Fintech Impact

In this 120th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Melika Hope, Head of Product for Small Business and Self-Employed Group at Intuit. Intuit is the world’s largest provider of accounting software. Melika Hope talks about how Intuit has managed to, through customer focus, continuously innovate up it’s product. Episode Highlights: ● 00:48 – Melika Hope explains what Intuit is. ● 02:36 – How did Intuit start and develop to where they are today? ● 03:53 – What does Melika Hope do on a day-to-day basis? ● 05:35 – What are some of the bigger product steps that she has taken with Intuit in recent memory? ● 11:23 – How do they gather information from end-users? ● 14:12 – How do their ideas end up getting implemented? ● 16:00 – Average features get built with speed, typically within weeks or months. ● 17:30 – What types of businesses do they consider as ideal candidates? ● 19:45 – Wh

In this 119th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Alex Lazarow, Venture Capitalist and Investment Director at Cathay Innovation and Author of the book Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs--from Delhi to Detroit--Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley. Alex Lazarow talks about how entrepreneurs around the world approach various problems differently in order to achieve success. Episode Highlights: ● 00:24 – Jason Pereira introduces Alex Lazarow. ● 01:21 – Alex Lazarow talks about his book Out Innovate. ● 03:46 – What is a ‘camel’ company? ● 04:58 – Alex talks about what can be learned from Grubhub. ● 06:00 – Alex and Jason talk about the concept of ‘blitz scaling’ and Company types that it is applicable to. ● 09:26 – How many companies did he talk to when writing his book? ● 10:36 – What is going on in North Korea in the fintech scene? ● 12:41 – What is the most unconventiona

Summary:In this 118th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Matt Alston, COO & Co-Founder at Surex, an online digital insurance broker that caters to home, auto, and various forms of casualty, seeking to digitize the entire consumer experience. Matt Alston explains the origin of Surex, the solutions that it provides to its users, increasing automation to compete long-term, and providing intelligent distribution. Episode Highlights: ● 00:16 – Jason Pereira introduces Matt Alston and what Surex is. ● 00:43 – Matt Alston explains what Surex is and its history. ● 01:54 – What opportunity did Matt see that he needed to take advantage of? ● 03:33 – What exactly does Surex’s app do? ● 04:02 – What does the experience look like when applying for insurance? ● 04:58 – Matt talks about focusing on quote accuracy and working with the carriers they work with. ● 08:27 – What was the experience l

Summary:In this 117th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Dan Doney, CEO of Securrency, a blockchain-enabled tokenization platform that bakes compliance into the actual token. This enables the token to represent the actual asset and simultaneously has rules set around who can participate, what the issuance policies are, and what government regulations come into play. Episode Highlights: ● 00:13 – Jason Pereira introduces Dan Doney and what Securrency is, ● 00:52 – Dan Doney explains Securrency. ● 02:21 – How and why did Securrency get started? ● 08:19 – What is the ideal situation for blockchain tokenization? ● 11:02 – What is happening with the WisdomTree investment in Securrency and innovations in the blockchain space? ● 17:16 – How do liquidity rules apply to Securrency? ● 18:32 – The boundary is only formed by the qualifications of the users and the instruments that they care tra

Summary:In this 116th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Giles Sutherland, Managing Director for Growth Markets at Carta. Carta is a provider of underlining payment infrastructure for various players in the market, including many well-known fintechs. Episode Highlights: ● 00:37 – Giles Sutherland defines Carta and what it provides. ● 03:21 – What led the founders of Carta to create it? ● 08:34 – Giles provides some examples of companies that might be recognized that have utilized their service. ● 14:48 – What other sectors of the economy has Carta gone after to support? ● 21:17 – What is Carta’s unique value proposition? ● 25:19: – Why did the company begin its efforts in Europe? ● 31:39 – Platforms are baking in the proper security as necessary. ● 33:52 – Under 10% of process flows are touching a bank. ● 35:18 – It is roughly a 6-year process to upgrade platform systems.&

Summary:In this 115th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews J. Gaston Siri, Chief Executive Officer at SideDrawer and Jamie R. Wolkove, Vice President Sales & Marketing at SideDrawer. SideDrawer is an app and platform based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada that allows you to store all the stuff in your life in one place, not just as pdf files, but with intelligence to drive action and support. Episode Highlights: ● 00:56: – J. Gaston Siri and Jamie R. Wolkove define Sidedrawer and how it got started. ● 05:18: – What is SideDrawer doing to drive engagement with users? ● 07:38: – SideDrawer is implementing feedback that they are getting in the field from users. ● 08:59: – Jason Pereira defines ‘metadata’ and how it works with SideDrawer. ● 09:54: – What types of challenges and pushback have they gotten from people concerned about data security? ● 14:04: – How is the pricing model for SideDrawe

Summary:In this 114th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Neil Sheehan and Awaad Amir who both work in the roles of Research & Advisory at Celent. Celent is a consultant to large financial and Fortune 500 institutions that deals with how they can better adapt to technological challenges that they are facing. Awaad Amir and Neil Sheehan discuss the uses and developments of voice activation. Episode Highlights: ● 01:15 – Neal Sheehan and Awaad Amir define Celent and how it got started. ● 02:43 – Why was Celent created as an offshoot of Oliver Wyman? ● 04:28 – What kind of developments have they seen arising with voice? ● 08:23 – They discuss some of the obstacles that voice has to overcome still. ● 13:14 – What are some of the use cases for voice? ● 19:22: – How many banks in Canada and the United States are using Virtual assistants? ● 22:50 – Voice accuracy and privacy issues are

Summary:In this 113th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Zack Brown, Vice President of Sales at Dialogue in Montreal. Dialogue is a telehealth service that enables you to access healthcare right from your smart phone in a fast, user-friendly, and convenient manner. Zack Brown discusses how Dialogue began, how they service their ideal customers, and the benefits of Dialogue. Episode Highlights: ● 00:55: – Zack Brown defines Dialogue and how it got started. ● 01:59: – What is the origin of Dialogue? ● 04:44: – What are the main uses for the app? ● 10:51: – How is focusing on the employer market working out for Dialogue? ● 17:50: – Why was Germany the first non-domestic expansion of Dialogue? ● 20:15: – What has the user feedback been looking like? ● 22:38: – What would Zack Brown change in his business or industry? ● 23:31: – What has been the biggest challenge to get the company

Summary:In this 112th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Natalie Sunderland, Chief Marketing Officer of Addepar, to talk about embracing risk, the benefits of technology, and the importance of advancing data reporting in wealth management. Episode Highlights: ● 01:03: – Addepar is a wealth management platform that specializes in data aggregation and performance reporting that currently has $1.7 trillion being managed on the platform. ● 02:10: – Addepar was founded in the wake of the financial crisis when the founder was struggling to understand how the crisis was impacting their assets. ● 03:53: – Getting a complete picture and understanding your assets is even more difficult now that people often split up their assets into different accounts, different financial institutions, and with different wealth managers. ● 05:22: – Financial advisors are limited in the advice they can give clients by the leg

Summary:In this 111th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes J. Paul Haynes, President and COO of eSentire, to talk about evolving cybersecurity threats, the challenges of the mid-size market, and more. Episode Highlights: ● 00:58: – eSentire is disrupting the way cybersecurity is managed. ● 03:28: – There are over 70 categories of cybersecurity companies because the problem keeps changing as technology evolves. ● 05:00: – eSentire serves mid-size companies with between 200-2,000 employees. ● 07:05: – Instead of offering certain features, eSentire sees themselves as a threat partner, making decisions about traffic and servers as if they were an employee of your company. ● 09:01: – eSentire was one of the first to solve security issues with hedge funds. ● 10:20: – A security breach with a hedge fund would be not just a reputational hit, but could end the business. ● 11:17: – A security ana

Summary:In this 110th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Ohad Samet, Co-founder and CEO of True Accord, to talk about leading with empathy even in debt collection, how True Accord’s debt collection model has impacted both creditors and debtors, and more.Episode Highlights:00:37: – True Accord is a machine learning-based digital debt collection platform used by creditors and financial institutions.01:57: – Others often see people in debt either as villains or as victims.05:00: – The majority of people have debt collection horror stories, but the people working as debt collectors aren’t bad people, but the way the industry is structured, they are incentivized to do things that create a bad experience.05:55: – True Accord’s machine learning helps track user behavior to determine the best way to reach each customer and when to have human interaction versus digital intervention.10:35: – At first, Ohad would get laughed out of of

Summary:In this episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews returning guest Samantha Russell, Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer at Twenty Over Ten. This time around, instead of discussing Twenty Over Ten, Samantha has come to talk about Lead Pilot, which is Twenty Over Ten’s content marketing platform for financial advisors. Samantha also explains inbound marketing, why it is so effective, and how inbound marketing differs from short-form marketing. Episode Highlights: ● 00:50: – Samantha Russell defines Lead Pilot. ● 02:43: – What led to the creation of Lead Pilot? ● 04:27: – What is inbound marketing and why is it so effective? ● 07:17: – You can’t expect results if you are not trying or doing the right things. ● 09:16: – How does inbound marketing differ from short-form marketing? ● 12:19: – Samantha provides advice for those that don’t think they have enough time for inbound

Summary:In this 108th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Daryl Hatton, Founder and CEO of Connection Point, to talk about Connection Point’s crowdfunding model, some major successes challenges the platform has faced, the psychology behind philanthropy, and more. Episode Highlights: ● 00:35: – Connection Point is a social commerce company that helps people crowdfund money for personal and professional/non-profit organizations. ● 02:50: – Connection Point began as a fundraising site for unregistered and non-charitable non-profits like children’s sports teams. ● 05:25: – They were one of the 30 companies included in Facebook’s beta for the Timeline feature to know how it worked ahead of time. ● 06:20: – The site allows companies and groups to use their own branding on their funding campaigns. ● 07:10: – The site includes technology called Coco Pay to allow companies to help potential customers cro

Summary:In this 107th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Garrett Viggers. Co-Founder at Limelight Health, a company that is working to digitize the entire experience of insurance applications from start to finish. Garrett Viggers talks about how Limelight Health got started, obstacles in getting the industry to accept innovation, and not trying to be a one-stop solution for everything. Episode Highlights: ● 00:08: – Check out JasonPereira.ca to sign up for the newsletter and notifications. ● 00:51: – Garrett Viggers describes Limelight Health. ● 02:07: – What really drove the foundation of Limelight Health? ● 04:35: – How did his first experiences go with insurance companies trying to show them that there is a better way? ● 11:16: – Limelight Health is not overextending itself to try to be a policy admin system, CRM, or an enrollment platform. ● 11:54: – Are they running into the ‘one ma

In this 106th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Filipe Castro, co-founder and CIO of Utrust, to talk about Utrust’s growth strategy, how blockchain payment technology competes with credit cards and other existing forms of payment, the future of payment tech, and more.Episode Highlights:00:55: – Utrust is a platform that enables e-commerce merchants to accept various forms of cryptocurrency as payment.01:24: – Filipe met his co-founders online in 2010 in cryptocurrency and blockchain forums.03:30: – On the merchant’s side, they don’t have to worry about the accounting or conversion of cryptocurrency, because Utrust handles all of that automatically on the back end and the merchant simply receives their US Dollars or Euros or whichever currency they operate under.04:28: – For the user, you select Utrust as your payment method, which takes you to the Utrust website and allows you to select and set up your crypto wal

Summary:In this 105th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Doug Dahmer, CEO of Better Money Choices, to talk about democratizing financial planning, having a long-term view of planning, and more. Episode Highlights: ● 00:32: – Better Money Choices is a financial platform that puts the power in the consumer’s hands. ● 01:25: – Before Better Money Choices, Doug founded Retirement Navigator. ● 02:22: – Better Money Choices allows consumers to gamify their choices to explore what their financial options are. ● 04:50: – The biggest obstacle to financial planning is the initial data collection, so the Better Money Choices platform has a wizard that allows for that data collection in 7.5 minutes or less, and to identify the places that need further detail and clarity later. ● 08:59: – Financial planning is a verb, not a noun. ● 10:20: – Better Money Choices is owned by the client and can be shared

Summary:In this 104th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Scott Hawksworth, Sales and Marketing Director at Soar Payments. Soar Payments is a company that focuses on providing payment solutions to higher risk businesses in the United States. Scott Hawksworth explains chargebacks, examples of high-risk businesses that banks tend to have trouble with, and the value that Soar Payments offers to its clients. Episode Highlights: ● 00:33: – Scott Hawksworth defines Soar Payments. ● 01:11: – Soar Pay was launched in 2015 in Houston, Texas. ● 03:10: – What are examples of higher-risk industries from the standpoint of payment processing companies and banks? ● 06:38: – Scott explains a chargeback and why the threshold is a small number. ● 10:51: – How is Soar Payments solving this problem? ● 12:11: – Soar Payments’ goal is to present merchants in places where they have the best chance of getting ap

Summary:In this 103rd episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Tea Nicola, Co-founder and CEO of Wealthbar, and Pawel Brzeminski, Founder and CEO of Snap Projections, to talk about what led to their companies’ partnership, fintech’s rise and the financial planning industry’s move towards technology, and more. Episode Highlights: ● 00:46: – Wealthbar is one of Canada’s first robo-advisors. ● 01:18: – Snap Projections is a financial planning platform for advisors. ● 02:38: – Tea was interested in Snap Projections after using it herself for years as a solution to having to do calculations in Excel and then manually transfer data over into reports for clients. ● 04:33: – Pawel was interested in the relationship because he wanted a partner to help grow and improve the platform. ● 06:44: – Snap Projections has helped Wealthbar grow because it has been helpful to own software that allows advisors to work mo

In this 102nd episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Yaron Ben-Zvi, founder of Haven Life, to talk about how he ended up in the life insurance industry, the problems he found once he got there, and how Haven Life aims to fix those problems.Episode Highlights:00:36: – Haven Life is a service that rethinks how people purchase life insurance policies using better tech.01:24: – Yaron started Haven Life because he was shocked at how outdated the process was when he went to purchase his first life policy after the birth of his first child.04:25: – Every step of purchasing life insurance had tons of friction that Yaron believed could be alleviated using technology, from understanding the product to applying to underwriting and the customer decision.05:25: – Jason notes that Yaron includes policy examples in the application process to remove the intimidation factor.06:54: – The best insights while developing the Haven Li

Summary:In this 101st episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Phillip Barrar, founder of the Mylo savings and investment app, to talk about banking differences in Canada versus the EU, banking regulations, and more. Episode Highlights: ● 00:33: – Mylo is an app that rounds up your purchases and invests the change to help you work towards your savings goals. ● 03:18: – Phillip started Mylo after he was already teaching his friends and family savings techniques. ● 04:24: – Canada has an under-banked population and aren’t saving or investing. ● 04:40: – 53% of Canadians have under $1,000 in their bank account. ● 04:54: – For Phillip, it’s about inclusion; how do you make products more accessible and affordable and remove friction points? ● 09:06: – The roundup process in Mylo helps people go from saving nothing to saving their first $1,000 in a year. ● 09:15: – Users can also set up recurring