Fintech Impact

Today is the 2021 year in review show and Jason brought back his colleague and occasional guest host, Guy Anderson, to interview him on the course of events and what happened in the past year. 

Episode Highlights:

• 00.42: This is our second year in review, and Jason has done over 200 podcasts now in the fintech space. No one in the country understands the Fintech landscape better than you, says Guy
• 04.08 Jason says that data tells other institutions about who it is you are. That data allows the current bank or financial institution to make decisions regarding services and products and other things that you can offer you. 
• 06.10: We need to think about the ability to create technology that truly is client-centric in its focus, and to do that, we need to be able to access the data securely and effectively. 
• 10.52: Swift data is a platform for securely storing your data. With this, if you have open banking, you can store everything. You could technically leave it in the institution connecting institutions or can extract it and keep it yourself, says Jason.
• 20.38: Jason says Holistiplan came on the scene couple of years ago. It takes up pdfs with a tax return, spits out a user-friendly report, let people know what’s going on with the tax return, and is also a helpful tool for demonstrating value and helping clients.
• 24.51: Microsoft working on HoloLens doesn’t even have monitors anymore. This is where they headsets and have monitors rendered in front of them.
• 28.31: The difference between fractional ownership and blockchain is that blockchain being divisible means that they have to take zero-risk by its nature. 
• 30.08: When you think about your choices as an owner of a real estate property or your own home for accessing the capital within that property, it is minimal borrowing, says Jason.
• 31.22: Diversification can own fractional real estate worldwide, and it’s finally coming to markets and finally coming true, says the guy.

3 Key Highlights

1. Guy asks Jason, you had a podcast with a company called Flinks, who are they, and who are some of the other prominent players in the open banking space? 
2. People talk about as mass proliferated Bitcoin is. However, there is still friction and anything that reduces friction access for the common person or investment accounts or whatever it is, gets the rewards, says Jason.
3. NFT, Non-fungible tokens are proof of ownership of something on a blockchain. So, in theory, your house could be NFT, says Jason.

Tweetable Quotes

• “In Swift data technically, the network verifies the data amongst itself and its validity. Theoretically, it is possible for something that we call disclosure list disclosure.” – Jason
• “Holistiplan technology is now far more accessible and far more accurate than standard things, especially the tax forms.” – Jason
• “The governments worldwide need to empower consumers, protect them, and encourage competition. The rates to our data should be enshrined into law.” – Jason

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• Woodgate.com – Sponsor
• Podcast Editing

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to James Rockwood, founder, and CEO of Capintel. Capintel is an investment analytics company that tells you how your performance looks and does all kinds of proposal building, automation, and team collaboration tools that reduce the heavy lifting and let us go back to focusing more time on what matters that’s the one on one time with our clients. 

Episode Highlights:

• 00.42: Capintel is an investment comparison proposal platform for financial advisors that help them organize how they present and pitch investment products to their customers. 
• 06.15: Jason says that industry people focus on demonstrating how smart they are to the client instead of speaking their language.
• 09.00: Most advisors deal with tons of different metrics and data. They have complex reasons for recommending fund A versus fund B or portfolio A versus portfolio B, says James. 
• 11.40: One of the bigger things going on around the world is they move towards even greater transparency and regulatory reform around any number of things, says Jason.
• 16.08: Client focus forms will be good for the industry. It will be excellent once we get through the specificity of understanding, like how much information is enough, says James.
• 21.41: It is interesting how in the 80s, the advisors had all the access, and now you could argue that retail clients have slightly more access because they can now access these random securities like NFTs in crypto, says James.
• 26.00: In 2022, Canadian fintech startups will be able to submit a three to five-minute video to pitch their idea. We will provide them with access or select companies with slightly used MacBook Pros and then introductions to some of our Angel investors, says James.

3 Key Highlights:

1. Capintel has a product management component where you can build your models. Then, you will organize it the way you want and make that into capital by entering the codes, the fund tickers, and allocations.
2. Financial goals are not met with a single financial product. Instead, it is a combination of financial products like a mixture of investments, insurance, willingness, date planning all over the place, says James.
3. The amount of change required in regulation for financial advisors from a reporting perspective or a record-keeping perspective is massive and shouldn’t be underestimated. In addition, people had to make huge changes to their day-to-day workflow to be able to do it.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “Being able to strike the right balance between informative and easily digestible is hard. Simplicity itself is a beautiful art but difficult.” – Jason
• “We are excited to be trying to build up more advisors’ abilities to address that holistic wealth problem because it will be a combination of the advisor’s judgment and knowledge of the client.” – James
• “People will be looking more and more for broader-based advice instead of Hollistic traditional investment management role.” - James

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• Woodgate.com – Sponsor
• James Rockwood – Linkedin 
• Podcast Editing

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Deven Hurt about the company Prediction strike of which Deven is the CEO and Co-Founder. Prediction Strike is a sports betting platform that treats athletes like stocks.

Episode Highlights:

• 00.45: Deven says, prediction strike is a sports stock market that allows users to buy and sell shares of athletes as if they were stocks. He said that they want people to start feeling like they are investing in players and using their sports knowledge as an investment.
• 08.06: Jason says, based on the market dynamics, you probably always will play the role of the market maker for players with liquidity below a certain level and bench players whom no one knows their first name outside of their city.
• 11.31: Jason affirms, as you guys are creating a market price, there will be some transparency in how you do it and specifically in the earnings. 
• 19.26: Deven says we have started to work on partnering with athletes, and a big thing that we have told all the athletes is we want you to do whatever you want to do. 
• 21.20: Deven explains that they are doing NFL, NBA, UFC right now, which has been exciting, and the next phase is going to be expanding esports. They have baseball and global soccer or global football as the priority.
• 23.05: Academics will be very curious to see how market dynamics play out and the number of papers just being written off to see your behavior in terms of valuation and market clearing, says Jason.
• 25.23: Jason asks, if you had one wish you could change in your company or industry as a whole, what would it be?
• 28.44: Jason says, in Prediction strike, if you are willing to put the money in, you can have whatever draft team you ever want regardless of who else is playing the game, and that’s a key differentiator. 

3 Key Highlights

1. Deven explains how prediction strike works and how it is different from other sports betting options out there.
2. The interesting thing about traditional fantasy is you can’t necessarily get access to players you want. Whereas in prediction strike, you could construct whatever team you want. You just have to be willing to pay the price to get them on your team, says Jason.
3. Athletic lives are short. In most cases, very few convert them into marketable brands that can be carried on after they retire, says Jason.

Tweetable Quotes

• “The fan perception of athletes is so funny in how that matches up with how the players play, and sometimes it doesn’t.” – Deven
• “The amount of random jets and giants players who get traded is spectacular, and it’s just because they are so dialed into that hometown and hometown effect is real.” - Deven 
• “I learned that it takes almost $200 million to go through the licensing if you want to operate as an online sports bet.” - Deven

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• Woodgate.com – Sponsor
• Deven Hurt – Linkedin | Website 
• Podcast Editing

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Steve Boms, executive director of the Financial Data and Technology Association, a.k.a. FDATA. FDATA is a global trade association started in 2013 - 2014 in the UK.

Episode Highlights:

• 05.38: Steve says, you don’t need to understand the mechanism of how electricity is traveling from the power plant through the transformer into your house. Similarly, we have to think about open banking. But you need to know what happens if something goes wrong.
• 07.52: Open banking is all about competition, and it is all about a more inclusive, more accessible financial services system that meets you as the consumer where you are rather than it being dictated to you by a large financial institution. 
• 17.45: Steve says you can let the industry figure out the standard and the technology to make it work. And this is how the third-party bank gets approved to play in the sandbox. 
• 18.31: Home automation is nowhere near what it could be because you have to worry about these things, says Jason.
• 19.25: If you talk to the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK, some of the regulators that were part of the implementation of this will be the first to tell you that we didn’t get this all correct, and we knew we weren’t going to get it all correct, says Steve.
• 25.18: The future of any large bank, if they are smart enough, is to adopt the revolution to becoming banking as a service platform as fast as humanly possible to seize that opportunity. But executives aren’t rewarded for that kind of innovative thinking and banking unfortunate traditionally, says Jason.

3 Key Points:

1. Open banking is the digitization of financial services. It is a free and competitive marketplace for a consumer to decide which service provider you want to choose and provide you with the product or financial service. That service provider can be a bank, or it can be a nonbank.
2. Steve says that the President of the United States earlier this year put out an executive order on competition, and this was one of the things he called out that even in the US, where you have 10,000 financial institutions and thousands of fintech, there is still not enough competition and we are not meeting the promise of just how innovative, and competitive this marketplace could be. We need to have open banking, and the government will have to mandate it. 
3. In Canada, a lot of our group’s conversations with the Department of Finance have been around keeping the Canadian financial services regime competitive against Europe and the UK, as they are catapulting ahead on open banking, and Canada hasn’t.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “In theory, the government only has one concern: what is the best case for our constituents and our economy more broadly, and our view is that data is the best outcome.” – Steve
• “Never underestimate an institution’s ability to be spiteful if it’s not in their best interest to be cooperative, and this is where legislation matters.” – Jason
• “When you bring in a set of companies or use cases that are not regulated or supervised to the extent that a large national financial institution’s initial reaction is this is unsafe.” - Steve

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• Woodgate.com – Sponsor
• Steve Boms – Website 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s episode is a recording of a brief intro that Jason gave to the recent Canadian advisor Tech Expo. It was the first financial advisor technology expo of its type in Canada, and that was put on by the Financial planning association Canada, for which Jason is the President.

Episode Highlights:

• 00.56: Digital transformation is about taking your practice and digitizing it, and reaping the benefits of digitization, efficiency, scalability, and hands-on experiences for both you and your consumer.
• 01.12: Which of us doesn’t want to do the less heavy lifting, make more money, and provide clients?
• 02.06 There are always opportunities around the outskirts of core technologies, and you need to treat your business like a business and think about how you can enhance it. 
• 02.35: The dealers are too busy worrying about the mass audience in core technologies. So they are not going to get things like your booking scheduling systems. 
• 03.01: If you don’t know what is out there in the marketplace or what others have done, it is tough to figure out what you are going to do for yourself. 
• 4.00 Technology is meant to support your business strategy. Don’t go looking for the solution to your problem if you haven’t figured out your problem correctly. 
• 5.57: Once you have identified what you do, look for repetitive things that take a lot of time and keep you away from facing clients. Because those are the ones that are the most useful to automate basically, and those are the ones that are most likely to have solutions. 
• 07.07 Most important is to invest the time to learn and onboard the technology. Set aside time to understand the technology and then realize it so much and so well that you can turn around and train your staff on it.
• 11.08: The day tomorrow and the next day are all about you. It’s all about technologies that you can choose and deliver.

3 Key Points:

1. The first tip is that you need to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset to start the visual transformation, says Jason.
2. There are tools for the problems that are better handled through technology than by human beings. Human beings are good at figuring out complex relationships between things.
3. Advisors digitized can transfer over all their systems with a couple of usernames, and everything is done at a premium.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “There are so many little solutions out there that cost a couple of dollars per month to solve problems that are taking hours per week away from you.”
• “Some advisors don’t listen to you, steal you using E signature, don’t have a CRM, and don’t care about innovating any other stuff.”

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• Woodgate.com – Sponsor
• Podcast Editing

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Gavin Spitzner, President of Wealth Consulting Partners. Gavin is one of the more recognized fintech experts in the US that consults with significant players on the state of their advisor technology and its future development. 

Episode Highlights:

• 5.58: Gavin says it is not an institutionalized legacy in terms of how we ensure that we are delivering a client-centric and advice-oriented relationship where it always puts client interests first, and we are here to help and guide them. 
• 8.57 Gavin suggests if you look at the research when clients leave, it's not about performance. It's all about the technology and communication you are doing.
• 10.29: Jason inquires, what are the table stakes you think exist now and what are the better implementations over top of that? 
• 11.42: Gavin recommends, "You have to make some of the decisions around what is high up on the value chain that I can uniquely bring value to and what else could I automate to digital engagement." 
• 15.01: Jason suggests that you have to take a client-centric approach when you think of a plan-centric approach. 
• 25.09: Automated intelligence overlays on top of CRM's because it's hard for companies to do many things well, and we can find some of the more specialized firms that are deep diving into it.
• 27.22: Just because the software says do this doesn't mean that it matches the human being, says Jason.
• 30.21: The entire industry is better off by niche development because you can cater to a small group of people incredibly well at a deeper level.
• 33.00: The growth rates for direct indexing come from a smaller base, depending on how it is measured, it will be off the charts.
• 34.52: Gavin says that if you educate your client, you will not focus on your custodial statement. You are going to focus on your performance report, which is about you and your goals.
• 36.23: With the real aspects of COVID and changes in employment, whether voluntary or involuntary, everyone's life is turned upside down to some degree. 
• 38.21: Advisors can guide clients to look at different work arrangements to take advantage of the wealth they have accumulated and permit them to spend more and do things differently when they can still take advantage of it. 

3 Key Points 

1. Gavin shares how people came to advisors in the old days because it was the only way to access the markets or the information.
2. Gavin points out that we need to have a better digital engagement process, but the traditional portals out there do not shape or make a match.
3. Jason explains how the advisors who tend to focus in concentrated niches are growing at far faster rates than the advisors we need.

Tweetable Quotes

• "The role of technology or data to engage with clients and make a meaningful impact on their lives motivates me." – Gavin
• "You can't go back to the old premise if you discover what it means going forward." – Jason
• "You are going to be more knowledgeable if you believe in technology and handle financial issues leading with planning and definition." - Gavin

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira's Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedIn
• Woodgate.com – Sponsor
• Gavin Spitzner – LinkedIn 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Kevin Levitt; he is the Director of Industry and Business Development for Financial Services for Nvidia. The company is one of the driving forces behind the technology powering artificial intelligence today.

Episode Highlights:

00.38: Nvidia is a company that was started about 30 years ago almost, and they have really pioneered the use of graphics processing units.

08.12: What Jason has seen in academic studies is more accurate FICO scores in terms of calculating the probability of default.

09.58 Jason asks, “What is the natural type of function for artificial intelligence disturbing the market today like what is the commonality around the things is replacing?

10.20: Kevin says in the example of Siri virtual assistant or chatbot. In the context of financial services that are helping us to transfer a balance or to understand what our balance is, or pay a bill, it goes from there to assist the call center agent where we have a more complex problem. With the call center and the agent, the AI is actually complimenting human assistants with information.

18.30: Large banks are trying to figure out how to build an enterprise AI capability, AI infrastructure to support the migration from a handful of AI-enabled applications up to 100s.

22.10: Jason inquires, “What is the kind of cool use cases you see being drummed up and coming forward going in the future?” 

26.30: Kevin talks about the four primary players in terms of big retail, big tech, fintech and big banks, are going to be the primary competitors and if one of them is using AI to deliver a virtual assistant or chatbot and the other one is still using some form of rules-based kind of chat experience, AI one is going to win.

28.40 Jason: The technology companies choosing to come out and this is going to make everybody sharper, and everybody really focused on their value proposition and really try to eliminate friction.

35.32: NVIDIA is all about innovation and stretching, kind of the boundaries of where people thought. Computing power could go and certainly where artificial intelligence could be of benefit.

3 Key Points:

1. For the past 15 plus years, Kevin has been at the intersection of data technology and financial services.
2. The technology can enable a better customer experience across many dimensions when artificial intelligence and deep learning models that leverage natural language processing are utilized.
3. There are lots of opportunities to continually improve how AI is leveraged within any industry, including within the context of financial services.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “You can think of artificial intelligence, or AI is kind of the Super umbrella if you will, and underneath that falls a category of artificial intelligence which is machine learning.” – Kevin
• “It is not about job loss it is about job improvement, which is freeing us to do the higher-order capabilities.” – Kevin
• “There are some of the smartest people in the world that are working on financial services, and they see the power and the opportunity associated with AI.” - Kevin

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• Woodgate.com – Sponsor

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Denelle Dixon, CEO and executive director of the Stellar Development Foundation. Stellar is one of those coins that has been around for a while and has some very interesting use cases. 

Episode Highlights:

• 1.08: Dixon says that the stellar development Foundation is a nonprofit, non stock entity whose sole mission and soul focuses on developing the ecosystem around the stellar network and also shepherding the codebase for the stellar network.
• 4.33: There are lots of stable coins that are issued on stellar, and these coins are like USDC, and you can actually send the stable coin so that you don’t actually have to worry about any volatility in the cryptocurrency market itself, says Dixon.
• 8.25: The notion of having stable coins actually creates an opportunity for the stability so that you don’t actually have to worry that when you send a transaction, affirms Dixon.
• 9.03: Dixon says that we think about the financial system from where we sit, wherever that might be but it’s really hard to think about in certain countries.
• 11.34: Leaf global company has created the digital wallet that folks can use when they are crossing borders.
• 14.31: Blockchain is the fastest way to transfer money between countries with the least amount of fees and your vendors on the other side don’t necessarily need to understand that blockchain is how you got it to them because it just goes into their bank account. 
• 23.19: If you have the global network with the partners that create the on and off-ramps and then from there everyone can just build on it, and it can just grow. 
• 28.37: China is developing its centralized cryptocurrency for absolute control of their economy. They do have the great firewall that gives them the more potential than anyone else to actually shut something down.

3 Key Points:

1. The global remittance system is enormous. The amount of money crossing borders, whether it be people sending money to support people back home, or even for transactional purposes, is substantial.
2. Back in the old days of the Internet, you had a lot of Silicon Valley building for the world, and that’s actually not the way they should be. It always should be solving local problems with local solutions.
3. The beauty of blockchain is that it allows the local developers to look at the problems they see around them and fix them in ways that make sense for their communities and do so in a global network, says Dixon.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “We have come a long way, and we are now using the likes of a cryptocurrency that can transact the pennies.”- Jason
• “Blockchain creates the opportunity to truly have a global financial system that doesn’t exist today.” – Dixon
• “Not everybody does understand all the inner workings of how HTTPS works, and yet we still use the Internet every single day.” - Dixon

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• Woodgate.com – Sponsor
• Denelle Dixon: LinkedIn | Website

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's episode, Jason will talk to Brandon Chapman, founder of Advisor Flow. It is a tool that helps advisors learn more about their clients in onboarding and acquire vital information to them faster and better. 

Episode Highlights:

• 01.10: Brandon explains Advisor flow was incorporated last year. He was working on a project three years ago because he was so frustrated with using PDF and word documents to gather facts about his clients in his practice. Then, during the pandemic, it appeared every other advisor realized that pen and paper wasn't sufficient and efficient. 
• 03.40: Jason suggests if you want to see who is ready to work with it, put an obstacle in front of them. 
• 07.18: Brandon says, if a robot is emailing you to do something, it's very easy to ignore it, but if it's a human that you know is going to call you next or see you at the dinner party, there's a much higher chance you're going to do that thing.
• 09.24: Jason asks, how much of the financial industry has been around relying on frictions as a means of keeping people in place?
• 10.46: Brandon said when there was no information online, a few companies could get away with this, but the fact of the matter is that the world has shifted, and the most profitable businesses are the ones that recognize when you put the customer first and you end up doing better. 
• 18.53: Jason asks Brandon, tell us about how your first integration is gone and the feedback you've gotten from users as far.
• 20.18: Brandon shares his wish that we need more people that challenge the status quo out there, and who will own the experience they offer.
• 20.28: Jason asks, what have been the biggest challenges you encountered in getting the company to where it is today? 
• 20.47: Brandon suggests, in the tech business, if you are not making money early enough, you make a deal with the devil, which might impact the decisions that you make afterward. 

3 Key Points:

1. The paper chase is the most challenging part of the financial advisory planning process, and if you can make that process seamless, it will encourage the odds that a prospect becomes a client, says Brandon.
2. Brandon explains that any data collected in their system will feed into the advisor's CRM choice and potentially into the onboarding technology of choice, which could lead to account opening on the investment side.
3. The most important thing in a fintech is you could know especially early in life is what you are and what you're not, says Jason.

Tweetable Quotes:

• "There is a certain type of human being who's ok with turning over their entire lives to a machine." – Jason
• "Friction is not a way to win business. This is a way to get off your client base." – Jason
• "This industry requires a lot of relationship building, a lot of building trust and a lot of following through on promises." – Brandon

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira's Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedIn
• Woodgate.com – Sponsor
• Brandon – LinkedIn | Website 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason talks to Tom Carpenter and Jason Chomik from the financial data exchange which is an organization that works towards unifying data flow across different financial platforms.

Episode Highlights:

• 01.15: Tom explains that FDX is a not-for-profit organization specializing in an open banking or open fintechnical structure. They got an API that is open to use and one can freely use the API to ensure the safe exchange of data between organizations.
• 03.46: The industry could work together that you had a governance structure that levels the playing field among Fintech's, financial institutions, and aggregators so that the market could determine the best way to deliver on consumer demand, says Jason Chomik.
• 05.24: Open finance is probably the camel's nose under the tent of a broader set of use cases and a desire for consumers access, user data across a spectrum of industries, says Jason Chomik.
• 11.50: Tom points out that on boarding many institutions is complex, and it is not a light undertaking, especially when you start thinking about the different security protocols and all of the other pieces that need to go in place to make everything happen. 
• 13.43: You got a lot of adoption that you have to get before you can turn off an old technology to make the other ubiquitous, suggests Jason Chomik.
• 14.31: Jason Chomik says you got to phase a timeline for phased implementation to adopt API standards. They have seen other jurisdictions around the world that put very aggressive timelines in place on API adoption. 
• 19.19 Jason asks, you had one wish for something that could change your company or industry as a whole what could it be? 
• 19.30 Tom says his wish would probably be more data-sharing agreements signed more quickly for us to create scale quickly. 
• 21.39: No matter what type of open banking infrastructure is put in place for the system or in place around the world, the standard API is a function of all of them. 
• 25.08: Jason asks what excites you the most about what you are working on and keeps getting out of bed in the morning to keep on fighting the good fight. 

3 Key Points:

1. Jason Chomik shares why they started using available finance. They felt this is broader than banking data, and insurance, investments, and taxes are considered a wide swath of financial information.
2. The more people work with you, the more straightforward it becomes to transact within the network and the more valuable it becomes.
3. Jason Chomik says, from a success standpoint they noticed, how many consumer accounts have been transitioned from credential-based access to the FDX API. 

Tweetable Quotes:

• "Tom created a platform for companies with their different systems" – Jason Pereira
• "It's the biggest challenge to making sure that both the Fintech's and the banks are walking to the same drum because all have the same end goal." - Tom
• "Open banking is one of the single most important business issues if not data rights issues in the marketplace today." - Jason Pereira

Resources Mentioned:

• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedIn
• Woodgate.com – Sponsor
• Tom Carpenter – Linkedin
• Jason Chomik – Linkedin 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.