Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Apr 30, 2026 | NCFA Insight | Capital Markets And Funding

Image: Unsplash/John McArthur
On Apr 30, 2026, FrontFundr released its 2025 Community Capital Report with the following top line figures:
These numbers reflect FrontFundr platform activity across multiple exempt market channels in 2025, including startup crowdfunding, offering memorandum, accredited investor, FFBA, and private market financial products such as MICs, REITs, and funds.
FrontFundr’s 2025 performance shows strong growth in both capital and usage. The platform facilitated $83.2M across 8,064 investments, marking a 23% increase in capital and a 91% increase in investment transactions year over year.
Noticeably, participation is scaling faster than capital. Average investment size declined, while the number of investors per campaign increased. That means broader access and more distributed capital formation rather than larger individual allocations.
Financial products continue to drive the majority of platform volume, accounting for 84% of total capital raised. This reflects ongoing demand from accredited investors for income oriented products such as MICs, REITs, and funds, and reinforces that the headline $83.2M figure is not purely startup funding.
At the same time, platform growth is supported by increased engagement across sectors. Technology, manufacturing, and consumer facing companies continue to attract strong investor participation, particularly where companies already have an engaged audience or customer base.
Several campaign examples highlight how the model operates at scale. Edison Motors raised $6.8M from 2,667 investors. Blossom Social raised $1.93M from 1,028 investors in approximately six hours. Gander Social raised $2.0M from 2,517 investors. These campaigns reflect a shift toward high participation rounds where capital comes from large numbers of individual investors.
The equity crowdfunding under National Instrument 45-110 is growing quickly, but remains small relative to overall private markets activity. FrontFundr reported $4.79M raised from 4,320 investors under the exemption, representing 93% market share and growth of 181% in capital and 187% in participation year over year.
Early stage capital formation is becoming more distributed, with more investors participating through smaller allocations. Campaign success increasingly depends on community engagement, distribution, and trust rather than traditional investor networks alone.
At the same time, regulatory issuer limits are starting to be hit. Several campaigns approached the $1.5M annual cap under NI 45-110, including Edison Motors and Blossom Social. When demand reaches these limits, issuers must align with other exemptions to continue raising.
Globally, the ceiling is higher than what Canada currently allows. In the United States, Regulation Crowdfunding allows eligible issuers to raise up to US$5M in a 12 month period (and there's been many petitions to increase the cap to US$20M). In Europe, policymakers are pushing to increase platform thresholds toward €12M, while the UK has removed structural barriers to larger public raises under new platform rules.
Canada’s lower cap now stands out. If investor participation continues to scale, the current limit may constrain companies with strong demand and push larger raises toward more complex and costly structures.
Early stage investing still remains illiquid and uncertain. Platform structure, disclosure quality, and regulatory oversight remain essential as participation expands.
Peter-Paul Van Hoeken, Founder and CEO, FrontFundr:
“2025 was a defining year for Canada’s private capital markets and for FrontFundr. The scale and pace of growth we saw reflects a clear shift in how capital is being formed in Canada. Community capital is no longer a niche channel—it’s becoming a core part of how companies raise and how Canadians participate in private market investing.”
FrontFundr had a solid 2025 result with expanding platform activity driven by higher participation and broader investment access. Equity crowdfunding continues to grow albeit from a small base. Community capital plays an important role in Canada's early stage private markets. The next phase of growth will depend on how well regulation, infrastructure, and investor protection evolve alongside rising participation.
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, artificial intelligence, 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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Apr 29, 2026 | NCFA Resource | Artificial Intelligence And Data, Risk Compliance And Regtech

The MIT AI Risk Repository is an open database created by researchers at MIT to bring structure to AI risk. It compiles more than 1,700 documented risks from 74 existing frameworks and studies into a single system. The aim is practical. AI risk guidance exists, but it is scattered and inconsistent across sources. This repository organizes it into a shared taxonomy, with links that show how risks connect and compound across systems.
In practice, this gives teams a consistent way to map risk across AI systems.
Teams already running AI in production will get the most from this. If you’re operating models in lending, fraud, onboarding, or customer support, it gives you a structured way to think about risk across systems. Larger fintechs and financial institutions dealing with audit and regulatory pressure will find it useful quickly. Early stage teams without deployed models will likely find it heavy and not immediately relevant.
The strength here is structure. It turns fragmented AI risk concepts into something teams can actually use, and the causal links add depth that most frameworks miss. At the same time, it does not rank risks by likelihood or impact, and it does not translate directly into controls or regulatory compliance. Some classifications reflect interpretation across sources, and emerging risks may not be fully captured. Teams still need to apply judgment and build their own control layer on top.
Repository Homepage (AI risk overview and navigation)
Full Risk Database (AI risk dataset for audits)
Causal Taxonomy (AI risk relationships mapping)
Domain Taxonomy (AI risk classification framework)
Research Paper (AI risk methodology and design)
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, artificial intelligence, 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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On Apr 27, 2026, the Bank of Canada reminded PSPs under the Retail Payment Activities Act that annual reports were due by March 31, 2026. PSPs registered after March 30, 2026 are not required to submit an annual report for 2025.
PSPs that missed the deadline should submit their report as soon as possible or face potential enforcement action.
The reporting framework is detailed. PSPs must follow the Bank’s annual reporting policy, which requires annual reports by March 31 each year, and its retail payment metrics policy, which covers the value of end user funds held, EFT volume and value, end users served, and other PSPs served. This turns reporting into an operating discipline (to avoid a year end scramble).
The Bank’s reporting guide shows that PSPs must report across operational risk, incident management, end user funds safeguarding, significant changes, incidents, activity metrics, financial information, and record keeping.
The form also asks about cyber security controls, third party service providers, agents, mandataries, safeguarding accounts, shortfalls, and independent reviews.
For operators, (1) data infrastructure must support audit ready reporting, (2) governance must match supervisory expectations, and (3) product design must account for regulatory visibility from day one.
For investors and partners, reporting compliance is a useful test of execution quality. Firms that can operate inside regulated environments with clean reporting, strong controls, and reliable evidence will have an advantage as oversight expands.
The Bank’s information session walks PSPs through annual reporting requirements, including required data fields, operational risk disclosures, activity metrics, and submission through PSP Connect.
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, artificial intelligence, 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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Apr 29, 2026 | NCFA Fintech Market Activity | Lending Consumer Credit And BNPL, Capital Markets And Funding

On Apr 29, 2026, VersaBank and FinanceIt Canada announce breakthrough in Real Time Structured Receivable Program pilot, an AI enabled funding model for point of sale finance receivables.
The change is in timing. Many point of sale lenders originate loans and then hold those receivables for 5 to 30+ days before financing them. VersaBank aims to fund individual receivables within hours. That shortens the gap between origination and funding and reduces the need for warehouse lines.
The program already operates at scale. VersaBank’s Structured Receivable Program portfolio exceeded CAD $4.4 billion as of Jan 31, 2026 and has grown at a 33% compound annual rate over the past five years. In the U.S., it completed more than US $310 million in fundings in its first year, above a US $290 million target.
The pilot with FinanceIt focuses on funding at or near the point of sale. FinanceIt originates consumer loans across home improvement, retail, and other merchant channels. If funding happens closer to origination, partners can reduce how long loans sit on balance sheet and lower the cost of carrying receivables.
This approach also changes how lending platforms access capital. Many point of sale and BNPL providers rely on warehouse facilities and forward flow agreements before selling loans into securitization or institutional channels. Shortening the time between origination and funding improves capital turnover and reduces reliance on those structures.
It's AI's decision support layer that's supporting faster decisions. VersaBank positions the program as using AI to assess and structure receivables in real time, allowing funding decisions without batch processing or manual review cycles.
David Taylor, President and CEO, VersaBank:
“This represents a breakthrough innovation in point-of-sale financing.”
It's the combination of faster decisioning and immediate access to capital. Funding can move closer to continuous, loan level decisions rather than batch processing. That allows capital to be deployed when a loan is approved instead of after it sits waiting in a pool. Over time, this leads to more precise pricing and better use of balance sheet capacity.
What happens when capital is deployed at the moment a loan is approved instead of days later, and which lenders are set up to operate at that speed?
Funding speed is becoming a core driver of economics in point of sale lending. When capital is deployed at origination, lenders can reduce costs and improve returns without taking on more credit risk.
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, artificial intelligence, 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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Apr 28, 2026 | NCFA Insight | Artificial Intelligence And Data, Banking And Credit Infrastructure

On Apr 27, 2026, Customers Bank announced a multiyear collaboration with OpenAI to deploy AI across commercial banking operations. The bank has nearly $26 billion in assets and already has 75% of team members using OpenAI powered tools. Customers Bank even used an AI voice clone on its last earnings call. The bigger change is how the bank is deploying AI agents across lending, onboarding, and payments.
On its Q1 call, Customers reported more than 500 internal agents and custom GPTs, over 28,000 hours saved through AI enabled workflows, and productivity gains equal to almost 15 full time employees. Q1 results also show $69.7 million in net income available to common shareholders, total deposits up $813.9 million from Q4, and total loans up $609.0 million from Q4.
Sam Sidhu, President and CEO, Customers Bancorp
“We expect a fundamental re-engineering of how Customers Bank operates. We have spent the last year building the operational and governance infrastructure to deploy AI at scale. This strategic collaboration with OpenAI gives us the frontier models, engineering expertise, and ability to co-create a roadmap toward becoming an AI-native bank."
Customers Bank wants AI inside its operating model, with OpenAI engineers working directly with the bank to automate commercial lending, deposit onboarding, and payments. The bank’s cubiX platform already processes about $2 trillion in annual payments volume, giving the collaboration a live operating base, not a pilot or lab only environment.
During Q1 2026 earnings call, Sidhu disclosed that his prepared remarks had been delivered by an AI clone, not read by him. While it was sure to be a memorable call at that point, it's important if AI can represent management's voice in a public market setting, boards need rules for disclosure, script approval, recordkeeping, and accountability before the next experiment becomes normalized.
AI banking use cases aren't just theatre. Customers Bank wants to reduce its commercial loan closing from 30-45 days to about 7 days. It also wants complex commercial account opening to fall from more than a day to under 20 minutes. They are targeting the slowest, most expensive parts of commercial banking.
This is where smaller banks and fintechs should pay attention. AI in banking won’t be won by buying a model and asking staff to use it. The value comes from redesigning workflows around agents, then keeping humans on approvals, exceptions, and risk judgement. That requires clean data, mapped processes, audit trails, escalation rules, and ownership of each AI output.
There's a regulatory approach too. Investor relations, lending decisions, onboarding, and payments all require accountable systems. If an agent drafts, routes, ranks, or speaks, the bank's still on the hook for the result. The lesson is not “let AI run the bank.” It's use AI to remove friction, but keep governance strong enough to prove who approved what and why.
Can Customers Bank turn AI from a productivity tool into an AI enabled engine powering lending, deposits, and payments?
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, artificial intelligence, 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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