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August 26th, 2025
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Fintech Fridays EP45: Mission-driven and Consumer-centric Financial Services
NCFA Canada | Oct 23, 2020
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EP45: Mission-driven and Consumer-centric Financial Services
Guest: KEITH TAYLOR, Executive Director, DUCA Impact Lab (LinkedIn)
Bio: Keith Taylor is the Executive Director of The DUCA Impact Lab, an innovation hub founded by DUCA Financial Services Credit Union. The Impact Lab is a hub for leveraging emerging technology and community-based insight to build banking models that benefit all members of the community. Prior to DUCA, Keith worked as strategic advisor to a group of companies accounting for over $500 million of community investment annually. He started his career in international development working on business planning and finance for community owned businesses in the Caribbean. Since then, Keith has worked in Canada and internationally on a variety on initiatives focused on philanthropy, social enterprise, social finance and strategy. He holds an MBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University and a BA from Saint Francis Xavier University.
About this episode:
Keith Taylor, Executive Director of the DUCA Impact Lab chats with Anna Niemira about consumer-centric and fair banking. They discuss how a group of underbanked Canadian newcomers back in 1954 focused on solving a real problem in financial services. Fast forward 65 years later, DUCA’s mission has never been stronger. From innovative escalator-loans to digging deeper into retail financial literacy gaps, and their commitment to improving the financial well-being of its customers. As a registered B-corporation, learn how DUCA is innovating and living up to their motto of not only being ‘the best in the world but the best FOR the world’.
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Fintech Friday Transcript of Episode 45: DUCA Impact Lab
Intro: Welcome to fintech Friday's a weekly podcast brought to you by the National Crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada and partners. Covering all things fintech, blockchain, AI and alternative finance.
Anna Niemira: [00:00:21] Hello and welcome to FinTech Friday's podcast, brought to you by the NCFA Canada, a leading fintech and crowdfunding association. This is Anna Niemira and I am your today's podcast host. Time Flies! We are already in the third season of our podcast. You can always refer to the past episodes by visiting ncfacanada.org, which is our website, to connect with incredible people and their stories. Thank you so much for tuning in. Let me introduce our today's guest. We have the pleasure of speaking with Keith Taylor, Executive Director at Duca Impact Lab a non-profit project, which is channeled by Duca Financial Services Credit Union. Keith, thanks so much for sitting down with me today. I'm very excited to speak with you about Duca Impact Lab and its innovation through social finance. Great to have you here.
Keith Taylor: [00:01:28] It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Anna Niemira: [00:01:30] Well, fantastic that we have a chance to speak once again. You presented about Duca Impact Lab at FFCON20 during summertime, and now we are going to tap into this again. So let us know a little bit about yourself. Like, what was the beginning of your fintech adventure? How did all start for you?
Keith Taylor: [00:01:58] As opposed to the beginning of my fintech adventure and interest in the fintech world was when we were thinking about pilots and the Impact Lab and we had a sense of what we wanted to do, but needed to create some partnerships with like-minded organizations and companies. And a key part of the partnership was, how exactly, the technology piece is going to work and help us facilitate these transactions in a way that meets the goals of the partnership. So it was really I'd say accelerated once we started launching the Impact Lab and needed to actually make our pilots work and figure out how to, what resources and partners we could draw on to meet. Those needs and fintechs have been a natural partner. They've been a crucial part of all the pilots we've done in the Impact Lab so far.
Anna Niemira: [00:02:57] Yes. So this is actually something interesting because Duca Credit Union's founding year was 1954, so a few decades ago. And, Duca Impact Lab is a new, over a year old project. So what was happening that the members of the organization decided to leap forward and create Impact? What was the pivotal moment when they said, OK, those financial services, the future of the financial services needs a relationship, a marriage between tradition and innovation.
Keith Taylor: [00:03:35] So it is really rooted in, the Impact Lab is really just an extension of the history of Duca. Duca itself was kind of an experiment in financial inclusion. We started it, like you said, in 1954. But to dig a little deeper, it was actually started by a group of people that were newcomers to Canada and didn't have access to banking services at the time. We found it very difficult to begin services and access to things like loans and accounts at banks in Canada, but they still need to bank and they created their own bank. And what was interesting about that story is like it's a good growth story over such a long period of time. I think our annualized growth rate is something like 20 percent a year for 65 years. So, you know, certainly a successful business story. But what's always intrigued me and has been a part of the Duca culture since our inception was that you know, the reason people didn't have access, was the realization that the people didn't have access to banking because they weren't able to send the right signals to banks that you could be bank customers. That growth trajectory is really impressive, considering it happened on, you know, based on the business of people who are on paper, not supposed to be very good banking customers. So we wanted to figure out, OK, well, if that was the case, then how is it materially different now and if the signals that we were using then are imperfect? Are there some better signals that we can use now? And we want to create some space to figure out how we could develop some better signals and how we could carry forward that history of providing access to people that didn't have great access to banking with better access to banking. So that's what the Impact Lab is. And it's very much rooted in where we came from. So I wouldn't say it's a new trajectory or a departure from our history. It's really like a natural evolution of where we've been and where we intend to go.
Anna Niemira: [00:05:54] So you mentioned about those signals. So what has been missing thus far in the traditional lending system? Because you are talking about people not really being good on paper and banks rejecting those customers. What was actually that pivotal moment that you decided, OK, we need to form, we need to create everything but there's something missing. And it seems to me, from what you're saying, that it's still missing in this traditional banking system. So what is that signal? What what is actually missing here?
Keith Taylor: [00:06:37] Well, I think the capacity to evaluate nuance and the importance of relationships has largely been in, phased out as we become increasingly reliant on automation, and decision-making processes are more and more centralized. I think the value of relationships and history with an institution from a credit risk perspective has started to become fuzzy. And what we're seeing, what we're seeing, is, you know, that and what our history proves is that that value is still very relevant. I would add to that, you know, there're some missing transparency pieces in mainstream banking that I think people have just come to accept. There was like, this is the terminal. It's almost like the difference between an applicant and a supplicant. OK, but it's there and it carries forward at a hangover from the banking power dynamic that you saw in the old days. And I think it's still true. You see, the partner and the impact lobbyist like to use the example of buying laundry detergent as opposed to getting a mortgage. And I'm going to steal maybe some of your thunder because I always really loved that example. And it's in, it's very, very true. It's what what is different about banking that makes you kind of leave your meeting with a banker, you know, grateful, grateful that they were actually willing to sell you their product, whereas, you know, you would never, you would never have that level of gratitude leaving Wal-Mart with your laundry detergent and sitting here. Isn't it great that Wal-Mart sold me this laundry detergent? I'm so grateful for them. They're so lucky to be dealing with Wal-Mart.
Anna Niemira: [00:08:39] Yes, it's funny and it's tragic at the same time.
Keith Taylor: [00:08:44] Yeah. So I think that there's a lot of unpacking to do when it comes to power dynamics and transparency in banking. And it's one of the things that I think has a real impact on the experiences of people when they deal with institutions and they know it when they deal with institutions that still prioritize that relationship. I think that's something that you guys long prioritized. And it's that, in the way, that we've operated for quite some time and it's still very much part of the experience when we make business decisions and lending decisions. So I think there's an interesting culture in banking as you move through the ranks, and I'm not quite sure if I can synthesize it all in a in a soundbite. But as you move from client-facing service type roles to senior executives an interesting thing happens. You know, you move from a role that prioritizes relationships and thinks there's flexibility in decision making and that things are dealt with on a case by case basis, too, like the opposite end of the spectrum, where we do a fair banking study every year that you get in and through the impact lab. And we examine perceptions of fair banking on a number of different metrics between borrowers and lenders and the borrower side. We had a question about perceived levels of gratitude for your customer. So essentially, like how grateful should your customers be for doing business with you? And at the frontline level, that the number of people that said, oh, yeah, customer should be grateful for doing business with us was very marginal. But as you move up the ranks and especially going into the executive ranks, it actually becomes quite a significant chunk of the respondents that work in financial institutions, said that, yes, customers should be grateful. And I think there's an interesting opportunity somewhere in there for fintech, but also for smaller institutions to really reconnect with that relationship piece and to start using that as a lens for creating value for their customer base.
Anna Niemira: [00:11:19] Well, from what you're saying, I'm finding this fascinating because we are moving into the twenty-first century right now and we are talking about artificial intelligence and robots answering to us. And, then, you talk about creating a relationship. That's actually fascinating because it's very untypical. But yet, you find this as a foundation for your business. And this is how actually Duca started the relationship and keeps building those relationships. And, building those relationships has been fundamental to the existing and growth of Duca. And, you are taking that and you are passing this towards the future. Do you think, is it important for traditional financial institutions to open up to fintech solutions? Is it going to change the dynamics? Is this going to change their relationships with the customers, or is this just simply pertaining more to the services they can offer?
Keith Taylor: [00:12:33] I don't think technology and automation are necessarily at odds with the relationship driven approach. I think in the best cases, they can enhance that approach, especially when it comes to providing better data to informed advice being given by the financial institution. I think one of the things we also see in that area, banking study, is that there's a big advice problem in financial services, and it's one that fintechs are really well-positioned to help support the improvement of. So, I don't think it's necessarily the antithesis of what I would say there's starting to be an opportunity to identify fintech companies that are really taking a mindful approach to solving a problem that is worth solving as opposed to, you know, building something that can easily be gobbled up by a ban and the value proposition of each company is completely different. And the latter, you know, has an obvious audience, but the former has a chance to do something truly transformational and can fit into that sort of approach that I just described. So maybe, it is maybe, it is a bit atypical, but that's, you know, that's what we see in our business and it's what's driven the success of the credit union and its played role in the risk analysis of the impact of our pilots as well. You know, it's a crucial part of the risk that is underexplored because it's less quantifiable, but it's certainly there.
Anna Niemira: [00:14:35] So definitely like tapping into fintech, it seems to be beneficial for either midsize financial institutions as well as for the big banks. But at the same time, what are exactly customers' possible benefits from such partnerships? You mentioned the services. You mentioned also that there are certain applications. But, you know, it's a broad spectrum of applications when it comes to financial apps. So in particular, what are you focusing on?
Keith Taylor: [00:15:15] Through the Impact Lab?
Anna Niemira: [00:15:17] Yes, exactly, through the Impact Lab, yes.
Keith Taylor: [00:15:19] We run, in addition to some larger pilots, some research initiatives that we're involved in, we run special loan pilots, which are collaborations between different community organizations or social finance entities, fintechs, and ourselves. So we're focused on building models with that sort of approach that seek to address some sort of inequity in the financial system and to test, you know, to test this notion of like what would banking look like if all we were trying to do was solve a problem or create an opportunity. And framing a banking business model design process that way is a very different way of looking at it than saying, OK, what's our hurdle rate over the next three months or a month or whatever it extends, know the short-term of that type of approach with like really what ends up being a single metric that matters to a long-term view of it with a lot of different metrics that matter. So, I'll give you an example, one of the pilots we run, and I spoke about it with Stephanie Holmes from Cash-Flow, who's our fintech partner, over the summer at your conference, is the utility of cash flow based lending. And the way that it can form a type of personal lending is very much geared towards an individual's cash flow. And that is structured entirely on that individual's cash flow profile. So we created a loan pilot using that sort of a methodology and using their platform to help move individuals that have gotten themselves into trouble with high cost debt, like payday loans, or other types of high cost consolidation loans or private lenders, and provide them a way out of that with a low cost loan. It was only a prime plus two loan that was entirely adjudicated based on a cash flow profile. And what we're finding in that, in that pilot, is that the risk is a lot lower than we might have assumed. And I think that's true of both the Impact Lab pilots that we're running right now. That's what we're seeking to get out, and I think fintechs are a really crucial part of the equation. And in my earlier statement, I gravitated more towards the data functionality because that's really the value that one of the big pieces of value they've been able to bring to the table is helping us collect, dissect and utilize data in a bit of a different way than we would be otherwise.
Anna Niemira: [00:18:31] When it comes to Canadians, and I'm sorry to say that, we are one of the most indebted nations. So definitely, when it comes to this variety of loans, with some of them being very high interest, why this is actually happening? Do we have too easy access to money here, or perhaps not enough of financial education, or do we consume too much that we are spending too much? What is actually happening when you are dealing with retail clients and you are consolidating their debts? What is the biggest problem here and why we are borrowing so much?
Keith Taylor: [00:19:20] Well, I think it's a complicated answer, I keep coming back to one of the findings from our fair banking study that was really interesting to me. And I think it's been mirrored in the results of other studies is that there's a two part problem, really. There's a big gap between consumers self-assessment of their financial literacy and evidence of that financial literacy. So, for example, I forget the actual numbers now, but most of the respondents, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 percent of people, thought that they were very, very good at managing their own personal finances. But half of those people never established and don't have a budget. You know, a similar proportion don't have any goals. So, the evidence that you are good at managing your own money is not really there, despite this self-perception that you know, you're excellent at it. The second part is, where financial institutions need to reflect on their role in that equation and that it's not just the availability of debt. It's the quality of advice that they're getting in that same study we saw almost half the borrowers say that the advice I get at my financial institutions is very helpful. And you combine that with the fact that most lenders don't think that, almost half of the lenders surveyed don't think, that their borrowers understand what they're buying. That's a recipe for a bit of a mess.
Anna Niemira: [00:21:04] Ok.
Keith Taylor: [00:21:07] So I don't know that answers your question, really, but I think what we need is a better assessment of our own abilities and in a better framework for giving advice through either tax or financial institutions, or both.
Anna Niemira: [00:21:27] Right. So we can say that we are lacking financial education, that Canadians are lacking financial education and, you know, being positive by nature they overestimate what they are capable of doing, and earning, and paying. And, I think that is actually the biggest problem, that we are lacking a reality in our financial situations.
Keith Taylor: [00:21:53] And it speaks to the value. If you can come up with a model, you know, of addressing financial literacy for a bunch of people that don't think they need financial literacy addressed is a really big opportunity.
Anna Niemira: [00:22:06] And, at the same time, that pertains also to advisors, to financial advisors, as you mentioned, who are working at the bank. That sometimes it's just for them about knowing their products, but not really seeing if those products are suitable for their customers. So, the perception of the bank needs to be a little bit changed, or the mentality of the bank. It's not just about selling the products, but also selling the products which are suitable for the customers. And that actually makes a big difference. What are the differences between lenders' and borrowers' perceptions of lending risk factors? You mentioned that you're looking, for example at Duca, at the cash flow; whereas, banks are looking from a different perspective. At the same time, borrowers also looking at themselves from a different perspective. If you were to mention one or two crucial points what each side would need to look at when evaluating the person for the loan.
Keith Taylor: [00:23:27] I think credit scores are still really important in our studies. They insistently come out on the lender side as the highest weighted aspects. And I think the more we learn about using that as a basis for lending, the more we realize we need other indicators. And it particularly becomes relevant, I think. And I think one of the most interesting transparency issues, in the kind of borrower-lender world, or the lending world, is the way things are priced. I think you have situations where credit scores are overly weighted in applications, but then you also have lots of situations where similar types of credit profiles are getting different deals. So, the importance of negotiation is one of those things that I think lenders appreciate that borrowers may not be based on what we're hearing. There are about half the lenders that responded, suggested, that they don't get questions on pricing a lot, or at least, just half the time, which means half the people aren't really asking. They're kind of taking what they're given. And what they're given is primarily based on a credit score and with a few other things peppered in there. That is a difference that's worth unpacking. And the importance of negotiation, especially on the borrower side, is an underappreciated difference because I think lenders are expecting a certain amount of it and they're not always getting it.
Anna Niemira: [00:25:17] Thank you. Thank you so much. That's actually very helpful because we can at least know what we need to focus on making sure that certain points are completed before we are applying for anything. As you mentioned, education is the key to successful banking and successful lending as well and it makes it easier for both sides. What is the current project you are running at Duca? Is it escalator loan? What is it?
Keith Taylor: [00:25:57] It's a yeah, it's a mix of projects. The Escalator Loan is one project and that's the pilot loan program I mentioned that we're running with CacheFlo and it's called CacheFlo, the Credit Canada Debt Solutions, which is a national non-profit that counselor, Equifax is involved, and Duca and Duca Impact Lab are involved so that that pilot is meant to be a consolidation loan option for individuals that wouldn't qualify for consolidation loans through the usual channels without being, you know, huge premiums to do so. It's structured on its adjudicative based on the cash flow profile and structured in a bit of a unique way, it's a prime plus two loans and for borrowers that meet the terms and payment obligations of the loan as they've agreed. They actually get the plus two back in a cash payment. So there's kind of an incentive both to repay the loan, but also a cushion to help them avoid to start funding a savings account and start to avoid getting into trouble with particularly payday loans. We've seen a lot of payday loan patrons in that in that pilot and it's something that I think there's a lot of, it's just amazing to see what people are paying for that type of financing, and the circumstances they get themselves into. I think it's also amazing to see how many people have multiple payday loans outstanding at once, which is technically against the rules but seems to happen anyway and there's a lot we're learning there. I think the other pilot we're running is a working capital pilot for underbanked entrepreneurs and social enterprises that are being done with our Partners Fund through and we're targeting businesses and individuals that would never we are outside of the usual criteria of funding through his usual channel and testing, you know, the risk and impact of providing this type of short term financing for businesses to help manage cash flow crunches by giving them a vehicle for selling their receivables.
Anna Niemira: [00:28:41] Those ones are actually fantastic projects. And what I can see, we were talking about education, but I can see, that through your projects, you are actually educating people because you are focusing on this cash flow management as well, and you are trying to do everything to help people to improve their credit score, to consolidate the debt giving, as you mentioned, prime plus two, which is really affordable for many people. That can really set them up in life as well and they can start looking at life from a different perspective as well.
Keith Taylor: [00:29:19] Yeah, we're taking the approach of solving the problem first and then thinking about how to scale as the second. I don't know if that's the right way to do it, but that's how we're doing it and it's been successful.
Anna Niemira: [00:29:35] Now, you're looking at, as I can see, that this is a long-term approach. This doesn't look like a short-term approach that, OK, let's make money as much as possible, but rather what we can do to help people, to help Canadians. And if we help Canadians, they are going to be better off, and then they are going to be our better clients. Through that, our business will excel, our business will scale and will grow. You're looking to do all through action, to build yourself through tangible actions and seeing the problems and looking for solutions.
Keith Taylor: [00:30:13] You said that a lot better than I did.
Anna Niemira: [00:30:17] Yeah.
Keith Taylor: [00:30:18] You can see that's exactly what we're trying to do. We'are trying to create a venue for ourselves and for like-minded partners to explore what's possible. If you take that sort of let's do it.
Anna Niemira: [00:30:30] I think one of your mottos at Duca is: be the best in the world but also be the best for the world.
Keith Taylor: [00:30:38] That's a B-Corp motto. We are also a B-Corp, and that's one of their lines. Duca's mission is to help people do more, be more, and achieve more money in their lives.
Anna Niemira: [00:30:50] Right.
Keith Taylor: [00:30:51] It's very, very much linked to the mission of the Impact Lab as well and why Doca decided to create such an environment.
Anna Niemira: [00:31:02] Right. But those two actually are going very well together. When you think people and by that you actually good for the world as well and Duca is the first ever credit union to receive global recognition, which is Duca's designation as a B-Corp certified organization, as you mentioned, and because of that, I'm sure that there's many fintech companies which would like to connect with you and collaborate. How they can do it? How the fintech community can connect and collaborate with Duca Impact Lab?
Keith Taylor: [00:31:39] I was going to ask, you can either send me a note on the Impact Lab site, there's a connect with us feature there that just come straight to me or you can find me on Linkedin and send me a note there, and if that fails, it's ktaylor@duca.com.
Anna Niemira: [00:32:00] For everyone who's listening, they can actually connect with Keith directly and make sure that they're giving actually a very good proposal as well because it definitely needs to be solution-oriented. It's all about fulfilling the mission.
Keith Taylor: [00:32:16] Yes, absolutely.
Anna Niemira: [00:32:18] If you were actually to give also one advice to the fintech community what would it be? We mentioned that, yes, they have to be solution oriented, but is it anything specific that you are focusing on when you are reviewing fintech companies for collaborating with you?
Keith Taylor: [00:32:43] Really, I think what separates the ones that we want to collaborate with from the ones we don't is the ones we collaborate with are trying to solve a problem we're solving. And they're trying to build something, you know, not necessarily build it to an exit, but build something that's a contributor to the ecosystem. They're trying to, they're taking that problem-solving first approach that the one we just went through and those are the partners that we find the most interesting, and those partnerships are the ones that work out the best. I know there are multiple ways or multiple drivers of evolving your fintech business, but, you know, if that sounds like the company that you run, then it'll be interesting to chat.
Anna Niemira: [00:33:43] We are coming to the end of our conversation. I would love to ask you more questions, but maybe at the same time, in the end, is it a story or some profound case or the situation or eureka moment that you said, either pertaining to you or your colleagues, that you encountered at Impact Lab and then you said, OK, this is it, this is how we do it. This is our vision and mission for the future when you actually either collaborated with someone or you came across something, that you had this very unique moment, either personal or from the business perspective.
Keith Taylor: [00:34:30] I think. I mean, for me, those moments are when we realize when we kind of had that Aha link to the history of Duca and recognize the need to kind of carry that on as we evolve, was one. I think the second was, you know, once we started to analyze the data that we had was that a lot of our existing members were in situations that could benefit from the loan and debt solutions that we were coming up with within the Impact Lab. So you could start to see a real tangible need for it and our membership base now that was really clearly linked to the history and why we became a thing in the beginning and I think those two pieces were really powerful. And, I'm looking forward to continuing to evolve what we're doing and to set out new partnerships, and solve problems.
Anna Niemira: [00:35:37] Yes. So you had this feel good moment.
Keith Taylor: [00:35:41] Yeah, exactly, but it was almost like it was "feel good", but it was a validation too. We kind of had this hypothesis of what we wanted to do and we started to look, OK well, who could benefit from this in our own membership base expecting to not find that many, but there were a lot of them and just, you know, got us excited in a way and in that it really demonstrates the need for what we're doing and how many people could benefit from it.
Anna Niemira: [00:36:13] I'm truly looking forward to seeing what will be happening in the future and how you are going to evolve, because so far what you do, I think, it's absolutely fantastic. Keith, thank you so much for being with me and sharing all this information and everything that you've said about Duca's future, but also what you are doing for the community and how you're trying to help retail and institutional clients as well, how you are working with fintech companies and trying to improve our financial systems, step by step, case by case.
Keith Taylor: [00:36:51] Thank you. Appreciate that. And thanks for having me.
Anna Niemira: [00:36:53] Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, that's a wrap. On behalf of the FinTech Fridays podcast, we would like to thank Keith Taylor for joining us on this show and you for tuning in. Please feel free to share your thoughts with us. We always welcome your feedback. And listen and learn! Once again, I'm inviting you to visit NCFA website to check out some of the fantastic past episodes. We look forward to seeing you next Friday for another episode of FinTech Fridays. Have a great weekend. Thank you so much.
Outro : you've been listening to Fintech Fridays brought to you by NCFA and partners. Tune in weekly for the latest fintech Friday podcast by subscribing to this channel. The National crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada is a non-profit actively engaged with social and investment fintech sectors around the globe and provide education research industry stewardship services and networking opportunities to thousands of members and subscribers. For more information please visit ncfacanada.org. Oh yeah.
End of Podcast
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Fintech Fridays EP43: Taking the Mortgage Process From 40 Days to Minutes
NCFA Canada | Oct 9, 2020
JOIN US ON A STORYTELLING JOURNEY EVERY FRIDAY.
EP43: Taking the Mortgage Process From 40 Days to Minutes
GUEST: CHRIS GRIMES, Co-Founder and CEO, FundMore.ai (Linkedin)
BIO: Chris has worked in the financial industry for 20 years, gaining experience in wealth management, credit lending, and mortgage origination. He is passionate about advancing the mortgage industry through technology and forward-thinking initiatives. Chris spent 12 years managing a local mortgage team. He is actively involved in real estate investment and other entrepreneurial ventures.
Links:
Chris Grimes, Co-founder and CEO (LinkedIn)
FundMore.ai (website| twitter)
About this episode:
Chris Grimes, Co-founder, and CEO of FundMore.ai chats with Tristram Waye about the mortgage market, inefficiencies, and entrepreneurship. Vetting mortgages by lending companies is a complex process involving several parties and considerable time. Whether a first-time buyer or doing a refinancing, this process can last up to 40 days. The conversation explores the mortgage process, its deficiencies, and how technology is being used to enhance this financial transaction.
Subscribe and tune in each Friday to check out the latest movers and shakers in fintech. Listen to more podcasts here:
Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3
Fintech Friday Transcript: Chris Grimes of FundMore.ai
Intro: Welcome to fintech Friday's a weekly podcast brought to you by the National Crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada and partners. Covering all things fintech, blockchain, AI and alternative finance.
Tristram Waye: Welcome to the FinTech Friday podcast. My name is Tristram Waye, and I'm your host for today's session on behalf of the National Crowdfunding and FinTech Association of Canada. FinTech Friday gives us a chance to talk to interesting personalities from the FinTech space. Today, my guest is Chris Grimes from Fundmore.ai. Chris, great to have you here.
Chris Grimes: I appreciate that. Tristram, I'm looking forward to the conversation today.
Tristram Waye: Let's, let's start off with a bit about your background. What was your journey prior to Fundmore?
Chris Grimes: As I probably, you know, like most technology founders, I had zero coding experience, zero technology experience, and decided I would start a technology company. I actually - my background started in banking. So when I was going to school, I started as a teller at one of the big banks and then jumped ship to the green-colored ship. And we drove on the investment side of the world and then eventually into CIBC, where I sort of got my footing in the mortgage space. I was there for a few months and realized, you know, there was this cool world and mortgage brokering. I didn't know very much about mortgages. I'd only been in it for about six months. But I said, this was a cool industry, and I was going to go and dive headfirst into it. So I left the security of the bank started a mortgage team in Ottawa, back in 2006, and into 2007. And sort of a way I went, traveled through a couple of different brokerages and got to experience what it was like at different brokerage houses here in Canada. But really started to understand the mortgage process that both a lender goes through and, more importantly, with the consumers going through.
And just to quickly summarize, what I found was, every single time the government came out and added a new regulatory change or every single time there was a bit of a change in the market, it really impacted the borrowers' experience. And as a team, we started realizing that there had to be better ways of processing mortgages. And we began to sort of journey on the broker side of the space and looking at helping my actual mortgage team become more efficient at processing more mortgage files. And as we did that, we started realizing that this is actually stemmed, not necessarily from the broker side, or even the consumer side, but really it fell back on the lending side. The impact that they had, based on the regulatory guidelines and the underwriting guidelines that these lenders had to underwrite, it became an extremely arduous process. They have huge workforces spending hours, and hours a day, going through paperwork, analyzing applications for credit risk. And as this process goes on, it becomes more and more of a time-consuming exercise. If you look today, I think it takes roughly 40 days to fund a mortgage. Costs to the underwriter, going and funding in particular, going through the roof. There's a lot of factors that go into that. But especially if you look at, you know, in the US there, the numbers are more than $9,000 to fund a mortgage today. It's staggering. Profitability on mortgages are going down year over year. And it's becoming much more...and really, it's all driven by labor costs. And a lot of it is just simple inefficiencies because they're forced to do certain things that automation can do a really good job. And not necessarily replacing people, but really assisting people and making them more efficient. And that's really where we see Fundmore as a bit of a game-changer for these mortgage lending companies. Being able to leverage machine learning, artificial intelligence, and automation to give them a better head start when they're when they get the application in the door
Tristram Waye: For people that maybe have had some interaction with a mortgage broker and have been through the process, but you know, don't really get to see all the other things that go through during those 40 days. What what does that process look like? And why does it take so much time?
Chris Grimes: So if you're, pick a first-time homebuyer as an example. So you've decided you're going to buy your first home. You've chosen to work with a mortgage broker, or maybe even just go right to the big banks, and you walk in the door, and you say, I want to get a mortgage. Thanks. That's great. We're here to help you. We're excited. And we're gonna hand you a mortgage application. And you're going to complete the mortgage application. This might be done in person. Today, there are tools that maybe allow you to do it online, and it feels like the experience is getting better because maybe they don't ask you 20 or 30 minutes worth of questions. They might only ask you 10 or 15 minutes worth of questions to start with. But it's only a starting point. After you completed the mortgage application, they have to actually do all the due diligence to validate that mortgage application. And what that means is today, roughly 60 documents are required to actually validate that information. So you will tell your lender, I make X amount of dollars. You have to validate that with anywhere up to five or six pieces of documentation today to actually confirm that. Same with the down payment. There are anti-money laundering laws. There are counterterrorism funding laws. There are Know Your Client requirements that these lenders have to do to actually validate you as somebody that could have a mortgage. This is all before they've even thought about, you know, whether, on the credit guidelines, they can even meet their credit guidelines or even lend to you. Or you know, the affordability factors. So you can see how all this starts compiling. And you know, to look at downpayment and then meet all those checkmarks, I just talked about AML, CTF, and KYC documents. You know, you're looking at least probably another half dozen to a dozen documents to verify that information, especially today. Cost of housing is going up. And there's some housing shortages and things like that that's occurring. And, you know, people looking to get into the market today are, are faced with these challenges. That, you know, they may not have all that money sitting in their bank account, where traditionally, if you're buying a home and it was $250,000, you probably could save that 5% or 10% or 20% quite quickly. Today, it's a lot more difficult. And so you rely on parents, or you rely on other sources of funding to be able to help secure your downpayment. And all of these little things you're going to do to actually buy your home actually make it more difficult for the lender today to actually approve you because they have to collect more documents. So this is really the biggest driving time factor behind the 40 days.
We were talking to one of the large lenders this summer. And they were telling us they employ 50 people simply to look at documents and then go through a document checklist. They look at an appraisal. They have four pages of four letter-size pages of one line checkmarks that somebody has to go through to validate that appraisal, as an example. So you can see it's quite - that's really what's driving a lot of that the time factor. There's also the issue of Equifax, and Home Trust did a study last year, and they found that 70% of mortgage applications have some sort of fraud involved with them. I mean, it can be as simple as you misstated your income, which coming from the mortgage broker background, and any other mortgage brokers listen to this, they'll know most people will say they make $100,000 when the truth is they make, you know, $96,500. It's not a big glaring, you know, error, but it does require additional time on the back end, and even on the on the front end to validate that information. So if there was ways to go about this, you know, i.e., looking at some of the technology solutions in the industry today, Flinx in Canada, Stripe in the US. Now they have these tools where you can scrape bank account data, and it has some analytics built-in, where it can help sort of validate this information at source. Rather than having to go through the phase of first-time homebuyer, gives you an application with a number. Lender asked for a bunch of documentation. Someone's manually checking it. So a simple solution like that would save quite a bit of time in the process. Once you've gone through the app, Oh, go ahead.
Tristram Waye: No, no, go ahead.
Chris Grimes: I was gonna say what once you've gone through that documentation process, the application process, you're now in a bit of a waiting period. And this is a period where the lender is going to make a final credit decision on you. So you know, they've taken into account your credit. They've taken into your income your down payment sources. And now they're going to take a bet on you that you are a good risk or you're not a good risk. And a lot of this is based on you know, your, your credit profile. And then that'll take - could take up to two or three days, depending on how busy the lenders are. And you'll get an approval. Assuming you get an approval, you're really you're in a position to maybe waive that condition or go out and find that property if you hadn't found one already. And then we have another phase where now the lender has to validate the property. So the first day is all about you. The next phase is about the property and some of this if it's insured the mortgage insurance default insurance company like CMHC, or Genworth, or Canada Guarantee. They have some automated tools in their systems to help with that. But sometimes it becomes another manual process, especially if the property is slightly unique. So this can now add two or three or four or five days in a process when they're validating the property. And making sure that, you know, if things go sideways, they have the ability to recoup their costs. After that phase is done, we know we know typically get lawyers involved. They're doing title searches, and they're looking for anything else that might be might come up as a potential risk. And that could take several days. And then, the lender validates that information. It keeps going back and forth with the different parties that are involved. And eventually, 40 days go by and you can - the lenders done all their processes, and they're ready to find your mortgage.
Tristram Waye: So basically, there's, you know, there are at least five or six different groups by the sounds of it involved in this process. And they all do completely different things. And there's a ton of paperwork that needs to be moved around. Sounds like a pain in the butt.
Chris Grimes: That's how I would describe it today, for sure. I mean, it was a pain in the butt whenever it was 12 years ago when I bought my first property. But, going through it now, even knowing everything I know about this industry, it's still a pain.
Tristram Waye: And this is a similar process for people that are doing refinancings and stuff like that, is that right?
Chris Grimes: It is absolutely. Sometimes it can be even more challenging with those the B20 guidelines that came out in 2018 and 2016, restricting how lenders can ensure refinances is really put a damper or really restricted, you know, some lenders and what they can actually offer you. So in some ways, it's can almost be worse because you have a smaller lending pool that was willing to do that. And now you're at the mercy of several lenders instead of several hundred lenders.
Tristram Waye: And what is the difference between, let's say, a bank approach to this versus a versus a private lender? What is like, Is there some crossover there? Are they totally different in terms of their approach to the mortgage market?
Chris Grimes: Yeah, I often say this. I do a lot of training with our agents on our, in our team. And this question comes up a lot. And the best way I always think to look at this is there's you know if you look at the sort of the key driving factors of our mortgage approval today, it's credit and your credit history. You're basically what your credit report says. Then you have the affordability factor. Can you actually afford to live in that property or, or at least afford the mortgage? And then the third thing being the property. And if you look at the way, you know, schedule one banks, the large TDs, the Scotias, the RBC's, etc., would underwrite something like that, it's really credit first, affordability second, property third. They're really betting on the covenant on the applicants to being a good suitor, assuming it meets their criteria. On the private lending side, it's flipped. It goes property number one, affordability number two, and credit number three. And the reason for that is typically they have a lower loan to value and what they're willing to how much money they're willing to put up. And then two, they want to make sure that their asset is - can be flipped back on the street if something goes wrong with a mortgage. They don't want to be holding a property that needs a lot of work. They don't want to be holding unique properties or properties out in rural areas. And most private lenders, you'll see, will have very defined geographic areas, but not so much credit guidelines. Where a lender will not care so much about geography but really care talking about the schedule one banks will really care about the applicant. So the credit, the income, things like that.
Tristram Waye: Okay, and so let's talk about Fundmore. You know, how - you were saying a little bit about how it got started, but, you know, where did the idea evolve from? And how does it help address some of the problems in this area?
Chris Grimes: So, Fundmore, I started saying before, really came about from this idea that I had a mortgage team of, we had 15 agents at the time, and how could we make them more efficient? We basically - I mean, there are certainly exceptions to this rule, and the top brokers in Canada are going to exceed what I'm about to say. But, you know, the average broker that we found over the last seven or eight years of running mortgage teams are really capped at about four files, maybe five files a month, personally. This is without extra team support and things like that. And, you know, some certainly could do a lot more. Some were doing a lot less. But it was sort of the average number is about four or five a month. And so we wanted to see what would it take to make them more efficient. What can we do to turn the needle from four or five to 10, 12, or 20, or 50 files at any given time? And so we started scouring the world. I started looking in Canada realized that we were really behind the ball - is what I actually realized, eventually. There wasn't a lot of great solutions to make them more efficient. Certainly, there are newer loan origination systems out there. And there are some good ones, and people do, companies do some great things around that. But it wasn't changing anything. It was just making the wheel shinier.
And, and then, when I started looking at the US and Australia, in the UK, I started realizing that they were much further ahead on simple things that made a mortgage agent's life easier. And they started negotiating with them and saying, Hey, I know you don't offer product in Canada. What would it take to bring a product to Canada? And it started with a document management system. And slowly rolled out, and we ended up bringing in about four or five different platforms. And so what I was trying to do was make my team more efficient. What I ended up doing was giving them five platforms, and nobody was using them because there were too many. So we had all these tools, which were meant to save time and no way of actually making it efficient. And that's how Fundmore was born, to be honest with you. We brought in some - we hired a couple of Co-Op students and brought in someone on the technology side and said, you know, here's our - here's what I want. I have all these platforms. I need to aggregate it into one platform so that somebody can go in access all these data points to make their job easier. And so you know, parts of that were validating income. Parts of this were validating property details. Part of this was validating down payment information. All these things we talked about earlier about what - somebody through a mortgage process has to go through. And so that's what we did, we started building on this platform.
We realized relatively shortly into the process, I guess that what we were building probably had way more value in the lending space. Particularly in the private and alternative lending spaces. And this is going to be companies like credit unions, mortgage investment corporations, private lending, and private lenders. A lot of real estate lawyers represent a lot of private lenders. Things like that, where their job was to actually underwrite these files, to be able to provide them a solution that could do many of these tasks for them. And in seconds, rather than hours or minutes and saving them hiring additional staff and things like that. And so we went out to the market, and we said, Hey, we had this idea, we've built half of it. What is it in there that you would need to actually make this a viable product for you? And so we did a lot of research, spoke to dozens of lenders, of all different sizes. And took their feedback and then built out Fundmore. What happened through that journey, though, is that we realized it's great for the small private lending institutions, you know, companies that were maybe running under $200 million in assets under management. But once you sort of exceeded that number, and then you got into the larger credit unions and you got into big the large mortgage finance companies was that they had these legacy-based systems that - I will be shocked in our lifetime, if they ever actually can replace them, they've invested too much time, they're very fragmented. But that didn't mean that our solution couldn't be available to them. They just had to be exposed in a different way. So through conversations with them, we've now launched our fund or relaunching our Fundmore Score, which has three key components to it. One is it, it triages, and it triages based on the idea that every application that comes in the door, you know, has a lender will have a set of credit guidelines. But credit guidelines, as I said, are really based on credit, first, income second, or property third, or maybe flipped, depending if it's a private investor or a large company. And were there other opportunities to make lending decisions outside of that scope. So bringing in additional data. Better understanding that applicant to then give them an opportunity to potentially approve files that may not have even been in their scope. And then on the flip side is files that will never - should never have come into that lender they don't have to spend time actually underwriting. So that's why we see this sort of triage function of our Fundmore Score. A second component is around the idea of risk and fraud identification. So we know we'll highlight, you know if we think there are some issues with the application, or we think there are issues with the documents we're gathering, we can flag that, and, you know, provide some analytics around the risk metric, and of that applicant. And then the third part is understanding the funding ratio. And this is a big challenge. One of the reasons why the cost of underfunding mortgages and underwriting mortgages have gone up so much is because, you know, on top of all the due diligence work, a lot of files just don't fund. I mean, some of the biggest lenders in Canada have funny ratios at 65%. And what that means is, when they get a mortgage application in the door, they get the documents, that file doesn't actually get closed, even if it meets their lending criteria. So everything else they've sent out a commitment, they're happy to fund the mortgage, the client doesn't actually go there. They may go off to another lender. Maybe they just don't even, maybe they decide they don't want to buy a home, or they decide they don't want to refinance the property anymore. But the lender is completely blind to that decision making. And what we're really looking at right now is through the data, we have to be able to better understand that score for that idea for them and provide that in our Fundmore Score. Which ultimately, again, helps drive profitability because one, they can work on files that are going to absolutely fund and maybe the ones that were at a much lower funding ratio or funding score opportunity, they may just pass. But I actually believe that the biggest value there is that it allows them to change the conversation, maybe change the narrative with a potential applicant, and have a conversation around, you know, what is it going to take for us to close this, this file with you. As opposed to letting them walk out the door and go to another lender or go to another broker or go to another or change their mind and altogether.
Tristram Waye: Is a part of that just like the amount of time that it takes to get this stuff done?
Chris Grimes: It is absolutely timing. Some of it is, you know, other factors. Sometimes it's as simple as another lender offering a promotion. But a lot of this, you know that the lender doesn't have a better - have a full picture of that applicant, outside of what comes in the application and the documents. They can't see that. And so we're looking at data points now that can be able to start predicting some of these metrics,
Tristram Waye: And you were mentioning that there were some other elements that the system can help identify that by, you know, clarify or, you know, help approve a mortgage that may not otherwise have been approved. Can you talk a little bit about those?
Chris Grimes: Yeah, I mean, some of that falls in the secret sauce. But I mean, absolutely. We're just looking at,
Tristram Waye: You don't want to give anything away.
Chris Grimes: No, no, but we're certainly looking at it - we now have access to more data points on when mortgage applications - and part of it. Absolutely. So here's how I have been sort of talking about Fundmore from another perspective. And maybe this answers this question. So if we look at Europe, and you look at the UK, and you look at their advancements in open banking. You look at the US in the way they're interpreting open banking. And you look at Canada, how we've just put a stick in the mud and said, Well, I don't really know what to do. I don't know if we want to do it - I think we should, it's probably great - we're not really sure - and we're gonna maybe leave it up to the Big Five banks - but I don't think so we should let the government handle it. This is sort of where the discussions have been, even though the government has a mandate to really open up the discussions around open banking in Canada. And really, what we've designed with our platform, is an open banking type model where, you know, we, because we've aggregated so many different data sets, a lot of it is through consumer consent. So it's not - we don't, we don't have access to this information, just by you know, flipping a switch. We have to get that consent from the consumer. But it gives the control and the power to the consumer to, you know, to provide the information that they want to provide for us to help them make a better, almost a better proposal to the lender. So the lender can see a much bigger scope and a much bigger picture potentially, of that lender of that applicant, sorry, a direct, you know, direct with the application opposed to the traditional method, which is, you know, application goes in, lender asked for the documents validates the application and we go back and forth for several weeks. So allowing the consumer to control the data and putting forward as much data points as they believe they want to. I mean, obviously, we're interpreting that within our own algorithms, but it gives that, it does give them a bit more power in the application process. And gives the lender a bigger picture of the applicant in themselves if that makes sense.
Tristram Waye: Yeah. And so in terms of your target market, are you focused primarily on Canada now and with, you know, North America, Europe as a potential expansion point, or what are your thoughts there?
Chris Grimes: Right now, we're really focused on Canada, and, in delivering this, getting this product out to - we have a goal of hopefully, every, almost every mortgage application or every mortgage application in Canada will have a Fundmore Score attached to it with the ability for the lenders to better understand and take a deeper dive through our data by us revealing it. That actually means our 2021 goal is to enter the US market with the scoring system and our key platforms. And we also have, as I said, because of the relationships we've built early on with these third party companies, in Europe, Australia. We're looking at delivering some of rather core products to their markets through those through some channel partners there.
Tristram Waye: That's great. Now, tell me a little bit about the, you know, the evolving nature of the mortgage market as a result of, you know, 2020 and all the things that have been going on there? How is that market changing? And, and how can you know, how is Fundmore helping in this environment?
Chris Grimes: So, I think one of the biggest hurdles, early on in 2020, with a pandemic, was the idea of how are lenders going to process applications in a remote environment? Most lenders send their staff home, March, whatever it was, March 18, like everyone else, and, you know, there was quite a bit of a backlog early on because it was still a very manual process. And Fundmore really provides a - can provide a key - an important tool to expedite that process, especially in this remote environment. You know, being able to provide that sort of instant picture. Not only if you look at underwriting, it's typically a point in time, but not only looking at that point in time, which, you know, maybe March 18, wasn't so great, but also looking, you know, forward in that application. So, you know, being with the way we, we make our predictions with our AI, that we can take that application, and then look forward in the future. So the lender not only gets there sort of static point in time picture, but they also get a sense of where the file and where that applicant would be headed. In times like this doesn't make it, it does make it challenging. So that was sort of the first, the first thing they were, you know, we would have provided probably a much easier transition from many lenders if they were using our technology at the time. And but also, you know, with the, with this, and I think the continuation of remote working and, you know, wanting to provide their clients with a better experience, a faster experience, you know, we're in this reality, in this digital age now, where, you know, it's not good enough anymore to stick a mobile app up on your website and say, Well, you know, we have an application. You can fill it out online, or you can go on our website and fill out an application because it doesn't actually help the client. Sure it's a different way of ingesting information. But for me, you know, this is information that probably should have been done in 2000, not 2020. And so, you know, how would you so that the next version of this is how do you turn that application into an instant approval? So if you look at the US, there are companies like Figure.co m and Better. com and they're providing solutions, blending solutions to their clients, almost instantly. And they're doing that by using analytics. They're doing that by understanding their - you know, by understanding as much as they can from their applicant on application. Not on the underwriting process. Now, if you look at this, and you say - if you look at the insurance industry about ten years ago, and you started getting these online applications, and you'd fill them out, and, you know, go to an underwriting desk, and underwriting would still underwrite it, and it would be approved. Today, and companies like standards and things like this that are coming out in the marketplace. And they're underwritten on application. And they're done mostly using AI, some sort of machine learning component in the background. You know, so this is where I think the mortgage industry is right now that, you know, we are where the insurance industry was ten years ago. You know, we're trying to provide better solutions. But it's not actually changing the story, where I believe in 10 years from now, you know, what we're trying to provide as a solution today will be the norm across the board. That if you expect to get a mortgage, you should have a mortgage. It shouldn't take 40 days. It shouldn't take a week, frankly. It should be the same day. There's a lot that goes into it. Absolutely. And it's one of the, if you look at lending as a whole SME lending, credit card lending, a lot of this stuff is gone the analytics route and offer instant approvals. Again, a lot is driven by credit. The mortgage application process, short of maybe commercial lending, or large development lending, is probably the most complex. And there's a lot more that goes into it, which is why it's not here today. But you know, it's coming in, you know, with what we're doing today, we can already turn a mortgage application in what would have been, you know, maybe a full week of work, or several hours of work into several minutes of work. And so we're not that far away from being able to actually tell you, as a consumer as an applicant for a mortgage, you have your mortgage approved. You can have the money in your account within two or three business days.
Tristram Waye: A whole lot of people with a lot of fingernail left. Right?
Chris Grimes: Exactly. Exactly. It's a great analogy.
Tristram Waye: Now, tell me. You know, I'd like to hear more about your entrepreneurial journey, you know, what, what does that been like as a founder? I mean, you're a subject matter expert. But what is it been like developing a company, exploring an idea? You know, how's that gone?
Chris Grimes: It's been - I'd be lying if I said it wasn't challenging at times, for sure. You know, several late nights, and, you know, my partner sitting there, and she's, you know, basically saying, what the heck are you doing?
You know, but coming from a comment, you said, I mean, I've understood the mortgage space, have been in for a long time. I've had some banking experience, but I didn't have any technology experience. And, and I was lucky, early on. I didn't go through my full history and background, but through another company I was involved with, I had met my one of my co-founders. And his background was in technology. He launched and successfully exited multiple businesses, some through IPO t through private sale, things like that. And mostly in the health tech and security tech space. And he also ran a technology company, which was useful. And so we started talking about the mortgage industry, and you know, and his personal experiences and some of my personal experiences, like I said, just getting a mortgage today is not easy, even for people that understand it. And, you know, we were just basically chatting about the difficulties in the space. And he started to get more and more interested in it. And he's done a lot of real estate investment and things like that, as well. So he did understand it from that perspective. But he did give me that opportunity to just sort of pitch in the idea of, you know, what if things were like this? And he thought it was kind of an interesting idea, and we went out and started building something. Spent about, I think we threw maybe five or $10,000 at something, and three months, and we realized, well, that was fun, but that's not going to go anywhere. And but, you know, we're both sort of invested at this point in this idea of what fun work could be eventually. And we've probably pivoted at least a half dozen times in the 18 months we've been in existence. And a lot of that has to do with you know, first trying to develop products for the broker side. Realizing that the challenges were on the lender side, and then pivoting into that space, as our product evolved. And then realizing, well, this is great, we built out a platform that only a select group of lenders can even use, because, you know, their legacy systems are so entrenched in their organizations that they can't even replace what they have. And then we have a pivot again to so that they can ingest our systems or analytics into their platforms. So that is sort of been one of the things I realized when you start a technology company that what you believe you have at the beginning is probably nowhere near what you're going to have when, you know, you're six months, 12 months, 18 months into your journey. The second challenge we've obviously, or we've had is delivering, you know, the sort of technology on time. It's, uh, it's interesting, because, you know, as much as I've said, it takes a long time to get a mortgage, I'm pretty - I can tell someone pretty early on in the application phase, okay, I need this much time to get you approved. I have that just from being in it for so long when I look at an application, okay, I need a week. I need two weeks. This is extra complicated. I mean, three months, four, now, maybe I do 24 hours. But on the technology side, I've learned that if you - if someone tells you it's a month, it actually means three. If someone tells me it's three, it might mean six.
Tristram Waye: Right.
Chris Grimes: But, you know, on the other side, though, it's been an amazing sort of experience. You know, we've got to work with already a lot of different organizations. We were part of the invest Ottawa pre-accelerator program that turned into a pitch contest win, which turned into being part of their accelerator program for a while. And most recently, because of the AI work we're starting to do on a really dive into, I should say, we were just accepted into Creative Destruction Labs, which is one of the largest AI accelerator programs in Canada. And now they're actually offering their program to universities across the world. They have launched one in Paris, UK, three, I think, in the US and, and three or four in Canada now. So
Tristram Waye: It's a tremendous organization. The people that they collect for that, it's incredible—dream Team.
Chris Grimes: Yeah. Yeah. We were quite excited about that news. We just found out actually last Friday. So it's been it was exciting kind of weekend.
Tristram Waye: Congratulations. That's Great.
Chris Grimes: Thank you. Yeah. So we're excited to get started with that. And it starts in a couple weeks. And yeah, we've had, we've had lots of, we said, there's been a lot of - Going through this entrepreneurial journey, I think that my biggest takeaway on top of the learning experiences about how technology companies actually work was, you know, the opportunity to meet and work with so many different people and different mentors and advisors and leading in different spaces. So it's been quite a journey so far.
Tristram Waye: Now what
Chris Grimes: Fraction of the way there.
Tristram Waye: Okay, and so what are your plans for the future?
Chris Grimes: So we're going to go into this program, and we're about to partner with the University on some on another research project around AI. And then really, for us, it's driving our product into more lenders' hands, to be able to provide our solution to make their processes easier and make their lives simpler, but ultimately impacting the end consumer, which is the person getting the mortgage. We don't want it to take 40 days. We want - if somebody wants to get a mortgage, we want them to be able to have that entire, as you said, nailbiting, stress, anxiety, wiped away because they know that they have an approval. They're sitting there driving around on a Sunday afternoon; they're looking at an open house sign. They pull out their phone, and their phone says, oh, I can afford that. I could fund this mortgage tomorrow if I decided I like that house, and I want to sign a purchase offer. That you know, that's sort of the ultimate vision of how we want to be able to provide our tools to lending platforms to lending companies to loan origination systems across North America, and then we'll see what the next phase is.
Tristram Waye: Terrific. Now, if anybody wants to get ahold of you or connect, where can they do that, Chris?
Chris Grimes: Yeah, I mean, you can always find me on LinkedIn. I think it's Chris M. Grimes. But our websites Fundmore.ai. And my email is Chris at Fundmore.ai. So anytime you want to reach me feel free. I'm out there. And can always call me too.
Tristram Waye: Fantastic. Well, Chris, it's been great to chat with you. Very informative to get, you know, for people that didn't have a full understanding of how the mortgage market works and its complexity. That was very informative. Thank you very much for taking the time.
Chris Grimes: Again, I appreciate your time, Tristram, and it was awesome speaking with you. And as you said, if anyone has any questions about the mortgage industry or wants to ask questions about what we're doing, I'm always open to have a discussion. So thanks. Thanks for your time.
Outro : you've been listening to Fintech Fridays brought to you by NCFA and partners. Tune in weekly for the latest fintech Friday podcast by subscribing to this channel. The National crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada is a non-profit actively engaged with social and investment fintech sectors around the globe and provide education research industry stewardship services and networking opportunities to thousands of members and subscribers. For more information please visit ncfacanada.org. Oh yeah.
End of Podcast
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Fintech Fridays EP42: Insights into the Teen Banking Sector and Improving the Financial Well-being of Families
NCFA Canada | Oct 2, 2020
JOIN US ON A STORYTELLING JOURNEY EVERY FRIDAY.
EP42: Insights into the Teen Banking Sector and Improving the Financial Well-being of Families
GUEST: RIM CHARKANI, Co-Founder and CEO, WALO (Linkedin)
BIO (FR): Rim Charkani est la cofondatrice et CEO de WALO, Fintech dont la mission est d'assurer la santé financière des générations futures à travers une éducation financière pratique pour les jeunes. Avant de créer WALO, Rim a travaillé au sein de l'équipe Stratégie du Mouvement Desjardins, et avant cela, elle a été directrice en Stratégie chez KPMG Canada, et directrice en Numérique chez KPMG Australie. Rim détient un MBA en Gestion des Technologie de l'Information de l'Université Laval, et une Maitrise en Management de l'EDHEC Business School (France).
BIO (EN): Rim Charkani is the co-founder and CEO of WALO, a fintech on a mission to ensure the financial health of future generations. Rim has over 8 years of experience in corporate strategy in the financial services sector. She has worked with senior executives to define, plan and execute on their customer and growth strategies, in North America, Africa, Europe, and Australia. Prior to founding WALO, Rim has held multiple key roles such as senior corporate strategy advisor at the Desjardins Group, Strategy Consulting manager at KPMG Canada, and Digital Consulting manager at KPMG Australia. Rim holds an MBA in Information Technology Management from Laval University and a Master's degree in Management from EDHEC Business School (France).
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rimcharkani/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RCharkani
Medium: https://medium.com/@rim.charkani
About this episode:
Rim Charkani, the Co-Founder & CEO of WALO connects with NCFA Founder, Craig Asano, to discuss why Teen Banking is a growing opportunity for banks, and why financial wellness education is more crucial than ever for both kids and families. Did you know women in Canada weren't allowed to open a bank account without a man's signature until 1965? They navigate the history, psychology, cultural differences, and the need to improve Canada's financial literacy gaps and personal finances in every day life.
Subscribe and tune in each Friday to check out the latest movers and shakers in fintech. Listen to more podcasts here:
Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3
Transcription of Interview
Intro: Welcome to fintech Friday's a weekly podcast brought to you by the National Crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada and partners. Covering all things fintech, blockchain, AI and alternative finance.
Craig Asano: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, it's Craig Asano, the founder and CEO of NCFA, a Canada welcoming you to Episode 42 to a Fintech Friday's a weekly podcast brought to you by NCFA and Partners, where we sit down with incredible people in the fintech and funny community talk about everything under the sun, product innovation, developments, challenges. We get deep down to personal with the founders that are changing the future of financial services in Canada and around the globe. We're super excited to welcome our guests today, Rim Charkani, the CEO and co-founder of WALO to the show. Welcome.
Rim Charkani: [00:00:36] Thanks, Craig. Thanks. Happy to be here.
Craig Asano: [00:00:39] So let's get started. I think the plan this afternoon, which is becoming a bit of a framework here, is let's first talk a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey. Then we're going to dig into WALO itself and the emerging trends in the financial education space. And then we're going to finish with a round of speed questions for some fun. So how does that sound like for for a plan for the next forty five minutes or so?
Rim Charkani: [00:01:05] Sounds like a great plan. Let's get started.
Craig Asano: [00:01:08] Ok, so let's just can you first tell us a little bit about yourself and your entrepreneurial journey just to open up the connection with listeners. Let's let's learn a little bit about Rim Charkani.
Rim Charkani: [00:01:24] Yeah. So born and raised in Morocco, I come from an entrepreneurial family. Both my parents, grandparents were all entrepreneurs. So I kind of always knew I had to I wanted to become an entrepreneur someday. Left Morocco, when I was 18, went to study in France, studied math, business and immigrated to Canada after my masters I went to consulting. So I wasn't feeling ready to start my entrepreneurial journey after I started my studies but I thought consulting was a great way to learn and be ready to to succeed in business. Spent four or five years working at KPMG and strategy consulting here in Canada. I went to Australia as well as KPMG Australia, where I was more working on the digital consulting side. So I always had this deep interest in technology, new tech and customer experience in general. I've consulted for a lot of clients and financial services as well, which brought me to my next job, which was working in strategy at Desjardins, which is one of the key financial institutions here in Quebec. And again, I was just curious to know what was well, how does it work from the inside? Like how does it bank work from the inside, through the operations look like what's the the have they actually executed on the strategies the consultants tell you to do? So that was all like during all these years I was having multiple ideas, businesses I could start but never really got to do something, something about it until one day I just decided to take the leap and solve a problem that that was dear to me and that I personally experienced growing up. And so, yeah, that's how well over a year ago now, I started WALO with with my co-founders and one year and so in the venture like a pretty, pretty happy with the decision to kind of leave corporate and start my own business. That was something that I always wanted to do. And so far it's been a great, great ride.
Craig Asano: [00:04:02] It's amazing. We sort of started to hear the similar stories, you know, strategy, management, consulting firms, very bright folks working for the largest companies that are advising companies. But as an entrepreneur, someone coming from an entrepreneur family with all that international experience, what jumped out when when you were talking and then you talked about going to school in France, you've been in Australia. What what do you think is it that did do you think there's there's an affinity for anyone who has had more exposure, for example, international I just want to get more into, you know, how you made the decision or was it everybody at Jesjardins or, you know, do you envision everyone at a consulting firm thinking, you know, boy, I'd love to to actually launch our own company? And then, you know, further to that, how did you handle the risk internally and make that decision? Or was a very simple thing for you?
Rim Charkani: [00:05:06] So, yeah, I don't think it's it's for everybody for sure. I think it's it's both a personality trait. It's something that that was, you know, very natural for me. And at the same time, in terms of risk, you mentioned risk. Some people are more risk averse than others. And I see myself rather as a risk taker. I think that nothing comes to you in life if you don't take some risks. In my case, it was it was you know, for sure it was a risk because I was leaving well-paying job stability and and going into some adventure that that didn't have any, you know, have any revenue for for a long time. And it was it was certainly a risk, but it was a calculated risk. I kind of knew how much I needed to be able to survive, to be able to live during a certain period of time. And I said to myself, some objective and some deadlines. I also think that it's the earlier you take the risk, it's probably the easiest, the easier it is. I know that I have some friends who are a little bit more advanced in their careers, who are, for example, partners at consulting firms and and who have, you know, when you have a mortgage for like millions of dollars for a house, you can just say, OK, I'm going to leave my job and and, you know, who's going to pay the mortgage. So I think there is there is it was a step in my life where I still didn't have too much to lose in terms of of of stability. But at the same time, I knew that I had to do it now or otherwise might be just too late. So in terms of risk, it's a calculation, I think. And in terms of personality, it's it's just readiness and you know, what you really want in life and what kind of life you're looking to have, what what kind of impact you're looking to achieve.
Craig Asano: [00:07:29] You know, it's interesting. We often hear on the show and among startup circles that let's let's take the risk. There's a sweet spot in your life. When you have less to lose, you can live off ramen noodles, for example, which brought up the other day. But I have read a number of articles that talked about that that's a fallacy that there's it's only for youthful entrepreneurs that have this extra runway in their life that they can have a couple of failures in the likelihood that their first entrepreneurial venture isn't successful. What about and I think the report was saying, on average, the most successful entrepreneurs were over forty five. I think the sweet spot was around 47-46. What do you think about older entrepreneurs and what they can offer? Do you do you think that there's there's something there that entrepreneurship is for everyone, including older entrepreneurs potentially as they reassess their life and particularly with this new covid environment? Or is it really best suited, as you say, the risk to take that calculated risk when you're younger? What do you think?
Rim Charkani: [00:08:43] I'm not surprised with what you say with read, because I don't think I don't think age is a single factor here and I don't think there's a like a clear correlation between age and success. I think it's just what what step in your life you are at and what are your circumstances at that specific moment that allow you are not to take to make the leap? You know, so I'm sure that are lots of entrepreneurs who are a little bit more a little bit older and who have more experience under their belt. So probably that does help to have more experience. A larger network. That's probably a plus on your on your own, your entrepreneurial skill set, let's say. However, in my case, based on my life plans and where I see myself in ten years, I just couldn't wait anymore. I was there. It was the right time for me, and I felt it. And I just followed my intuition.
Craig Asano: [00:09:53] Yeah, and so you're a year into the the WALO venture, which is that your first startup and what was the story behind the creation of it? How did you come about the idea you had said earlier that the idea was with you for a while before you took the leap. Can you talk a little bit about the story behind the creation of WALO and what's been happening in that that last year?
Rim Charkani: [00:10:24] Yeah, well, I'll actually go back a little bit further and I'll just the last year, but it's more like it comes down to my life journey and and my values as a person was something that that's really dear to me, you know, as as as a woman who grew up, you know, in Morocco, surrounded by very conservative, let's be honest, this was a misogynistic society, Morocco, although I always felt like I could accomplish anything as a women. And I thought that there was lots of boundaries that were set by society to us women and I thought that I just had to move to a developed country and there's no gender gap out there. So I was obviously being idealistic. So when I moved to France, Canada, you know, I realized that as a woman, you're carrying an invisible burden to always kind of try to work harder, to prove yourself more, you know, deal with unconscious bias. And as the core of the problem, I think for me, I believe that one of the things that played a significant role in reinforcing this gender gap and perpetuating it is really about financial power and money. So I think not only from the fact that I believe that we need to do more to narrow the gender gap and to offer equal opportunity to anyone, really, so that I had to do something about it. And from my personal experience as well, I didn't have any financial education growing up. So I had to learn the hard way. And so it was a problem that I've experienced and that I've seen from from both my troubles, my reasons that it is it has an impact on the gender gap, actually. And again, when we started our WALO journey, something we came across quite early was when we were looking at market data. It showed the same thing. You know, in Canadians in Canada, there was a financial literacy test that that that was performed to a group of people. And you could see that males succeeded more in that test. I think it was like 60 percent of males succeeded versus 50 percent of women. So something like that. And you can see that the gender gap is even there in Canada. And from the financial literacy perspective, you know, it wasn't until, you know, it wasn't until 1965 that Canadian women were allowed to open a bank account without their husband's signature. That's crazy when you think about it. So, yes, it has reduced significantly relative to the past. But there were there are lots of areas when work can be done to ensure greater will be in greater financial help for women. And I think that Fintechs have the opportunity to empower women and have the opportunity to bridge that gap in investment, retirement economic status overall. So for me, it's a way to work on something that I'm passionate about while also knowing that I can have or at least aim to have an impact on a matter that's dear to me.
Craig Asano: [00:14:20] Did you say in nineteen sixty five, up until 1965 that women couldn't even open a bank account without a male signature in Canada?
Rim Charkani: [00:14:29] Yes, that's in Canada.
Craig Asano: [00:14:31] That is ridiculous. I've not come across that stat before. We're going to have to quote that one out. That's that's just unheard of and has the gender gap which we all are aware to varying degrees and, you know, some talk about, well, you know, men are more gravitate towards more towards stem related jobs and women more caring, supportive, communicated communication type jobs...when it comes to the gender gap let's try to focus on Canada and our local experiences, but will apply globally. You know, are we, I see a lot of groups and government support but when I see the data, and I think there was a recent report that might have come from EY I believe. It doesn't the needle doesn't seem to be moving that much. I think we've made great strides in the last decade or so. But can you talk about the gender gap a little bit more and how we can tackle it as a as a Founder, as a change maker? Is it is it really just information? And helping women access more money will give them more power? What what can we do?
Rim Charkani: [00:15:53] So I think we can do many things at multiple levels, and I think we have to tackle this at multiple levels and in different ways. So coming back to just the basics of financial education for kids, you know, so there was a study, I think it was a UK study though, but I couldn't find any like I was trying to find something in Canada or North America, there wasn't anything similar but the UK study shows that the average boy makes twice more allowance per week than the average girl and that most young girls complete chores daily relative to occasional tasks for boys and boys are many times paid for personal hygiene tasks that women are not provided financial rewards for. So I think at the family level, at the educational level, we tend to reinforce those gender biases. And that's where the importance of a gender neutral financial education importance to empower little girls to, you know, to let them believe in themselves and pay them help give them an equal allowance, as you would give a boy for doing a chore. That's just as basic as this. And I think it's it's unconscious. We need to make people aware of those kind of things and act on it. So that's that's a very basic educational family level. Then when thinking about, you know, Fintechs, for example, you're very, very much aware that there are not many women in Fintech. I think, one, I think I read like an article recently that said that only nine percent of the Fintech in Canada have at least one female founder or C-level executive. And then in terms of capital, that it's even worse in terms of, you know, raising money. There's another study that showed that only three percent of the capital invested in Fintechs went to firms with female founders. So it's quite rigid for you to see those figures. And it's not a surprise when you see that there are so, so many women in fintech when you think of the predominance of male leadership in the financial world, the predominance of male leadership in tech and the predominance of male leadership in investors, it's hard for women to see themselves in those fields and to find, you know, people to look up to to find mentors who will help them navigate the course. And that's personally a challenge I had myself just find in finding female mentors who went through the same or a similar journey, you know, raising money for a Canadian fintech those kind of leadership figures. It's a challenge. So I think we are people are more and more aware of these issues for now, from time to time you read blogs, articles about this issue. There seems to be growing awareness and people trying to spread the message about the importance of diversity and the importance of empowering women in those areas. However, it's still I think it's still not enough. It's still a lot of visibility and a lot of, you know, trying to make people aware of this versus actually taking some concrete, practical actions of putting money on the table for women or, you know, having more concrete measures that can be that can actually be measured and have an impact either on the having more capital allocated to female founded fintechs or just having more women interested in fintech. I think we have we are making progress for sure that we have lots of lots to do, lots of challenges ahead.
Craig Asano: [00:20:40] Yeah, well, in my experience, women are much better than men at many, many areas, not just marketing and a whole host of skill sets. This this multitasking in a very busy life these days. And a lot of the online fintech models are, quite frankly, better suited to being run by anyone. Doesn't matter what gender anyone that that's able to handle some of those cases and the workload and communicate effectively and and connect in an EQ way with their staff and provide the vision for the future of a company and build a tremendous amount of value in doing so. You know, and of course, there's the diversity point. If everyone is in the boys club and they're analyzing charts and trying to make a decision, but the information in their own biased experiences are the same. They're going to come up with the same answer, time and time again are becoming more common. I know in New York at the ARK Investments, they recently published an interview and they were saying, well, how did you outperform, let's say, 90 percent of the ETFs in North America and really came down to diversity. Is there large message? And they have a varied group of individuals all focusing on their areas. They're surely experts, but they're bringing that diversity of thought and that's translating decisions. And it's very empowering when you quantify and measure and they're winning. So I'd love to hear it. Yeah, it in the families and homes and anyone who is providing and supporting greater allowance for boys for ridiculous tasks that they should be doing should eradicate gender biases immediately. You've got to treat your kids fairly, which I myself, I've got two kids. I try to do my best. It's always a challenge, but absolutely hear you. So this leads into the segway around sort of financial education to me with with the WALO, the creation of the WALO app. I mean, you're you're obviously very passionate about solving this this gap in and it's around financial literacy and what has happened. And I'll tell you one short anecdote, because I mentioned that I have two kids. I got my son. He's in public school here in Ontario, and they don't even in the curriculum, have kids memorize. This is not financial literacy, but it's a very simple example, rudimentary example. They don't have kids memorize the Times tables anymore. You know, one times one is one, one times two is two, one times three is three. And what that's actually done is when you go to the cashier and check out and you need simple math to calculate how much change my getting back or, you know, they're all relying in the cash register and they're using their fingers because they have not been required by the curriculum. When we went to school we at least had to remember the Times table. And, you know, if this is a message to anyone in the Ministry of Finance here in Ontario, Stephen Lecce or Premier Ford, you've got to put the Times table memorization, probably not just 12 by 12, go all the way up to 14 by 14 on the curriculum. Because if I see my son counting one more time on his hands for a simple math problem in our daily life, it's it's just mind boggling. So where is financial literacy? And I'm talking small business, financial literacy. I'm talking personal finance literacy, wherever you want to focus. Where are we in Canada? I'm waiting to hear the tsunami of gap. What is going on? Can you illuminate can you educate us on this?
Rim Charkani: [00:24:42] Yeah, that's a very fun anecdote. I am very surprised that they don't teach those tables anymore. Oh, although I think that I think I've heard a couple of months ago that Ontario Premier has there was some change in policy in the education curriculum and now they're going to have financial education, I think, in school. So that's that's good news for Ontario, because you know that until now, until that announcement, there's was no financial education at school at all in Canada, and there is still none outside of Ontario. And I think right now well, I think there are two things. There is first and the first thing is why is it important? Why is financial education important? Well, you just have to look at the financial health of Canadians right now and the fact that they are very, very leveraged. If you think of the debt to income ratio, Canadians owe an average $1.78 for each dollar of net income. So income after tax affects. So it's a very high ratio when you compare it to other countries, even to US to countries in Europe. It's a very high ratio. And I'm going to tell you a story because when I came to when I moved to Canada, it was. I had the cultural shock about that because I was seeing that my Canadian friends were where we're using credit cards basically to buy. To buy everything they were using credit cards and the beginning I didn't understand why are you using money that you don't have and then paying a bill at the end of the month, why don't you just use the money you have in your in your bank account? Obviously, coming from Morocco, European background, credit cards are not a thing. Their credit cards are viewed as as the devil. You know, Debt is viewed as the devil consumption that more particular. So we are back in France, you know, or your Visa and MasterCard, our debit cards, you know. So initially I didn't understand. I was like obviously some of them were like, oh, I get I get points for my for my purchases. So why not just use a credit card and then other as well, I understood that you kind of have to have a credit card to build your credit score if you want to eventually buy a house or, you know, invest. So it was like this cultural shock made me think of, you know, why there is such a disparity of indebtedness between between Canada and U.S. in general and the rest of the world, rest of Europe, where I was coming from. And it comes down to our attitude towards money, you know, our attitude towards consumption and our attitudes towards saving, risk taking and investing, and those attitudes vary by geography. You can tell that in France, for example, people tend to save a lot of money because they're quite risk averse and they don't invest it. They just put it in like very low interest savings account, but they don't invest. So that's that's an issue in France. Some fintechs, by the way are trying to tackle...versus in Canada, you can see that people don't save enough. For example, they don't save enough for retirement and they take on debt to they take on maybe a little bit too much debt for consumption versus versus, let's say, healthy debt to buy it, to buy a house or to invest let's say So, all these attitudes all come down to the habits we build when growing up, the culture of setting and also our financial literacy and our financial literacy, financial literacy. For me, it's defined just like actually the government of Canada has a different a definition of financial literacy. And it's not financial literacy is not only knowing what our audiences are, knowing what our what is investing, and what our stocks, etc. It's not just the knowledge, it's the knowledge, but also the skills to be able to apply that knowledge. And then the third component, which sometimes is forgotten, is the confidence to actually take that knowledge. Use your skills and make the right decisions to influence positively your your financial health. So when you don't have these three components, knowledge, skills and confidence, you're not on the right track to making the best decisions to optimize your financial health. And I think those three components, you can't just say they're not let's say they're not natural to just learn. They're not natural to acquire. Someone has to teach you. And if no one teaches you, either you end up learning the hard way or you end up doing the same mistakes over and over again until you hit a wall. That's why I think it's a very long explanation of why financial education is important. But I think it's really important to kind of understand what's behind it and why it's each component of it is necessary for each individual to optimize his financial health and be able to take to make the right decisions and advance and that's in life. So. Yeah, you wanted to say something?
Craig Asano: [00:31:25] No, I'm taking some notes here, you know, it's interesting. I'll let you finish that point, then I'm going to come back at you.
Rim Charkani: [00:31:32] So just this I'm going to finish on this very last thing. Basically, what we are putting on the table with WALO is that. We need to bring financial literacy early in people's lives because those habits, that knowledge, skills and confidence are can be gained early, or if you miss the train, your end up making mistakes because you can't, you know, change your habits. It's easier to get the right habits from day one versus trying to change your habits later when you're 30 or when you're 40 and or when you're closer to retirement. Might as well get that education early on and be ready to face life, face your financial life.
Craig Asano: [00:32:28] It's a scary life, so I yeah, I mean, the pitch is if you want to be happy and once you get married and kids and have a financially sound life, a happy life, you got to do those four things and that's got to boost your confidence. And, you know, with the WALO app, you're going to learn it from very early on. But the one thing I want to come back to you on was you mentioned consumption, savings, risk taking and investing, which are sort of four tenets to, I guess, the foundation. If you had those things in check to the opportunity to have the confidence to make the right decision. In Canada, let's say, could we have to compare and contrast with a country that I guess America, because we're probably a lot more similar to the American behaviour than, let's say, Moroccan or. You know, my original heritage, Japanese, which I know they're great savers, may be way better than... which from consumption. Let's go through those four. Is Canada better or worse, like consumption? Who's consuming more, Canada or Americans? And where's the right balance?
Rim Charkani: [00:33:40] Well, that's a that's a good question to which I'm not sure I have I have an answer, but honestly, I think when it comes down to I'm going to come back to the debt to income ratio, I believe the Canadians are I have a higher ratio. So at least in terms of. consumption debt, I what I tend to say based on that ratio is that Canadians have a higher ratio. So compared to Americans, they're either either Canadians are taking more debt to buy more houses or they're taking more debt to buy more stuff. So I can't I can't say for sure, but that's that's the only fact I have on that on this question.
Craig Asano: [00:34:31] So so, for example, you hear about because it covid the road to recovery. I know Ray Dalio had an article the other day that American consumption is a big reason why it's a world power and it's very powerful. But if they're unable to consume at the same rate and their productivity is declining, it's a negative impact to the economy. But I guess what will simplify the question in Canada, do you think we should consume more, consume less?
Rim Charkani: [00:35:02] So that's that's a great question for economists, which I'm not, but I think from I'll take it down to an individual perspective, you know, for a persona, consumption, I think needs to be taken down into basic level, which is wants versus needs, you know, so we tend to say you consume first for your for your needs and before consuming for your wants and before consuming at all. You save you pay yourself first. That's the kind of one of the the key rules, let's say, that we're trying to teach kids, for example, when we're teaching them about about financial literacy. So going back to your question, should we consume more or less? We probably should consume less of things we want but don't need and save that money or invest it.
Craig Asano: [00:36:06] Yeah, it's a it's a formula, really. They're not independent, those four tenets and I see I see where you're going with that.
Rim Charkani: [00:36:16] Maybe if I may add, one of the things that the pandemic has shown us is, is that lots of people were living...lots of people in Canada were living paycheck to paycheck. And that's an indication that they didn't have an emergency fund, they didn't have an extra cushion, which means they didn't save it, which means they probably consumed that money instead of saving it. So it's another way to see it. But there are some basic financial literacy rules or let's say some basic financial soundness rules. And they're not a hundred of them. They're probably if you try to put them on the list, maybe 10 rules or something like that. And that can that to that you can take today as a Canadian and make your financial health better. And those step include, for example, have an emergency fund, you know, or or at least, you know, saving some money to that, saving at least some money early on, you know, starting early, etc..
Craig Asano: [00:37:26] Absolutely. Instead is looking at all those covid mask posters. We need some financial get your finances in order posters.. Right? Everywhere that people will start to get the message.
Rim Charkani: [00:37:38] Well, actually, it's a pandemic. Is it? Well, I was going to say is a great opportunity, but I mean, in every bad thing, there's something good. So let's take take the opportunity to pause and have a look, you know, take a picture of our finances and say, what can I do better? You know, how can I prepare for the next, you know, for the next hardship? So, yeah, I just let you move on to your next question. I feel like I'm going way over with you.
Craig Asano: [00:38:05] Well, I think it's interesting. It's at the core of the psychology and I guess and day to day life there are gaps. People have a busy life. They get on and you if you don't map it out and plan for it, everybody's in for a rude awakening when they retire. And it's not certainly what they might have expected. And life throws a lot of curveballs. So the help of an app like WALO. So let's let's get into the app. Let's get into the vision for WALO and this this idea that who is your target market and how does the app work? How is it available right now for download?
Rim Charkani: [00:38:45] Yeah, so right now, it's available in the app stores and the App Store and Google Play, it's even beta. In terms of our of our target market, it's basically we talk to parents, we talk to parents and tell them, use this, don't change your habits and teach your kids about money on the go, you know, using allowances and in terms of our vision and how we're seeing this going in the future, it's really around financial wellness for families. And this goes hand in hand with the kids education, you know, educating kids to talk to about financial services and getting them to actually understand that money does not grow on trees, understand the basic concepts of saving, spending and earning your own money, and then all of the economic environment around us. What are the tools that exist that we can use to improve our situation, etcetera? And the way we're thinking about this is it's really an app that we're making available for anyone. It's on a freemium model. The app is free. And and the way we're thinking about it as well in terms of our business model is that we're looking to partner with financial institutions to distribute it even to larger masses and have it available to to their customers, you know.
Craig Asano: [00:40:33] I know that I went into an RBC branch this a physical brick and mortar, and this is when my kids were much younger and guy runs out and he's like, oh, great, you have kids, and he immediately handed over an RBC piggy bank with their brand and your app's basically, those banks want to connect and to early customers, they're teenagers or in our case, kids. And I mean, is this a whole growing sector, this centennial millennial? Is it I think some might call it teen banking sector. Is it is it growing? Is there a name for it or is this mostly around family financial literacy or is it really the empowerment of teens to help them save and learn about their risk profile and understand how the trade-offs between that consumption and investing could work for for them today as well as by the time they retire?
Rim Charkani: [00:41:32] Yeah, it's actually you're right. It's actually I think it's it's a market that we can call some people, call it "Teen Banking". And it's it's really a growing market. It's a growing market. And you can look at it right now. Actually, the market, like the biggest player in this market, is in the US and has just raised around at $1.2 billion valuation. So there's clearly something going on there. It's actually a clear case study you could see in business school about market maturity life-cycle, where in the growing stage, you know, there's growing competition, increase number of years. Last time I checked, I think they're over approximately like forty startups, forty Fintechs around the world working on this, on this, on this problem. And some of them are in the scaling stage. There's no clear winners yet. No, we're not at the profitability stage yet. You can tell clearly that Europe, US are the leaders there, like I'd say, probably one third of the companies worldwide are in the US, another third are Europe and the rest a little bit all over the world, some in Asia Pacific, etc.. And however, in Canada, we're a little bit (behind) earlier, as usual, in terms of market maturity. So let's say there are a couple of players entering the market in Canada. And I think in Canada it's a win it all market. I think it's going to be one market leader. Hopefully it's going to be us just like, you know, the fact that Canada is quite a small market compared to the US or other areas in Europe where you could obviously actually players in Europe could distribute their product everywhere because of the regulation that allows them to do that. Although it's not it's not the case here. Obviously in Canada, I think in terms of the market, the way... The reason why it's growing market, it's just because there's a huge opportunity, you know. Twenty 25% of North America, if you look just here where we are in the world, are under twenty years old. And those people's needs are are unmet. Those are actually young people are you know, they are under-banked usually, you know, and in particular, when you look at Gen-Z, they are a very demanding generation. They have very high expectations. They're used to the the I want it now, the uberization they're used to they're born with with a smartphone in their hands. So they have a lot of traits and needs that simply are not currently met by incumbent financial institutions. That's why there's a place to take in the market. And you can see so many players popping up around the world. And it's it's actually a good thing because growing competition for us is a good sign, means there's a need.
Craig Asano: [00:45:08] Why aren't the banks in the office doing more for this very early stage incubating type customer? And is it the underbanked? Where are the underbanked gaps in Canada that you're you're talking about?
Rim Charkani: [00:45:24] So I think from what I've seen in Canada, there are there are two categories that that can be considered under-banked, at least from what I've seen. You know, there's the youth, the youth segment. And then there's also the the immigrant segment or the newcomers segment. And it happens that those two under-banked categories, as a matter of fact, are almost the only growing segments in personal banking for the next couple of years. And I think banks know that. I mean, they're not that they know that there are growth potentials, voting newcomers and a new segment. But I think having worked at a bank, I know how there are lots of priorities to tackle at once. In fact, there are lots of table stakes that are still not there in banking. Some financial institutions are still, let's say, trying to catch up in terms of their customer experience. Just let's take the most basic example, opening a bank account online like a couple, like a year ago, it wasn't it probably wasn't possible in any bank like doing it from an online a year ago. It wasn't possible in any event. Right now, you can see that a couple of banks are allowing that, covid has certainly helped accelerate that. So I think banks have so many priorities to tackle. They have so many things on their plate that, for example, if we think specifically about the youth segment, yes, it's a priority, but we are not going to see your ROI on investing in the youth segment right away, because they're not the ones that that have let's say they're going to make you the most money. They're not the one buying houses and making a lot of investments. So it's a long term game. I think that's that's my view on why banks are not at, you know, very active or very well involved in in this in this area.
Craig Asano: [00:47:49] Well, it's going to be good for you. They're going to have to buy it off of you or partner with you for a bunch of money. So but we've heard that story time and time again, the incumbents, if they de-prioritize some areas and I can think in the small business innovation for capital markets side, on some of the other opportunities, we've always advocated that some of these new innovative funding models should be backed by government and incumbents and more support partnerships. And because that they're strengthening the feeder systems and plugging early stage gaps. And overall, it makes the economy from jobs to economic GDP better, stronger. And so I think what you're doing is filling in a need which is obvious, whether it's youth, immigrants or families that are a bit off the rails. And there's this partnership opportunity with government. And those banks should be the first one there. And I can think of a whole number of innovative credit unions that are popping up that would probably be open to talking about let's take an app like this and try it, and test it out, and let's see what the results are and create some measured indexes. And I'd be very happy to make those introductions. So what would what do you think is is next for WALO? You're in the App Store. This is a growing area. You've got to you know, in the US, you've got a unicorn overnight in this enormous area. It's incredibly important during covid times. What are the biggest opportunities for WALO and how are you going after them?
Rim Charkani: [00:49:34] So the way we have thought of our go to market is really different from what we've seen our competitors do, trying really to grow B2C, truly B2C in Canada. It's quite hard. Cost of customer acquisition on the B2C side is quite high. You need a lot of funding to do so. Fintechs are early stage fintechs are easy to fund, sorry are hard to fund in Canada. So basically our go to market really focuses on piggybacking onto existing consumer bases, which are financial institutions. So really our next months for us are really focused on business development with those financial institutions and closing agreements and partnerships with them in order to distribute our solution. And I think in terms of opportunity, it's not only about the financial literacy, wow app really it's the whole adjacent product and adjacent value proposition that that can get added and can become complementary to what we put on the table. And I'm thinking about the whole financial wellness environment for families and getting into and getting this product WALO app product into a family is just the first step to kind of spark the money conversation and bring financial literacy to the family environments and empower families to take responsibility for their finances. So I think it's really around building that ecosystem of financial wellness for families. That's where for me the opportunity lies in the future.
Craig Asano: [00:51:43] That's great. I mean, who doesn't need a financial wellness AI assistant on there saying... Don't do it, save your money. This is how your life will be impacted by point seven if you do it. So, you know, you've got to get to talk to the Google assist teams or Alexa teams. It's a fascinating area. I'd love to continue to track it, but I just looked at the time, we have a it's it's basically we burned through our time here. So what I'm going to do to end this, we're going to jump right to the speed round of questions where I ask some short questions, and we're looking for quick witted responses. You can pass if you want.. want to end things on a on a fun, fun manner. So if you're up for that, are you are you ready to to get into speed round questions?
Rim Charkani: [00:52:39] Yes. Let's do it.
Craig Asano: [00:52:41] So OK, let's go. Tick tock. Tick tock. First one, are you more of a hunter or gatherer?
Rim Charkani: [00:52:50] Oh, I'm definitely a gatherer. I like to to to kind of analyze my environment and take take the low hanging fruit and eventually grow on that, and go on a step by step basis to build something, you know.
Craig Asano: [00:53:11] Ok, so next question. What is the funniest thing that has happened to you recently?
Rim Charkani: [00:53:19] Funniest thing. Oh, not very funny, but, yeah, I was I was supposed to move to Montreal like this month, but things are just cancelled because of the new restrictions. So I had to postpone that. Not very funny, but yeah.
Craig Asano: [00:53:38] That's funny in an awkward way. So next question. If you met a genie in a bottle, who's going to grant you, let's say, one, two, three wishes? What would or grant you one wish? What would that one wish be?
Rim Charkani: [00:53:57] It would be a really about empowering women back in my country. So you kind of take their life into control and get more education and, you know, get out of the male dominant society back in Morocco. So it's really empowering women in a place where in a place where they really do need it.
Craig Asano: [00:54:26] So you surely have changed a lot since you've taken the leap to entrepreneurship. Is there any advice that you'd give yourself, looking back, let's say, as far as when you were living back in Morocco or when you were a consultant at Desjardins?
Rim Charkani: [00:54:44] So I would really say, just don't wait. Just make the leap early, I'd say really I should have started earlier and failed faster and failed earlier so that, you know, I could have probably learned a lot and not have waited until now to kind of get started in this probably just, you know, make the leap without necessarily leaving your job or just take that extra time, extra free time and, you know. Become an entrepreneur, a part time entrepreneur.
Craig Asano: [00:55:21] Part time entrepreneurship is like spinning wheels in some way. OK, speed round question. You have a 30 second pitch to a leading VC on why the opportunity is unique. What is it?
Rim Charkani: [00:55:37] I'll just change it, not to VC, but to a financial institution. I'd say it's really time to change family banking and bring real value to families beyond just the financial products you're offering them. Bring them something they really care about. And what do you think parents care about? If not their kids, their kids future and their kids success. Give parents the power to help their kids become successful.
Craig Asano: [00:56:15] Absolutely. OK, well, there you have it. We're going to move to to wrap up the podcast here, but just want to give you an opportunity to see any last parting messages that you'd like to offer the Fintech Fridays listening audience.
Rim Charkani: [00:56:31] Well, I just wanted to to thank you for this, Craig, and I wish everyone has a great weekend and stay safe.
Craig Asano: [00:56:39] That's right. OK, everyone. Well, that's a wrap, folks, on behalf of the Fintech Friday's podcast. We'd like to thank Rim Charkani for joining us on the show. I had a great time. I learned a ton about this related model of a financial healthy future. And let's be honest, we all should have started earlier. So if we haven't started yet, our kids haven't started yet. Let's recommend them to download the app. And any feedback, any ideas, any partnerships, get them over to the Rim and let's develop and define and hope for a better future. So before you go, Rim, can you tell the audience how to get in touch with you? If they want to learn more or introduce you to a financial institution or simply connect with you and support you in your journey.
Rim Charkani: [00:57:33] Just to reach out to me on LinkedIn, it's the best way to get a hold of me.
Craig Asano: [00:57:39] Right? Ok, well, we're going to have your LinkedIn link on the show notes. And if anyone has any questions about WALO, want to connect with Rim, check her LinkedIn profile and the information on the show notes. So thanks very much for joining us for EP42 with RIM CHARKANI, the CEO and co-founder of WALO. If you're new to FinTech Fridays, please check out some of the incredible past episodes on the site. You'll be surprised what you find. We look forward to seeing you next Friday for another episode of FinTech Fridays. Have a great weekend, everyone. Thank you.
Rim Charkani: [00:58:12] Thanks.
Outro : you've been listening to Fintech Fridays brought to you by NCFA and partners. Tune in weekly for the latest fintech Friday podcast by subscribing to this channel. The National crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada is a non-profit actively engaged with social and investment fintech sectors around the globe and provide education research industry stewardship services and networking opportunities to thousands of members and subscribers. For more information please visit ncfacanada.org. Oh yeah.
End of Podcast
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FINTECH FRIDAYS Podcast: Season 3
JOIN US ON A STORYTELLING JOURNEY: SEASON 3
Welcome to Season 3 of NCFA Canada's Fintech Fridays podcast, your trusted source for the latest trends and innovations in the fintech and funding community. This season, we continue our exploration of the fintech landscape, delving deeper into the world of digital identity, blockchain, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
EP54: How Digital Identity will Transform Human Potential
EP54: How Digital Identity will Transform Human Potential
Featured Guest: DAVID LUCATCH, Co-Founder, Director and President, Liquid Avatar Technologies Inc. (LinkedIn)
About Liquid Avatar Technologies Inc.
Liquid Avatar Technologies Inc. focuses on the verification, management and monetization of Self Sovereign Identity, empowering users to control and benefit from the use of their online identity.
The Liquid Avatar Mobile App, available in the Apple App Store and Google Play is a verified Self Sovereign Identity platform that empowers users to create high quality digital icons representing their online personas. These icons allow users to manage and control their digital identity and Verifiable Access and Identity Credentials, and to use Liquid Avatars to share public and permission based private data when they want and with whom they want.
The Company has a suite of early stage revenue generating programs that support the Liquid Avatar Mobile App program, including KABN KASH, a cash back and reward program that has over 500 leading online merchants and coming soon, an integrated offering engine. In Canada, the Company also has the KABN Visa Card, a "challenger financial" platform that allows users to manage and control a range of financial services for traditional and digital currencies. The Company is currently exploring expansion of the KABN Visa Card program to other geographic regions, including the USA. The Company's subsidiary, Oasis Digital Studios, is a creative and development agency that supports a wide range of artists, talent, and enterprises with Non-Fungible Token (NFT) solutions.
Liquid Avatar Technologies Inc. is publicly listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) under the symbol "LQID" (CSE:LQID).
The Company also trades in the United States under the symbol "LQAVF" and in Frankfurt under the symbol "4T51".
If you have not already joined our mailing list and would like to receive updates on Liquid Avatar Technologies Inc., please click hereto join!
For more information, please visit www.liquidavatartechnologies.com
About this Episode:
On this episode, show host Anna Niemira sits down with guest David Lucatch of Liquid Avatar Technologies Inc. They discuss the ins and outs of digital identity and it's transformative potential for both consumers and businesses.Enjoy!
EP41: 40% pandemic growth, taking risks and innovating Insurtech in Canada
GUEST: DANISH YUSUF, Founder and CEO, Zensurance (Linkedin)
About this Episode: Danish Yusuf of Zensurance joins Craig Asano for the kickoff episode of Season 3 of Fintech Fridays. They discuss Danish's entrepreneurial journey, the story behind the creation of Zensurance and dive into what it's like adding 40% new staff during the pandemic to sustain growth, and innovating B2B insurance products for small businesses in Canada.
Enjoy! (Full TRANSCRIPT)
EP42: Insights into the Teen Banking Sector and Improving the Financial Well-being of Families
GUEST: RIM CHARKANI, Co-Founder and CEO, WALO (Linkedin)
About this Episode: Rim Charkani, the Co-Founder & CEO of WALO connects with NCFA Founder, Craig Asano, to discuss why Teen Banking is a growing opportunity for banks, and why financial wellness education is more crucial than ever for both kids and families. Did you know women in Canada weren't allowed to open a bank account without a man's signature until 1965? They navigate the history, psychology, cultural differences, and the need to improve Canada's financial literacy gaps and personal finances in every day life.
Enjoy! (Full TRANSCRIPT)
EP43: Taking the Mortgage Process From 40 Days to Minutes
GUEST: CHRIS GRIMES, Co-Founder and CEO, FundMore.ai (Linkedin)
About this episode: Chris Grimes, co-founder, and CEO of Fundmore chats with Tristram Waye about the mortgage market, inefficiencies, and entrepreneurship. Vetting mortgages by lending companies is a complex process involving several parties and considerable time. Whether a first-time buyer or doing a refinancing, this process can last up to 40 days. The conversation explores the mortgage process, its deficiencies, and how technology is being used to enhance this financial transaction.
Enjoy! (Full TRANSCRIPT)
EP44: The Vanguard of Digital Innovation and Ecosystems in Canada
GUESTS:
RICHARD REMILLARD, President, RCG Group (LinkedIn)
ROBIN FORD, Principal, Robin Ford Consulting (LinkedIn)
DAVID LUCATCH, Co-Founder and CEO, KABN Systems North America (LinkedIn)
LYNN JOHANNSON, Owner, E2 Management Corporation (LinkedIn)
About this episode: Join us for a special Episode 44 where Craig Asano sits down with a panel of NCFA Advisors and members who discuss the vanguard of digital finance and it's ability to fund, develop and scale digital innovations in green finance, digital identity and other emerging ecosystem opportunities in Canada. Are success stories like Wealthsimple and Shopify repeatable? Covid has afforded us all the time to take stock on the past and present while considering a relaunch of the future. Will Canada get it right?
Enjoy! (Full TRANSCRIPT)
EP45: Mission-driven and Consumer-centric Financial Services
Guest: KEITH TAYLOR, Executive Director, DUCA Impact Lab (LinkedIn)
About this episode: Keith Taylor, Executive Director of the DUCA Impact Lab chats with Anna Niemira about consumer-centric and fair banking (social finance). They discuss how a group of underbanked Canadian newcomers back in 1954 focused on solving a real problem in financial services. Fast forward 65 years later, DUCA’s mission has never been stronger. From innovative escalator-loans to digging deeper into retail financial literacy gaps, and their commitment to improving the financial well-being of its customers. As a registered B-corporation, learn how DUCA is innovating and living up to their motto of not only being ‘the best in the world but the best FOR the world’.
Enjoy! (Full TRANSCRIPT)
EP46: Making Business Borderless: International Payments and Partnerships
Guest: ALASTAIR THOMPSON, Global Head of Business Development & Partnerships, TransferWise (LinkedIn)
About this Episode:
Alistair Thompson, Global Head of Business Development and Partnerships at TransferWise joins host Manseeb Khan to talk about their mission to make sending money as easy and free as sending an email. They discuss how TransferWise began 9 years ago, and how transparent pricing, putting customers first and partnering with banks and non-banks globally has grown into a $5 billion monthly business and international fintech success.
Enjoy! (Full TRANSCRIPT)
EP47: How to Change the World: Risk Culture and Work-life Balance
About this Episode:
Michelle Beyo, Founder and CEO of Finavator joins Fintech Fridays host Manseeb Khan who talk about taking risks, celebrating success and finding work-life balance. They talk about innovation during crisis and the need for Canada to adopt Open Banking and how companies that aren’t creating 50/50 diverse teams are leaving money on the table. Join us for an action packed episode that will have you participating in a sprint triathlon next year.
Enjoy! (Full TRANSCRIPT)
EP48: How to Connect and Resonate with Customers Through Podcasting
Guest: FATIMA ZAIDI, CEO and Co-Founder, Quill Inc. (LinkedIn)
About this Episode:
Fatima Zaidi, CEO and Co-Founder of Quill Inc joins Fintech Fridays host Manseeb Khan to understand why podcasts have grown 200% in the last 6 months, and how influencers and corporate brands are building authentic customer relationships and motivating prospects with them. They talk about inspiring stories of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, building trust, advice for female (under-represented) founders, and how to connect with affluent, educated millennial professionals. If you’re new to the power of podcasts, tune-in to learn why they are quickly becoming an integral part of a company’s marketing mix, today.
Enjoy! (Full TRANSCRIPT)
EP49: Managing Private Placements Has Never Been Easier
KARAN KHIANI, VP Solution Engineering, Katipult (LinkedIn)
About this Episode:
Join Brock Murray (Co-founder and Head of Global Business Development) and Karan Khiani (VP Solution Engineering) of Katipult, an award winning private placement software as a service company. They navigate the origins of their company, the challenges of product/market fit, the impact of COVID19, emerging retail investor trends and going public early. The best part is....their journey is just beginning. Welcome to EP49 of Fintech Fridays. Enjoy! (Full TRANSCRIPT)
EP50: Compliance to the Moon
Guest: MARK BINNS, Chief Executive Officer, BIGG Digital Assets Inc. (LinkedIn);
About this Episode:
On this milestone episode, our host Manseeb Khan sits down with Mark Binns CEO of BIGG Digital Assets. They cover the rally behind bitcoin, big tech investing in crypto, and giving your kids crypto instead of fiat for allowance money. Enjoy! (Full TRANSCRIPT)
EP51: Bacon and Eggs
About this Episode:
On this episode of Fintech Fridays, Craig Asano, CEO of NCFA connects with Julien Brault the CEO of Hardbacon, an emerging high growth financial fitness and tracking app in Canada. They talk about the story behind Hardbacon, raising capital via equity crowdfunding and IPO routes, digital platforms as lead generation, and helping Canadians improve their wealth by making better financial decisions. Enjoy! (Full TRANSCRIPT)
EP52: Technology Due Diligence Process and Cyber Security Risks
Guests:
1. FARSHAD ABASI, Founder and CSO, Forward Security Inc. (LinkedIn)
2. DANIEL LEE, Managing Director, Technology & Innovation, Mid-market Investment Banking, CIBC (LinkedIn)
3. MICHAEL CASTRO, Founder and Risk Executive, RiskAware Group (LinkedIn)
About this Episode:
On this episode of the Fintech Fridays Podcast our Host, Manseeb Khan is joined by Daniel Lee Managing Director, Technology & Innovation, Mid-market at CIBC, Farshad Abasi the Founder and CSO of Forward Security Inc., and Michael Castro the CEO of RiskAware Group. They chat about why you should make sure your company is secure from Day 1 and how you go from secure to sale. Enjoy! (Full TRANSCRIPT)
EP53: Staying True to Bitcoin
Guest: CHRIS NAPRAWA, President, TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc.(LinkedIn)
About this Episode:
On this episode, our host Manseeb Khan sits down with Chris Naprawa the President of TAAL. They chat about what is Bitcoin SV, how crypto can save global warming, and how to stay true to Bitcoin. Enjoy! (FULL TRANSCRIPT)
SEASON 1 EPISODES:
EP1-Jul 20: Global Crypto Payments and the Future of Digital Assets (CoinPayments)
EP2-Jul 27: Canada's Role in the Global Fintech Ecosystem (Fintech Growth Syndicate)
EP3-Aug 3: Doubling Down on Female Founders (Roar Ventures)
EP4-Aug 10: Importance of a Smart Contract Safety Net (Sagewise)
EP5-Aug 17: First Coin's M&A Story - Wall street meets Crypto (Galaxy Digital Canada)
EP6-Aug 24: Asian Crypto Markets meet Canadian talent (Fintech Association of Hong Kong)
EP7-Aug 31: Structuring an ICO and the Mind of a Fintech-preneur (Pegasus Fintech)
EP8-Sep 7: Institutionalization of Crypto, China’s Ban and the Potential of Blockchain Decentralization (NexChange)
EP9-Sep 14: New SmartPay Product & Front-line of Global Digital Payments (Curexe)
EP10-Sep21: A Regtech-based Blockchain KYC Solution for Document Custody (Commercial Passport)
EP11-Sep 28: How Amazon Bank is Dominating and Risks of a Digital Bifurcated World (Schulte Research)
EP12-Oct 5: Building Blockchain Products & Decentralizd Solutions for Enterprise and Start-ups (Northern Block)
EP13-Oct 12: Road to Fintech IPO: Capital Networks, Scalable Solutions, Putting People First (Progressa)
Ep14-Oct 19: The Convergence of Data Intelligence and Money Algorithms (Senso.ai)
Ep15-Oct 26: Gearing up Hyperion Exchange, Hybrid Models and Security Tokens (Hyperion Technologies)
EP16-Nov 2: Envisioning the Future of Open Banking for Consumers and Businesses (Lending Loop)
Ep17-Nov 9: How Artificial Intelligence is Optimizing Sales and the Future of Business AI (Fortuna.ai)
Ep18-Nov 16: Bridging the AML/ATF Gap with Financial Institutions and the New Economy (Coinsquare)
Ep19-Nov 23: Future of Business Tokenization and How Blockchain Challenges Concept of Money (TokenFunder)
SEASON 2 EPISODES:
Ep20-Jan 11: Bitcoin Backed Loans and 2x Credit - Putting Your Crypto to Work (Mauricio Di Bartolomeo)
Ep21-Jan 18: Meritocracy, Decentralized Innovation and the Power of Collaboration (Hussein Hallak)
Ep22-Jan 25: Reducing Regulatory Burden by 25% in Ontario (Amar Nijjar)
Ep23-Feb 1: Getting Smart About Crypto and Insurtech Snapchat Models (Justin Hartzman)
Ep24-Feb 8: Re-imagining Philanthropy (Daryl Hatton)
Ep25-Feb 15: Unlock the World (Kate Guimbellot and Jason Sosnowski)
Ep26-Feb 22: Investing in Private Canadian Companies (Peter-Paul Van Hoeken)
Ep27-Mar 1: Blockchain Gaming and esports (Shidan Gouran)
Ep28-Mar 8: Rethinking Brokers (Muhammad Rashid)
Ep29-Mar 22: The Future of Securities (Richard Carleton)
Ep30-Apr 12: The Future of Canadian Crypto (Andrei Poliakov)
Ep31-May 14: Blockchain Law (Jason Saltzman)
Ep32-May 24: Rallying behind Bitcoin (Frederick T. Pye)
Ep33-May 31: Indexing Consumer Loans and Financial Literacy (Phillip Postrehovsky)
Ep34-Jul 6: Accelerating Fintech Growth (Brendan Holt Dunn)
Ep35-Aug 9: Autonomous Alternative Lending (Vit Arnautov)
Ep36-Aug 22: Techfins (Michael King)
Ep37-Sep13: Funding is Female (Jill Earthy)
Ep38-Mar25: Why Identity Matters in an Evolving Online Environment (David Lucatch)
Ep39-Apr23: The Power of Digitization and How to Get Exponential (James Wallace)
Ep40-May22: Why Bitcoin Exists and Education for the Masses (Austin Hubbell)
SEASON 3 EPISODES:
EP41: 40% pandemic growth, taking risks and innovating Insurtech in Canada (Danish Yusuf, Zensurance)
EP42: Insights into the Teen Banking Sector and Improving the Financial Well-being of Families (Rim Charkani, WALO)
EP43: Taking the Mortgage Process From 40 Days to Minutes (Chris Gries, FundMore.ai)
EP44: The Vanguard of Digital Innovation and Ecosystems in Canada (Various NCFA Advisors)
EP45: Mission-driven and Consumer-centric Financial Services (Keith Taylor, DUCA Impact Lab)
EP46: Making Business Borderless: International Payments and Partnerships (Alastair Thompson, TransferWise)
EP47: How to Change the World: Risk Culture and Work-life Balance (Michelle Beyo, Finavator)
EP48: How to Connect and Resonate with Customers Through Podcasting (Fatima Zaidi, Quill Inc.)
EP49: Managing Private Placements Has Never Been Easier (Brock Murray and Karan Khiani, Katipult)
EP50: Compliance to the moon (Mark Binns, Digital Assets Inc.)
EP51: Bacon and Eggs (Julien Brault, Hard Bacon)
EP52: Technology Due Diligence Process and Cyber Security Risks (Forward Security, CIBC, RiskAware Group)
EP53: Staying True to Bitcoin (Chris Naprawa, TAAL)
EP54: How Digital Identity will Transform Human Potential (David Lucatch, Liquid Avatar Technologies)
SEASON 4 EPISODES:
EP55: Global hiring trends: How Gen Z Talent Thrives (Anne-Marie Fannon, Work-Learn Institute, University of Waterloo)
EP56: How We Raised $426 million Using Rewards Crowdfunding (Zach Smith, Funded Today)
EP57: 10 Years of Investment Crowdfunding: Past, Present, and Future Since the Act (Expert Advisors)
EP58: Using Risk Management to Improve Your Business and Life (Alex Sidorenko)
EP59: Master Entrepreneurship with YEDI! (Maria Konikov)
EP60: Revolutionizing Small Business Lending and Empowering Entrepreneurs (David Souaid)
EP61: Making Markets and Investing in Crypto with the Phoenix App (Kay Khemani)
EP62: The Future of Investment Crowdfunding: Innovations, Data, and Opportunities (Sherwood 'Woodie' Neiss)
EP63: From Angel Investor to Change-Maker: Investing with Impact (Marcia Dawood)
EP64: House Rich Cash Poor And The New Home Equity Playbook (Shael Weinreb)
EP65: Personal Guarantees: The Most Expensive Autograph an Entrepreneur Can Sign (Craig Arnatt)
Interested in getting involved in FINTECH FRIDAYS? info@ncfacanada.org
FINTECH FRIDAY$ is a weekly podcast brought to you by NCFA and partners, where we sit down with the incredible people in the Fintech and Funding community and talk about trends, product innovations, developments and challenges!
Fintech Fridays is an evolving and innovative educational platform focused on delivering authentic personalities, content and story telling on the journey of mainstream adoption of new financial technologies and their impact on the future of finance.
Subscribe and tune in each Friday to check out the latest movers and shakers. Want to get involved? Contact us about partnerships opportunities, hosting and more: info@ncfacanada.org
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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Global News Radio Interview with Michelle Beyo: Alipay – Moving Money Between Countries
NCFA Canada | Michele Beyo | Aug 19, 2020
Checkout NCFA Advisor - Payments, Michelle Beyo's interview on Global News Radio
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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Rebank Podcast: How to Build a Profitable Digital Bank with Tinkoff
Rebank Podcast - Banking the Future| June 19, 2020
Oliver Hughes is the CEO of Tinkoff Group, one of the world’s most successful digital banking groups with over ten million customers.
Tinkoff is publicly listed, which brings clarity to its operating model in a time when many noteworthy consumer digital banks are pursuing customer acquisition at the expense of profitability.
Oliver has led Tinkoff through three financial crises, so brings experience and perspective to the current COVID crisis.
Listen to this podcast --> 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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Innovate Finance: Spotlight on Innovation: Canada Fintech Podcast
The Global City | Jun 4, 2020
Welcome to part two of Spotlight on Innovation, a series of discussions that look in detail at fintech in global markets recorded in partnership with Innovate Finance.
This episode will look in detail at the fintech landscape in Canada. Lord Mayor Alderman William Russell and Innovate Finance’s Head of Commercial and Business Development Caroline Vaughan are joined by two guests to discuss everything from investment into Canadian fintech and emerging trends to the effects of Covid-19 on innovate firms.
With special thanks to Jennifer Reynolds, President & CEO of Toronto Finance International and Robert Baldassare, Senior Advisor – Fintech at MaRS for their time and insights.
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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