Fintech Impact

During this 36th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira interviews Ben Harrison, Partner and Head of LP

Engagement & Partnerships at Portag3 Ventures, one of the top venture capital firms in the

fintech space.

● 00:56 – Portag3 is made of two funds that handle areas like blockchain and A.I..

● 02:19 – Ben has just over 16 years with Great West Life.

● 05:08 – Financial customers want the same user experience that they are familiar with from Amazon and Google.

● 10:28 – In order to have a better understanding of the change that is happening, invest in and partner with those that are doing it.

● 13:31 – The cost of starting a start-up as dropped dramatically during the last decade.

● 16:12 – When start-ups get absorbed by huge institutions, the corporate culture should remain the same to maintain those talented developers.

● 20:30 – Success in Asia from an insurance company standpoint success is measured in selling 100s of 1000s or millions of insurance policies in a year.

● 23:22 – When there are major investments involved, there are broad power shifts.

● 24:40 – What is the platform that is going to streamline blockchain.

● 27:00 – Portag3 Ventures invests in great, talented people in the founders and high comfort with the technology, performance, and scalability.

● 29:53 – Ben Harrison is most excited about seeing the interest in the bigger companies being willing to have partnerships.

3 Key Points:

1. Portag3 Ventures’s first fund was made up of Power Financial, Great West Life, andIGM.

2. Approximately, 10 years ago the average price of launching a start-up company was $5 million, now it is about $500,000 dollars.

3. To adapt to change and stay ahead of the curve—you have to be willing to partner up.

Tweetable Quotes:

- “Portag3 is an early stage venture fund.” – Ben Harrison.

- “Customers just expect now the types of experiences that they receive from Google or Amazon or Netflix.” – Ben Harrison.

- “So it’s not so much that fintech is going to topple the business world, it’s now questions about these big platform tech players.” – Ben Harrison.

Resources Mentioned:

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

● Ben Harrison – LinkedIn for Ben Harrison

● Portag3 Ventures – Website for Portag3 Ventures

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During this 35th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira interviews Chad Davis, the Co-Founder of LiveCA, which is an accounting firm rather than a fintech. What makes LiveCA an excellent company to talk about on Fintech Impact is that it is a next generation company with no fixed address, it has about 60 employees from all around the world, and it communicates and renders their service offers using a number of technology tools and fintech tools—some that have been featured on previous episodes of this show.

●01:31 – LiveCA focuses on providing clients with technology and tax services.

●03:01 – Chad, his wife, and their children used to live in the Cayman Islands.

●05:51 – LiveCA have about 50-60 people working remotely without any central office.

●09:07 – Slack, Zoom, the Google suite of apps, Collage, and Humi are some of the tech tools for communication and human resources.

●10:10 – LiveCA offers tax, standard year-end work, United States consulting, mergers, treasury and accounts payable, bookkeeping, and aggregating multiple digital payment services.

●14:27 – You have to have key people that believe in what you do.

●16:33 – The 80% or 90% of LiveCA ex-employees that have left tend to move on to competitors or start their own firms.

●17:27 – You need support and controlled growth to not overextend too fast.

●20:00 – Living in an RV with his family and being flexible allows him to “grow smart.”

●22:20 – Chad Davis is excited about moving into a trainer role and creating opportunities for the team to try new things in a supported environment.

3 Key Points:

1. Services that LiveCA Tax, standard year-end work, Unite States consulting, mergers, treasury and accounts payable, bookkeeping, and aggregating multiple digital payment services.

2. Xero is an accounting system that LiveCA prefers.

3. Controlled growth is important to avoid watering down your services and spreading your value too thin.

Tweetable Quotes:

-“At the end of the day, we just put ourselves in everybody’s shoes.” – Chad Davis

-“We just try to remove the risk of people saying ‘yes’ to working with us. We start removing things like set-up fees and hourly rates, the conversations just start flowing really naturally” – Chad Davis

-“For us, that in-person social interaction with cues that you see in body language and tone, you really can’t see when you are working virtually.” – Chad Davis

Resources Mentioned:

●LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

●Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

●Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

●Chad Davis – LinkedIn for Chad Davis

●LiveCA LLP– Website for LiveCA LLP

●@ChadDavis – Twitter for Chad Davis

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

During this 34th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira interviews Tea Nicola, CEO, and Co-Founder of Wealth Bar. Wealth Bar is both a robo adviser and robo planner in Canada that works to provide integrated planning and investment solutions to clients. Learn the story behind this fintech company, what they are offering present and future clients, and what it took to bring this company to fruition.

●     00:53 – WealthBar doesn’t have physical offices—everything is done online or over the phone.

●     01:26 – Tea earned her Electrical Engineering degree and interned at Nicola Wealth Management in Vancouver.

●     02:10 – She worked as a financial advisor for several years.

●     05:26 – WealthBar’s efficiencies help lower the cost to pass the savings to the consumer.

●     08:05 – Clients can onboard themselves and deposit money without an advisor. 

●     09:48 – One of the biggest differences between WealthBar and their competitors is the level of financial planning that WealthBar does.

●     11:36 – On the accumulation side, WealthBar has a module built into their website where users can enter basic information and see where savings will take them.

●     13:26 – There is full inside and outside sales support for financial advisors.

●     20:21 – Proper financial advisement takes education on the advisor and client side.

●     21:36 – There are still people that want advisement even if they could do it themselves.

●     22:06 – WealthBar currently has a team of 30 people based in Vancouver.

●     22:48 – Changing the way that advisors work with their clients and represent their professionalism are the opportunities that Tea is most excited about.

3 Key Points:

1. Clients can onboard themselves and deposit money without an advisor. 

2. WealthBar offers a conversation with an advisor within the first five seconds that you are on the website, and again within the first 20 seconds when you sign up.

3. All of WealthBar’s client-facing portfolio managers are also CFPs, accommodating areas like retirement planning and estate planning.

Tweetable Quotes:

-     “WealthBar is one of Canada’s leading robo advisers, and by robo advisor we mean that we do everything a traditional financial adviser would do.” – Tea Nicola.

-     “People don’t have a very high understanding of finances at all, and often times they just need that reassurance.” – Tea Nicola.

-     “For the more complex financial planning we actually use Snap Projections.” – Tea Nicola.

Resources Mentioned:

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

● Tea Nicola – LinkedIn for Tea Nicola

● WealthBar – Website for WealthBar

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During this 33th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Johnathan Holland, the Founder and CEO of Curexe, that provides tools for enabling online foreign exchange transactions at reasonable rates—including a new product that will allow users to take payment with Interac.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

●     00:55 – Curexe assists businesses to send and receive money.

●     01:34 – Johnathan Holland started Curexe four years ago.

●     02:59 – He looked at how Canadian banking hadn’t properly connected to

                    technology yet.

●     04:33 – He started listening to motivational speeches on YouTube for inspiration.

●     05:48 – He began working with his CTO and got into a Canadian entrepreneurial

                    leadership program called The Next 36.

●     09:16 – Johnathan came to Toronto from St. Catharines.

●     10:22 – Curexe only charges a flat rate of 1% to send money out, 2% to accept

                    money.

●     11:18 – Curexe is targeting small business owners looking to scale globally.

●     12:45 – Curexe has a blog with content to capture customers and provide value.

●     14:02 – Their new product is a debit card called SmartPay.

●     19:17 – Curexe handles about 20 currencies.

●     21:43 – The hurdles have been things like it taking 2 and a half years to convince

                    a bank to give them a merchant account for a money service business.

●     26:05 – You have to be resourceful and hustle.

●     28:20 – Have a differentiating product that is valuable to get customers and scale

                    up.

●     30:38 – The long term vision for Curexe is showing Canadians that businesses can

                    scale globally to be the next PayPal.

●     33:29 – Johnathan Holland is excited about forcing banking to change to creating

                    more value and a smoother experience.

3 Key Points:

1. You aren’t going to know looking forward how it is all going to work out…but you can

   connect the dots when you look back.

2. Research shows the U.S. and Canadian income per capita are constantly diverging

   because Canada isn’t building the big YouTubes and Googles of the world in terms of

   businesses.

3. Your network is the biggest thing.

Tweetable Quotes:

-     “We (Curexe) help businesses that need to send and receive money.” – Johnathan

       Holland.

-     “If you are a business owner and you need to send money to a supplier in another

       country, we (Curexe) can help you do that right from our online platform, for a 

       cheaper price tag than what a bank would typically charge.” – Johnathan Holland.

-      “Accepting money would be via invoice or in an online checkout, which is

       accentually a direct debit way of paying without ever leaving your online store.” –

       Johnathan Holland.

Resources Mentioned:

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

● Johnathan Holland – LinkedIn for Johnathan Holland

● Curexe – Website for Curexe 

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

During this 32nd episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira interviews Randy Cass, the CEO, Founder, and Portfolio Manager of Nest Wealth. Nest Wealth is the second largest robo adviser in Canada, and a platform provider of digital solutions for the client onboarding experience in asset management. The conversation digs into what has led Randy Cass to creating Nest Wealth, how the company has evolved and expanded, and how they fit into the financial space in Canada.

●01:11 – Nest Wealth helps firms, individuals, even employers move whatever process they’ve been using historically and allows them to run it all digitally in the B2B space.

●02:07 – Randy decided he didn’t want to be a lawyer and later started trading currencies derivatives at TDSI.

●05:15 – He performed a hosting job on BNN for several years with guests that were CEOs, CFOs, and also the heads of regulatory bodies.

●07:00 – Nest Wealth was originally started as a direct-to-consumer robo advisor.

●07:47 – When compressed margins arise, it becomes about getting more efficient in your operation and scaling your operations above past levels.

●12:00 – All on a single stack, Nest Wealth is a Sass-based company and a licensed product that controls their technology.

●14:26 – A large financial institution wanted to by Nest Wealth in the past.

●17:58 – The average consumer on the direct-to-consumer side of Nest Wealth:

78% of consumers have done multiple transfer-in assets in the first six months.

●19:00 – Nest Wealth puts more control of the financial process on consumers.

●25:03 – In 2013, Nest Wealth launched in the midst of the media saying there will never be a digital advisor in Canada.

●27:39 – The financial advisement space isn’t disappearing because of robo advisors, it just needs to continue to focus on adding value.

●34:03 – Customers are generally open to change, especially when it benefits them.

●40:14 – Nest Wealth is currently the only direct-to-consumer platform with a flat fixed fee regardless of how much someone puts into their account.

●43:01 – Randy Cass is most excited about driving transparency and better creating outcomes for investors.

3 Key Points:

1. On the direct-to-consumer side of Nest Wealth, 78% of consumers have done multiple transfer-ins of assets in the first six months.

2.The average account balance of assets contributed to an account doubles in the first six months from the initial contribution.

3.The average client on Nest Wealth has an account of about $175,000.

Tweetable Quotes:

-“Think of us (Nest Wealth) as an engine that powers digital wealth.” – Randy Cass.

-“I left to start Nest Wealth as a direct-to-consumer robo advisor.” – Randy Cass.

-“Once there is a substitutable similar product in the marketplace, you’re going to

have price competition and margin compression throughout the entire industry.”– Randy Cass.

Resources Mentioned:

●LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

●Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

●Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

●Randy Cass – LinkedIn for Randy Cass

●@Randy_Cass – Twitter for Randy Cass

●Nest Wealth – Website for Nest Wealth

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

In this 31st episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira interviews Kesem Frank, Co-Founder, and COO of Nuco, a company that helps implement blockchain technology for financial service companies—in banking and securities. Kesem will speak about his career in Nuco, the effects of the blockchain, and cryptocurrencies, of which he has his own.

●     01:00: – Kesem started Nuco with two partners: Matthew Spoke and Jin Tu.

●     02:30: – Nuco was faced with the question of serving or building?

●     03:24: – He was working in technology, but went to school for law and business.

●     08:12: – Blockchain adds a new way to validate data.

●     12:09: – Cuts currently take 16-19 days to reconcile where the problem occurred.

●     14:19: – Blockchain is like a universal ledger to help stakeholders know the truth of what is happening in the value chain.

●     18:30: – The future of blockchain: private stake owners that have skin in the game that are going to run their own blockchain.

●     20:50: – Does the fact that I want to do business with you mean I have to blindly trust you?

●     23:09: – We have to make sure that capital markets are played fair.

●     26:09: – The Canadian Exchange likes what Nuco is doing with natural gas, and wants them to apply that to other areas and wants the inter-blockchain communication issues to be addressed.

●     29:09: – The conversation in the blockchain industry is evolving from what is the best blockchain to how do we take these excellent innovations and create one cohesive fabric that works as an ecosystem.

●     32:09: – A relay is an intermediary that steps in between two blockchains and mitigates between them—but isn’t a good solution.

●     36:40: – Bitcoin has had slow adoption in North American countries.

●     39:09: – Aion is a non-for-profit blockchain organization while Nuco has become its own business.

●     42:50: – The difference between the current age of platforms is not as fair as decentralization.

3 Key Points:

1. The trust engine was most crucial to Kesem Frank with blockchain.

2. How do you go to market where you don’t already do business?

3. A blockchain should be what goes in between any two blockchains.

Tweetable Quotes:

           -   “How do you actually bring it (blockchain) to a business and create a return that you

                could quantify?” – Kesem Frank.

           -   “When a cut happens it takes the exchange 16-19 days to figure and reconcile who

                 dropped the ball.” – Kesem Frank.

           -   “(Blockchain) Universal ledger that is helping all of these fragmented multitude of

                stakeholders kind of know what is true and what’s not.” – Kesem Frank.

Resources Mentioned:

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

● https://www.finally.technology/ – Website for Finally Technology

● Kesem Frank – LinkedIn for Kesem Frank

● Twitter – Kesem Frank’s Twitter 

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

In this 30th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira interviews Amelia Young the Founder of Upside Consulting, which works within the fintech space, advising enterprises on how they can meet the challenges of the technology world and how it impacts finance.

●     00:49 – Amelia founded the Upside Consulting firm about 12 years ago

●     01:33 – She started off her career an equity analyst and trader, did investor relations, and ended up in corporate strategy.

●     04:15 – The biases that are relevant to our financial well-being: Choice Overload, Doing Nothing, The Hangover Principle.

●     08:14 – She got involved in fintech because it opens up a wealth of tools to simplify the process.

●     13:14 – Amelia is an Executive in Residence with the Scotia Bank Digital Banking Lab.

●     16:20 – Open Banking is that consumer bank information is their own property and that they have the right to share their information with who they want.

●     28:51 – Amelia completed a substantial research project on Millennials and Investing for the OSC.

●     38:06 – If you don’t have at least $100,000 for financial management, it is hard to find an advisor to spend the time with you.

●     39:40 – Complete Financial Advice: Insight into where you money is going, Savings Nudges, Goal Setting, and Construction and Maintenance of an Asset.

●     43:31 – People that live in the wealth business tend not to think about daily banking.

●     45:31 – She is excited about fintech’s potential to assist Canadian’s financial well-being.

●     48:54 – Financial literacy is highly important to teach kids and everyone in general.

3 Key Points:

1. Biases that effect our financial wellbeing:

2. The biases that are relevant to our financial well-being: Choice Overload, Doing Nothing, The Hangover Principle.

3. China is by far the world leader in fintech adoption and Canada was third from the bottom.

Tweetable Quotes:

-     “Our goal is to help our clients benefit from the transformation of the wealth

       management industry.” – Amelia Young.

-     “Open banking, if done properly, should be more secure. But, people need to really

       get under the covers and understand what is involved in these things to get that.” –

       Amelia Young.

-     “Canada was one of the first adopters of contactless payment.” – Amelia Young.

Resources Mentioned:

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

● LinkedIn – Ameilia Young’s LinkedIn

● Upside Consulting – Website for Upside Consulting

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

In this 29th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira interviews Danish Yusef, the CEO and Co-Founder of Zensurance, a Canadian organization that manages the insurance needs of startups and small businesses.

●     01:09: – Zensurance helps small business manage and curate their insurance affairs.

●     01:40: – Danish is a software engineer by trade, and worked as a developer at IBM.

●     03:50: – Most people in the insurance industry have grown up in the industry— change is slow.

●     05:15: – These days you can’t buy stock in insurance companies.

●     07:30: – Zensurance is building internal risk models to assess the risk of a business type based on factors like industry, location, and size.

●     10:40: – Zensurance started with technology companies, then they added construction, health care, consultants, cannabis, and sports—general liability and cyber insurance are popular policies.

●     13:26: – Auto insurance could phase out in the next 10-15 years.

●     21:10: – Zensurance currently works with about 25 insurance companies.

●     26:03: – The Ryerson DMZ growth accelerator program was beneficial to Zensurance, and November 2016 was when the first round of funding came through.

●     30:57: – The Zensurance team is about 17 people, only in Ontario and Alberta at the moment, and have helped over 5,000 businesses.

●     32:15: – Danish is excited about the possibility of being able to automate advice.

3 Key Points:

1. A small $500 insurance policy could be touched by eight different people before its

   issued.

2. Two-thirds of Zensurance customers by their services after hours.

3. Zensurance started with technology companies, then they added

   construction, health care, consultants, cannabis, and sports.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “Zensurance helps small business manage their insurance.” – Danish Yusef.
•  “We (Zensurance) work in the property and casualty insurance space, not the life, and health and benefits.” – Danish Yusef.
• “Auto insurance is probably going to go away in 10 or 15 years. So the industry is betting on cyber security taking the place of auto insurance, because half of all premiums are on the auto side.” – Danish Yusef.

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• https://www.finally.technology/ – Website for Finally Technology
• Danish Yusef – LinkedIn for Danish Yusef
• Twitter – Twitter for Danish Yusef
• Zensurance – Website for Zensurance

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

In this 28th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira interviews Eva Wong, the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Borrowwell. As a Canadian credit score and lending recommendation engine, Borrowwell helps people manage their credit score and gives them advice on how to apply for credit cards and other solutions to improve their credit.

●     01:14 – Borrowwell was the first company to give Canadians their credit scores for free.

●     02:07 – Eva Wong doesn’t come from financial or business background.

●     04:20 – When you carry a balance on a credit card you are actually borrowing money on their previous purchases but on every purchase after that—at over 20%.

●     04:50 – Borrowwell offers loans from ($1,000-35,000) online that can be customized interest rate (under 6% into the mid-20%) based on their credit score.

●     07:00 – They are funded by Equitable Bank, a few angel investors, and VCs that include White Star Capital and Portage.

●     09:21 – Many people are unfamiliar with their credit file and advice.

●     13:11 – They currently have 45 teams members in Toronto after starting 3 years ago and have over 500,000 members that they serve.

●     14:47 – They work with about 40 partners and most of the largest banks.

●     18:09 – Factors for determining interest rates for their loans include: credit scores, debt service ratio, credit utilization, and the loan amount.

●     20:56 – Information is updated once a month.

●     22:54 – Diversity is slowing improving.

●     26:00 – Eva is excited about the impact that Borrowwell is having.

3 Key Points:

1. Borrowwell helps consumers by giving them a free credit score, offering a loan product, along with credit advice.

2. Borrowwell offers a loan product online that can be customized interest rate (under 6% into the mid-20%) based on their credit score.

3. There are currently 45 teams members in Toronto working for Borrowwell and over 500,000 members that they serve.

Tweetable Quotes:

-     “At Borrowwell, our mission is to help Canadians make great decisions and credit.” – Eva Wong.

-     “If you look at bank profits by country…if you look after China Japan, and the U.S., all of which have much, much larger populations than Canada, Canada is the next.” – Eva Wong.

-     “We just crossed 500,000 members, which we think makes us one of the largest Fintech companies in Canada. ”– Eva Wong. 

Resources Mentioned:

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

● Eva Wong – LinkedIn for Eva Wong

● @eva_toronto – Twitter for Eva Wong

● Borrowwell – Website for Borrowwell

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

In this 27th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira interviews Davyde Wachell, a Stanford graduate in artificial intelligence and the CEO of Responsive AI. 

●   01:26 – The integral trust of clients comes from: service excellence and actionable insights. 

●   02:30 – Davyde studied AI before it became overwhelmingly popular. 

●   03:20 – Responsive AI identifies through aspects of who the client is or where they are in their life, that could be acted on to help both the client themselves and the enterprise serving the client.

●   08:50 – Davyde believes that Canadian institutions and culture have a specific way of looking at innovation, which Is very consensus-driven 

●   11:16 – 2017 and 2018 were the years of “fake news.”

●   17:25 – How do you make sure people live up to the policy?

●   18:41 – The future for the company is to see how wealth management can add value for clients and financial advisors. 

●   20:14 – Process automation and AI create the chance to create better outcomes and push away tasks that slow down the workflow. 

●   21:25 – Human beings using AI tools will outperform raw AI and raw human beings. 

●   26:17 – Davyde foresees that the AI hype will calm down in the next three years and people will realize transfer learning and complex heterogeneous problems aren’t easily solved with AI.

3 Key Points:

1. The integral trust of clients comes from: service excellence and actionable insights. 

2. Responsive AI technology is only for wealth management serving mass affluent and high net worth clients. 

3. Humans that use AI tools will outperform raw AI and raw humans. 

Tweetable Quotes:

-   “Those of us tracking wealth tech know that digital is a big story, and it’s expected to reach $4.6 trillion by 2022.” – Davyde Wachell. 

-   “Wealth is built on trust. And our clients will trust us when we serve them well and they feel taken care of, and when they trust our judgement.” – Davyde Wachell.

-   “What our AI looks at is identifying through aspects of who the client is or where they are in their life, that could be acted on to help both the client themselves and the enterprise serving the client.” – Davyde Wachell. 

Resources Mentioned:

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

● Davyde Wachell – LinkedIn for Davyde Wachell

● Responsive AI – Website for Responsive AI

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