of a business.Tweetable Quotes"While valuation is a methodology, the true focus is on enhancing visibility into the business's health and performance." - Trevor Greenway"Understanding the value drivers behind the valuation is more crucial than the valuation itself." - Trevor Greenway"The frequency of valuation updates doesn't necessarily lead to dramatic changes in valuation results." - Trevor Greenway"By automating certain aspects of discovery, advisors can focus on delivering true value to business owners, helping them hit milestones, achieve goals, and mitigate risks." - Trevor GreenwayResources Mentioned: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.

Jason talks to Jud Mackrill, co-founder of Milemarker & Mammoth, who has been on the show before. The discussion centers around the challenges related to data and data management in the industry. For the past 15 years, many conferences have complained about the quality of data, its location, and how it's often siloed. Jud is working on a solution to address these issues.Episode Highlights 0:56: The company's main goal is to address issues related to connectivity, integration, and operational efficiency for firms that may not have the resources to specialize in these areas due to their focus on taking care of their clients' needs.01:40: Jason and Jud discuss the challenges faced by average RAs (Risk Analysis) depending on their size.06:27: Jud emphasizes that Milemarker's goal is not to compete with internal teams but to assist and augment their efforts.08:30: Milemarker helps integrate data and information so that when the Home Office receives requests from the field, they are intelligent and specific to the unique office or role making the request.16:37: Mammoth is an opportunity to modernize and streamline the process of handling alternative investments.19:54: Mammoth offers a single pane of glass solution that integrates with various technologies used by wealth management firms. The platform helps advisors manage alternative investments more efficiently and addresses the complexities involved in handling such investments for clients.21:45: The guest emphasizes the importance of having professional-grade software and processes to support technology and compliance efforts, especially as more firms transcend into becoming media and technology companies alongside their core service offerings.24:19: Being data-driven and having a clear point of view can provide a significant advantage to companies in the long run.3 Key PointsJud describes their approach to the consulting process, which involves writing a plan and designing how the data management and integration should work.Jud explains some of the quick wins and secondary wins that their consulting services provide to their clients.While technology can support the advisor-client relationship, the human element of personalized service will always be essential and cannot be fully scaled.Tweetable Quotes"As for the benefits of the consulting process, once the data challenges are identified and understood, the firms can leverage the solutions provided by Milemarker to improve data connectivity, integration, and operational efficiency." – Jud"It's very common for technology teams to be consumed with daily operational tasks and support, leaving little time for strategic planning and comprehensive data management." – Jud"A study by Fidelity, which found that many firms are acquiring other companies with clients that don't generate profits for the acquiring firm." - JudResources 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 Philipp Hecker, CEO of Bento Engine. It is a cutting-edge content and conversation system designed for financial advisors. The system's primary goal is to assist financial advisors in cultivating stronger client relationships and expanding their businesses.Episode Highlights 0.49: Bento Engine aims to help advisors focus on crucial moments in their clients' and prospects' lives. It operates as a B2B SaaS solution, integrating with widely used CRM systems through APIs.2.05: During his time at JP Morgan's Wealth Planning and Advice unit, Phil witnessed the power of comprehensive advice in action. This unit included various financial planning teams across JP Morgan's private bank, broker-dealer business, and TRACE network.5:30: As per Jason, some advisors opt to limit the number of households, they serve to provide high-level service, which may restrict their income potential. This approach often leaves the bottom end of their client base underserved.13.41: Bento Engine triggers opportunities for gifting and personalization, and it often leads to fulfilment needs and product opportunities. Bento Engine is delighted to see the various directions that clients take in utilizing the platform's opportunities for the benefit of all involved parties.15.06: By avoiding the need for a separate login or app, Bento Engine becomes a background system that enhances the CRM experience and provides advisors with timely opportunities and materials. 19.40: AI language is an inefficient form of communication, and understanding clients' needs and concerns requires empathy and expertise.3 Key PointsBento Engine serves as a tax solution that integrates with popular CRM systems, making it the central hub of client-centric technology for advisors. By mining and leveraging client data, advisors can shine during crucial moments that matter in their clients' lives. Jason envisions that users of Bento Engine can use the triggered events to initiate other workflows, allowing for customized touchpoints with clients.It's crucial to strike the right balance between AI-driven automation and the personalized human touch to ensure a successful and ethical implementation of AI technology in the financial advisory space.Tweetable Quotes"Many financial advisors talk about providing holistic advice but may not consistently deliver it across their entire client base. Bento Engine aims to address this opportunity by providing a technology-driven solution that allows advisors to offer comprehensive advice consistently and efficiently to all their clients and prospects." - Philipp"Bento Engine sees the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models to unlock valuable insights from unstructured data within CRM systems." - Philipp"AI will not replace financial advisors; instead, it will make them more efficient, effective, and capable of serving more clients." - PhilippResources Mentioned: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.

Jason talks to Jacob McGraw from Sikka.ai, a fintech company specializing in API platform services for dental support organizations (DSOs). DSOs are large firms that operate numerous dental practices. Jacob discusses Sikka.ai’s innovative underwriting methodology for insurance companies and explains the company's value proposition. Episode Highlights 01:00: Jacob explains the operations of Sikka.ai The company collects data from dental practices to underwrite life insurance applicants. 03:13: The company's API platform integrates with over 92% of the practice management systems used by these dental clinics, making it easier for DSOs to manage their operations.04:45: Jacob highlights the power of taking data from oral health practitioners since oral health often serves as an indicator of other medical issues.07:12: The current reliance on self-reported information in traditional underwriting can lead to inaccuracies and misclassifications. With Sikka.ai’s dental data integration, these issues can be addressed, leading to a more accurate assessment of risks, especially related to smoking habits.08:56: Jason and Jacob discuss how the fear of rejection has created a negative stigma around insurance applications.10:50: Jacob provides a practical example of how the risk model is used to differentiate risk within different preexisting conditions.17:10: The real-time data sources and API platform provided by the company are relatively new and novel to insurance companies, which are typically not accustomed to real-time processes.3 Key PointsJason and Jacob discuss the novelty of using dental data for insurance underwriting and acknowledges the value of alternative data sources in the insurance industry.The significance of dental data in insurance underwriting lies in its ability to offer valuable insights throughout an individual's life, regardless of their age or prior oral health practices.Jacob explains how their focus is on improving the underwriting process by reducing the need for additional tests and enhancing the speed and accuracy of risk assessment.Tweetable Quotes“Sikka.ai utilize two main products for this purpose. The first product includes indicators for pre-existing conditions like tobacco use, kidney disease, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, etc. Among these, the tobacco indicator is the most crucial, providing significant protective value per hit from exam one. The second product is mortality risk scores for life insurance underwriting, powered by procedure codes and the frequency of dental procedures performed per calendar year. These procedures help assess and understand mortality risks for potential life insurance applicants.” – Jacob“Data can be viewed as Swiss cheese, with holes representing missing or incomplete information.” – Jacob“Starting from a certain point in technology often influences a country's willingness to embrace new advancements.” - JasonResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://sikka.ai/Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Jay Goodis, the CEO of Tax Template Sync, a software designed to help advisors in Canada assess different tax scenarios for their clients. The software allows users to analyze current tax situations, run test scenarios, and optimize tax strategies.Episode Highlights01:57: Jay explains that the genesis of the company was driven by the need to save time and improve efficiency.02:23: While working in public practice, Jay constantly sought ways to be more efficient and identified opportunities to develop software solutions for the complex challenges faced by professionals in the wealth management industry.03:40: Jay explains that when assessing tax outcomes, it can be done from both a corporate and personal perspective. From a personal perspective, individuals can download tax tables from their websites to determine their marginal tax rate.05:52: Jason explains that individuals at the lower end of the income spectrum may face high marginal tax rates due to clawbacks, such as the guaranteed income supplement, which effectively results in close to 70% taxation.11:14: Taxes can be perceived as both simple and complex, depending on individuals' level of understanding and experience.11.38: Jason raises a concern about the perception of taxes being simple or complex. He mentions two categories of people: those who believe taxes are simple because they use tax software without fully understanding the complexities and those who recognize the complexity.18:22: The software developed is primarily used for personal tax planning and corporate tax planning with shareholders, says Jay.19:38: The lack of software dedicated to anything outside of financial planning and investment in this industry is horrible.29:43: Jay discusses the importance of simplifying the tax code and the challenges faced in finding professionals with expertise in tax and programming. 3 Key PointsJason and Jay discuss the impact of government benefits and income testing on tax calculations. Jason mentions that in the US, these are referred to as phase-outs, where entitlements are based on income and may result in different calculations.Jason shares his perspective on the challenges faced by business owners who often have surprise tax bills at the end of the year.Jason and Jay discuss the use cases and value of software in the financial planning industry, particularly in the areas of personal tax planning and corporate tax planning with shareholders. Tweetable Quotes“Many advisors focus on corporate tax and personal tax, so that's where most users begin. They work with their clients to assess their tax situations and determine what deductions, credits, or planning strategies are available to optimize their tax outcomes.” – Jason“The software aims to address both the total tax amount and the cash flow implications for clients.” - Jay“There is a lot of time spent by me and my colleagues reading tax legislation, putting that tax legislation into an interface that's easier for others to understand and to keep it current.” - JayResources 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 Derek Notman, the founder and CEO of Couplr. It is a fintech company that provides a platform for people to find the right financial advisor for their needs. Jason mentions that he often gets pitched similar ideas, but he finds Derek's approach unique and effective. Derek explains that Couplr is focused on fixing lead generation in the financial advisory industry. He highlights that lead generation has been a personal frustration for him, and Couplr aims to address this issue. Episode Highlights01:08: Couplr is a platform that combines the concepts of eHarmony and Bumble. It focuses on facilitating connections between financial advisors and consumers based on the human elements and dimensions of the relationship.03:07: Early in his career, Derek joined New York Life and encountered the traditional methods of lead generation, such as cold calling, door knocking, and attending networking events like BNI meetings.12:02: Derek introduces the concept of warm inbound traffic, which refers to the existing pool of people actively searching for financial guidance.14:06: Derek further explains that Couplr empowers consumers by allowing them to research and get matched with an advisor when they are ready.17:21: Derek highlights the importance of providing valuable information and building trust with consumers before they even contact the advisor.34:20: Through the work at Couplr, Derek aims to break down the friction and barriers in the financial industry, enabling more advisors to help more clients.36:20: Derek shared his passion for fixing the issues surrounding money and improving financial outcomes for individuals and advisors. The conversation highlighted the complex nature of financial relationships and the significance of addressing them effectively.3 Key PointsDerek explains how Couplr's approach to lead generation is different from the traditional methods like SEO and paid ads. Derek explains the "bumble aspect" of Couplr, where consumers can explore the matches, read buyer reviews, visit websites, and check broker checks to gather more information about the advisors.By leveraging machine learning and AI, Couplr aims to continually improve its models and gather valuable data insights.Tweetable Quotes"The current process of finding a financial advisor is broken, as it fails to create a positive experience for both clients and advisors." – Derek"Couplr aims to help consumers find the best advisor based on shared human dimensions, commonalities, experiences, and philosophies." – Derek"By focusing on connecting consumers and advisors on a human level, Couplr offers a more targeted and effective solution." – Derek"Minimizing friction is crucial for adoption and user satisfaction." – Jason"Money is a powerful tool that people have access to, yet there is a lack of education and guidance in managing it effectively." - DerekResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://www.couplr.ai/about-couplr/Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Rishi Khanna, CEO of StockTwits. It is a social media platform for the retail investing and trading community, known for inventing the cash tag. Rishi talks about his vision involving horizontal expansion to become a global platform and vertical expansion into diverse asset classes, while leveraging the culture of money and markets and the significance of live interactions.Episode Highlights01:00: StockTwits has expanded beyond U.S. stocks to cover Canadian equities, Indian equities, cryptocurrencies, and other assets.01:16: The company aims to provide a highly engaging place for global investors to connect, learn, and have fun while profiting.03:10: Rishi Khanna got involved with StockTwits in late 2019 after knowing the company for several years. He was invited to help build the next phase of StockTwits' vision, expanding its value to the investing community throughout the investing life cycle.03:35: Rishi mentions joining in January 2020 and how the world changed drastically during that time.04:07: Jason suggests having a dedicated social media outlet for a specific community of interest.06:08: Rishi discusses unlocking and utilizing unique data points, such as social sentiment data, trending activity data, and messaging bonds.07:37: Rishi highlights the importance of enriching the execution experience and providing a comprehensive toolset for users.08:57: Rishi discusses the challenges of the equity trading business model.10:26: Jason mentions the monetization strategy of advertising on the social media platform.20:45: The conversation touches on the introduction of trending streams and the importance of trust and quality conversations on the platform.22:20: Rishi Khanna expresses his wish to change the default position of cynicism and distrust in communications.3 Key PointsRishi talks about the importance of data and information in the investing life cycle.Rishi discusses the challenges of the equity trading business model, particularly in the US where it is highly commoditized and most big platforms offer free trading.Rishi explains how to facilitate and enable investors to explore and connect with different asset classes, find their tribes, engage in conversations, learn, and potentially build wealth.Tweetable Quotes"Equity trading is not a great business model. It's very hard to generate revenue to cover costs." - Rishi"We're expanding globally to become the go-to platform for the retail investing community. Launching in India is just the beginning." - Rishi"Our goal is to expand the asset classes and cater to the diverse interests within the investing and trading community. There are many micro-communities within this space." - Rishi"Changing things is a challenge... users hate change, especially if they've been using [the platform] for 10 plus years." - Rishi Khanna"We punch way above our weight class... getting to take on these challenges and problems every day is fun." - Rishi KhannaResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorStockTwits Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Brigit Carroll, the policy lead for the Americas at Wise. Wise is a company that has previously appeared on the show. Jason has invited Bridget to discuss the progress or lack thereof regarding open banking in North America. They discuss various topics related to cross-border payments, banking apps, and the challenges faced by the industry. Bridget emphasizes the need for transparency in pricing and reducing the cost of remittances. They also talk about the evolving narrative of fintech disruptors and the importance of collaboration within the payment ecosystem.Episode Highlights00:42: Bridget provides a recap of what Wise (formerly known as TransferWise) is all about. 01:18: Wise is a global payments company that focuses on providing the best solution for moving money across borders. 02:22: Open banking is seen as a crucial component of the overall modernization of the payment ecosystem in Canada. 08:33: Bridget emphasizes the importance of faster payments, stating that Canadians deserve it and it's not just a luxury. Failure to deliver on this promise would be detrimental to consumers and businesses during the cost-of-living crisis.11:26: Bridget emphasizes the importance of bringing Canada up to speed with the rest of the world.16:22: Canadian banks are not competitive and are expensive compared to other financial institutions globally. 18:06: There are long lead times for various initiatives, such as the retail Payments Activities Act, which is currently undergoing consultations. 27:10: Knowing that we are making a positive difference in the lives of millions of people around the world is incredibly rewarding. It's why we do what we do, and it's what keeps us motivated to continue pushing for better solutions and a more inclusive financial system, says Bridget.3 Key PointsBridget explains that payments modernization in Canada includes various aspects such as real-time payments, modern payment licensing through systems like RPAs (Request-to-Pay Agreements), open banking, and enabling fintech companies to access the payment system through amendments to the Canadian Payments Act.Jason highlights the frustration of waiting several days for a payment to clear and emphasizes that instant payments are crucial for individuals who cannot afford to wait for their paychecks or for small businesses seeking instant liquidity.Jason criticizes banks for their generic marketing approaches that fail to address individual needs.Tweetable Quotes"Canadian banks may strongly resist open banking, while noting that Europe has taken a legislative approach, and the United States has embraced free market capitalism." – Jason"Wise was the first non-bank to access the Bank of England's faster payment system, resulting in cost reductions for customers and significantly faster payment processing." - Bridget"Change needs to happen in collaboration with regulators and incumbents as well. It's not about disrupting for the sake of disruption, but it's about working together to create a better system." – BridgetResources 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 Giuseppe Stuto, co-founder and managing partner of 186 Ventures. It is a venture capital firm founded by former high-growth tech executives themselves. They have been there, and they know how to advise people who are going through that same journey. Giuseppe explains that their criteria for investing in a company involve evaluating founder market fit, the competence and unique positioning of the founders, their understanding of the problem, and their passion and motivations for building the business.Episode Highlights:00:47: Giuseppe Stuto says that they are at an early stage precede and seed venture capital firm. So, they typically invest at the earliest stages. There may or may not be a company incorporated or maybe a business already with over $1,000,000 in annual revenue, but primarily invests in the US primarily in the Northeast.01:43: Giuseppe shares how he and his best friend started angel investing. 07:25: As per Giuseppe for the most part, they make sure that they leave that initial meeting with two or three ways they can begin to provide value to that founder.10:04: The investors focus on connecting companies with key team members and leveraging their extensive network of technical and industry experts to provide support and value to the companies they invest in.11:57: Giuseppe emphasizes their role in assisting founders by aligning their goals, providing insights, and offering support through various programs tailored for founders and operators.15:08: Giuseppe acknowledges that building an unsustainable model can be challenging to unwind, particularly in times of high cost of capital. 21:29: It's crucial to have a deep understanding of the local market when making investment decisions or implementing business strategies.24:19: In the context of early-stage startups, the definition of "early stage" typically refers to the initial stages of a company's development, usually up until the Series A funding round.3 Key Points:Giuseppe shares how in early 2019, the brand was founded and then in fall of 2021, they started investing out of their first institutional vehicle.Giuseppe talks about the 4 pillars that they consider when deciding upon investment.Jason expresses the desire to discuss the investments made in the fintech sector and asks Giuseppe to provide details about the companies they have invested in and what attracted them to those companies.Tweetable Quotes:"Never before was there more of a time where founders should partner. With firms that actually have institutional know-how and being able to build companies themselves." - Giuseppe Stuto"In mid 2021, later on the peak actually where many funds were coming to market, new ones particularly we decided to institutionalize our platform and raise our first fund vehicle, which is a $37 million fund today." - Giuseppe Stuto"The experience of having been there and done, that's incredibly valuable, but there's also an underlying thesis to the investments." - 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 Jennifer Thomas, Director of Business development for XLR8. It is a well-known financial advisor CRM tool that is built over top of the Salesforce Platform. XLR8 is an overlay or custom version of Salesforce. Jennifer explains that they use all the power and strength and a wonderful thing that Salesforce offers, and then they came out-of-the-box with a fully customized version specific to the finance sector. Episode Highlights:01:19: Jennifer talks about the history of XLR8. How did it come to be and how does it evolve?03.20: Within XLR8 what we are doing is providing the out-of-the-box solution that is able to be and still intended to be sort of further customized, says Jennifer. 07:17: Jennifer explains how they are a little bit different in the Salesforce space and that they are not a transactional relationship. They don't just sell you licenses and then sort of move on.08:43: Jennifer explains how keep updating the system as per process and industry changes.10:17: Jennifer shares how filling gaps is something that they work with the different educational series that they provide.10:57: Jennifer thinks more from a relationship point of view. She doesn't think about business workflow enablement. 12:40: Sort of mathematics in your mind doesn't always go there with technology, says Jason.15:01: Jennifer is currently at a place where her successful business basically caters to the financial advisors.16:13: To sort of filter and disseminate information to our clients of what impacts them, what matters to them, what's important to them, what's useful to them, that is something that we have sort of taken on our shoulders, says Jennifer. 23:08: One of the things that often shocks advisors is the transition cost from CRM to CRM. Jennifer shares what people can expect when they are moving to any CRM. 24:17: Big data is the most valuable part of your business. It is everything, it's every note. It's everything about your clients.28:06: The support in Salesforce is largely handled through DIY stuff on their very good learning systems.30:31: There is some saying about lesson learned or once the lesson is better learned once you have experienced it.3 Key Points:Jennifer explains how the user journeys and the product itself are informed by the user's journey.As per Jennifer a lot of firms don't always investigate the full breadth or depth of the technology they have.Jennifer says that their focus is to make sure that they are an ongoing partner, and their clients are able to and open to and know that they can kind of come knock on their door anytime to ask questions and look for ideas. Tweetable Quotes:"If you are willing to invest the time and effort into the customizations of building your entire practice into Salesforce, you can spend a lot of time on a lot of money, but also get a lot of utility out of it not everyone is built for that." - Jason "You could get into some really deep things, but there are also a ton of really some little things that can be done in the system that takes essentially time really adds time back to somebody that's doing those things manually or kind of doing those things in a repetitive way." - Jennifer"Leveraging a best-in-class platform in a unique vertical which is a great trend and bright place to be as a good, sweet spot." - JasonResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Daniel Cronin, CEO and Co-Founder of Integrated Finance. It is a platform that helps Fintech's launch with their payment systems all ready to go. Episode Highlights:00:31: Integrated finance is a platform that helps fintech's to launch or incumbents or add new offerings to their existing customer base.02:00: The APIs that work with Bank A are entirely different to the APIs that work with Bank B compounded times the number of banks you are working, says Daniel. 11:45: The four letters that scare at every American when looking to do business with Europeans are GDPR, and Daniel has built our platform from a security perspective and data protection perspective here in the UK and Europe and it just conforms to GDPR.15:52: There is a stranglehold on innovation because over half of the Fintech that wanted to launch with product X, either never launched or ended up launching with product Y because it was 10 times harder.23:32: If we don't make the cost of entry low or be as lowest as possible then any number of constrained, innovative ideas who do not have capital Rich will never see the light of day, says Jason.32:01: Forcing consumer protection is a great way to create innovation that is now more secure, says Jason.32:31: As crypto cools, fintech's become the higher risk category, and Daniel would be interested to see how that plays out over the next couple of years.36.32: The biggest challenge in the company where is it today is to fully evaluate the ecosystem that Daniel is trying to build and strategically add new partners as they grow.39.15: Finding something that you love where you don't get Sunday blues changed Daniel's life about 7-8 years ago it was running his own business.3 Key Points:Daniel explains how they target the payments piece, they go even more specific than that on account generation, because this is something that's often overlooked in Fintech.It's the mountain of non-differentiating stuff that needs to be built before you can get your head above the water line just to breathe.There is an asymmetric relationship with industries that are currently growing rapidly, and the way legacy industries are built to serve that growth.Tweetable Quotes:"Rather than focusing on the core assets of the back end of Fintech, we focus on homogenizing the experience our Fintech customers get." – Daniel"The principal reason you increase engagement with anyone in any industry is by giving them account, and that's why we are in the payment and account space to give Fintech and Non-Fintech greater control of their user base." – Daniel"When a customer comes to us, the first thing, we do is we analyze what their requirements are, and we set them up with a sandbox that works with the bank, and they can do what they want." – Daniel"We establish a marketplace where all gaps are filled, and we're doing minimal filtering of features for every single partner, and that drives major commercial alignment." – DanielResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/danielcroninif/?originalSubdomain=ukhttps://integrated.finance/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Ashley Aydin, Principal at Vamos Ventures. It is a venture capital firm that not only makes investments in various areas, including fintech but has taken a keen eye toward increasing diversity within their founder.Episode Highlights:01:41: Ashley explains how they only invest in the next and diverse founding teams. They also focus on impact-oriented companies. 01:47: Ashley mentioned diversity, but it also means equity, community, product, and environment on the equity front, it's about wealth agency created for founders, teams, and communities and access to funding and growth that facilitates social mobility in the Community front, it's creating a diverse pipeline of Angel investors of VC investors of role models for future generations.03:29: 60% of population growth is going to be fueled by that next immigrant chic right in the coming years.03:48: The world is changing fast as what we are seeing, and it's increasingly marked by Latin X and diverse entrepreneurial influence.05:29: Ashley explains how there is a demand for more financial education and literacy.06:49: As per stats, less than 3% of funding goes to diverse entrepreneurs, whether women, Black, Latino, or any underserved overlooked founder category or demo figure.08:37: As per Ashley there needs to be education early on as to what these careers are, whether it's building, operating, or investing, and that we need diversity in those spaces and different experiences.11:15: Ashley is building sort of outside of the venture partnership and advisor staff off deep functional experts in health and Wellness and sustainability and future work in fintech that either have had exits or have been in an executive position.13:21: The more LP capital that you have that believes in these missions, that gives emerging managers a chance, the better the VC landscapers and the startup landscape.15:30: The founding journey isn't just this glamorous thing; it's also caring about an aging parent and building a company at the same time.17:35: Emerging fund managers aren't so much emerging anymore that they are the standard right and that they have unique insight into investing and building funds.18:22: At the end of the day, the opportunities between success and failure in life often come down to a couple of serendipitous choices made by others that give us opportunities where they could have just as easily turned away and done nothing.3 Key Points:Ashley explains how diversity is important to them and how they use it to build technology.Ashley shares examples and instances how they promote diversity.Ashley talks about the venture partner program. How people could sign up to be a venture partner, come on as a venture partner and help advise companies about market strategy or how to fundraise etc.Tweetable Quotes:"There are a few different things we look at in Fintech, but I think the overall theme is empowerment and education." - Ashley"When we look at the sub-sectors and fintech and what is most interesting in that connection, it's things like alternative business lending, new payment structures platforms that focus on wealth generation and wealth building and access and education." - Ashley"We have seen that people are privileged, are coming to coming to the VCs end up not necessarily staying on the right side of the law either." - AshleyResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Ryan George, CMO of Docupace. It is a platform for paperless tools basically designed to automate your back office or the financial advisors back office that, eliminate a lot of the heavy lifting and pain that we go through daily.Episode Highlights:03:07: Ryan is working with and working for people who are sometimes in the background of the business, whether it's connecting to the CRM and having a wireframe into that business or another level of deep integration.05:56: As per Ryan, in the early 2000s, they sort of had the mainframe systems where everything was a locked technology ecosystem, and in terms of what it was able to do and what happened, that led to this explosion of innovation.11:01: As per Ryan industry average is around between 25 to 27% of the NIGO rate for large enterprises, which sounds extremely high because it is on Docupace, it's below 3% for their clients.12:00: As per Ryan, APIs are a big part of their integrations and a big part of their systems. 18:26 Ryan discusses how the pandemic drove growth in digital data gathering.24:37: Sometimes, your clients will lead you down the path to destruction. It's a matter of knowing where to draw the line and saying this is what's good for us.28:01: As per Ryan, there is a need to pivot, and we need to change things in order to get to where we are trying to do what we are trying to move, move faster, be more agile, be more innovative, serve customers in a different way.30:42: As per Ryan, they are not at the level of creativity to where people are coming up with creative solutions to solve because they don't know what the problem is yet.3 Key Points:Ryan shares a case study of someone he has dealt with who didn't have the interconnectivity, what kind of experience change they see within their company, and what type of productivity gains they get from this.Docupace provides tracking in the dashboards where if paperwork gets submitted, somebody must call and say, hey, where's Joe and sell his application.Ryan shares what are the new features of Docupace that they are going to implement in the coming years.Tweetable Quotes:"We want to be a cohesive glue that helps connect your financial planning software, custodian, and systems together as you integrate throughout the technology stack that you have at your firm." – Ryan"Often, it's not the technology, it's the humans that become the inefficiency in the system, and we are trying to find that." - Ryan"Do you have the people in management or middle management with the vision for how this all comes together, which is a is and it's a very difficult thing to fill because it's a Venn diagram." - Jason"People who understand the digital realm as to what's possible and being able to tie that all together. Those are the single most valuable people in our enterprises these days." - Jason"There are so many uses for being able for one person to get data from another person, and that is never going to go away in this business." - RyanResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInLinkedIn - Ryan George Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Alan Gurung, CEO of SIFA. It is an artificial intelligence-powered platform for financial advisors to leverage their data, be more efficient, and garner insights from that data.Episode Highlights:01:52: It is a man versus machine argument instead of a man and machine argument.02:51: Generative AI seems almost scary to many, but the reality is the future belongs to those who utilize the robot correctly.05:29: AI works on explicit rules and logic to solve specific problems and is very rigid. Prerequisite rules and logic have been put together, whereas generative AI works a lot more on patterns. It's able to create new content on the back of those patterns that's been exposed.06:37: In SIFA, Alan and his team gain data that financial advisors use. They analyze the endpoint of all financial advisors trying to do with that data and trying to streamline that process as much as possible. So, the moment when people come on to decipher, what they can do is they can import their unstructured data through recordings from meetings or notes from meetings and start to have a conversation with that data.12:20: Alan explains how they come right at the start of the process of individuals once they record the meeting, they can import them into the cipher as well as gather data from all the other areas.13:15: Think about where advisors tend to spend the most amount of time or rather where they pay people to end up, saving them a lot of time, it's the middle and back-office side of things.14:11: People just hire other people to do stuff they hate as opposed to improving that process.17:32: Alan explains what the future of their application is what other features they are planning to implement.19:53: Alan sees support chats on every website, but in some of these to date the bots have been very, very rudimentary.23:45: The difficulty for Alan has been to work alongside data, and for a lot of financial advisors they realize the impact AI and machine learning might have on their overall business. 3 Key Points:Alan explains about AI and generative AI and how they are different. Alan talks about the integrations that they have done. He explains custodial integrations and couple of other CRMs.Alan explains how they are fundamentally changing the nature of the work in the back and middle offices.Tweetable Quotes:"SIFA is a virtual assistant that allows financial advisors to communicate with their data and generate insights." - Alan"A lot of individuals who seek out financial advisors one of the main reasons they do so is because they don't have the knowledge for certain questions they want to answer. But in actuality, a lot of people don't even know what questions to ask." – Alan"Small finance advising has been a somewhat delicate dance between logical decision making and emotional decision." – Alan"The interesting thing about the financial advice industry is that the demand for financial advisors is greater than the supply of financial advisors." – Alan"If I can teach other people how to be better with their money, maybe I can be better with my money as well." - AlanResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-gurung-186714168/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Matt Lister, CEO of Cloud Advisors. It is a company in the group benefits space, and one of the unique things they have done is they have built a benchmarking system that helps inform business owners as to basically how their plans stack up against competitors in the same space and helps advise around best practices and design. Service is free for employers. Paid by advisors and providers.Episode Highlights:01:04: Cloud advisors use the Canvas employee benefits marketplace. Matt explains how they show employers how their benefit plans stack up.02:23: Every advisor got their own limited pool of experience regarding different sectors, different types of companies.06:35: Matt explains how their system has options for employers that have no coverage, they can get a sample plan.07:17: Matt explains how their system intakes the benefits plan and breaks it down into hundreds of different variables that one can then compare by industry, region and group size.09:57: Matt explains how they developed the bar score, and it stands for benefits, action, retention, and it's like a credit score.14:15: With Covid, Matt has seen the geographical boundaries breakdown and even if you offer hybrid work, remote work, people are not drawing on labor from within driving distance of their office anymore, says Matt. 16:42: Being more competitive, when we dig into the actual benchmarking, we typically organize it by benefits included versus not included on our intro report, says Matt. 17.14: Matt talks about the type is benchmark that they do. There are basically 2 types, he says.19:41: Matt talks about the database that they have built and how they segregate problems and solutions.21:18: Advisors have their preferred solutions. They have exclusive rates and all of that can be customized on that evaluation so that the employer gets excellent bottom line.22:30: Matt says that they recognize that business owners are busy, and they have got businesses to run, and insurance is only a small component of that needs to be done efficiently and effectively and conveniently.3 Key Points:Matt talks about the big determinants, basically how benefits programs get structured in terms of, different industries or different careers, different development stages, what are the big factors implemented that should be impacting, and how a plan is designed. Cloud Advisor has been in the marketplace coming up eight years and when they first developed the database, they had a very limited amount of data in it to perform the benchmark. Matt shares how they achieved about 15,000 employee benefit plans.Matt talks about the client output and how they visualize the actual results.Tweetable Quotes:"We show them how their current programs stack up by industry, region group size as well as how they can improve their program." - Matt"When I started in the industry, my dad had spent most of his career working for a public crown corporation with the incredibly robust union." - Matt"We will connect not just with the vendor and the vendors; information will actually perform an instant quote and an instant proposal so that the employer has everything they need to." - MattResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInLinkedIn - Matt Lister’s LinkedIn  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Alex Murguia and Wade Pfau, co-founders of RISA. It is an online questionnaire and tool for helping determine what an individual's retirement styles are like and specifically helping advisors steer them toward the type of retirement solutions that help ensure that they both succeed, but also that they are comfortable and their preferences on how they wish to retire or how they wish their income to be general in retirement come about.Episode Highlights01:05: The risk that people face in retirement is different from pre-retirement, with the sequence of returns, risk, and market returns.04:46: Alex shares how they took reoccurring constructs and then wondered could they quantify them that were reliable and in a manner that was valid.06:28: Jason is not a big fan of bucketing, but for some clients like visualizing and understanding that might be the difference between them panicking and being comfortable.08:41: Alex informs that they have an implementation matrix, which is how someone prefers to implement financial advice.11:07: You always have to overlay the numbers; the advisor has to help you sort of curate through that journey.19:23: As per Alex there is no annuity proposal in much the same way that there is no like government worker puzzle in the United States.22:23: The distribution of advisor preference largely comes down to licensing standards.24:38: The best salespeople are the people that get to close loss the soonest.38:12: As per Jason, people spend a lot of time these days talking about understanding client bias.3 Key PointsAlex explains how they kind of take a step back and say what strategy is the one you should begin with when it comes to retirement planning? People either need safety or they won't accept risk, and they are different degrees of willing to basically lock themselves into something, so it's static.The first step of retirement income planning is to identify your retirement style and then build your financial plan and then take your risk tolerance questionnaire and choose your asset allocation and so forth.Tweetable Quotes"With COVID after reading a certain amount and collecting notes, we realized that there were certain constructs that seemed to be reoccurring motifs." – Alex"We all have different risk tolerances. We all have different preferences for security." - Jason"I may, as a consumer, have not known that there are different strategies that there are and here is the strategy that looks like it does fit best with my own psychological considerations and makeup." - Wade"The end consumer doesn't realize that there are options available to themselves for different retirement income strategies." - Alex"There are a few things that in research frustrate me more than trying to break an advisor value down to a percentage cases per year." – JasonResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://retirementresearcher.com/about/Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Christine Brunsden, CEO of Benefits2, a web-based application designed to help people and medical practitioners identify disabilities that qualify for the Disability Tax Credit. It also assists them by saving time and money while increasing the rate of success when applying for the Disability Tax Credit.Episode Highlights02:56: Through her teenage years, Christine's daughter went downhill, and she ended up going through some really terrible stuff.03:52: Christine realized how hard it is for young people who are aging out of the system, they don't have the proper support.05:44: Medical practitioners are burning out record numbers. They are not motivated to take their after-hours to fill out third party forms for the government09:41: Christine shares an example of a woman who did her disability tax credit with Benefits 2 on January 31st.11:09: The hard part for everyone involved in tax refund is that nobody has ever taught anything about this in school.12:02: Christine explains how her platform helps people qualify for disability tax.12:45: The government tried to bring in the disability tax motors restrictions act and fix the fee at $100. 17:08: Christine thought the disability tax credit promoters were really predatory in nature, taking that big percentage.19:10: Christine is a huge advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion, and he is also a huge advocate for people with disabilities.24:18: The Canada Caregiver credit, medical expenses, and disability supports deductions home buyer's amount.25:09: 60% of all people who have the disability tax credit are over the age of 55, and the RDSP is not even a benefit for that.26:22: It's not a disability tax credit. It's really an enabling for people with ordinary everyday impairment to their activities of daily living.3 Key PointsChristine shares her daughter's ordeal and how her teacher called her out in front of all of her peers at the age of 6.Christine developed Benefits2 to leave more money in the hands of persons with disabilities and their supporting family members and to ensure Canadians have an option that complies with the disability tax credit promoters restrictions act.Christine explains how they created a platform, a complex algorithm in the background that once you have answered your questions related to your particular impairment, they write the application for success for you, you get a code and the PDF of the application and e-mail.Tweetable Quotes"My eyes are really wide open around the disability taxpayer." - Christine Brunsden"If the credit doesn't apply to you, maybe you're not working, but maybe you have a supporting family member, and you can transfer the credits to that supporting family member." - Christine Brunsden"Our marketplace will have diversity, equity inclusion, calendars that support all the different awareness dates throughout the country and internationally." - Christine BrunsdenResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorPodcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Mounir Felloula, CEO and Co-Founder of Puulse. It is a challenger bank, that has specifically partnered with the company's HR departments to help enable their employees to have a positive banking experience from the moment they get paid.Episode Highlights01:51: Mounir explains what Puulse is and the services that they provide. 03:43: Mounir explains how they facilitate money getting to the employee's app from day one?05:22: Puulse's specific attack vector was to work with HR Partners to try to basically get involved with the companies.05:39: Puulse have a strong fintech part, but they are also like a nature tech pack because, basically they are able to know when someone finishes a job.08:09: Mounir shares how companies are now conscious about their workers.10:02: Companies that tie up with Puulse don't own the data payroll. The data platforms don't have the expertise to push money to look at regulation to know which license you need to have to push the money, when and how to clean the dealer configuration.11.10: More than 1000 people can implement the Puulse HR software, says Mounir.12:55: Mounir's aim is to facilitate everything related to gig workers.13:21: Mounir talks about employee's initial reaction of the app and what they are planning to launch in the future.15:09: Puulse's goal from the beginning was not only to bring workers, but to build the banking infrastructure to help people to be financially independent.16:25: People want to get paid daily, so this is possible, but the guardian is structure, which basically pays your taxes, restrict it.16:52: Human life is very exciting, and you can do plenty of things you can use to travel.18:56: Mounir discusses about the challenges they faced when launching Puulse.21:20: To build a culture that is effective and enjoyable that people want to be a part of and are happy to go up to every day, and that is unfortunately and a difficult task, but it's achievable.3 Key PointsMounir shares how they come in the middle and create liquidity on one side to the other.Mounir explains how they help companies facilitate on time payment.Mounir talks about the future of Puulse and its growth. He also discusses what they are planning.Tweetable Quotes"When we get the money, we are kind of a box that comes in the middle and start to push the money automatically that cover this gap basically." - Mounir Felloula"We notice when we start at the beginning about talking to HR companies and HR software, every people like every gig, workers complain to their employers, then they get paid all of them when they notice that what someone pays faster, they jump to one up to another." - Mounir Felloula"I can basically go between these jobs and vendors very quickly just by flipping apps and we are talking about essentially a commodity. We are talking about rides. So at the end of the day, if they don't support what the other guys doing and making it easy, then they are going to lose people pretty quickly." - JasonResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorPodcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Kelly Waltrich, CEO of intentionally, a well-known marketing firm within the advisor and fintech space that helps companies market themselves effectively and get results.Episode Highlights01:16: Most people didn't get into a business to market it, they got into a business to do the thing that they wanted to build.05:09: Kelley is extremely particular about the firms that they work with. They conduct a pretty in-depth review of the companies before they agree to market them because they have to have a couple of things right.05:46: It's sort of blows Kelly's mind how little founders and leaders are sort of inspecting the world around them and understanding what they are up against.07:21: Kelly talks about a major red flag when people don't know the competitive landscape.08:51: Kelly shares how they try for the most part, to just make sure that the brand is solid and what the messaging is going to be.10:29: As per Kelley it is important to clearly define goals and she is a stickler about the goal-defining process.11:54: Most ironically, in industry, it's always about helping people reach their goals.15:23: Just because you hung a shingle doesn't mean people are going to walk in and just hand you money. 19:09: Kelly shares how they track revenue through growth of all of their clients.25:47: Your brand is being distributed. More people are seeing it. It's so worth it, and Kelley tells everybody the same story.28:58: Kelley is on a crusade to help firms realize the value of modern marketing that it should have a seat at the table, that it should be driving strategy, and then it should be a driver of company revenue.3 Key PointsKelly shares how she was really compelled to create a company in that everyone in it had a strong industry context, understood the competitive landscape, understood the inner workings of each of the firms, and understood how everything needed to be connected.Kelly explains what content map is and how they use it.Kelly explains how they spend a lot of time building content strategies and content plans that fuel the overall demand generation plans. Tweetable Quotes"When everybody was reevaluating what they were doing with their lives. I wanted to build a firm that could turn that around for this industry and help firms deploy modern marketing to generate revenue, turn their marketing efforts into revenue generating activities." - Kelly Waltrich"I am building this technology. It is so awesome. It's going to change the way advisors work." - Kelly Waltrich"We make sure that we have a story that we can work with because, at the end of the day, we can't create campaigns, we can't drive opportunities." - Kelly Waltrich"Once you have given us your granular, thoughtful, realistic goals, we get after it, and we put a plan together, and we say this is, this is what it's going to take, this is what it's going to take from your time." - Kelly WaltrichResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://intention.ly/team/kelly-waltrich/Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Jose Luis Salas Calcáneo, Sales Manager at Checkbook.io. It is an online platform for not just processing payments and pushing money to where you need to be but doing it in every method from digital to the old-school methodology of SNL.Episode Highlights00:43: As per Jose checkbook is 6 in one payment disbursement platform. They have six different railways in which they can disburse money, and the beauty of the platform is that the recipient can choose how they want to receive money.02:06: Instead of focusing on the people who were sending money, leaders at Checkbook decided to give a nice experience to the recipient. 03:55: Real-time payments depend upon both people having an account and a balance.05:43: Jose talks about paper cheques and how they still provide it to the end users. 07:47: Jose explains instant payments that entail instantly moving money from your existing Visa and MasterCard.09:47: Besides trying to convince people to value, funding something that basically has physical checks really shows a fly on the wall for that one.12:45: Jose says that they sign a contract, and then they have an onboarding process.13:34: There are people who want to use Instant Pay, NBC only, or ACGH and RTP, but we need to enable that we see what is the full experience for your final recipients we test, validate and deploy, says Jose.14:11: Jose explains how they integrate with some accounting and integrate with accounting seed, SAGE interact, and QuickBooks. 15:41: Jose talks about the benchmarking on how much time and effort is saved by AP departments in terms of being able to streamline the processes.17:24: Jose talks about the migration problem and the unbanked people. He would love to bring a solution for them.19:34: Jose loves connecting with people and solving problems.3 Key PointsJose talks about the six channels of payment that they have in place at Checkbook.io.Checkbook is the bridge to the old world and the new world.Jose explains if they have any integrations into billing processing software or is it just all native.Tweetable Quotes"We are also one-sided platform. For example, if you wanted to send money. You and me in some other environments, we both need to be in the same environment." - Jose Luis Salas Calcáneo"With the printed checks that we are doing now, we are just implementing the magnetic ink, which it might sound like that is not that important, but you have no idea how important this is." - Jose Luis Salas Calcáneo"Sometimes people actually don't want to reveal their account number, routing number, and it makes sense." - Jason"This is getting a lot of traction mostly in loyalty programs, people want to pay their customers, for example, for being loyal and being our current customer using these cards, and it's real." - Jason"We connect with the API of flat, then everything gets connected, and it's done. So you have a lot of money in reprocessing and returns." - Jose Luis Salas CalcáneoResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://checkbook.io/Podcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Sharon Bauer, founder of Bamboo Data consulting. It is a niche privacy and security consulting firm that basically helps companies figure out how to foster trust and responsibly profit off the use of their data. Sharon's purpose is to empower businesses to make better decisions that will build sustainable privacy and security programs so that they can instil confidence in their customers, partners, and investors.Episode Highlights02.52: Data and monetization of private data came to be through companies like Google and Facebook.06.07: Sharon explains how laws were first and foremost designed around the surveillance economy.12.28: Sharon shares while setting up frameworks, what are the key best practice areas they look at. 17.02: Sharon explains the importance of having a standard contractual clause.19.20: Sharon talks about the misconception around data breach and how that happens.20.22: The SEC passed the rule that basically requires everybody to be certified if they are going to be a vendor that is used by someone licensed by them.26.33: If you are not going to respond to the liking of the individual or in a timely manner, they are going to go to the privacy commissioner.29.30: Sharon highlights awareness and bringing awareness to employees and making them feel really empowered that they are doing the right thing and that they are trying to work with their existing processes. 31.03: It takes 8 months to a year to truly implement a privacy program that is robust and operational.35.06: Privacy is not always top of mind for all companies. It is a huge, endeavor to educate, educate, educate, and bring awareness so that.3 Key PointsSharon explains how explains privacy program is for companies. If you have a chat on your website, an AI tool or maybe not even an AI tool, but it is recording. There is a transcript recording that chat and you are collecting information from the EU or UK users. You need to seek explicit consent.You need to make sure that the vendor that you are in business with also has good privacy and security practices and are not using that data for their own purpose.Tweetable Quotes"It has become a highly profitable stream of revenue to basically harvest this data and utilize its direct ads and doing a number of other things." – Jason"If you are collecting personal information from residents in the EU or UK or in the US, or any other legislate or jurisdiction, you need to consider whether those regulations also apply." – Sharon"Most recently Facebook came under fire again because they were collecting personal information for the purposes of hitting ads at them instead of seeking explicit consent to do that, what they did was they embedded it in the terms of use terms of service." - Sharon"I feel so fortunate to be working in an industry that is very collaborative and everyone is so supportive of each other." - SharonResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorPodcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Reese Harper, CEO of Elements. It is a financial planning company focused on delivering deep, meaningful conversations between clients and advisors, but specifically focused on the key things that they need to focus on in order to be effective in their financial planning journey. Episode Highlights1.36: Reese shares how the idea of launching Elements came through? What factors motivated him?06.38: Reese tried to create a more efficient way to answer questions without him having to do any of the data entry or data maintenance. 07.49: As per Reese they are trying to get deeper in conversations, but not have as many extensive presentations as they are trying to put in front of people. 13.48: Saving money, spending money, paying taxes and paying debt are the four elements that are the four vital signs that cash flow is made-up of.16.02: Reese explains how the elements financial planning system scorecard works. 18.58: Reese discusses the obligation that they have as the software provider in a world where it's all about financial health. 21.28: As per Reese both benchmarks and heuristics are important and right now, they just have heuristics in the system. 23.37: Reese supports the idea of advisors using guidelines and benchmarks to motivate clients toward a healthier state when needed. 26.27: Insights engine is what are we going to surface to the advisor to show them what's going on with their clientele.30.12: Reese shares the success stories and how well the app is received by clients.33.37: Reese explains how their entire clientele is not on meetings. He is batching responses and he is doing it asynchronously.35.52: A DSO that employs like 200 dentists, it's really hard to cost effectively work with rank-and-file dentists, says Reese.3 Key PointsReese discusses an easy way to measure holistic financial health. He shares how the elements financial planning system helps clients to collect and organize financial data and then gives a snapshot of all their key financial health metrics–in one view.Reese talks about the three main ways that they use to interact with clients.The advisor mobile version is mostly meant for real-time analysis, and when you get on the phone with the client, you will be editing data on the fly with them. The web is there for triage and sort of book-level clientele, explains Reese. Tweetable Quotes"If you ever tried to build your own software for your own needs, using your own money from profits from another business that like an advisory business to pay for software, you realize very quickly that it, it's very challenging." - Reese"You could really overwhelm people quite Quickly if you say we have to collect all the financial vital signs that exist in the world." – Reese"Benchmarking is kind of the V2 of what we see coming. It is when you can create internal when you have a large enough internal sample, you can start creating financial health metrics." - Reese"Almost everything that matters to you in your life has some representation on your phone screen." - JasonResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/reeseharper/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Richard Vinhais CEO of WAX. It is a platform for ensuring collectible items of high value and making sure that if anything goes wrong with your treasured collectible or sentimental value object that basically you are protected. In addition, they have helped people with custody and leverage of these assets with that.Episode Highlights1.42: Richard talks about his background and how his journey started. 08.22: Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurer. They have 200 billion in assets, maybe 40 billion plus in gross premium. They are who you want and they kind of concentrate on the high network space. 10.10: Richard talks about the lending business that they launched the previous quarter which is really in pilot.11.15: Richard explains in the collection management process there is an element of doing kind of a rapid income analysis on the individual rapid employment data. 13.14: Richard shares how they determine the value of assets and what is the process that they follow. 17.08: Cash is not as cheap as it, it was even six months ago. If you look back even a year ago when money was virtually free, that is just not the market conditions today. But there is still always a space for an individual that's looking for a quick infusion of cash, says Richard. 19.05: Once we are vaulting, we are responsible that means the insurance needs to be fully in place. The conditions of the vault need to be exceptional, says Richard.22.05: As per Richard, understanding the collector mindset is everything because every collector, they have their own tribe. Every collector also has their why behind, why they collect.25.12: As per Richard, they could open up the valves to allow anybody to enter their ecosystem which will certainly grow the top line of the business, but as claims start rolling in because they not thinking about the quality of what is coming in, then you are no longer running a profitable business. 3 Key PointsRichard explains the technology aspect of Wax and where is the tech coming to play, and how is he delivers Insurance on collectibles?Richard talks about the range of products that they have launched or will launch in future. The list included the collection management, model line insurance, lending, and then vaulting.Richard talks about appraisals, how that was going to work and how it changes the current experience.Tweetable Quotes"Collectibles are now seen as an alternative investment whereas in the past it was just kind of seen as a toy or a strange hobby or target demo has disposable income." - Richard Vinhais"The lending product was an experiment that we put into play last quarter, and we see this as a great way for individuals to kind of unlock value in the collectibles that they have." - Richard Vinhais"The amount of research we went into to find the correct vaulting partner was staggering, mainly because we want to make sure we're doing right by our clients, and we don't have to worry about it." - Richard VinhaisResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://www.wax.insure/about Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Brad Joudrie and Ken Lotocki. Brad is the Chief Revenue Officer of Conquest, and Ken Lotocki, Chief Product. Today they are going to talk about the changes, growth and challenges that have occurred in the past 2.5 years. Episode Highlights1.16: Brad and Ken talk about conquest planning and its origin stories.02.24: Ken talks about the adoption of new technologies and innovation in Conquest Planning. 03:30: There's a lot of in every other profession out there in terms of innovation, whether it's medical profession or legal profession or so on, more and more tools are being built to help make it easier for that professional essentially to do their job and financial planning, specifically building that plan.05.02: Brad and Ken discuss about the challenges they faced and how they implemented processes that helped them to save lot of time and effort.06.14: Jason mentions how Sam built strategies such a way to help advisors work with their clients and understand exactly what's being recommended to them.09.35: It's an easy enough conversation to explain to a client that if you delay you get more money, says Brad.11.18: Brad explains how Sam has shaved hours off the process using automation. 19.02: Ken and Brad discuss about the work and the process of hiring people.21.58: Ken explains how they invest heavily in technology.25.10: Ken talks about their partners and how they are very happy with the stable of partners they have from a venture perspective.27.01: Brad and Ken talk about the next feature or next thing that they are going to do in the company.33.03: There has only been three companies Jason has known of that have ever sold financial planning software outside of their own jurisdiction effectively.45.52: We understand better how advisors and financial professionals are working with their clients today and then have conquest to be agile itself to work within their ecosystem, says Ken.48.16: Ken shares how they are in a different situation than they were when they first sat down.53.21: There are a lot of good advisors, a lot of great advisors out there just approach it.3 Key PointsBrad and Ken talk about the launching of Conquest Planning and how as the company grew it adopted cloud technologies and innovation. Brad and Ken talk about the business and how big the team was when they first started in the company.Brad explains how the company's scaling was almost as a B2B as opposed to an enterprise product.Tweetable Quotes"The club speed knows which club to hit knows the distance, the thing and but in the end it's the advisor." – Brad"You landed the single biggest enterprise contract last year that none of the competition probably heard of yet, so kudos I think that's a testament to just how differentiating you are in the product market." – Jason"We have kept our team reasonably lean, I would say on the distribution side of the House, and that has been fairly intentional." – Brad"I love what we do and I love the fact that everyone in our company is passionate like we were." - KenResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Dave Carr-Pries, Vice President – consulting services at InvestorCom. Today they are going to talk about how the implementation of CFR and Reg BI has basically panned out in the last year and where the successes and challenges are? Episode Highlights1.31: InvestorCom is a fintech company, they provide software really focusing on helping the industry make better financial decisions, and with that means their focus is on compliance solutions that aim to make being compliant as intuitive as possible and removing friction and barriers from advisors of dealers. 2.58: Without an advisor or an investor doing anything, when fund companies change their products or things change about their products, suddenly a portfolio may become unsuitable, says Dave.7.23: Dave discusses what is the kind of data points for the elements that you look for significant change.09.30: People like complaining about work and it's like this is not hard. You need to have investment thesis for how you actually manage portfolios and do it consistently and then you just have to look for changes that are pertinent to that, says Jason.14.02: Dave shares how they filter and pass data down to people and give them what to look at.15.30: When an advisor is presented with kind of a relative comparison, things do move slowly and we are starting to see a trend and making recommendations of products that stack up, says Dave.17.40: Jason discusses how it is not hard from the advisory perspective to have a documented process.20.01: Anyone who just basically buys nothing, but passive indexes have an easy time says Jason.22.01: As an advisor professional judgment is about identifying red flags and if there are any red flag be prepared to document your justification relative to those flags.29.30: We put out a process, our documentations are in place, this is really called practice management 101, says Dave.31.02: To not think through the advisor experience and how to make this a manageable experience is a gross failure of management like that, says Dave.3 Key PointsJason and Dave talk about the big changes in regulations both in Canada and US and InvestorCom dealt with the changes. Dave explains how they have taken self-monitor solution that builds the industry audit trail and added advisor alerts. Dave shares that they are working on the product recommendation side and how to do that product comparison or consideration of primitives.Tweetable Quotes"People probably made decisions that weren't good or interpretations that the regulator won't agree to." - Jason"This kind of change management or change monitoring process mean thanks to the regulator's kind of a new thing. So, no one really knows what that magnitude is." - Dave "My concern is people for shooting an arrow and then drawing the bullseye around it." – JasonResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorDave – LinkedIn  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Adrian Johnstone, Co-founder, and President of Practifi. Practifi is an advisor centric CRM that was developed on the Salesforce platform but is not Salesforce itself and has made a name for itself in terms of leveraging the advantage to build better automation workflows and tools for advisors.Episode Highlights0.44: Adrian explains that they use the term performance optimization platform in Practifi. They use salesforce as the chassis, but they are actually a product sitting on top and none of the nasty overlay stuff.6.07: Adrian explains that their system is designed to provide the answers to questions you are not yet thinking like, who do I need to call, what do I need to call them about, what might I have missed from a compliance perspective and serve that information up to the right person at the right time.9.20: Adrian told someone that they need to do something along the way is one thing, but what they have done is embed things like the data capture and data transfer within the workflow itself.13.44: Many people don't realize that Salesforce and Microsoft are in pretty much every business where Salesforce exists, but they don't necessarily play great together on their own.17.19: Adrian shares how they have built very specific integrations at an industry level, and they will continue to do that as well. 19.20: Adrian says that they also see newer firms coming into the market who look at integrating the Salesforce and what they find is that they are going to integrate to something that they know everyone has customized because there are a very few standard Salesforce instances out there.21.58: Anyone who's going to really exercise the technology, then we are a great solution because you don't lose any of the flexibility. You just gain such a strong starting position, says Adrian.3 Key PointsPractifi is designed to cater for a multifamily office with complex relationship trees, many to many kinds of structures within there, as well as managing all of your other relationships.Adrian explains how they got away from standard stuff available on salesforce and built what Practifi Propel, which is an entire analytics suite and gives users the comprehensive time series data that one can really look at across the business.Adrian shares how he wants to create a more unified experience between the Salesforce and Microsoft Stacks because they know the Office 365 world is ubiquitous and they want to make that as seamless as possible.Tweetable Quotes"Having something purposely built versus generic from day one is a big advantage for anyone starting off from day one." - Jason"Practifi is not trying to be the solution to the retail banker. It's a solution to the wealth to the financial intermediaries." – Adrian"As the underlying platform changes, you are forced into reinvesting in building because it doesn't stand still and so you can't." – AdrianResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianjohnstone/https://www.practifi.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Don Scott, CEO of Frank Mortgage. It is a new company looking to take the bias out of shopping for a mortgage and make sure that consumers get the best rate possible. Don talks about the surprising piece of feedback that he has received post launching Frank Mortgage. Episode Highlights4.30: The market has a flaw in the way it's set up. The brokers are supposed to represent the customer, but we are paid by the lenders so that can steer a bias into the process and bias because it's not necessarily the same compensation between lenders may not be identical, says Don.5.44: Some of the brokers out there provide wonderful service for their customers. But there is this inherent flaw in the way that business is set up. So, customers often enter the process feeling very uncertain and not informed, and they often exit the process feeling the same way.8.51: Features matter as much as rate does to a lot of customers. It's always not just a pure rate decision and we can help them understand all of that, but then they ultimately can make their own decisions, says Don.12.49: There is a customer adoption and acceptance that has to take place for this kind of product and ultimately where we get down the road is where we can ask the customer for less and go to direct source to get more information, says Don. 17.00: Don explains how customers select products in the portal, how they move to the documentation stage and stages of approval with the lender.27.24: At the end of the day, incentives are often designed to control that person who is the bottleneck or is that person is going to write that business, says Jason.28.06: Raising capital is a major challenge that Don had faced while launching Frank Mortgage. 29.36: As per Don there is a great opportunity to enhance the experience of consumers in the mortgage market and the feedback, they are getting consumers is confirming that it's very positive so far and they don't see the competitors that are in the marketplace.3 Key PointsDon explains how the market has sort of turned into a Marcus. It's very focused on maximizing the outcomes from the brokers of the lenders and not so much for the customers. There is a lot of data scrubbing and a lot of back and forth between the broker network and lenders, but it's of time and resources, and with a digitized process like this, you can simplify that and deliver a complete file 100% of the time that has some algorithmically driven underwriting, says Don. Talking about feedbacks received from consumers Don says that they have heard in surveys that more and more consumers want to have online solutions for mortgages. So, they presented one to them and now Frank Mortgage is getting positive feedback about the experience. Tweetable Quotes"I have been around the mortgage market quite a long time, funded some of the medium and small sized lenders that are in the marketplace space know their businesses fairly well." - Don"It's not the customer that's paying us and so our economic incentive isn't always aligned with the customers best outcome." - DonResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Professor Ben Charoenwong, an Assistant Professor in Finance at the National University of Singapore. Today Ben is going to talk about some research he has done specifically in the RegTech field. Ben explains how dealer broker firms would not have wanted to invest in all these technologies on their own, it's the fact that there are some regulations that kind of forced them to get software.Episode Highlights1.40: RegTech is short for regulatory technology or software that is designed specifically for the purpose of improving or assisting with compliance with rules and regulations. 6.09: At the end of the day, everything is all about liability and the only way to make companies accountable is to make them liable, says Jason. 9.00: When you look down the list of like the top 20 broker dealers, it's a mix of whether they are caring or not a lot of this business line of having custody.11.04: There are many proprietary software solutions for document handling and storage that jumped about 30% when this rule was signed and started to be implemented and there is just a dramatic jump in the firms adopting the software solutions.12.44: Ben saw an almost exact equivalent jump on the hardware side. The estimated IT budget for each company increased by about 30 to 40% and consequently the profitability of these firms increased by about five percentage points.19.14: The most profitable per dollar of revenue firms that exist at this point are typically sole practitioners running at a high level of automation and it's interesting.24.04: Ben talked about his research, and did he complete any form of causation like was it the elimination of bad actors or we could just attribute this to a Hawthorne effect?27.35: If you think about this SEC 175-A rule it is very basic and just says, all these other financial regulations, just can you comply with them always.3 Key PointsThe main thing about customer asset segregation is that the brokers that were not carrying or using other brokers as custodians, that was fine because that's a third party and it's very hard to steal customer assets when it's sitting with someone else, says Ben. Realistically companies looked at SEC rule that basically talks about banking versus investing and they must have thought immediately like we need a software solution. James explains what he saw in terms of the implementation and its efficacy of it.The technology component seems to have the operational effect that's almost equivalent to like having the FBI come check the firm, says Ben.Tweetable Quotes"In the face of increasing regulations in the financial services sector, it's become fairly difficult for humans to actually make sure they are in compliance." – Ben"You always have all the independent parties who are making decisions as to how things are to work." - Jason"It's a known phenomenon that computers tend to not get scrapped, they trickle down for a long period of time until they're useless." – Jason"I don't think regulation is going anyway anytime soon. It's going to increase even more."- BenResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://www.bencharoenwong.info/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Will Robinson, CEO of Encapture. The company brings machine learning to banks and lenders to help them understand what is going on with their data and make better decisions. Anywhere anyone signed, any place someone showing up and having to fill out paperwork or submit supporting documents to do something at a bank is where Encapture can get involved. Episode Highlights0.58: Encapture is a machine learning platform in the intelligent document processing space. They are good at finding and extracting important info out of documents. 4.02: Will explains how they collect documents required for loan processing and helps to save time and manual effort. 7.36: The big impact over the last several years is the ability to read through unstructured documents, says Will. 14.00: Will explains why it is important to feed really good clean data into your model in the first place.15.45: Jason talks about how the relative tightness of Encapture's data set really does play in quite well into being able to have that human versus machine interaction. 18.10: Will explains how some of their prospects are familiar with machine learning, how it works, and they understand kind of the limitations of it doesn't do everything and it doesn't do everything 100% accurately. 23.37: Will says that they kind of take the mindset if we can go solve everything there is to solve with the current product they have, then they will think about doing more. 25.39: As per Will getting people to really buy in and believe into where they are going has been harder than he had thought. 27.17: Will says there are so many problems out here. So many things to get solved and the way that we even solved them, we are getting better at that. 3 Key PointsWill shares how they are using machine learning to save lot of time and effort in data processing. Will explains how training a machine learning system is very similar to feeding it data. There are different methods of training where you feed it massive datasets, like thousands or 10s of thousands of samples of documents and you let the machine learning kind of figure it out on its own and come back to you with results. Will explains how they are not making decisions about credit or about new account openings, they are simply looking for the data in the documents and making that hunt and peck a lot more efficient. Tweetable Quotes"Our focus of the last several years has been in developing our own technology and trying to find some compelling sticky use cases in the financial services space to apply our tech." - Will"There are probably 30 examples that we can give as tangible to bank and so much of it is dependent upon who are we talking to in that meeting." – Will"It's incredible how far machine learning has come to mimic kind of a natural conversation between a system and between a person." - Will "There is a super long tail of community banks and kind of smaller regional banks that would love this technology that has never been exposed to it at all." - WillResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInhttps://encapture.com/about/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to James Tait, CEO of Underwrite Me. It is a platform that allows insurance advisors to quote and handle the entire application that underwriting cycle through one unified platform and does so in 11 countries around the world. James explains how the platform allows each insurer to configure their rules and consistently with their philosophy without asking different questions or without having to agree to exactly the same philosophy. Episode Highlights06.02: At Underwrite Me, someone puts their details in the portal and says these are their general health concerns. First the underwriting of their health condition as an individual happens and then the persona gets recommendations on pricing on insurance companies.07.51: As per James it was a painful process over the years to convince everybody to come on board. It wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination, but the fundamental for them was that they were trying to improve the market. 08.58: James explains how they partnered with a couple of very large financial advice firms, and distributors in the UK that provided some of the attractive business volumes. 10.01: As per James there is a lot that they provide to the insurers even outside the marketplace that they are providing to do that. 14.50: James explains how the flexibility within the platform made it much easier to get everybody to agree on a common approach.19.14: James shares how they are focused on three regions at the moment, UK and Ireland, Asia Pacific and North America.25.01: Every industry at the moment, whether it's personalized medicine or personalized advertising, personalization is definitely the future of life insurance, says James.26.10: One change that James would like to make in the industry is ease of access to electronic health data.3 Key PointsJason and James talk about the early days of Underwrite Me, and how James convinced or how he got the insurance companies even come to the table on this?James explains how they are trying to improve both sales and customer experience.James shares his journey and how 22% of the financially advised UK life insurance is written through the Underwrite Me platform.Tweetable Quotes"By launching Underwrite Me, we were putting something in place that I think everybody would agree would make financial advisors' lives much, much easier and in a market, that's probably struggled to grow over the years." - James "Imagine if you had an extra month to make revenue with no additional investment like that is just profound in terms of size." - Jason"Underwriting is a field that is changing really rapidly at the moment and it's really interesting the differences around the world in the focus of that development. So, a big topic at the moment is how we incorporate predictive models, artificial intelligence, machine learning within the underwriting process." - James Resources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://www.underwriteme.co.uk/our-people/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Nicholas Bernardo, Founder & CEO of OnBord; a simple, secure tool with automated compliance features that will save you time and money while onboarding new clients. OnBord is built to streamline the new client experience for not only the advisors but also their clients.Episode Highlights03.02: Nick talks about his profile and what prompted him to launch OnBord. He also talks about how simple the tool is and the feedback that he has received from few of his clients. 05.32: Jason and Nick talk about the inconvenience caused during manual data filing or data gathering process. 06.17: Nick explains how they have created the ability to do a bulk transfer. Now they are working to eliminate that custodial spreadsheet so that if you are an advisor looking to leave a wire house or leave a broker-dealer that's protocol or non-protocol you have all kinds of limitations around what you can take. 7.18: Nick talks about their data gathering process and how they don't actually hold any of the client data.  09.32: Nick explains OnBord's entire work process flow and how it is all automated.11.04: Nick explains once the client completes the flow, they also receive an e-mail from the firm, welcoming them again, stating kind functions of the CSA and then also putting out the e-mail as disclosure documents that way that is one step that the CSA team has to do. 13.10: Nick explains how they are currently working on the KYC module right now so that they can update that and push it right back to the advisor's CRM. 18.20: Nick explains how OnBord shows real time status of clients filling in their information and how it helps to save a lot of time and efforts. 23.05: Features and functions we have an unbelievably long list of features and functions that. We want to put out there, but right now it's about solving the core problem right and showing the most value to the same, says Nick. 31.00: OnBord is a core technology for almost every RA in the in the country and maybe even in the world.3 Key PointsNick talks about how well OnBord uses automation to create great user experience. He says that they are not asking them complicated questions, they are asking the minimum amount of information that the custodian wants in order to open their account.Nick explains how they leverage text as a means of engagement of the consumers.Any business that gets new clients and needs information to get from the client to their database and potentially you know signed off on a form, that's our opportunity, says Nick.Tweetable Quotes"We are looking to make use technologies to flatten this whole experience out and that way the advisor and CSA, all they have to do is manage the process." - Nick "If you are a broker dealer and you need to update KYC on an annual basis, we'll be able to administrate the entire process for you." – Nick"Getting people's attention via text message and a reminder say hey by the way we need to get this done it. We're finding that you know response times are faster." - NickResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Justin Adler, co-founder of NorthOne. It is an online Business Account with built-in features to make business banking fast and easy. Justin helps people with this entire profit for a system, they put people in envelopes or supplements, but nevertheless it's basically splitting up by dollars or percentages and making sure that when the taxman comes calling the money sitting there when payroll comes, it's done which is fantastic.Episode Highlights0.54: When launching NorthOne Justin Adler's goal was to transform what would be a really burdensome experience of traditional banking into one that's simple, fast and efficient. NorthOne is like Uber for banking and financial management.04.19: When setting up his business Justin visited several places and did in-depth research. He realized that the problems we seen growing up were so widespread and so commonplace and they really resulted from the fact that small business owners are generally really good at what they do. They are great at your craft, but they are so ill prepared and ill set up for the financial management side.06.16: By launching NorthOne, Justin aimed to remove the opportunity cost of doing day-to-day banking from the business owner so that we could turn the really burdensome banking experience for small business owners. 07.50: Justin co-designed a feature called the Northland profit first envelope system. This allows the small business center to literally, with one click on drag and drop, an automatic budgeting system so that whenever they deposit money, the correct amount is sequestered for things like rent, payroll, taxes. 11.02: As per Justin, one of the biggest threats to the economy today is the failure rate of small businesses.13.13: One of the big features that Justin and his team worked on this year has been really about defining more convenient ways for folks to get paid and make payments. 16.09: Justin says that they focused on integrations that really allowed the bank account to do what it does best.3 Key PointsJustin shares how he has built a system to basically implement the entire cash flow model.Many small business owners use cash basis accounting to make decisions for what they can, what they can afford, what they can buy. A lot of what Justin has also focused on this year has been building integrations so that the business center can get a wider circumference and expand on the view of what's going on in their business through the Northwest Bank account.Justin shares how he sees the future of the product and the best way to serve the customer. NorthOne is a platform that really kind of connects that small business center to a variety of different proxy tools and services that they need. Tweetable Quotes"NorthOne is a digital challenger bank specifically made for the needs of small business owners across the country." – Justin"We worked with our team to really figure out how to take that functionality ACH and take it as fast as possible." – Justin"We have always stood behind the idea that if you make a product service, it's good customers should be happy to pay a fair price for it." - JustinResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Santiago Burridge, executive chairman of Lumiant. It is a platform that helps advisors discover what really matters to their clients and helps them have more deep and meaningful conversations and guides them along the way to a deeper and more meaningful and prosperous engagement. Episode Highlights0.38: All the extraordinary conversation that happens between an advisor and a client currently now goes into a filing cabinet and we anchor experience in something we can control, which is a product, says Santiago.4.33: You can't help people in relation to their life unless you understand what drives them in life and that is their values and it's not their goals because goals change, and values tend to not, says Santiago.9.21: If you lead with the client's life, not with your product, the client is going to work with you and that's the subtle pride pitch between selling and serving, says Santiago.17.55: The computers aren't the thing. Computers are the thing to get us to the thing and the financial plan is not the thing. The financial plan is the thing to get the things. The values and goals are the thing that gets you to that thing, which is financial planning, says Jason.23.23: When you are in a bad health situation or need surgery, the doctor is the shining star and the most important person in your world. But when everything is going ok or not ok or just average every day, financial planners are the most important.24.38: One wish for something to change in the industry is that 51% of advisers should be women. It's currently 16 to 20% and it's a disgrace and it's a poor reflection on what we do, says Santiago.3 Key Points90% of people who walk in to see an advisor and non-financial spouses, they generally do not know what they need to do, and these non-financial spouses have been utterly ignored by our profession forever, says Santiago.When we thought about bringing the whole client journey through a platform, it is values, goals, key advice, strategies and tasks to achieve and live the best life and what risk are they willing to accept to live their best life, says Santiago.Santiago is building nudges into the part forms and the ability to remind their clients of things that they need to do. But it's more than a task.Tweetable Quotes"When we thought about technology that has been used in the financial services industry today, we realized that everything's been built for the sale." – Santiago"Everybody wants change, but no one wants to change and it's the most frustrating thing in the world." – Jason"Supporting entrepreneurialism and independence, helping this industry achieve its potential is the thing that excites me to continue the work, day and night since I was a kid." - SantiagoResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/santiago-burridge-1a830b6/?originalSubdomain=auhttps://www.lumiant.com.au/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Guy Anderson about what happened in these past years of 51 episodes other than this one. As per Jason When it came to technology innovation, it was the bigger issues that were looked at first, but now we are looking at the smaller problems.Episode Highlights1.59: Jason shares what was his top pick for the most interesting fintech solution for 2022. 2.04: As per Jason the closest thing to the most revolutionary, coolest thing he has seen wasn't in Fintech and that is GPT chat. This year more than any product he was rather impressed by good execution. 04.02: Jason really appreciates Nudge; it is a tool for automating client communication and collaboration. Then there is Hubley a checklist or process mapping system. 06.09: There is a software now that ensures that everything involved with settling an estate is done first and foremost, but also as fast and as painlessly as possible. 09.40: Historically the distribution of financial products followed specific channels where you typically go to one person for one thing your investment guy, your insurance guy all that and we have seen that slowly expand out with multi licensing.10.15: Jason explains how and why the number of financial decisions that people face on a day-to-day basis is increasing.13.48: There is a certain type of person who is going to listen to a robot running their financial life start to finish. That's the reality of it, says Jason.16.28: If we keep on talking about being the future of this business, that is going to be the differentiation point because that is not going to be what is basically done, says Jason.21.49: Crypto is a technology that is unfortunately that is useful and unfortunately that use is lost and rampant speculation in most cases.23.32: In a lot of ways the crypto purists will tell you your mistake was leaving it on someone else's wallet, says Jason.26.02: Jason talks about his initial plans in 2023 and how he is going to bring in new and some of the old guest in the upcoming podcasts. 3 Key PointsFintech is going to revolutionize, and it has already started to revolutionize our business. Jason shares his views on where does he sees revolutionizing is going to impact advisors versus all the other aspects of the fintech space?Jason shares how much of this Fintech filters down into the hands of individuals and what impact does that have on the advisory business? GPT chat is a function of GPT 3 which is a general-purpose technology artificial intelligence that has been being experimented with and now they have kind of opened it up and it allows people to ask whatever question they want of it or to ask it to compose whatever text it wants. Tweetable Quotes"Buy now, pay later is still most hated but best example of embedded finance." – Jason"I see a lot of issuances coming to the business and building up deeper relationships with your clients and just being able to be better and just be being better advisors' long term." - Guy"Any new technology is always met by a bunch of scam artists." - Jason Resources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Yasser Abou-Nasr, Senior Vice President of product at Dwolla. The company is a payment infrastructure company specifically specializing in account-to-account transfers.Episode Highlights0.30: Dwolla is a modern payments platform that really becomes an engine that a lot of our Fintech or software companies or corporate enterprises want to embed in their stacks because they actually have sophisticated a2a problems that they want to solve, says Yasser.2.20: There was a decision to make a pivot around 2016 where Dwolla focused on helping businesses get paid and payout necessary use cases that really have to pay payments through modern API.6.11: One use case we are seeing is that people being really creative with helping that are under underprivileged and how they are able to leverage our platform to make cash flow readily available for those, says Yasser.8.04: It's just amazing to see how many different people are realizing the opportunities to embedded finance and finding that Dwolla is kind of that opportunity and that really helping us position and go to market. 9.18: Some customers use us as essentially, they are able to give cash advances to their drivers and their drivers are able to kind of pay back those loans as well through our network, says Yasser.12.21: Yasser wants to go ahead and be that payment service provider where they can actually leverage the data, make smart decisions and actually get payments to the financial Institute.15.47: Yasser says that they are looking at data aggregation and enrichment for them to bring other value adds to kind of help enrich the transaction or the decisions or the risk behind those transactions.17.05: RFP, request for payment is going to do some amazing things. Yasser has learned from other markets like India that they're way mature with instant payments. 19.01: Any type of position has risk involved with that and if Yasser can minimize risk and increase that position for a faster funding, then everything kind of follows right behind it.24.55: There are endless possibilities with a2a payments and that's what gets Yasser excited and kind of really coming in every day.3 Key PointsEveryone in vertical SaaS companies is trying to disrupt the certain industry that has pain points or problems especially around funding or positioning, says Yasser.The banks are just not best positioned especially when it comes to API's and how they want to manage innovation and Fintech find a big struggle to work with banks.The fact that open banking is regulated has really pushed a lot of innovation in a2a because of consumer piece, says Yasser.Tweetable Quotes"We actually power complex a2a payments as well and because of our solution people come to us." – Yasser"Effectively you are the pipes that no consumer sees but alleviates frustration when it happens." – Jason"We are excited about all the different use cases in industries around. We ran a report earlier and we see ourselves in 80 different industries." – YasserResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/yabounasr/https://www.dwolla.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Mark Higgins, Chief Analytics Officer and Co-Founder of Beacon. It is a company that provides cloud solutions to financial institutions to run their data and analytics and a number of other interesting and high-level things.Episode Highlights0.33: Beacon is a financial technology company focused on the capital markets. These are the sort of wholesale trading that happens in foreign exchange and commodities and interest rate derivatives.4.55: Mark had decided to start their trading and risk management system as a development platform that has all that enterprise technology stuff in it and so that quants and data scientists and people like that don't have to be experts at enterprise technology.8.00: The financial institutions have had a sort of 30 plus year history of on-premises data center computers and there is a particular kind of mental model that goes along with that.09.02: Mark shares how their product is this combination of two pieces. One of them is sort of an out-of-the-box set of trading and risk management applications and the second part of the platform is the developer environment where they can go and build their own tools.10.28: Mark says that they are very open with their underlying technology and development environment. Their clients get all of our source code, and they can write their own code in the environment. 12.02: In the early years of the company, Mark spent a lot of time being pretty reactive from a product perspective where basically their road map was whatever the next big prospects wanted them to build, and it kept changing all the time.12.35: Beacon is a big change for people. Jason talks about the implementation timeline for something like this for the people or companies.17.41: Institutions start using Beacon for one particular thing or whatever particular business problem they have and when their developers start using Beacon to build new stuff for the desk, then a new project comes up and they're like, why don't we just use Beacon for this, says Mark.3 Key PointsOne thing where Mark helps people with Beacon is how to use the cloud in the right way because beacons sort of automates all the cloud infrastructure management in the elastic compute stuff.Beacon came into the market after 4 iterations Mark shares how he ended up having to modify and adapt this product that he didn't expect initially.Beacon gives you a lot more flexibility in doing the kind of ad hoc analysis because you have access to elastic computing, says Mark.Tweetable Quotes"The quant has outsourced the most important thing that any developer can do, which deploys your change into production." – Mark"The thing that we didn't properly understand about selling to big institutions is that it's really hard to sell to them when you're a little company." – Mark"I just love the idea of helping the whole industry to get more efficient and productive through using better tools." - MarkResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-higgins-63b0264/https://www.beacon.io/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Andrew Kirkland, President, and Co-Founder of Justwealth. The company is a Canadian based Robo advisor that deals directly with consumers but also collaborates with financial advisors.Episode Highlights0.29: Justwealth is an online portfolio manager also known as a Robo advisor and Andrew is bringing investment services to Canadian investors via a very efficient model by using technology.2.55: Just of just wealth is for justice and acting in the client's best interest of all time we are regulated with the Ontario Securities Commission which means we have fiduciary standards to act in the best interest of the clients that we deal with, says Andrew.3.32: Andrew's co-founder background is in the asset allocation space. He actually manufactured some portfolio models for large banks and other high net worth portfolio management in Canada.5.25: It was important for us to make sure that we are building a broad product lineup and if someone looks at Justwealth lineup portfolios, we have a many more options than other Robo advisors, says Andrew.8.25: Andrew says that they have different portfolios for different account types. You could be accumulated in accumulation phase in one of our growth portfolios and invested in a non-registered account.10.13: Justwealth's portfolio investment questionnaire provides questions as to help us figure out which risk level that you're associated and for us, risk is really determined by your ability to take on risk and coupling that with your willingness to take on risks, says Andrew.14.07: Andrew says that they felt that their investment offering of having more options attracted somebody who may have more objectives that need to be met.16.09: People are beginning to realize that costs associated with the bank are just too high for the service that they are getting.18.00: Andrew says that they have financial planning channel, and they are working with financial planners, and they are referring or outsourcing the investments decisions to us20.43: Andrew wishes to have unlimited amount of funds to explain their services to all the people. 21.38: The biggest challenge in new company is to teach yourself to be patient for the public and the users to understand your service, Andrew.3 Key PointsFinancial plan can change and will change between today and 15 years down the road, but people just want to get an understanding for on the right track record and that's what our service can provide from a financial planning perspective, says Andrew.From a cost perspective, the people to have the most gain are not necessarily the millennials. Millennial will get the savings over time, which is phenomenal.Andrew shares where he is finding the majority of his client base.Tweetable Quotes"We are trying to make it as efficient as possible for people to get access to sound, quality, and diversified investment portfolios." – Andrew"In earlier times, there were a lot of costs that associated with the current model that inflated the end cost to the investor." – Andrew"We also have a family that targets or utilized often within RESP and education savings plans." - AndrewResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Greg Leroux, founder of Retirement Optimizer. It is a Canadian software that optimizes your retirement specifically around strategies on drawing down your assets over time to ensure that you successfully make it to the finish line.Episode Highlights0.42: In existing financial planning software, you enter a series of inputs regarding your assets, spending expectations and what you want your retirement to look like and what you have to fund that, says Greg. 0.55: As per Greg, the difference that we have at Retirement Optimizer is that we apply an optimization engine to the de cumulation side of things.2.56: Many clients ask, what should you be doing instead of the rule of thumb and the answer is there is no answer. Because it depends on lots of things and that's why when it comes to decumulation and retirements or in a game of chess, computers generally beat people, says Greg. 4.53: In any situation you are setting up with the spreadsheet, you are going to be making assumptions about the future, and your assumptions are by nature going to be wrong because we don't know what inflation is going to be over the next 30 years, says Greg. 6.02: Greg started with a company that was a performance reporting company to comply with CRM two requirements and allow people to look at their rates of return and benchmark them against common indices.7.21: Greg was originally contracted by a financial planning firm to build a suite of tools for them. And, once we actually had the solution working, they wanted to go into business with us and commercialize it more generally. 12.21: Computer says you have enough money to retire. It says that you might fall a little bit short if you were just using bucket approach of withdrawing assets. But that might not be where you're concerned. You might want to stretch things, says Greg. 13.18: As per Greg, the output of our system is a series of interactive graphs and tables on a computer screen. But many people who are retired and don't want to be staring at computer screens they can produce a report.17.00: Greg doesn't work under a subscription model like many financial planning pieces of software; instead, it's on a pay per use basis.18.56: As per Greg we are going in two directions right now. One is to make it even more user-friendly for the individual who doesn't necessarily have a financial planner. And other direction is to make it more complex for people who have crazy systems of accounts that include money that's offshore or overseas.3 Key PointsThe majority of people who are entering retirements have real estate as a substantial fraction of their net worth, but they don't intend to live in the same house until the end of their retirement. They intend to downsize at some point.Greg shares his thoughts on conjunction of financial plan with other standard financial planning software. Tech has been red hot industry for the last bunch of years, and it is really difficult even for highly skilled, highly compensated people to resist the siren song of California.Tweetable Quotes"I would like to see the industry evolving towards a computational stuff being handled by computers and human interaction being handled by humans." - Greg"Attracting, retaining talent as long as possible is probably the biggest challenge." - GregResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/grleroux/?originalSubdomain=cahttps://retirement-optimizer.ca/welcome Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's episode of Fintech Impact, we have Marcilio Oliveira, Co-Founder of Sensedia. It is a platform that provides API access through microservices for different financial institutions around the world, basically connecting them seamlessly. They are helping the enterprise companies around the world to become more connected, open and digital using the modern integration platform and API.Episode Highlights1.03: Marcilio says that they created Sensedia 15 years ago to help companies to modernize their enterprise sectors. 1.14: In last ten years we have been 100% focused on API management platform to help companies to connect the core data in digital experience, partner journeys and innovation and in the last five years we created a nice, specialized solution for financial institutions, says Marcilio.3.08: The connection between the legacy system with mobile apps, with ecosystems from partners and with different kind of digital experience or digital behaviors is done using API.6.32: Companies are looking for Sensedia when they are trying to evolve the digital experience or part integration ecosystem positioning for open banking service, or they are looking for innovation.7.53: FTX conference in Dallas was amazing because we have around hundred financial companies there and all of them trying to discuss about strategy, not only about Tech, says Marcilio.8.04: API is a tech subject, and it supports new business model, new functionalities, new partners model and new positioning.15.40: Many banks have created their own API management plan because they are using these as internal APIs.16.04: All the financial institution will be part of one or more ecosystems because they have a chance to be the heart of the ecosystem to create their own ecosystem by exposing API.19.05: As per Marcilio, we are going to nice space where everyone needs to be a part of ecosystem.20.03: Companies should be more open and digital and connected and not looking for tech or for business strategy.3 Key PointsMarcilio shares what is the percentage of existing institutions that were non digital before and converting over versus native Fintechs that have come into the market?Fintechs are not looking for a hard discussion about tech integration. They are looking for the good experience in the digital world. So, we have invested a lot in digital experience for the companies beyond the API, says Marcilio.Marcilio shares his thoughts on where is the lack of openness? Is it a reticence of companies entering the space like departing from their norms of keeping things closed and being very defensive with data?Tweetable Quotes"We are focusing the enterprise companies. We are looking for the traditional companies and usually they are asking for our help in three different scenarios." – Marcilio"The open banking is not about regulation, it's about movement and in my perception, Canada will move fast about regulations." – Marcilio"If the company is looking for position as the central of ecosystem, they need to improve the developer experience." - Marcilio"Technology is not a strategy. Technology is there to enable your strategy." - Jason "My motivation is when I explain stories about customers and people show interest to listen more. I love to share stories from achievement with good customers." – Marcilio.Resources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – SponsorLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInhttps://www.sensedia.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcilioso/?originalSubdomain=brPodcast Editing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Timothy Nuy, Founder and Co-CEO of Finclusion. The company is an African based neobank that is basically tackling a lot of the structural issues in banking in Africa in a digital way. Episode Highlights1.11: Today our lending products predominantly are either employed or merchant distributors ranging from earned wage access to payroll loans and from buy now pay later to merchant lending facilities, says Timothy.2.06: Timothy explains how he predominantly distinguish clients with our AI based credit scoring where they have consistently outperformed the markets from a collections and repayment perspective on the back of our scoring models.5.14: The traditional data is oftentimes not available on our type of supply and field. Also, the easily accessible credit score, simple repayment behavior isn't available. What is available is a whole lot of different data points that by themselves aren't actually predictable, says Timothy.9.03: Timothy explains how does the business side of the business differ from the personal credit scoring?11.10: Pledging security it depends on the market. In some markets it works, many other markets it doesn't. But depending on the relationship we can take a risk.13.01: One of the benefits of building some of the infrastructure in Africa from scratch is that infrastructure gets built based on modern day design principles.14.17: Buy now pay later has been something that has largely been a newer innovation in the Fintech space and within the last 24 months it's really taken off, says Jason.15.02: Today we can offer credit better than anyone else, but that's a leap. IT doesn't mean we'll always be better than anyone else, says Timothy. 16.01: We basically unconverted ownership of a client into our world and really achieve long term client stickiness, says Timothy.17.07: Timothy would love for the African rails to work as well as they do in India where you could just digitally verify anyone's identity and get access to their data in a readily simple, straightforward way.17.51: Getting people brought into the company culture and building together, creating that feeling of togetherness without actually being able to be together in the same office has probably been the hardest thing to do, says Timothy.19.20: Africa has been in the loss from probably the last 30 years. But Timothy truly believes it is going to convert and end up in the same space as a Brazil or China or India.3 Key PointsTimothy talks about the core problem that has to do with the AI based models on credit scoring you deal with in Africa compared to more developed nations like the US and UK.Timothy’s company does future wage access where they give you a loan which you can repay over 12 to 24 months using about 30% of your income as a maximum installment.The reality of not being able to pay for goods and services at checkout is a much bigger problem in the African population than the rest of the world.Tweetable Quotes“I feel there is no one really addressing the credit gap effectively with products and solutions that truly address the market needs on the ground and we could make a real difference.” -Timothy“We work with any employer more than 200 employees, but we prefer to work with larger employers.” – Timothy“No one would ask you for your house title for a small loan in the rest of the world probably via emerging markets where there's still an opportunity.” - TimothyResources MentionedFacebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInWoodgate.com – Sponsorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/timothynuy/https://www.finclusiongroup.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

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

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

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

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