Fintech Impact

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. ●    

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 entrepr

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 be

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.●    &nb

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 ow

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 cyb

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,

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 c

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&nb

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

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

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

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 al

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 partne

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 function

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 mon

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

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 does

This is the 16th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, and Jason Pereira interviews Peter Demangos, the Co-Founder of Collage, a human resources benefits technology platform that works in tandem with broker partners. Peter explains how Collage was created, the ways in which it is pushing technology in the financial advisement and human resources spaces, forward, and the ways they plan to scale.●     01:06 – Collage aims to assist mid-sized companies in Canada with 200 employees or less, but the average tends to be 20-100 employees.●     02:28 – Peter’s original passion began with health and wellness at the corporate level that led him to the benefits space.●     03:18 – PDF Employee Benefits that focuses on health and dental is a company that Peter started and which he still runs today.●     08:09 – Collage works with all of the insurance companies across Canada.●     11:21 – The

During the 15th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira interviews Pauline Shum Nolan, the Co-Founder and CEO of Wealthscope, an online tool for accessing portfolios. Pauline shares the creation and opportunities available with Wealthscope, which digs beyond performance, into various parameters like factor-based investing, fees, and long-term projections of income.●  01:09: – Wealthscope is a web application, looking to “open the black box in retail wealth management.”●     02:18: – Pauline began as a professor of finance for the last 25 years, and worked with the university penchant plan for the last 14 years the on the institutional side.●     04:40: – Wealthscope has a free B2C version for students, and investors, but will launch a premium version for investors that are willing to pay for more customized opinions through a subscription.●     08:01: – Wealthscope built in analytics for proof of concept which allowed t