Fintech Impact

In this 26th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira has an interview with Don Whalen, the Co-Founder and CEO of PreciseFP, a Unites States-based questionnaire company. PreciseFP makes it easy for financial advisers to make custom questionnaires that integrate into various utilities.

●01:03: – PreciseFP is involved in gathering data and engaging.

●02:14: – Don started off in IT for a company called SAP.

●04:49: – PreciseFP is highly customizable for financial advisors through a secured process.

●08:14: – Advisors initially thought that clients wouldn’t fill out the questionnaires and that older people would feel alienated—neither was the case.

●14:47: – PreciseFP’sonly competition is “Google Docs, paper, and PDF.”

●15:35: – Canada, United States, and the United Kingdom are among locations with PreciseFP access.

●18:50: – Version 5: simplifying the interface, client surveys, more template library content, and IPS.

●21:42: – The current price for PreciseFP is $60 a month for a one-user seat and ID sharing isn’t allowed—$30 per additional user.

●26:09: – The company has 10 members, and mostly are developers.

●27:11: – Don is excited about talking to advisors, and listening to the way PreciseFP has transformed their business.

3 Key Points:

1.PreciseFP is a data gathering and a client engagement platform that has been around for 12 years.

2.Two initial fears of PreciseFP that proved to be wrong: clients wouldn’t fill it out and older people wouldn’t want to use it.

3. Version 5 of PreciseFP will have data quality measures.

Tweetable Quotes:

-“The power of our system, of our platform, the advisor can make the experience custom.”– Don Whalen.

-“We have to keep that client data complete, but also current.”– Don Whalen.

-“I would steer advisors away from our competition, which at the end of the day, is Google Docs, paper, and PDF.”–Don Whalen.

Resources Mentioned:

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

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

●Don Whalen– LinkedIn for Don Whalen

● PreciseFP – Website for PreciseFP

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Summary:

In this 25th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira interviews Richard Arundel, the North American General Manager for Currencycloud, that is a solution for international exchange online through a series of APIs. Richard discusses his involvement in the company and the ways in which it is expanding.

Show Notes:

●01:11 – Currencycloud offers a payment software that enables companies to optimize their payment process.

●03:01 – Currencycloud began in 2012.

●07:26 – They are a B2B company with customers that include AirHelp.

●13.27 – They charge a small percentage based on the flow.

●17:02 – Very often companies don’t know what kind of exchange fees that are being charged.

●18:02 – Obstacles that Currencycloud has faced: defining who these are, their value proposition, and how fast customers, could be serviced, and getting compliances right.

●19:39 – Compliance has been an opportunity not a threat to Currencycloud.

●23:09 – Currencycloud can send payments to pretty much any unsanctioned country, and they have local payout options in over 30 countries, and there are 40 different currencies they can currently process.

●24:51 – The size of the market and opportunity excite Richard about his industry.

3 Key Points:

1. Obstacles that Currencycloud has faced: defining who these are, their value proposition, and how fast customers, could be serviced, and getting compliances right.

2.The challenge is how to partner with banks and make customers aware that there are options.

3.Currencycloud can send payments to pretty much any unsanctioned country, and they have local payout options in over 30 countries, and there are 40 different currencies they can currently process.

Tweetable Quotes:

-“If I am giving up the payment process to these banks or to these other third-party people, then I lose complete control over a.) my customer experience and b.) the cost for the customer, which also affects their revenue.” – Richard Arundel.

-“There are companies out there that charge 2.75% or 5%. But often you don’t know what you’re being charged.”– Richard Arundel.

-“When we originally set the company (Currencycloud) up, Fintech was really just a buzzword. But now it’s I guess more of a movement, more of a thing. We were lucky enough that we were dealing with some really interesting customers from day one.”– Richard Arundel.

Resources Mentioned:

●LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

●Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

●Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

●Richard Arundel – LinkedIn page for Richard Arundel

●Currencycloud – Website for Currencycloud

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

Summary:

In this 24th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira interviews Charlie Conron, the CTO, and Co-Founder of Life Design Analysis, an online tool for analysis and illustration of different insurance policies and products available to customers. Life Design Analysis is both a sales tool and tracking tool that allows financial advisors to track their policies and mine the data.

Show Notes:

●01:09 – LDA is designed to help advisors service existing policyholders as well as present new opportunities.

●01:44 –Charlie Conron went to school for mechanical engineering and has been self-taught in coding.

●05:00 – LDA noticed an opportunity to streamline the big pool of fragmented data that was available.

●11:10 – LDA has some Whole Life capability in the system and has built an interface with every carrier software.

●13:23 – Ways LDA clients typically use their software: the PDF for digital report, reports on laptops or tablets, and a sharable proposal as a leave-behind piece.

●18:04 –LDA has built an easy way to request from the carriers to get information for inforce policies.

●20:16 – About five carriers have kits feeds for inforce data.

●24:23 – Life Design Analysis is working on integrations with Cronos, Blue Sun, and Razor Plan.

●25:21 – The LDA team is approaching 10 members with people in London Ontario, Toronto, and in British Columbia.

●26:09 –The biggest challenges have been the cooperation of some industry partners, and the quality of data.

●32:22 – Charlie is excited about the education about robots and the consumer experience getting smoother.

3 Key Points:

1. Charlie Conron’s stepfather Larry Kinlin, the Founder of Life Design Analysis, is a 50+financial veteran.

2. Life Design Analysis solves the problems of how to present insurance so it’s more understandable to the consumer and they offer sales and compliance options for advisors. 

3.The ways LDA clients typically use their software: the PDF for digital report, reports on laptops or tablets, and a sharable proposal as a leave-behind piece.

Tweetable Quotes:

-“We (LDA) really wanted to be your go-to software for the complete insurance sales process, so whether it’s a prospect or serving an inforce client.” – Charlie Conron.

-“Critical illness rates are built into the system. They are a great comparison contrasting a T10 to a 75.” – Charlie Conron.

-“Because a lot of new proposals come through our system, we’ve added this ability to mark a policy as sold, which will save the entire renewal schedule.” – Charlie Conron.

Resources Mentioned:

●LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

●Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

●Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

●Charlie Conron – LinkedIn for Charlie Conron

●LifeDesign Analysis – Website for Life Design Analysis

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This is the 23rd episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, and Jason Pereira interviews Ben Styles, the General Manager of product and Partner Development for Xero, one of the world’s leading online accounting software programs. Learn more about Ben’s work with Xero, and how the company is impacting the Fintech industry.

●02:56 – Xero started with the concept of a single ledger in the cloud, then an account or a bookkeeper for a small business able to work in this space in real time.

●03:45 – Ben Styles has been focusing his energy in digitizing businesses and products.

●06:12 – Xero zeroed in on removing manual entry.

●09:21 – In two of Xero’s core markets there are between 500-1000 small businesses joining Xero a day. the small business owners, the people that work in the small businesses, and the accountants and bookkeepers that work for those small businesses.

●18:18 – Picking partners is a challenge the Xero has, as most businesses do.

●22:25 – Xero is weary about totally digital currencies.

●23:12 – Nations where Xero has high penetration like Australian and the U.K. they are seeing many small businesses that have suppliers or customers that are also Xero customers.

●24:42 – Ben is excited about the realization amongst small businesses about how powerful running their entire business in the cloud can be for them for growth and company management.

●30:46 – Workflow Max is an important tool for accountants and bookkeepers to run the workflow within their accounting practice.

●31:49 – Projects software is about is about real-time time tracking and job managing of billable work, and making it available on mobile and desktop.

3 Key Points:

1. In two of Xero’s core markets there are between 500-1000 small businesses joining Xero a day.
2. Xero is now at 1.4 million small businesses globally.
3. Xero has customers in 180 countries. We’ve got operations in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, London, San Francisco, New York, Denver, and now in Canada.

Tweetable Quotes:

-“Having the single view of the ledger was going to be the core of solving cloud accounting.” – Ben Styles.

-“We (Xero) are now at 1.4 million small businesses globally.” – Ben Styles.

-“We’ve (Xero) got customers in 180 countries. We’ve got operations in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, London, San Francisco, New York, Denver, and now in Canada.” – Ben Styles.

Resources Mentioned:

●LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

●Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

●Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

●LinkedIn– Ben Styles’ LinkedIn

●Xero– Website for Xero

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In this 22th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host shares a recording of his presentation at the Wealth Professional Summit on Leadership and Technology that occurred on May 30th, 2018 in Toronto at The Westin Harbour Castle. Jason’s discussion covers a series of tech tools that are of use to financial planners and advisors. 

Show Notes:

●     01:06: – Technology Tools for Practice Management and Efficiency is the name of Jason Pereira’s talk.

●     01:42: – A trend in the FIntech space is Application Programing Interface (API) that allows systems to communication with each other like Facebook to Google.

●     02:51: – Zapier focuses on creating APIs.

●     03:50: – Canadian-based Hootsuite allows you to preprogram social media content and does his podcast for under $100 per episode.

●     06:34: – ScheduleOnce allows people to see your availability for meetings and request a meeting and SalesForce.com for CRM and data platform.

●     08:53: – Ring Central is a voice over internet protocol company that will allow you to have a standardized phone system but also allows you to call from your work number from anywhere.

●     12:02: – Woodgate Financial at IPC Investment Corporation sends clients 4 things: 1.) Invoice, 2.) Access to a personal financial management platform 3.) Online Questionnaire 4.) Risk-assessment Question

●     13:15: – Fathom is a reporting and visualization tool that produces stunning reports for business profitability.

●     14:00: – Honest is a personal financial management platform that does data aggregation, relationship tracking, data vault, and secure communication channel.

●     15:40: – Precise FP is an online questionnaire and is a FinaMetrica risk-tolerance questionnaire.

●     18:15: – Finally Technology is a company Jason and his partner launched to solved Fintech Technology problems, including a CRA data-scraping tools for SalesForce.

●     21:44: – Jason created an Insurance Needs Assessment Tools spreadsheet.

●     24:41: – Last Pass is a password management system to place all your passwords in a digital locker.

●     27:19: – Google Authenticator is is a software token that implements two-step verification options.

●     28:29: – Slack is for collaboration and SalesForce chat for chatting through SalesForce.com.

●     31:00: – The future of financial planning is letting AI handle client data points and focus on human relationships and needs.

●     35:34: – Where are you feeling pain?

3 Key Points:

1. Ring Central is a voice over internet protocol company that will allow you to have a standardized phone system but also allows you to call from your work number from anywhere.

2. Woodgate Financial at IPC Investment Corporation sends clients 4 things: 1.) Invoice, 2.) Access to a financial management platform 3.) Online Questionnaire 4.) Risk-assessment Question.

3. Fintech Technology problems, including a CRA data-scraping tools for SalesForce.

Tweetable Quotes:

-   “So you know how we talk about goals-based planning in this industry? Guess what, we can actually have goals-based reporting for the first time.” – Jason Pereira.

-   “The invoice I send them (clients), it’s actually done through our accounting system Zero. Zero is a cloud-based accounting system, that frankly is a million times better than anything I have ever used before.”– Jason Pereira.

-   “The reality is that data rights are one of the biggest contentious issues in the world right now.”– Jason Pereira.

Resources Mentioned:

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

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

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

During the 21st episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira interviews Othalia Doe-Bruce, the Public Relations Officer for One Ledger, that creates an API level so that blockchains can communicate with each other. The discussion revolves around what One Ledger has to offer, how it is being funded, and the Blockchain Hub education group.

●     01:24: – One Ledger technology is trying to resolve the issues related to blockchains not being able to communicate with one another.

●     02:29: – Othalia has been working in the investment management field for over a decade and became interested in blockchain and Bitcoin.

●     03:22: – One Ledger was founded by David Cao, an engineer architect from China.

●     04:06: – The benefit of interoperability between blockchain networks is being able to pick and choose between the different features that each may have.

●     08:25: – Polymath is a partner of One Ledger and one of the biggest VCs in Asia has already invested in the company.

●     12:11: – One Ledger isn’t currently monetizing, but it plans to do so in the future.

●     13:25: – One Ledger is planning to do an ICO and have already begun preselling and will offer the ICO publically in the near future.

●     16:30: – They are targeting B2B and clients that can help them monetize the platform after the ICO.

●     18:27: – The challenge for One Ledger has been finding blockchain developer talent.

●     19:41: – Blockchain Hub at York University provides a plethora of adaptive courses to meet the current needs of the industry.

●     22:44: – One of the most prominent consulting groups for blockchain in the United States is students at Berkley.

3 Key Points:

1. Polymath is a partner of One Ledger and one of the biggest VCs in Asia has already invested in the company.

2. One Ledger will be a decentralized platform, and essentially, it will belong to the token holders and the community.

3. One Ledger is targeting B2Band clients that can help them monetize the platform after the ICO.

Tweetable Quotes:

-   “For One Ledger, we have…as a partner Polymath, another type of blockchain platform. And what Polymath is trying to do is facilitate the issuing of securitized tokens.” – Othalia Doe-Bruce

-   “The beauty of block chain is that it is a decentralized platform, right, so One Ledger will be a decentralized platform, and essentially, it will belong to the token holders and the community.” – Othalia Doe-Bruce

-   “Blockchain Hub is a non-profit organization affiliated with York University, and that’s primarily education and then research and commercialization of blockchain start-ups.” – Othalia Doe-Bruce.

Resources Mentioned:

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

● Twitter – Twitter for Othalia Doe-Bruce

● One Ledger – Website for One Ledger

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In this 20th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira is actually the one getting interviewed this time by his colleague, financial advisor Guy Anderson. The goal will be to identify and define the acronyms, nomenclature, and tech speak that is typically used in Fintech Impact, and in the industry at large. Consider this Fintech 101.

●02:38 – API: stands for application protocol interface. APIs are rules or a language that a company puts out there for something else to talk to its programs.

●05:10 – AWS: stands for Amazon Web Services for cloud computing. Companies that use AWS include: Netflix, and Dropbox.

●08:37 – GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation, a series of data regulations and digital rights established by the European Union. 

●17:36 – Whatever you put online, consider there forever. Stupid things posted in the past could prevent you from getting certain jobs in the future.

●18:02 – Platforms: technological systems that allows other people to build other functions over top of it.

●20:31 – Narrow AI is artificial intelligence that essentially focuses on one task, like Apple Siri. Machine learning is throwing a ton of data at a computer system for it to mine and look for patterns of recognition that the human mind can’t recognize—teaching itself to learn as new data comes in.

●27:00 – Blockchain: the underlying architecture and code of every cryptocurrency that exists, creating a timestamp and transaction data that is resistant to modification of the data, and is an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties.

●34:11 – Cryptocurrency transactions aren’t instantaneous but they are ultra-fast compared to bank transactions: which are “controlled ledgers.”

●34:49 – So much of the financial system before cryptocurrency has been based on trust.

●35:50 – You have to convert money into cryptocurrency coins, transfer those coins to who you are doing your transaction with, and then they convert it back to money again.

●37:36 – You can send money anonymously from other users with cryptocurrency anywhere in the world because they are sent to private keys, and there are also public keys.

●37:50 – People can create their own cryptocurrencies relatively easily.

●42:20 – Bitcoin has implications for impacting anti-money laundering.

3 Key Points:

1. API: stands for application protocol interface. APIs are rules or a language

   that a company puts out there for something else to talk to its programs.

2.You have to convert money into cryptocurrency coins, transfer those coins

   to who you are doing your transaction with, and then they convert it back to

money again.

3.You can send money anonymously with cryptocurrency

   anywhere in the world because they are sent to private keys, and there are

   also public keys.

Podcasts that explain Crypto & Blockchain

https://tim.blog/2017/06/04/nick-szabo/

http://investorfieldguide.com/hashpower/

Tweetable Quotes:

-“APIs allow integration across different modules.” – Jason Pereira.

-“I think I once saw a survey that something between 40-60% of all cloud services offered on the internet are offered through AWS .” – Jason Pereira.

-“Europe typically looks at it (technology) from a consumer-first standpoint. As opposed to the North American attitude of looking at it from a business-first standpoint.” – Jason Pereira.

Resources Mentioned:

●LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

●Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

●Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial 

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

This is the 19th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, and Jason Pereira interviews Eric Arnold, the Chief Executive Officer at Planswell, an online financial planning software platform that is really targeted at individual consumers, helping customers implement their financial self-planning. Eric shares how Planswell was started, its capabilities, and ways in which it continues to expand.

●     01:36 – Eric began his career starting many businesses including tea at shopping      malls, driveway sealing, independent music distribution, children’s birthday parties, and window cleaning.

●     03:11 – Eric and his wife moved to Toronto from Aurora for her to attend the University of Toronto and he took on a job as an investment advisor at Wood Gundy.

●     06:14 – In 2016, investor dollars went into building up Planswell and have since made over 30,000 financial plans for people—about 20,000 in the last six months.

●     07:12 – The client experience begins with clients hearing about Planswell from ad campaigns or referrals, going through about 40 questions in 3 or 4 minutes, and they are then walked through their strategy plan.

●     10:56 – The 3 Pillars to Implementing a Plan: Acclimation of investments, Insurance, and Mortgages.

●     12:00 – Planswell Portfolios is a stand-online PM, a no-call a robo advisor license.

●     12:45 – On the insurance side, Planswell is a fully licensed insurance brokerage essentially, it’s called an MGA in the industry, which is the highest relationship that you can have with insurance manufacturers

●     17:06 – A lot of the plans Planswell have implemented were before they were even onboarding.

●     20:13 – Currently, Planswell has about 50 team members, doubled from last year, and next year the staff should increase to between 100-150.

●     20:56 – Over 25% of the potential investors Planswell has pitched to have invested.

●     25:20 – The general feedback from the financial advisor community is that many are uneasy about their futures.

●     26:50 – The demographics of Planswell skew a little older and coming from high net-worth brokerage and homeowners. The average client age is 40 years.

●     29:46 – About 5% of advisors are actually making plans for clients.

●     32:12 – Everyone is on a salary and receive performance incentives to get them excited about onboarding clients effectively and efficiently.

3 Key Points:

1. Planswell has since made over 30,000 financial plans for people—about 20,000 in the last six months.

2. The client experience starts with clients hearing about Planswell from ad campaigns or referrals, going through about 40 questions in 3 or 4 minutes, and they are then walked through their strategy plan.

3.The 3 Pillars to Implementing a Plan: Acclimation of investments, Insurance, and Mortgages.

Tweetable Quotes:

-     “Planswell is a way to figure out what you need to do on a monthly basis to maintain your lifestyle into the future.” – Eric Arnold.

-     “We are like a fully licensed insurance brokerage essentially, it’s called..an MGA in the industry, which is…the highest relationship that you can have with insurance manufacturers. – Eric Arnold.

-     “We definitely see a future where there are probably still a lot of advisors. I don’t see a future where top advisors are making $3 or 4 million a year, I don’t think the financial institutions thinks that either.” – Eric Arnold. 

Resources Mentioned:

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

● LinkedIn – Eric Arnold’s LinkedIn

● Planswell – Website for Planswell

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

This is the 18th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, and Jason Pereira interviews Anthony Stich, the Chief Operating Officer of Advicent, the largest provider of financial software in the world. Anthony shares information reguarding Advicent’s product line which includes NaviPlan, the power of their advancements and influence, and the ways in which they are able to service their clients.

●  01:06 – Advicent is the financial software developer that created NaviPlan. They                    are in seven countries and on four continents. They also have client portals, advisor dashboard, and API technology.

●     01:31 – They have about 100 enterprise clients, about 60 of which are blue chip clients, and service about 100,000 users.

●     02:03 – Advicent’s roots trace back to 1969 by Gus Hansch, a CFP referred to as “The Father of Financial Planning.”

●     03:18 – Anthony Stich began with Advicent, which is a name comprised of advice + enterprise, four years ago, and his career began in marketing first.

●     04:25 – NaviPlan, by user counts, and adoption rates, is the biggest financial planning software in the world with a cash flow first priority.

●     06:56 – NaviPlan’s average enterprise contract length is between 10-12 years.

●     10:30 – NaviPlan is highly customizable thanks to building their portal on top of

                    APIs.

●     14:08 – Figlo is Advicent’s European tool, available in five countries, with an office in Rotterdam outside of Amsterdam. Figlo used the APIs first.

●     15:51 – Adviser Briefcase is their marketing and communication engine that has about 700 documents that have been reviewed by FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority).

●     17:01 – As far as integration, Advicent is enterprise-first with back offices with all the core processors of the top five custodians.

●     23:35 – Advicent has about 300 team members, most are in Milwaukee Wisconsin, the Fintech capital of the world. There are also members in Toronto, Winnipeg, about 50 in Rotterdam, and scattered throughout the United States.

●     30:36 – The mission state at Advicent is to enable everyone to understand and impact their financial future, and it is about the end client.

3 Key Points:

1. Advicent has about 100 enterprise clients, about 60 of which are blue chip

   clients, and service about 100,000 users.

2. NaviPlan’s average enterprise contract length is between 10-12 years.

3. Advicent has about 300 team members, most are in Milwaukee Wisconsin,

   the Fintech capital of the world, the rest in here are also members in Toronto,

   Winnipeg, Rotterdam, and throughout the United States.

Tweetable Quotes:

-   “We’ve built a portal on top of APIs. What we’ve done is decoupled the user experience from those engines itself. And by doing so, we’re allowing larger enterprises and institutions the ability to use that API within their ecosystem.” – Anthony Stich.

-    “We’ve given them the keys to the kingdom. We have unlocked the powerful calculations of NaviPlan, and allowed people to access them and put them wherever they so choose” – Anthony Stich.

-    “Not only are we thought leaders in consulting our partners through these regulatory challenges, we are also developing in advance.” – Anthony Stich.

Resources Mentioned:

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial

● LinkedIn – Anthony Stich’s LinkedIn

● Advicent – Website for Advicent

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

This 17th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira interviews Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf, Founder and CEO at Flinks, a Canadian-based data aggregation software company that pulls data from various financial institutions, allowing third parties to use that data. Over the course of the discussion, Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf explains how Flinks began, what products they are offering, and how the data aggregation world is taking shape.

●     01:02: – Flinks began about 16 months ago in Montreal, connecting software with financial institutions as a data mover.

●     01:37: – Before Flinks, Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf was a tech consultant for lending companies, working on origination automation.

●     05:30: – One of the products that Flinks is launching is called Behavioral Score, analyzing consumers transactional behavior with their consent, and providing risk assessment scores—think of it as Credit Score 2.0.

●     07:38: – Flinks doesn’t have any plans to use identifiable data for now, focusing more on the behaviors of the data of the end users.

●     12:16: – Flinks doesn’t currently work with that many start-ups or financial institutions. The average clients are Canadian software companies with between 30-150 employees, and they service a total of about 8 different market segments.

●     14:46: – They have experienced a lot of openness from financial institutions, but there is often a lack of communication and plan direction within institutions.

●     18:28: – Two major recent events helped change regulators’ perceptions financial aggregation or financial data access:

 1.) Composition Report Borough in December 2017 stating regulators should more openly except financial aggregators.

2.) The mention of open banking in the financial budget.

●     21:30: – As of now, Flinks is self-funded, with about a million dollars raised from friends and family to maintain control.

●     22:14 – Flinks was incorporated in December 2016 and generated its first revenue in May 2017.

●     23:02: –They have grown from three founders to a team of 27 people and have put a lot of effort in developing company culture and core values.

●     24:46 – They aren’t planning a consumer portal but will have online forms and it will be a B2B product.

●     25:25 – Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf is excited about the opportunities that the industry is making available.

3 Key Points:

1. Flinks is launching a Behavioral Score, analyzing consumers transactional behavior with their consent, and providing risk assessment scores—think of it as Credit Score 2.0.

2. The average Flinks clients are Canadian software companies with between 30-150 employees, and they service a total of about 8 different market segments.

3. Flinks is self-funded, with about a million dollars raised from friends and family to maintain control.

Tweetable Quotes:

-   “I think what we can say about the Canadian market is that, because we have a small amount of financial institutions covering a high percentage of the population, it makes us basically work a lot on the quality side and the speed of the data.” – Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf.

-   “The average Canadian has like about three different banks accounts from three different institutions.” – Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf.

-   “Some financial institutions basically use aggregators but at the same time put in their terms and conditions that you should not share your information.” – Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf.

Resources Mentioned:

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn

● Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf – LinkedIn for Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf

● Flinks – Website for Flinks

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