David Durand, Advisor, Innovation and Advocacy
September 9th, 2020
David Durand, LL.L., B.Sc. chem., – Founder and Managing Partner of Durand Lawyers – Lawyer (Québec)[...]
Category Archives: Marketplace Lending/P2P, Online Lending
Has fintech made banking better?
DUCA Impact Lab | Keith Taylor | Feb 18, 2021
Fintech is responsible for a long list of innovations. Helping people make better financial decisions could be next.
Building banking that is not just different, but better, is a common refrain when speaking with fintech entrepreneurs. It is natural to wonder then, what roles are fintech companies playing now in building ‘better banking’, and more importantly, what opportunities are there to better deliver on this promise?
The DUCA Impact Lab was established by DUCA Financial Services Credit Union to explore these types of questions, and to ultimately work with its partners to build and test models of banking that benefit all. Each year, the DUCA Impact Lab, in partnership with Angus Reid Group, examines national perspectives on fair banking in Canada. The study surveys a national pool of banking consumers on their perceptions of fairness in their banking experiences. It evaluates a number of fair banking factors such as transparency, credibility, pricing, as well as access to products and services. It then compares these consumer perspectives with responses from bank employees working in a sales or lending capacity at different types of lending institutions, including fintech’s.
See: State of Fair Banking 2020
Reflecting on the study results for 2020 reveals some key considerations for fintech companies as they continue to innovate and build on their presence in the financial services marketplace. For example:
More people need access to quality advice.
The majority of consumers interact with a financial advisor once per year, or less. In fact, 29% say they have never met with one. Even for those that do meet with an advisor, chances are they either don’t trust, or are indifferent to the advice they get (75% of consumers combined). This is particularly troublesome, given that the right advice is desperately needed - nearly 45% of people with debt say they have neither a budget, nor specific financial goals. Lenders surveyed who work in fintech take an overly ‘sales first’ view of their companies compared with peers, and are significantly less likely to view the primary focus of their company as helping people (21%), when compared to 35% at banks, and 48% at credit unions. Perhaps there’s an opportunity to do both.
Trust is a short-term opportunity, but long-term potential risk for fintech’s.
Nearly as many Canadians distrust financial institutions as trust them, with a winnable 46% of consumers who are somewhere in the middle. Also consider that only 22% of big bank customers think they are getting a good deal on their financial service products; this should translate into opportunities for new entrants and alternatives to the big banks. The level of trust consumers have in fintech companies is generally similar to other lending options to start, but borrower experience becomes more negative post fulfillment. For example, fintech customers are more than twice as likely to respond that their debt has impacted their ability to afford basic health care services such as prescription drugs. Mitigating these risks has benefits for everyone.
See: How Banks, Fintechs, and Customers Win Together
The Fintech sector has produced some amazing innovations, improving the way financial institutions are able to offer a range of services, facilitate transactions and understand customer needs. Extending this innovative thinking to focus on consumer experiences and well being is a natural fit.
About the author:
Keith Taylor is the Executive Director of the DUCA Impact Lab at DUCA Financial Services Credit Union, an innovation hub focused on building banking that benefits all. He works with a range of collaborators such as fintech’s, community organizations, academics and others to build and test solutions to inequity in the banking system.
This article appears as a featured article in NCFA's digital magazine, Fintech Confidential (Issue 3). Click to read the latest thought leadership, insights and trends about Fintech in Canada:
Checkout NCFA's digital magazine, Fintech Confidential (Issue 3, Dec 2020) --> 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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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS!   |
State of Fair Banking 2020
DUCA Impact Lab | Keith Taylor | Feb 4, 2021
Defining Fair Banking
Pursuing the mission of ‘Building banking that benefits all’ requires a working definition of what that type of banking looks like. It needs to go beyond a set of ‘customer promises’ and needs to articulate a definition of fairness that enables banking consumers to spot fair banking when they see it.
We believe fair banking is any financial product or service that lives up to the following set of principles:
- Pricing is clear, transparent, and well understood
- Pricing is representative of the cost of funds, cost of administration and risk, rather than what the market will bear
- It is clear to all parties how any personal data is being used by the lender
- Personal data is only used for purposes agreed to by both the borrower and lender
- The terms and conditions, including penalties and the rights of each party are clearly explained and well understood by both lender and borrower
- Products are only recommended that will bring the borrower closer to their expressed goals
- The borrower is clear on what the institution will do (and not do), with deposits to earn a return
- The assessment of risk is objective, transparent and not prejudicial
- Financial institution recommendations are not biased towards in-house product recommendations
- Products empower consumers when they need access to financial services, not just when they do not
See: Fintech Fridays EP45: DUCA Impact Lab with Keith Taylor - Mission-driven and Consumer-centric Financial Services
Since we released the last report in 2019, much has happened. The COVID-19 pandemic has shocked the world and trailing with it came an economic recession we have not witnessed in nearly a century. Although the novel coronavirus does not discriminate, the infectious disease as well as the economic precarity of the pandemic is impacting individuals differently depending on their socioeconomic status. In the next few weeks, we will discuss the implications and the questions raised from the data and what the status of fair banking looks like today.
The first iteration of this study from 2019 will prove to be an important baseline to understand how the challenges of the public health crisis has rippled into the financial health and wellbeing of everyday Canadians through 2020 and beyond.
Download the State of Fair Banking: Borrower and Lender Perspectives (70 page PDF )--> 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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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS! |
Canadian banks are following in BlackBerry’s footsteps, and that’s not very good news
Hardbacon | Julien Brault | Jan 15, 2021
In my time as a business reporter, I was at the forefront during the decline of the country's 2000s tech giant, BlackBerry.
BlackBerry launched its mobile app store in 2009, a year after Apple launched the App Store.
Everyone knows the rest of the story.
See: NCFA OpEd: Canada’s Open Banking Consultations: Let’s Get it Done!
While BlackBerry executives praised themselves for having better sound quality and a more efficient keyboard, what people wanted when they bought a smartphone were apps.
Today, the Canadian banks are making the same mistake by refusing to put control of financial data back into the hands of their users, as the European banks are already doing.
In fact, since September 14, 2019, European open banking regulations (PSD2) force banks to allow their customers to share their data with third parties according to a standardized protocol. In other words, their customers can choose to share their bank information with an online loan app or even with a budgeting app.
In Canada, the federal government created the Advisory Committee on Open Banking in 2018, which delivered its first report in 2020, which was very favorable to open banking. The report listed the many benefits of such an approach, including increased data security and accelerated innovation in the financial services industry.
The committee then conducted public consultations, the results of which have not yet been released at the time of this writing. Meanwhile, Canadian banks are patiently waiting for a possible regulatory framework before taking action.
This slowness is all the more deplorable as the Canadian banks won’t be the only victims of this delay.
The collateral victims are Canadian financial technology companies like Hardbacon, which must operate in more difficult conditions than their American and European counterparts.
Consumers are also victims, since they can’t benefit from all the innovations they are entitled to expect, have less choice, and have to choose financial products in a scarcely transparent market.
See: Refusal to embrace open banking puts Canada behind yet another curve
Open banking shouldn't be a political issue. The game of competition should ultimately force the hands of reluctant financial institutions to allow their customers to use their financial data as they see fit. This is happening in the United States, where, despite the fact that there is no regulation forcing financial institutions to allow their customers to share their data with third parties, a growing number of players are doing so. This is notably the case with BBVA, ETrade, and TD Ameritrade.
As there is little competition in Canada, this change could unfortunately take a long time to materialize.
However, in recent months, Canadian banks have proven that they can be nimble by allowing electronic document signatures and enabling their customers to open accounts online.
Rather than wait to lose their market share to neo-banks like Revolut, which is already in Canada, Canadian banks have every interest in being proactive and embracing open banking.
The first step would of course be to create and implement a technological protocol allowing their customers to share their data with fintechs like Hardbacon or competing institutions.
But they shouldn't stop there. Canadian banks should also launch their own app stores, which would enable them to offer all kinds of services through their banking portals.
Of course, I would be eager to see Hardbacon become one of the first applications offered through a Canadian banking portal.
Despite the lack of standardized protocols, Hardbacon already manages to offer an application that helps you budget by using your banking information, track your portfolio with its brokerage data, as well as compare credit cards, online brokers, and other financial products. Imagine what Hardbacon could do if it could integrate directly with the financial institutions...
In conclusion, open banking should not be limited to banks. In Europe, PSD2 does not apply to investment account data or data related to insurance policies. However, this data is more complex than bank data, which makes their digital transmission even more significant.
Author: Julien Brault is the CEO and co-founder of Hardbacon, the Canadian fintech behind the eponymous app that helps Canadians plan, budget and invest. Before Hardbacon, he worked as a business reporter for Les Affaires and as a growth marketer for other fintech startups.
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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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS! |
How Banks, Fintechs, and Customers Win Together
Fintech Confidential | Michael King and Richard Nesbitt | Jan 21, 2021
In our recently published book The Technological Revolution in Financial Services: How Banks, Fintechs, and Customers Win Together, a group of expert contributors from North America and Europe share their insights on how the financial services industry will evolve in the coming decade. The context is the ongoing transformation in the financial services industry, which is being driven by three structural forces: heightened regulation that followed the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), innovation fueled by new technologies and entrepreneurial fintech startups, and demographic trends with the rise of millennials and the retirement of baby boomers.
These forces are changing the competitive landscape of financial services, lowering barriers to entry and increasing competition from both inside and outside the industry. Our book outlines what we see as the successful strategies for financial technology (fintech) companies and incumbents, namely banks, insurance companies, and asset managers.
While there is much to learn from our contributors, this article shares our main conclusion and a few key takeaways.
We argue that the winning strategy for the coming decade will be for banks, insurance companies and asset managers to partner with fintech startups to deliver a superior experience to end-customers.
The media has portrayed fintechs and financial incumbents as rivals. But the real threat over the coming is coming from outside the financial services industry – from large technology companies such as the Chinese techfins (Alibaba and Tencent) and North American bigtech companies (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Shopify). These global players have platform ecosystems with large and loyal customer bases, massive datasets on customer behavior, and well-known brands. Techfins and bigtech are bundling financial services with non-financial products to provide end-customers with the delightful, easy, convenient and lower cost experiences they desire.
See: Why Partnerships Are the Future for Fintech
Faced with these new entrants, we argue that incumbents need to partner with fintechs, combining their respective strengths to provide a better customer experience.
- Banks, insurance companies and asset managers are product-centric. These incumbents have millions of customers, expertise in risk management and compliance, funding and scale. But they view the world in terms of deposits, loans, payments, and investments. They see technology as a tool to reduce costs and increase profitability while meeting increased regulatory requirements. They are more focused on their shareholders than on understanding their end-customers.
- Fintech companies are customer-centric. Fintechs are better at understanding the customer’s needs and their financial journey. Fintechs leverage technology to solve customer pain points and offer a better value proposition. They have access to talent and are employing design thinking to develop innovative solutions that provide a delightful user experience.
So, the technological revolution highlighted in the title does not refer simply to the emergence of new technologies or the disruption from new entrants. It refers to a paradigm shift in financial services that refocuses on the end-customer, their experience and their lifetime journey.
Briefly, here are three more takeaways:
Technology is not a strategy, it is a tool for the execution of strategy.
Strategy is the answer to three questions: where is the organization today, where does it want to go in the future, and how will it get there. Technology can provide better tools for pursuing this strategy, but technological innovation is not the end goal of strategy itself. Technology does provide a sustainable competitive advantage; it is widely available and can be copied by competitors who are fast-followers. The biggest barrier to entry in banking is not technology or even regulation, but access to customers.
See: Does FinTech Substitute for Banks? Evidence from the Paycheck Protection Program
Trust in banking is paramount, supported by data security and privacy.
The loss of trust in incumbents following the GFC opened the door to new entrants including fintechs. But trust in financial services is intertwined with cybersecurity and data privacy. Cybersecurity has clearly become the biggest operational risk. The approach must be a shift in mindset from “if we are hacked” to “when we are hacked”. Finding it fast, disclosing it and dealing with it immediately, and minimizing the impact on customers will be critical. Data privacy is a second critical issue. Consumers and privacy advocates are acutely aware of the mixed incentives created by the advertising- based business models of Facebook and Google. This is one area where technology (such as blockchain) and new services (such as digital identity) can promote trust, by protecting customer data, privacy, and identity.
Open banking sits at the nexus of these concerns. We argue that the adoption of open banking -- in Canada and globally – will increase data security by putting in place a secure system for the transmission of data using application programming interfaces (APIs).
Regulation and risk management remain pillars of financial services.
See: The future of European payments: Strategic choices for banks
Regulation is not going away, nor should we want it to. Leading financial players – whether fintechs or incumbents – support higher regulatory requirements to weed out bad actors. We argue that maintaining a level playing field and avoiding regulatory arbitrage are important. Effective risk management will continue to be a driver of success in financial services. Incumbents possess this expertise. Fintechs and other new entrants will inevitably need to invest in risk management and compliance to be successful.
Authored by:
- Michael R. King, Lansdowne Chair in Finance, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria
- Richard W. Nesbitt , CEO, Global Risk Institute in Financial Services
This article appears as a featured article in NCFA's digital magazine, Fintech Confidential (Issue 3 Dec 2020). Click to read the latest thought leadership, insights and trends about Fintech in Canada:
Checkout NCFA's digital magazine, Fintech Confidential (Issue 3, Dec 2020) --> 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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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS! |
For Digital Assets, Private Markets Offer the Greatest Opportunities
Bain and Company | By Mike Kühnel, Thomas Olsen, John Fildes and Karl Gridl | Dec 16, 2020
Despite decades of technological advances, global capital markets remain characterized by fragmented and siloed networks, with limited interoperability between them. Reconciliation between systems requires extra, sometimes manual, steps. Many processes across the financial ecosystem thus continue to be prone to error and high costs. This applies to public markets but even more acutely to private markets.
See: 3 Ways Digital Assets Will Reshape The World
As a consequence, a consensus across the global financial ecosystem has emerged: Digitized financial assets and distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms will substantially improve transparency of information, automation, distribution and, ultimately, liquidity. Adoption of digital assets—assets and regulated financial securities that are represented digitally and administered on digital platforms—will expand beyond the first niche application of cryptocurrencies, with DLT removing many sources of inefficiency.
Exchanges, banks, technology companies and other financial market firms will need to make decisions soon about how to participate, as it takes time to build an economically attractive business model and the required capabilities and partnerships. Postponing this decision comes with the risk of losing strategic position as early movers gain share and replace or create new market infrastructure roles.
Despite uncertainty around the relevant legislation, dominant technologies and trustworthiness of some emerging firms in this space, we expect that digital assets will increasingly serve as substitutes for traditional financial products―not completely replacing them but rather operating side by side for many years. In the near term, DLT platforms can digitally represent traditional assets on a blockchain ledger to deliver more efficient administration, such as in managing collateral. But digital assets will also make inroads in issuance, trading, settlement, transfer and custody, because current systems for private assets involve expensive, manual tasks done by many intermediaries, resulting in cumbersome, duplicative and nontransparent processes.
Read: Self-driving Banking
Private market opportunities
In principle, any type of asset can be tokenized, in the sense that related rights of ownership or entitlement to cash flows, along with obligations, can be captured and stored via DLT. We have already seen oddities, such as shares in a professional athlete’s contract or fractional ownership of a painting. Yet while DLT has earned broad attention and support, the biggest opportunities do not lie in public markets, whose current technologies are fairly efficient and would be expensive and complicated to replace in the near term.
To be clear, digital assets are not a miracle that will make very small companies easy (or more desirable) to invest in. Nor will they circumvent retail investor protections by, say, allowing anyone to trade any private asset directly on a mobile app. Rather, the near-term breakthroughs consist of automating workflows and data ranging from capitalization tables to share transfers and dividend or interest payments. Digital asset platforms will bring benefits in efficiency and cost savings, accessibility and transparency. This, in turn, will enable new private capital market innovations to be more:
More Efficient: Digital platforms will allow alternative asset managers to create new, more efficient investment products with portfolios of tokenized private assets. Transfer and trading of private company shares currently have high documentation requirements for new shareholders, creating an administrative burden. Digital assets minimize that burden through smart contracts, where the terms of an agreement are programmable and thereby automated. Instead of settlement processes that take up to two weeks, embedded holder rights and an immutable record will ease verification of ownership, accelerate post-trade processes and remove intermediaries. Digital assets can also unlock more efficient settlement using digital fiat currency tokens and central bank digital currencies, as they become available.
See: Will the Law Keep Up with Smart Contracts in 2021?
More Accessibile: Automating capitalization tables through DLT will make private assets such as private company equity, debt and real estate much more efficient to administer. Efficiency also allows for new types of private capital products that will be more readily available to a broader set of investors―for example, through 401(k) retirement savings plans.
More Transparent: In the future, such platforms can be extended to help minimize costs and administrative tasks at the individual asset level. Transfer of equity tokens will also feature transparency of price and governance, including right of first refusal, proxy voting and divided payments. Automated administration would allow investors such as pension funds to more easily coinvest in specific parts or assets within a private equity fund portfolio.
Continue to the full article --> 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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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS! |
Self-driving Banking
Financial Times | OpEd by Brian Brooks | Jan 12, 2021
Lenders run by algorithms and blockchain technology will require 21st century regulation
The writer is the US acting comptroller of the currency In 1961, Popular Science magazine envisioned self-driving cars.
The reality arrived sooner than anyone anticipated, and before safety regulators could adapt. Most automotive laws — on speed limits, giving signals, drink-driving — had been designed to protect against dangerous drivers, not dangerous cars. Autonomous vehicles brought new risks that legacy rules never considered. As one headline on the Wired website put it: “Who’s Regulating Self-Driving Cars? Often, No One”.
Banking is headed down the same road. And it’s being driven by the technology behind decentralised finance, or DeFi. But just as the original rules of the road protected us from other drivers, so our current bank regulations exist mainly to prevent human failings.
See: Intro to yield farming and the latest developments in DeFi
At the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, we require every bank to have officers responsible for its safety — such as a chief risk officer and a chief audit executive. We limit how much banks can lend to their directors. We even make some bank employees take a certain amount of vacation so others can sit at their desks and identify potential fraud. We call it bank regulation, but we’re really regulating bankers.
DeFi turns all this on its head. It leverages blockchain technology to deliver services with no human intermediation.
One example is creating money markets with algorithmically derived interest rates based on supply and demand — rates that traditional banks set by committee. Other DeFi projects include decentralised exchanges that allow users to trade without brokers, and protocols for lending that do not involve loan officers or credit committees. Although these “self-driving banks” are new, they are not small. They are likely to be mainstream before self-driving cars start to fly.
However, self-driving banks present the same challenges and opportunities as autonomous vehicles. On the opportunity side, they can allow savers to stop shopping around for the best interest rates by having algorithms do this for them. They can also end discrimination against certain borrowers by having software make credit decisions. They could even eliminate the risk of fraud or corruption by no longer being run by humans at all.
See: Interested in a High Interest Bitcoin Saving’s Account? Interview with Ledn CEO, Adam Reeds
Self-driving banks also present new risks, though. If technology accelerates withdrawal of depositors’ funds, just as high-frequency trading can accelerate equity sell-offs, that could increase liquidity risk compared with traditional banks. Asset volatility could be a concern for similar reasons. And the management of loan collateral could be more difficult if humans are not involved in valuations.
There is also a risk that, in the absence of federal regulatory clarity, US states rush to fill the void and create a patchwork of inconsistent rules that impede the orderly development of a national market. This is exactly what happened with self-driving cars. Federal regulators must therefore determine what a regulatory scheme for self-driving banks should look like. Could they ensure fair treatment of customers by such a bank? Sure.
Continue to the full article --> 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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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS! |
Neo Financial Partners with Concentra Bank to Offer a CDIC-Eligible High-Interest Savings Account
Neo Financial and Concentra | Jan 13, 2021
CALGARY, Alberta--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Neo Financial (Neo), a Calgary-based fintech company created by two of the co-founders of SkipTheDishes, has announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration with Concentra Bank (Concentra), a Schedule 1 bank that is quietly fuelling innovation. Through this relationship, Neo is the first Canadian fintech company to offer a CDIC-eligible high-interest savings account that works like an everyday banking account. The accounts are held at Concentra, a Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC) member bank. Together, Neo and Concentra have opened the door for innovation that has historically not been accessible within Canada’s consumer banking sector.
“Canada’s banking sector continues to trail other countries, using technology that is more than 50 years old, and unable to innovate. This is why we set out to rebuild it from scratch. We wanted to create a seamless consumer-first experience, specifically for Canadians,” says Andrew Chau, Founder and CEO, Neo Financial. “Our collaboration with Concentra Bank is a great example of how new technology companies can work with industry partners to innovate better and faster to ensure Canada doesn’t fall behind.”
“We’re different from many banks—we’re open to creative ideas and solutions for our customers and we’re less rigid in our approach to innovation, while managing regulatory requirements,” says Don Coulter, President & CEO of Concentra Bank. “Collaboration with fintechs is central to our strategy. We have a strong history of working with fintechs and will continue to do so. We’re proud to work with Neo Financial to bring this great new savings product to Canadians.”
See:
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Why Partnerships Are the Future for Fintech
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SkipTheDishes co-founders look to shake up banking as Neo Financial hits the market
Neo’s proprietary technology has been designed to simplify finances and create rewarding experiences for Canadians. Neo Savings is a high-interest savings account that can be opened in minutes from your phone, and presently earns up to 30 times more* than other traditional Canadian banks.
“Our team is dedicated to creating a cultural shift in how Canadians bank. This means not only modernizing the current consumer experience, but rethinking the institution as a whole. Through collaboration with organizations like Concentra Bank, I believe the future of Canadian banking will be accessible, empowering and innovative in ways we haven’t thought possible. I hope Canadians are as excited as we are to create this change and build something substantial here in Canada,” says Andrew.
Continue to the full article --> 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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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2020 FINTECH DRAFT PITCHING AND DEMO COMPANY WINNERS! |
