Paul Schulte, Advisor, Banking and Financial Services
August 22nd, 2019
Paul Schulte is the Founder and Managing Editor of Shulte Research based in Singapore. Paul's roles[...]
Category Archives: Digital, NEO and Open Banking
Why Canada must be open to open banking
The Globe and Mail | and | Jan 2, 2020
Adam Felesky is CEO of Portag3 Ventures. Andrew Moor is president and CEO of EQ Bank.
Canada is often said to be facing an infrastructure deficit, having failed to adequately invest in transit, roads and water systems. But the country is also encountering a financial services infrastructure deficit. That is to say we lack the infrastructure and related government policies needed to safely, efficiently and effectively enable financial data to be moved and shared by consumers.
Much like the physical systems required for transportation, financial services infrastructure improves national well-being and has the potential to bring benefits to all citizens. For those of us in the banking, payments and financial services sectors and in regulatory, policy making and consumer advocacy roles, the time has come to erase this deficit, which manifests itself in unnecessary costs for customers and their financial services providers, limited transparency for those providing financial advice and roadblocks to innovation.
See: Open Banking Era Starts in Australia (Feb 2020)
Open banking provides the clearest opportunity to set Canada’s financial infrastructure on the right course and is already achieving success around the world. With 40 countries developing their own open banking plans, Canada needs to take bold action.
Where does Canada stand? The government first declared its interest in open banking in the 2018 federal budget. This interest was repeated in the 2019 budget. In 2019, the Senate produced a well-researched report urging decisive government action. In parallel, the Minister of Finance commissioned a report from an expert advisory panel. We hope this report will be released early in 2020.
Beyond this process, open banking has generated considerable interest from consumer advocates, the banking industry and emerging fintech players who have explored the benefits and risks. Among those who have thought seriously about the issues, our sense is that there is overwhelming support: open banking will keep financial information safer and provide more choice at a lower cost for Canadians.
There is general agreement with the Senate report that “consumers and small businesses would also benefit from increased competition and innovation in the financial sector.
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) stand to gain significantly.
As a recent C.D. Howe report highlighted, Canada lags international peers in allocating capital to SMEs. Part of this deficiency is attributable to challenges that banks have in getting the information required to assess credit for SMEs – a problem that can be alleviated by open banking.
Given the widely held view that open banking is a good idea, why is Canada holding back? One reason appears to be a lack of political desire. Recent discussions with elected officials have suggested that their perception is there are no votes in open banking and this may hold back progress on this important issue. As more Canadians understand the benefits, we believe there will be votes for politicians who engage with the open banking agenda. Open banking is clearly an issue whose time has come. We urge one of the soon-to-be-announced parliamentary committees to truly understand the benefits.
See: Monopoly-Friendly Canada ‘Does Not Treat Competition Policy Seriously’
That said, we are encouraged by Canada’s Digital Charter. Principle 4 of this charter espouses the core idea behind open banking: that consumers have rights to their data and can share it or transfer it. We would like to see the Department of Finance work more closely with the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development to bring these principles to life.
In banking circles, there is a debate about the relative prioritization of open banking and improving data security standards. Working on these two issues together is the only path to success. By their actions, customers are showing a strong desire to access their data in convenient forms. Absent open banking, consumers share passwords and access to their accounts with various providers, leaving them vulnerable to data breaches. It’s a compromise they should not have to make. Developing a secure financial services infrastructure, that is available to all credible participants and that keeps the entire system safe, is the only practical route forward.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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The Clearing House Releases Model Agreement For Sharing Financial Data
McCarthy Tetrault | Domenic Presta | Dec 3, 2019
On November 12, 2019, The Clearing House (TCH) released a Model Agreement as part of TCH’s Connected Banking Initiative. The Model Agreement is intended to be used as the basis for data sharing agreements between banks and Fintechs.
TCH is a U.S. based entity that is owned by some of the world’s largest commercial banks. TCH is also the parent organization of the Clearing House Payments Company, a payments association comprised of over 1,000 financial institution members and corporate subscribers
The Model Agreement is part of TCH’s Connected Banking initiative, which aims to facilitate innovation, customer control and the secure exchange of bank-held data. TCH developed the Model Agreement to be consistent with the Consumer Protection Principles: Consumer Authorized Financial Data Sharing and Aggregation, issued by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) on October 18, 2017.
Rob Hunter (Deputy General Counsel, TCH) stated that “[t]he Model Agreement provides a framework for how banks and Fintechs can work together to implement the CFPB’s principles...” in an effort to “…facilitate the efficient and safe sharing of consumer data.”
TCH’s Connected Banking initiative encourages innovation that allows customers to control how they share their bank-held data with third parties in a secure fashion. The initiative is also focused on the development of application programming interfaces (APIs) which can be used to create direct connections between banks and Fintechs. As a founding member of the Financial Data Exchange, TCH also promotes the use of FDX API in order to permit financial data to be shared securely and transparently. The Financial Data Exchange describes the function of the FDX API as follows:
“The FDX API works in combination with specific frameworks governing data sharing, secure authentication, data semantics, and syntax. These elements together will do for the financial data sharing ecosystem what the Bluetooth Core Specification, did for connecting devices wirelessly, providing standardization that will make it easier and safer for consumers to use financial data and apps to make good decisions.”
See:
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Open Banking Era Starts in Australia (Feb 2020)
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Open Banking in the UK: what’s happened so far
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Lack of open banking framework forcing Canadian consumers to choose between convenience and security, TD exec says
While the use of APIs to safely share financial data as between banks and Fintechs is gaining widespread momentum, the negotiation of the agreements governing such data sharing is not without its challenges. Hunter is hopeful that the Model Agreement will reduce the cycles and friction points in the negotiation of such arrangements:
“APIs have the potential to significantly benefit consumers, but the lengthy process to reach an agreement can become a bottleneck to API adoption… Using the Model Agreement as a reference to facilitate API agreements can streamline and accelerate the adoption of API technology.”
The Model Agreement was developed by TCH in collaboration with its member financial institutions, non-bank financial institutions, and in consultation with Fintechs. While not mandatory in nature, the Model Agreement is supposed to act as a point of reference for banks and Fintechs, and does not otherwise address commercial terms, which are to be negotiated as between the parties. TCH further clarifies that the Model Agreement is intended to be a living document which is intended to be updated to reflect changing technology and market conditions over time.
Canadian Perspective
It will be interesting to see whether the foregoing developments in the U.S. and U.K. will have an impact in Canada, where the Department of Finance is currently reviewing open banking in Canada. At this point, some of Canada’s largest financial institutions have been actively engaging Fintechs in order to negotiate data sharing deals which reflect the varying strategies taken by such financial institutions to-date. It will be interesting to see what – if any – impact such review into open banking will ultimately have on the arrangements entered into between Canadian banks and Fintechs going forward.
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Download the Model Data Sharing Agreement between Financial Institutions and Fintechs --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Fintech: The Fourth Platform
Forbes | Matthew Harris | Nov 22, 2019
This is part two of a two-part essay diving into the future of fintech. Read part one.
In part one of this essay, I discussed how fintech was moving from being a business model unto itself, to being an ingredient used in other technology businesses. This is what we refer to as the “fourth platform,” joining internet, cloud and mobile in the modern technology stack. In this essay, we will discuss why this is happening and offer some early examples.
Benefits of embedded financial services
When you look at the benefits of this embedded financial services model, the first point is obvious: as a technology founder, you’re already going through the hard work of acquiring customers, and as a result you have created the opportunity for a zero customer acquisition cost cross-sell. But the opportunity goes well beyond that basic business logic.
See: Fintech’s next decade will look radically different
Having these financial functions integrated with software enables new functionality, leveraging the persistent connection to move beyond transactions to relationships. We’ve already been trained to conduct financial transactions inside of software applications (think payments inside of Uber), so if you’re utilizing software to run your business, using that same software to get paid and make payments is logical and more natural than going to your financial institution to do so. These relationships are data-rich, which leads to smarter cross-sell, prequalification and massive risk reduction. The monetization opportunities are not only large, but actually meaningfully larger than the original software opportunity.
Integrated payments
As with most financial innovation, the first subsector to evolve is payments. When you look at payment card volume in the United States, for example, eight percent of it has migrated to what we call integrated payments, that is, merchant payments that are sold and managed through software companies as opposed to traditional payments companies. That portion is growing at two times the rate of the overall market, and analysts estimate it will hit 40 percent in the medium term. Why?
Take Shopify, a $36 billion software company that helps small businesses get online and setup e-commerce sites. You could think of it as shopping cart software. But at this point in time, the majority of its revenue comes from payments and that proportion is increasing. If you look at its website, you can see our thesis in action: zero CAC natural cross-sell, instant set up (most payments companies have to underwrite their merchants for risk, which takes time and hassle), novel functionality integrating settlement process and data into existing workflow, and then obviously additional revenue/enhanced monetization.
There are similar stories at many of our own portfolio companies. When we invested in AvidXchange four years ago, it was a majority software company, but by next year it will be 80 percent payments. Zelis Healthcare, which recently combined with RedCard Payments to form the next-generation leader in healthcare payments optimization, will similarly scale from almost entirely software to nearly a majority payments revenue in the next few years. We recently invested in Finix, the leading company enabling software companies to become payments companies.
See: Where top VCs are investing in fintech?
In certain segments, the innovation has come in waves. For example, take the rental payment market, which started with old school payments companies like FirstData, then progressed with Fintech 1.0 player, ClickPay, and now to the fully-embedded model, Cozy. However, our bet is that companies like SmartRent represent the next generation, with an even deeper integration.
SmartRent sells and installs home automation hardware into rental buildings, and uses that as a methodology for getting widespread and persistent connectivity to tenants in the form of its app. This year, it will incorporate rent payment into the app, and as soon as next year will sell renters insurance. SmartRent is the logical evolution of insurtech companies like Lemonade — zero CAC, integrated into its own smart lock and leak detection system for a persistent data-rich connection and novel functionality, and with excellent incremental monetization.
Integrated lending
Within lending, we’re starting to see some early examples of embedded fintech. For example, we've seen the rapid rise of the payroll advance lenders. This type of loan recognizes that workers are paid in arrears, and have a balance of worked hours that can represent, in effect, collateral for a loan. This began with the 1.0 versions, like Dave, which finds borrowers through marketing channels and attempts to underwrite their hours worked algorithmically. This has quickly evolved to where modern software-driven payroll companies like Gusto can offer this functionality through their employer’s customers, reducing CAC to zero, increasing data-richness and validity through their ownership of the payroll system, and adding another leg of monetization.
See: What to expect from social fundraising world in 2020
Our portfolio company Wisetack provides an API-driven infrastructure for software companies to add point of sale lending to their offerings without becoming lenders themselves. Lambda School, ostensibly an edtech company, has leveraged an innovative financing product called an ISA, creating unprecedented alignment between the school and its students. If SoFi is a classic Fintech 1.0 company (digital student lending!), Lambda is an early example of a technology company leveraging fintech as a platform.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Fintech’s next decade will look radically different
TechCrunch | Nik Milanovic | Dec 22, 2019
The birth and growth of financial technology developed mostly over the last ten years.
So as we look ahead, what does the next decade have in store? I believe we’re starting to see early signs: in the next ten years, fintech will become portable and ubiquitous as it moves to the background and centralizes into one place where our money is managed for us.
When I started working in fintech in 2012, I had trouble tracking competitive search terms because no one knew what our sector was called. The best-known companies in the space were Paypal and Mint.
Fintech has since become a household name, a shift that came with with prodigious growth in investment: from $2 billion in 2010 to over $50 billion in venture capital in 2018 (and on-pace for $30 billion+ this year).
See: Navigating the Great Reset: Fintech in Canada in 2020
Predictions were made along the way with mixed results — banks will go out of business, banks will catch back up. Big tech will get into consumer finance. Narrow service providers will unbundle all of consumer finance. Banks and big fintechs will gobble up startups and consolidate the sector. Startups will each become their own banks. The fintech ‘bubble’ will burst.
Here’s what did happen: fintechs were (and still are) heavily verticalized, recreating the offline branches of financial services by bringing them online and introducing efficiencies. The next decade will look very different. Early signs are beginning to emerge from overlooked areas which suggest that financial services in the next decade will:
- Be portable and interoperable: Like mobile phones, customers will be able to easily transition between ‘carriers’.
- Become more ubiquitous and accessible: Basic financial products will become a commodity and bring unbanked participants ‘online’.
- Move to the background: The users of financial tools won’t have to develop 1:1 relationships with the providers of those tools.
- Centralize into a few places and steer on ‘autopilot’.
Prediction 1: The open data layer
Thesis: Data will be openly portable and will no longer be a competitive moat for fintechs.
Personal data has never had a moment in the spotlight quite like 2019. The Cambridge Analytica scandal and the data breach that compromised 145 million Equifax accounts sparked today’s public consciousness around the importance of data security. Last month, the House of Representatives’ Fintech Task Force met to evaluate financial data standards and the Senate introduced the Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act.
A tired cliché in tech today is that “data is the new oil.” Other things being equal, one would expect banks to exploit their data-rich advantage to build the best fintech. But while it’s necessary, data alone is not a sufficient competitive moat: great tech companies must interpret, understand and build customer-centric products that leverage their data.
See: The future of fintech: lending + services
Why will this change in the next decade? Because the walls around siloed customer data in financial services are coming down. This is opening the playing field for upstart fintech innovators to compete with billion-dollar banks, and it’s happening today.
Much of this is thanks to a relatively obscure piece of legislation in Europe, PSD2. Think of it as GDPR for payment data. The UK became the first to implement PSD2 policy under its Open Banking regime in 2018. The policy requires all large banks to make consumer data available to any fintech which the consumer permissions. So if I keep my savings with Bank A but want to leverage them to underwrite a mortgage with Fintech B, as a consumer I can now leverage my own data to access more products.
Consortia like FDATA are radically changing attitudes towards open banking and gaining global support. In the U.S., five federal financial regulators recently came together with a rare joint statement on the benefits of alternative data, for the most part only accessible through open banking technology.
The data layer, when it becomes open and ubiquitous, will erode the competitive advantage of data-rich financial institutions. This will democratize the bottom of the fintech stack and open the competition to whoever can build the best products on top of that openly accessible data… but building the best products is still no trivial feat, which is why Prediction 2 is so important:
Prediction 2: The open protocol layer
Thesis: Basic financial services will become simple open-source protocols, lowering the barrier for any company to offer financial products to its customers.
Picture any investment, wealth management, trading, merchant banking, or lending system. Just to get to market, these systems have to rigorously test their core functionality to avoid legal and regulatory risk. Then, they have to eliminate edge cases, build a compliance infrastructure, contract with third-party vendors to provide much of the underlying functionality (think: Fintech Toolkit) and make these systems all work together.
See: The Decade in Blockchain — 2010 to 2020 in Review
The end result is that every financial services provider builds similar systems, replicated over and over and siloed by company. Or even worse, they build on legacy core banking providers, with monolith systems in outdated languages (hello, COBOL). These services don’t interoperate, and each bank and fintech is forced to become its own expert at building financial protocols ancillary to its core service.
But three trends point to how that is changing today:
First, the infrastructure and service layer to build is being disaggregates, thanks to platforms like Stripe, Marqeta, Apex, and Plaid. These ‘finance as a service’ providers make it easy to build out basic financial functionality. Infrastructure is currently a hot investment category and will be as long as more companies get into financial services — and as long as infra market leaders can maintain price control and avoid commoditization.
Second, industry groups like FINOS are spearheading the push for open-source financial solutions. Consider a Github repository for all the basic functionality that underlies fintech tools. Developers could continuously improve the underlying code. Software could become standardized across the industry. Solutions offered by different service providers could become more inter-operable if they shared their underlying infrastructure.
And third, banks and investment managers, realizing the value in their own technology, are today starting to license that technology out. Examples are BlackRock’s Aladdin risk-management system or Goldman’s Alloy data modeling program. By giving away or selling these programs to clients, banks open up another revenue stream, make it easy for the financial services industry to work together (think of it as standardizing the language they all use), and open up a customer base that will provide helpful feedback, catch bugs, and request new useful product features.
See: Are the fintech bridges working?
As Andreessen Horowitz partner Angela Strange notes, “what that means is, there are several different infrastructure companies that will partner with banks and package up the licensing process and some regulatory work, and all the different payment-type networks that you need. So if you want to start a financial company, instead of spending two years and millions of dollars in forming tons of partnerships, you can get all of that as a service and get going.”
Fintech is developing in much the same way computers did: at first software and hardware came bundled, then hardware became below differentiated operating systems with ecosystem lock-in, then the internet broke open software with software-as-a-service. In that way, fintech in the next ten years will resemble the internet of the last twenty.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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HSBC’s plan to move $20B in assets to blockchain could be a watershed moment
Computerworld | Lucas Mearian | Dec 6, 2019
The investment bank's trust of blockchain is likely to spur confidence in the nascent technology.
Investment bank HSBC Holdings is using a blockchain distributed ledger technology (DLT) to digitize transaction records of private investments, enabling clients globally to access the details of their assets online in near real-time.
The London-based company, the seventh largest bank in the world, plans to move $20 billion in assets that include equity, debt and real estate onto its new Digital Vault blockchain, a shift away from its current use of paper records to respond to client search requests.
"The Digital Vault is live in Asia and will be rolled out in the U.S. and Europe in the first quarter of 2020," an HSBC spokesperson said via email.
By getting investors to interact with this data on the blockchain through decentralized applications (dApps) supported by friendly user interfaces, HSBC is helping build the on-ramps and infrastructure needed to take blockchain DLT mainstream, according to Avivah Litan, a Gartner vice president of research.
See: The Decade in Blockchain — 2010 to 2020 in Review
"Presumably, millions of potential investors and users will be on-ramped to blockchain interfaces and they likely won't even be aware of the backend technology," Litan said.
Digital Vault, developed by HSBC's Securities Services unit (HSS), is expected to eventually handle the custody of additional digital asset classes, enabling the bank to move more of the asset transaction lifecycle onto the ledger in the future.
HSBC is hardly going into the blockchain project blind. The bank has been involved with enterprise DLT firm R3 since at least 2015, so it has had time to research and test various blockchain ideas, according to Michela Menting, digital security & blockchain research director at ABI Research.
R3, which began as a financial services consortium and is now governed by more than 70 partner firms, created the Corda open-source DLT platform. R3 claims Corda is not a blockchain platform because it lacks a consensus algorithm that allows participants to validate ledger entries. Like blockchain, Corda is a permissioned or private DLT platform that also enables the creation of dApps for various financial services uses; Corda uses the Java programming language for its dApps.
The use of Blockchain DLT will likely not only speed up HSBC's processes significantly and cut costs related to "middlemen" who engage in the time-consuming process of paper records research, but it will also boost interest and engagement by the bank's clients in securities trading, Menting said.
See: The 5 Debates That Will Shape Fintech In The 2020s
"This is important for a bank that wants to transform into a more nimble and flexible organization, especially with the increased competition from FinTechs," Menting said.
Stephen Bayly, HSBC's CIO for Securities Services, said the bank is responding to clients who have been requesting real-time visibility into their private transactions so they know when they will receive the coupon on a private debt transaction or to facilitate a records audit.
"Private assets are prime candidates for digitization and we see this platform as a key step on the journey as the model evolves," Bayly said in a statement. "We are preparing for the future, in which the full transaction lifecycle could be stored on a ledger, including issuing digital tokens instead of paper certificates."
This year has seen several high profile projects using blockchain to convert assets into digital tokens, which can then be more easily purchased or traded domestically or across international borders. KPMG recently pointed to a wave of start-ups and established financial services firms, such as Fidelity Investments, launching various crypto products and services for the emerging tokenized economy. The firm suggested that a tokenized economy will likely be one of the more significant innovations enabled by cryptoassets like bitcoin, Litecoin and Ether.
Last month, JP Morgan, IBM, Intel and Microsoft created a consortium to jointly develop a blockchain-based token specification that would enable regulatory-compliant digital currency.
See: Vanguard Developing Blockchain Platform for $6 Trillion Forex Market
HSBC's deployment of a blockchain digital custody platform is significant for several reasons, including the amount of assets being entrusted to the electronic ledger, as it joins a quickly growing trend in the financial investment market, according Litan.
"Blockchain DLT provides a shared single version of the truth based on immutable data and audit trails, critical qualities in shared financial recordkeeping. This implementation should also prove that the technology can scale to support global bank performance and data confidentiality requirements," Litan said.
Even as HSBC and other financial firms are increasing their use of blockchain, Boston-based State Street Bank reportedly slashed more than 100 blockchain-related developer positions in a move away from the technology.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Wealthsimple to spin out advisory service into separate company
Wealthsimple | | Dec 2, 2019
Toronto-based FinTech startup Wealthsimple is separating its direct to consumer and Wealthsimple for Advisors businesses and will transition the advisor-focused offering to a new company, BetaKit has learned.
“We’re currently focused on identifying the right partner to support your business on a future platform.”
Wealthsimple for Advisors is the company’s automated management platform targeted toward financial planners, investment advisors, portfolio managers, and dealers. The company announced the news to separate the entities in an email obtained by BetaKit and sent to clients on Monday.
Wealthsimple plans to announce the move on Tuesday morning. In a statement to BetaKit, the company noted that Wealthsimple for Advisors will transition in the coming months, and is currently looking for partners to support advisors on a new platform.
See: Wealthsimple launching zero-commission trading platform
“We are at a pivotal stage in our business where we have a very real, very unique, once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform financial services for Canadians,” said Michael Katchen, co-founder and CEO of Wealthsimple, in the statement to BetaKit. “To take full advantage of that opportunity, we need to be laser-focused on delivering transparent, accessible financial services to consumers, both directly and in collaboration with our institutional partners.”
Wealthsimple called the new company a strategic decision to help further its vision of becoming the primary financial institution of its users through a suite of direct to consumers services, as well as institutional partnerships.
The Wealthsimple for Advisors platform allows advisors to streamline client onboarding, account management, and compliance through front- and back-office solutions. The service launched in May 2016. The company said this most recent move allows its advisor platform to focus exclusively on serving financial advisors, which currently consists of hundreds of advisors.
The platform allows the advisor to retain full ownership of the client relationship and allows advisors to set the fee that a client pays, charging up to a 0.35 percent management fee. J-F Courville, who has been heading up the advisor-targeted business since May 2018, will continue to lead Wealthsimple for Advisors as CEO.
See: Wealthsimple Acquires Tax Software Company Simpletax
“Over the past three years, we’ve had the unique opportunity to build a platform to support you as you serve your clients,” the company wrote in the emailed statement. “During this time, we’ve also had the opportunity to learn from you and to see firsthand the incredible value you provide to your clients every day. We believe that there is a tremendous opportunity for technology to enhance your work, and to help transform your business.”
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Fintech Canada Directory Category: Digital Banking | Analytics | Infrastructure
Blockchain | Digital Assets | Crypto
Capital Markets | DeFi | Crowdfinance
Digital Banking | Analytics | Infrastructure
Finance | Accounting
Insurtech
Lending | Borrowing
Payments | Transfers | Rewards
Personal Finance
Real Estate
Security | Identity | Regtech
Wealthtech | Alternative | Investing
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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