Finaeo with Aly Dhalla (CEO) (Co-Founder)| EP10
04/19/18 • 42 min
Summary:
In this 10th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira interviews Aly Dhalla, the CEO and Founder of Finaeo, a platform to help independent advisors make their job easier with digital toolkits connected to a back office to work through their front office needs—from prospect to policy in one workflow. Aly shares what Finaeo’s goals are, who their core audience is, and their technological prospective to financial planning.
● 02:01 – Aly Dhalla introduces what Finaeo is.
● 02:31 – Aly shares information about his professional background as a financial advisor.
● 04:20 – Finaeo began delivering quotes via chat bot to provide them on demand.
● 06:00 – Three targets for Finaeo include:
1.) Early advisors who are 0-2 years in the industry looking for infrastructure.
2.) Growth stage advisors with 3-5 years in the industry making $75,000-$125,000 annually in income.
3.) Advisors towards the end of their career that are looking to exit in 3-5 years.
● 06:59 – Finaeo software process involves an initial needs analysis form for an advisor’s client, who can then log into the software and use the opportunity builder stage. The system sets up auto reminders.
● 11:45 – Finaeo currently does logic-driven data analysis, mining it for patterns.
● 15:52 – Finaeo is willing to partner with their competition.
● 17:29 – Connectivity with carriers is the number one issue that Finaeo is facing
● 19:17 – They will remain very focused on insurance distribution.
● 23:52 – Bionic advisor manta stands for the culmination of human and machine, with machine taking over computation, administration, and workflow. The human component handles building relationships and giving advice.
● 26:33 – Finaeo is free for advisors to work with the CRM software.
● 29:38 – Clients tend to find Finaeo through referrals, blogs, eBooks, podcasts, and webinars.
● 31:33 – As far as capital they have raised, the first $250,000 came from financial advisors, another $500,000 from the tech community and industry influencers. Their partner that lead their seed round of $2.25 million became Impression Ventures.
● 35:54 – Their first product was built by a single engineer in three months
● 38:26 – Faneo’a team is currently 14 full-time people (11 in Toronto, 3 in Vancouver) and are looking to grow to 20 by the end of 2018, with most of them in engineering.
3 Key Points:
1. Three targets for Finaeo include:
1.) Early advisors (0-2 years in the industry)
2.) Growth stage advisors (3-5 years in the industry)
3.) Elder advisors (looking to exit in 3-5 years.)
2. Bionic advisor manta stands for the culmination of human and machine,
with machine taking over computation, administration, and workflow. The
human component handles building relationships and giving advice.
3. Finaeo’s first capital was $250,000 from angel financial advisors, another $500,000 from the tech community, and their partner that lead their seed round of $2.25 million became Impression Ventures.
Tweetable Quotes:
“Our end-state goal is to be digitally bolted onto every insurance company and provide an open Amazon-style marketplace, where advisors can pick and choose from a suite of products.” – Aly Dhalla.
“We think that machine learning is going to drive the next generation of advisor, and help them scale.” – Aly Dhalla.
“Technology is the future of distribution, is the future of compliance, is the future of communication with clients.” – Aly Dhalla.
Resources Mentioned:
● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial
● Finaeo – Website for Finaeo
● LinkedIn – Aly Dhalla’s LinkedIn page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Summary:
In this 10th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira interviews Aly Dhalla, the CEO and Founder of Finaeo, a platform to help independent advisors make their job easier with digital toolkits connected to a back office to work through their front office needs—from prospect to policy in one workflow. Aly shares what Finaeo’s goals are, who their core audience is, and their technological prospective to financial planning.
● 02:01 – Aly Dhalla introduces what Finaeo is.
● 02:31 – Aly shares information about his professional background as a financial advisor.
● 04:20 – Finaeo began delivering quotes via chat bot to provide them on demand.
● 06:00 – Three targets for Finaeo include:
1.) Early advisors who are 0-2 years in the industry looking for infrastructure.
2.) Growth stage advisors with 3-5 years in the industry making $75,000-$125,000 annually in income.
3.) Advisors towards the end of their career that are looking to exit in 3-5 years.
● 06:59 – Finaeo software process involves an initial needs analysis form for an advisor’s client, who can then log into the software and use the opportunity builder stage. The system sets up auto reminders.
● 11:45 – Finaeo currently does logic-driven data analysis, mining it for patterns.
● 15:52 – Finaeo is willing to partner with their competition.
● 17:29 – Connectivity with carriers is the number one issue that Finaeo is facing
● 19:17 – They will remain very focused on insurance distribution.
● 23:52 – Bionic advisor manta stands for the culmination of human and machine, with machine taking over computation, administration, and workflow. The human component handles building relationships and giving advice.
● 26:33 – Finaeo is free for advisors to work with the CRM software.
● 29:38 – Clients tend to find Finaeo through referrals, blogs, eBooks, podcasts, and webinars.
● 31:33 – As far as capital they have raised, the first $250,000 came from financial advisors, another $500,000 from the tech community and industry influencers. Their partner that lead their seed round of $2.25 million became Impression Ventures.
● 35:54 – Their first product was built by a single engineer in three months
● 38:26 – Faneo’a team is currently 14 full-time people (11 in Toronto, 3 in Vancouver) and are looking to grow to 20 by the end of 2018, with most of them in engineering.
3 Key Points:
1. Three targets for Finaeo include:
1.) Early advisors (0-2 years in the industry)
2.) Growth stage advisors (3-5 years in the industry)
3.) Elder advisors (looking to exit in 3-5 years.)
2. Bionic advisor manta stands for the culmination of human and machine,
with machine taking over computation, administration, and workflow. The
human component handles building relationships and giving advice.
3. Finaeo’s first capital was $250,000 from angel financial advisors, another $500,000 from the tech community, and their partner that lead their seed round of $2.25 million became Impression Ventures.
Tweetable Quotes:
“Our end-state goal is to be digitally bolted onto every insurance company and provide an open Amazon-style marketplace, where advisors can pick and choose from a suite of products.” – Aly Dhalla.
“We think that machine learning is going to drive the next generation of advisor, and help them scale.” – Aly Dhalla.
“Technology is the future of distribution, is the future of compliance, is the future of communication with clients.” – Aly Dhalla.
Resources Mentioned:
● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial
● Finaeo – Website for Finaeo
● LinkedIn – Aly Dhalla’s LinkedIn page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Previous Episode
Viviplan with Rona Birenbaum (Co-Founder)| EP09
Summary:
In this 9th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Rona Birenbaum, a Toronto-based financial planner, and the CEO of Viviplan, a Canadian Robo planner that uses technology to more effectively provide financial planning to clients and a better price point. They chat about how Rona came to create Viviplan, what it aims to do for financial planning, and how it is growing.
01:09 – Rona sums up Viviplan.
●01:27 –Viviplan came out of Rona’s experience as a fee only financial planner for over 20 years.
●02:37 – Viviplan was accepted into the Ryerson DMZ-BMO Fintech Accelerator program in the summer of 2017.
●04:27 – Clients go through a rigorous but friendly onboarding process to gather the information to develop a comprehensive, tax-sensitive, goal-driven financial plan
●07:03 – The onboarding is all developed in-house.
●09:13 –Public relations coverage in The Globe and Mail and MoneySense has helped get the word out marketing-wise—along with podcast appearances.
●11:33 – To handle that overflow of inquiries and interest Viviplan is hiring another full-time planner.
●13:27 – College graduates trained for financial planning are coming to the realization that the only available jobs are sales jobs.
●18:14 – Viviplan doesn’t have in-house implementation, and they want to keep product and advice separate.
●20:58 –For the comprehensive plan clients get feedback, education, information, and direction on all aspects of their financial life. There are also lighter plans for people with less questions, without a full analysis.
●23:14 – Feedback from early users has been enthusiastic.
●26:17 – The biggest challenge is money. Rona is currently financing the company personally. Also, she desires the right partner that will fit in smoothly.
●29:26 – She is excited about building out a network of trusted professionals nation-wide.
3 Key Points:
1. Viviplan clients go through a rigorous but friendly onboarding process to gather the information to develop a comprehensive, tax-sensitive, goal-driven financial plan
2.College graduates trained for financial planning are realizing that the only available jobs are sales jobs.
3.Viviplan doesn’t have in-house implementation, and they want to keep product and advice separate.
Tweetable Quotes:
-“In order to do planning, you’ve got to sell.” – Rona Birenbaum.
-“Technology in my view, will not replace the need for people in financial planning.” – Rona Birenbaum.
-“We want to build out a platform of trusted professionals, vetted professionals, that our clients can then go to, and feel confident that they’re going to get the service to they need to implement what we have recommended.” – Rona Birenbaum.
Resources Mentioned:
●LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
●Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
●Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial
●Viviplan – Website for Viviplan
●Twitter – Rona Birenbaum’s Twitter page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Next Episode
Quandl with Clayton Feick (VP Sales & Business Development) | EP11
Summary:
This is the 11th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, and Jason Pereira interviews Clayton Feick, the Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Quandl, a big data company in the financial space that sells data points to vendors. Forbes has names Quandl one of the top 50 Fintech companies to watch. Clayton shares information about what separates Quandl from their competitors, how they are providing value in the fintech space, and what exactly alternative data is.
● 01:41 – Quandl is the leading provider of alternative data in the world. They also
provide financial and economic data.
● 02:04 – Clayton has been involved with Quandl for about two years, and spent a
decade at Thomson Reuters prior to that.
● 02:31 – Quandl is a proudly Canadian company, based in Toronto.
● 03:56 – Alternative data is information that has never been used before in capital
markets or in financial services, and packaging it up or extracting insight
from it can give an investor an edge.
● 08:19 – Quandl launched a product around the tracking of Tesla sales.
● 15:18 – They have a smart data science team that try to think like a hedge fund
while evaluating data, with half Quandl’s team focused on data
engineering, data science, and development.
● 22:55 – There are huge possibilities to use data for government, sociological
studies, and how humanity actually acts—not how we claim they act.
● 26:21 – Quandl has billions and billions of API calls every month, and store all their
data in the cloud. They have revenue-sharing agreements with vendors.
● 31:46 – Two venture capital firms that participated in their two fund-raising rounds:
August Capital and Nexus Ventures.
● 32:31 – They are constantly focusing on finding new forms of data that is insightful
and unique.
● 36:33 – Quandl gets excited when they find new data sets that the world has never
seen before.
● 37:40 – The Economist wrote an article called: “Data is the new Oil.” Data is everywhere, and news to be properly mined and refined to be as useful as oil.
● 38:00 – Quandl was the only Canadian firm on Forbes’ Top 50 Fintech companies
list for 2018.
3 Key Points:
1. Alternative data is information that has never been used before in capital markets or in financial services, and packaging it up or extracting insight from it that can give an investor an edge.
2. Quandl has over 250,000 individuals that are consuming data from us on a regular basis.
3. Quandl was the only Canadian firm on Forbes’ Top 50 Fintech companies list for 2018.
Tweetable Quotes:
“We have over 250,000 individuals that are consuming data from us on a regular
basis.” – Clayton Feick.
“More and more firms are making the decision to get into alternative data, get into
the technologies behind it and data science.” – Clayton Feick.
“You see some of the regulations in Europe around MiFID II and sell side firms need
to now charge for their research, it can’t be bundled with trading commissions.” –
Clayton Feick.
Resources Mentioned:
● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial
● Quandl – Website for Quandl
● LinkedIn – Clayton Feick’s LinkedIn page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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