Benzinga Fintech Focus

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we talk with Anthony Denier, CEO of Webull Financial, a free-trading app from the minds of former Alibaba team members. Links: Webull: webull.com (http://www.webull.com/) BENZINGA’S FINTECH FOCUS NEWSLETTER: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus-newsletter BENZINGA PRO: http://try.benzingapro.com 

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we chat with Jeremie Bacon, CEO of Imagineer. Imagineer is a relationship management software company, with products designed to help fund managers and institutional investors operate more efficiently. ————— Links: Imagineer: https://www.imagineertechnology.com  Benzinga's Fintech Focus Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus-newsletter Benzinga Pro: http://try.benzingapro.com 

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we chat with Raj Lala, CEO of Evolve ETFs. ————— Links: Evolve ETFs: https://evolveetfs.com/ Benzinga Trading Summit: https://benzingatradingsummit.com/ Benzinga Fintech Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/ Benzinga Pro:https://pro.benzinga.com/

In today's episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we chat with Erkin Adylov, Founder & CEO of Behavox. Behavox, the first ever behavioral operating system, is doing what Excel did for accounting and applying that to employee management. It is an AI-driven platform that transforms behavior in the financial workplace. ––––– Links: Behavox: https://www.behavox.com/ Benzinga Trading Summit: https://benzingatradingsummit.com/ Benzinga Fintech Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/ Benzinga Pro:https://pro.benzinga.com/

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we chat with Jay Klauminzer CEO of Raise. Raise is an online gift card marketplace where you can sell gift cards for cash or buy discount gift cards to all your favorite brands. ––––– Links: Raise: https://www.raise.com/ Benzinga Trading Summit: https://benzingatradingsummit.com/ Benzinga Fintech Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/ Benzinga Pro:https://pro.benzinga.com/

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we talk to Bryan Leach of Ibotta. Ibotta is the starting point for rewarded shopping, today announced the launch of its first-ever payments solution, Pay with Ibotta™, enabling shoppers to pay for their entire purchase at leading retailers through the Ibotta app and instantly earn cash back. ———— Links: Ibotta: https://ibotta.com/ Benzinga Trading Summit: https://benzingatradingsummit.com/ Benzinga Fintech Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/ Benzinga Pro:https://pro.benzinga.com/

In today's episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we chat with Lule Demmissie, new President of Ally Invest. She plays a critical role in leading and providing strategic oversight as Ally continues to grow and enhance its overall brokerage, active trader, advisory services, and managed portfolio offering. She comes with specific expertise in advisory services, the intersection of agile product development and investor behavior, and applying that expertise to design people-centric solutions. Lule also has a passion for the advancement of diverse teams as an accelerant to innovation and client-centric solutions. Lule joined Ally Invest from TD Ameritrade where she was a managing director responsible for the strategic development and analysis of all investment products and guidance across $300 billion in assets and $21 billion in managed money. Prior to TD Ameritrade, she spent eight years with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, designing and launching their non-discretionary platform. Lule has also worked for Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan during her career. ————— Links: Ally Invest: https://www.ally.com/invest/ Benzinga Trading Summit: https://benzingatradingsummit.com/ Benzinga Fintech Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/ Benzinga Pro:https://pro.benzinga.com/

On this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we chat with Michael Kopelman of Edison Partners. Edison Partners is a 33-year-old growth equity firm based in Princeton, New Jersey. With about 50% of their portfolio being in fintech companies, it's safe to say they're a leader in the space. LendIt named them the "Top Fintech Equity Investor" in 2018. Michael leads Edison's fintech practice. ——— Links: Edison Partners: https://www.edisonpartners.com Benzinga Trading Summit: https://benzingatradingsummit.com/ Benzinga Fintech Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/ Benzinga Pro:https://pro.benzinga.com/

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we talk about the high risk-high reward world of options trading with a startup named Gatsby. Just like the name of the eponymous book it gives a nod to, this Gatsby also sees the green light when it comes to opportunity, and that opportunity is teaching people about trading options while taking out things like options matrices and capital requirements. Co-founder Jeff Myers chats with us about his company and why he chose to make options trading more slimmed down and approachable. Done through an app, Gatsby acts more like a social networking site that allows users to make their moves based on market reporting, leveraging knowledge and expertise to make the right decisions. ----- Links: Gatsby: https://www.trygatsby.com/ Benzinga Trading Summit: https://benzingatradingsummit.com/ Benzinga Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/ Benzinga Pro: https://pro.benzinga.com/

On today's episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we take a leap over to the world of conversational AI. You've probably heard of Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Google Assistant, but here's another to add to that list - Clinc. Host Spencer Israel sits down with Dr. Johann Hauswald, Cofounder & Chief Product Officer of Clinc. Topics discussed include AI as a financial assistant, open sourcing their AI whitepaper, and almost getting sued by Apple. ----- Links: Clinc: https://clinc.com/ Benzinga Trading Summit: https://benzingatradingsummit.com/ Benzinga Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we shine an underserved area of the business community: small and medium-sized businesses. Most banks gear their services to large businesses with a little extra help on the side for small businesses. That’s why our next guest on the podcast is a man with a plan to help out SMB’s. After years of working with big-name clients and handling digital payments for Europe and Africa at Barclays, Farhan Ahmad realized that small and medium-sized businesses needed more help from their financial service providers. He set out on his own with Bento For Business, a financial services company specifically-designed for SMB’s. ----- Links: Bento for Business: https://bentoforbusiness.com/ Benzinga Trading Summit: https://benzingatradingsummit.com/ Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference: https://www.benzingacannabisconference.com/ Benzinga Fintech Focus Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast,  we’re going to take you on a little/big trip across the globe to Asia where the fintech business is a-booming. And what better way to learn about it than from someone who’s seen it grow from the ground up? We bring in Henri Arslanian, a man who wears multiple financial hats. He’s the head of fintech and crypto for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Asia, the chairman of the FinTech Association of Honk Kong, and is an adjunct professor at the University of Honk Kong where he teaches the only fintech university course in Asia. Arslanian advises anyone and everyone who wants to know about fintech policy and how to grow fintech—that includes government agencies, businesses and students. From crypto to the technology behind the technology, he’s your man. ----- Links: PwC: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industries/financial-services.html Benzinga Trading Summit: https://benzingatradingsummit.com/ Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference: https://www.benzingacannabisconference.com/ Benzinga Fintech Focus Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we’re hitting the road with Craig Fuller, CEO of Freightwaves. As of today, Freightwaves has officially launched Trucking Freight Futures, a futures product for the $726 billion freight industry. Why does freight need a futures product? Who is it for? How does one even go about creating a new futures market, and what even makes it successful? Craig has the answers. Listen to the podcast below to hear why Fuller and co. wanted to bring this idea—which has been years in the making— to life. ----- Links: Freightwaves: https://www.freightwaves.com/ Benzinga Pro: http://pro.benzinga.com/ Benzinga Fintech Focus Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we dive into the world of IPOs and put you into the shoes of an average investor who’s looking to be more involved in the investing process of, say, something like Lyft, which is gearing up for its stock market debut this year. IPOs are already intriguing enough in their own right, but not everyone has access to the IPO process itself. If you’re a large investor, good for you—you’re probably getting shares at the original price. But if you’re someone who doesn’t have millions of dollars and still wants to get in on an exciting tech company, like Lyft, the best you can hope for is to wait until some profits come rolling in. That’s why Scott Coyle, a veteran who survived the 1980’s stock market roller coaster, created ClickIPO, an app that acts as the middleman between retail investors and IPO underwriters. ClickIPO lets would-be investors put their mark down on an IPO before it opens, which then turns into proof that there’s retail demand out there. Links: ClickIPO: https://clickipo.com/ Benzinga Pro: http://pro.benzinga.com/ Benzinga Fintech Focus Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we talk about the world of mortgage-backed securities and how one person who had an inside look at how everything went down on Wall Street during the Great Recession. If you’ve seen the movie The Big Short (so many great wigs in that movie) or had a stake in mortgage during that time, then this pod is for you. We sat down with Perry Rahbar, a Bear Stearns alum who traded said mortgage-backed securities that helped fuel the financial roller coaster in the middle of the last decade. After seeing everything happen firsthand, Rahbar wanted to build an infrastructure between lenders and the capital markets that wasn’t present at the time. So, he did, and wants to make sure the financial market doesn’t make the same mistakes twice. ----- **Links:** dv01: https://dv01.co/ Benzinga Pro: http://pro.benzinga.com/ Benzinga Fintech Focus Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/

This week’s episode of the Fintech Focus podcast is going local. We’re heading west to Arizona where fintech startups are being welcomed with open arms into the state’s fintech regulatory sandbox.  Last year, Arizona became the first state to launch a regulatory sandbox specifically for fintech. Spearheaded by State Attorney General Mark Brnovich and inspired by regulatory sandboxes in Asia and Europe, lawmakers are hoping the initiative will put the state’s fintech scene on the map. To talk us through the thought process behind it, which types of companies they’re looking for, and what the terms of the sandbox are, we caught up with Evan Daniels, the Arizona Fintech Sandbox’s in-house counsel. Enjoy. ----- **Links:** AZ Fintech Sandbox: https://www.azag.gov/fintech Benzinga Pro: http://try.benzingapro.com/ Benzinga Fintech Newsletter:https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we chat with Brian Dally, co-founder and CEO of GROUNDFLOOR. GROUNDFLOOR is an American real estate lending marketplace. It was the first real estate crowdfunding company to achieve SEC qualification utilizing Regulation A+ since the regulation became operable through the JOBS Act, becoming the only such marketplace open to non-accredited investors. (via Wikipedia) ----- **Links:** GROUNDFLOOR: https://www.groundfloor.us/ Benzinga Pro: http://try.benzingapro.com/ Benzinga Fintech Focus Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we chat with Dov Marmor, Head of Banking as a Service at Green Dot. Yes, Green Dot does push its pre-paid debit cards for sale at places like CVS, but it’s also expanded into a banking service that lets it facilitate payments with companies like Uber, Walmart and fellow Fintech-ian Stash Invest. Dov, who studied finance at Cornell, jumped into the financial services market around the time the country was falling apart in 2005. He managed to keep his head above water in financial sales before he merged into fintech and then ultimately on to Green Dot. Listen to the podcast below to hear about his journey and what he’s doing to change the narrative behind Green Dot and its features. ----- Links: Green Dot: https://www.greendot.com/ Benzinga Fintech Focus Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter Benzinga Pro: http://try.benzingapro.com/

In this episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we chat with Ana Sirbu, Chief Financial Officer of BlueVine. Ana previously worked at UBS and Google Capital where she headed up fintech investing, which got her introduced to her new company, a fintech lender that focuses on offering financing for small- and medium-sized companies. It was a bit of a leap for Sirbu, going from Google to a somewhat unknown specialized fintech lender. Now, BlueVine works with more than 10,000 businesses, offering more than $1 billion in loans. Listen to the podcast below to understand her motivation behind the switch. ----- Links: BlueVine: [https://www.bluevine.com](https://www.bluevine.com) Benzinga Fintech Focus Newsletter: [https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter](https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter) Benzinga Pro: [http://try.benzingapro.com/](http://try.benzingapro.com/)

This week's Fintech Focus podcast goes global and discusses IBM's strategic vision and API-first mentality. ----- IBM is a global technology and innovation company headquartered in Armonk, NY. It is the largest technology and consulting employer in the world, with more than 400,000 employees serving clients in 170 countries. IBM offers a wide range of technology and consulting services; a broad portfolio of middleware for collaboration, predictive analytics, software development and systems management; and the world's most advanced servers and supercomputers. Utilizing its business consulting, technology and R&D expertise, IBM helps clients become "smarter" as the planet becomes more digitally interconnected. (via Crunchbase) ----- Links: IBM: www.ibm.com Benzinga Fintech Focus Newsletter: [https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter](https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter) Benzinga Pro: [http://try.benzingapro.com/](http://try.benzingapro.com/)

This week's Fintech Focus podcast takes us across the pond to interview Frederic Nze of digital micro-lending platform Oakam. Oakam is a digital micro-lender that is expanding credit access for the UK’s 12 million financially-excluded consumers. Oakam has captured the opportunity presented by the rapid democratization of smartphone technology to disrupt micro-lending by making borrowing more affordable and accessible for the working class. Prior to founding Oakam, Frederic spent his career in credit risk management and consumer finance at firms including American Express, Barclays and GE Capital. He first came across the UK’s micro-lending opportunity while working on a pilot project at Barclays to evaluate product offerings for lower-income customers, and realizing the potential of this market, decided to found Oakam in 2006. Raised in Central Africa, Frederic saw firsthand how informal community lending helped to jumpstart entrepreneurs and fledgling businesses. With global ambitions for Oakam, Frederic’s ultimate goal is to bring the concept back to the developing world. (via Crunchbase) ----- **Links:** Oakam: [https://www.oakam.com/](https://www.oakam.com/) Benzinga Fintech Focus Newsletter: [https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/](https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/) Benzinga Pro: [http://try.benzingapro.com/](http://try.benzingapro.com/)

This episode of the Fintech Focus podcast, we dive into the niche world of research management software with Chris Mackey of MackeyRMS. MackeyRMS is a SaaS-based research management software optimized for investment professionals. **About the company:** Mackey Research Management Software was conceived and developed by veterans of the hedge fund, enterprise software and cloud computing industries. Their founders recognized that legacy research management software (RMS) lacked the usability and mobility required by the modern analyst, while the one-size-fits-all approach of consumer applications fell far short of the investment enterprise’s robust functionality and compliance requirements. (via Crunchbase) ----- Links: MackeyRMS: https://mackeyrms.com/ Benzinga Fintech Focus Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/ Benzinga Pro: https://pro.benzinga.com/

This week’s Fintech Focus podcast looks at how one New York-based ETF sponsor is bringing the old and the new together, opening up a space where fintech and Wall Street can work in harmony within ETF investing. It’s safe to assume the majority of people with their eyes on ETF’s know that investing in those babies is changing, especially with the advent of mobile and peer-to-peer payments (i.e. fintech). How is fintech affecting ETF’s? Will there be a crypto exchange-traded fund soon? What makes a good investment? All those questions and more can be answered by Jay Jacobs who heads up Global X (NASDAQ: FINX), which manages more than 50 products and $8.5 billion in the space. ----- Links: GlobalX: [https://www.globalxfunds.com](https://www.globalxfunds.com) Benzinga Pro: [www.try.benzingapro.com](www.try.benzingapro.com) Fintech Focus Newsletters: [www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/](www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/)

This week's Fintech Focus podcast takes a look at how one fintech startup is changing the way we invest in real estate. Yes, people have always been able to invest in private real estate equity, which has proven to be an attractive venture for most. But it's real estate debt, an asset usually controlled by banks as institutional products, that is now stepping in as an enticing investment. That's where Brett Crosby of PeerStreet saw an opportunity to bring accredited investors into the octagon of real estate-backed loans. ----- **What were some roadblocks people were having in terms of accessing certain assets?** Until previously, lenders didn't have a secondary market. They were very capital constrained. So, what we realized is that, in the meantime, investors had access to their asset classes, really interesting assets, but were very hard to access; very hard to aggregate enough uproar even institutional investors et cetera. So, it was a space that really needed technology in a marketplace to connect both sides. We put PeerStreet there as a conduit between the world wide capital markets and local private loaners who understand their local real estate market. All of a sudden what's happened is that investors can access an asset class that they couldn't access easily before. They can diversify it in a way never before possible. If something goes wrong in the investment, instead of them having to put together a team of people to try and solve the problem, we already have that team in place, then we work with external professionals in the local markets to handle things....To me it's a very, very positive thing, and something that if we power one borrower to do that, that's great, but now we're powering thousands of borrowers to do that sort of thing. It's starting to have an impact on the housing stock of the nation, so it's getting pretty exciting. ----- Links: PeerStreet: https://www.peerstreet.com/ Benzinga Pro: www.try.benzingapro.com Fintech Focus Newsletter: www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/

This week's Fintech Focus podcast takes a look at the burgeoning Generation Z market, and how developers and entrepreneurs are finding ways to bring financial education to teens. With things like a shaky stock market and rising college tuition rates to consider, today's teens have a lot to think about when saving for the future. However, according to reports, today's teens are actually making strides to learn about and plan their savings, more so than Millennials before them. That's the basis of Current, a debit and credit card app that aims to teach Generation Z the importance of financial education and budgeting for the future. * * * **How did research affect your blueprint for this service?** When we went into this demographic, we had no preconception about what any individual parent may or may not want, and we'd surveyed a bunch of them and had interviewed a bunch, and what we learnt was that pretty much every family is different across America. From large metro to rural, to rich and poor…Most parents, we've found, believe in their kids, believe their teenagers are going to do the right thing, and they would rather them not be stuck swiping away in some random place or merchant when they need the money the most or they can't get cash out in an emergency. **You're simultaneously building a product for two audiences, right, for the parents and for the kids. How does your product development philosophy fit into that as you serve those two audiences?** What a teenager wants is probably not what a parent wants for them and vice versa, right? Balancing this conversation has been one of our key challenges, but also key assets and defensibility. Between 13 and 16, the product we have currently is doing extremely well. Sixteen to 18 is an area where the summer jobs start, we're rolling out the routing and account numbers, the remote deposit capture over this quarter, when it will look much more like a traditional bank account in many ways, with some UI tweaks and maybe even some upgraded cards. We have our P2P system as well, which is very common now, as you probably see from other financial products, but also the way we're thinking about data, the way we are thinking about our point system and the share-ability and discoverability of your swipes, holds the keys to the future of Current and how we expect this cohort to grow with us. * * * Links: Current: [www.current.com](www.current.com) Benzinga Pro: [www.try.benzingapro.com](www.try.benzingapro.com) Fintech Focus Newsletter: [www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/](https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/)

**What This Fintech VC Learned From A Near-Disaster In Brazil** On this episode of the Fintech Focus Podcast we’re journeying overseas with Monica Brand Engel, co-founder and partner at Quona Capital. Quona is a VC fund focused on emerging markets fintech, and Monica talks to us about the challenges in different fintech markets around the globe, how they compare to the U.S., and what happened when one of their investments was nearly shut down by the Brazilian central bank. ----- **Links:** Quona Capital: https://quona.com/ Fintech Focus Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/ Benzinga Pro: https://pro.benzinga.com/

Colin is a managing director within the Consumer and Commercial Banking Division of Goldman Sachs. He works as the chief operating officer of Clarity Money. Prior to Clarity Money, Colin held leadership roles in business development, innovation, and general management at American Express. He managed global partnerships for American Express, producing consistent double-digit growth on $200M global P&L and leading the highest-performing team in consumer business. ----- **Links:** Marcus: https://www.marcus.com Clarity Money: https://claritymoney.com/ Benzinga Pro: https://pro.benzinga.com/ Fintech Focus Newsletter: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/

**How Long Till Your Bank Goes Open Source?** This week’s Fintech Focus podcast is booting up Linux and going open-source. We’re chatting with longtime friend of Benzinga and CEO of OpenFin Mazy Dar about the company’s growth and how the startup is changing the way banks deploy new technology. **How Financial Services Needs To Take A Lesson From Mobile Developers** “Look at what's happened in the mobile world, and in Silicon Valley most of the really useful innovations of the last you know, five, ten years have come about on our mobile devices, and they've been enabled, principally by two operating systems. One is iOS, and the other one is Android. And so if you are Facebook, or Uber, or Snapchat, or any number of other apps that have been created in the last five, ten years, you have those two operating systems that are modern to build your app on top of. “Unfortunately, the situation we're in, in financial services is we're primarily using Windows 7, which was released in 2009, and some of us are still on Windows XP, which was released in 2001. So, these are operating systems that don't provide you the basic capabilities that apps need nowadays, and that's essentially what OpenFin is solving, we're a layer that sits on top of Windows XP, 7, 8, 10, Mac, and Linux, and we modernize the desktop and provide the foundation that's needed by applications in the financial industry to really innovate and provide the end user experience that's required for financial applications.” **How Open Source Can Actually Ensure Greater Cybersecurity** “OpenFin comes in and dramatically changes the security paradigm where now you can build an app that looks and feels and behaves just like a native installed application, but in face it is not an installed application. It's a web application. It runs in the security sandbox. It has no access to the local operating system. Has no access to other apps on the desktop and where it needs access, let's say there's a good reason for it to want to read the file system or read the clipboard or something else, IT security can essentially authorize those features and it's only available if apps actually need it and it's understood why they need those features. It's under a completely different paradigm than the one we have today, but one that is critically needed in an environment where the security threats are increasing exponentially, and we just need a much, much better way of ensuring security than the security review process that we have in place.” ----- **Links:** OpenFin: https://openfin.co Benzinga Pro: https://www.benzinga.com/fintech-focus/newsletter/

**What’s The Next Technological Leap For Financial Advisors?** The Fintech Focus podcast is taking another look at the changing world of financial planning this week, and how technology is redefining the way advisors work with their clients. It’s no secret that healthcare costs are a huge burden on American families—multiple studies say medical costs are the number one cause of personal bankruptcies. This week’s episode features an interview with an entrepreneur that asked how financial advisors could help families plan for medical costs. That’s the thesis of Genevity, the fintech startup that’s working with financial advisors to help their clients plan for long-term and even generational costs of medical complications like hereditary diseases and elder care. **How Can We Change The Way We Talk About Healthcare Costs?** “It really hit me that to truly make a difference, what we needed to do is not help educate families around health risks at a hospital setting. We needed to educate them in a technology-based way, and we needed to show the financial impact of those risks. Because even though people know maybe they should eat better, drink less, exercise more if they have different risks, it's really hard to make those changes from a behaviors perspective. But you really care when you realize it from aa financial perspective. “And so that's what Genevity does, is it looks across your lifestyle, your family risks, your health risks, and your family longevity and several factors. And we'll show you, what does that look like for you across your lifespan in a reference to healthy go-go years, along with some of those slower-go years. And then showing you how if you make these changes, you can improve your longevity, you can reduce those slow-go years and ultimately reduce cost. [We’re] here to help families and their financial planners too with them.” **How Do You Get Financial Advisors To Talk About Health?** “An individual is gonna spend way more time over their lifetime with their financial advisor than they are with their doctor. And because health and elder care costs are one of the biggest causes of bankruptcy in retirement, it can decimate a financial plan at any point in time. So if you're not planning for these things, you have this big blind spot in a plan. “We were just really surprised when we learned from an advisor who had contacted us that there wasn't a good way of personalizing this information for individuals. And you think about it, in this day and age, why are we not personalizing about these sort of risks to a financial plan if you could?” How Technology Can Start To Undo The Misogyny In The Way We Approach Family Medical Decisions “What advisors would share with us is that, ‘Look, we tend to have a relationship with one person in the family who's that financial decision-maker, and more often than not, it tends to be the man. Not always. But it can be really hard to engage that other spouse who maybe isn't as interested in the numbers in those conversations.’ “And that's where health is that perfect bridge. Because coming from the healthcare industry, as my co-founder and I both come from, what we've always talked about in healthcare is the CMO of the family, or the Chief Medical Officer of the family, and that tends to be the woman, whether that's the mother, the daughter, or the sister. And so she may or not be the financial decision-maker when it comes to sitting down and doing the really detailed planning with the advisor. But she will almost certainly be the person who is very involved around the health of the loved one and also you know, wave more heavily towards here from the caregiving, whether it's children or elderly parent. “This is the perfect bridge to her where she may not want to sit down and talk about the numbers or what Halo, our product, does, it sits down and talks about those health concerns and risks within the family, which speaks a different langua...

**What Are The Biggest Opportunities In Fintech M&A Right Now?** We’re back in the capital markets for this week’s Fintech Focus Podcast, and it’s a good one—perennial BZ Awards judge and partner at Marlin & Associates Michael Maxworthy joins us for an assessment of the state of fintech M&A. Maxworthy’s firm has advised a number of fintech deals this year—most recently when digital banking startup Zenmonics accepted a minority investment from Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (NYSE: FIS). **On How Fintech Has Changed From The Start Of His Career:** “In my mind, the fintech space has kinda had its ups and downs over the years, and I can go back all the way to the SIFMA conferences back in the late 90's, when proprietary data analytics and essentially database and content-type companies were all the rage. Well, guess what, they're back. If you can find a very hard-to-find dataset that's incredibly intensive to get a hold of, actually you can command a lotta money when you go out and either raise capital or you know maybe a Thomson Reuters or a Linedata or a SS&C or a Fidessa or somebody is coming to look at acquiring it. The harder it is, the more proprietary it is, the more people think they can get Alpha out of it, the more they're gonna pay for it.” **On What He Looks For In A Deal:** “When you do an M&A deal, and a lot of it just doesn't come down to the financials. A lot of it comes down to the strategic vision of the management teams coming together, the personality of the management teams coming together. The three, four, five-year horizon of where each kind of thinks where the combined business could go, that has a huge factor. “In some of our cases when we do M&A deals, we advise buyer and seller to go out and have dinner, have drinks, without the bankers, without the lawyers involved. Look the guy in the eye, ask him some of the tough questions that you may have thought of during the management presentation and you just didn't get to, or maybe just didn't wanna bring it up in that environment. The bankers and the lawyers, we can sit here and we can financial model all day, and we can legalese as much as we want, but you really just have to have a meeting of the minds of the two businesses, otherwise essentially it's just gonna fail.” **On What Changes We’ll See In The Next 6-12 Months:** “Two things I'm probably going to see over the next six months to maybe a year. One is I think some of the bigger acquisitions are gonna start shedding divisions. So you're going to see a lot of divestitures, or the like, where maybe ICE doesn't need a certain division of IDC and they finally realized over the last couple of years that it's just something that they need to get rid of, and I think that there's a huge amount of dry powder in the private equity sector that are just waiting on the sidelines to dig into stuff like that. And that's my second theme, where a lot of these deals I think are gonna be in the lower end of the middle market, probably deal-flow or transaction size under half a billion, maybe under 750. And I think that there is so many overlooked businesses inside that space that there is a little bit of a feeding frenzy for good companies when they do come to market. So I suspect deal-flow will increase over the next six to nine months.” ------- Links: M&A: www.marlinllc.com/ BZ Pro: https://pro.benzinga.com/ Newsletters: www.benzinga.com/

How Did A Startup Get Kevin Durant and Jay-Z Excited About Life Insurance?  The Benzinga Fintech Focus Podcast will take a brief detour this week into the world of term life insurance.  This week’s episode features an interview with Peter Colis, founder and CEO of Ethos, a startup looking to change the way consumers buy term life insurance policies. Ethos has raised over $40 million in venture capital this year from a combination of veteran Silicon Valley investors and celebrities like NBA champion Kevin Durant and Jay-Z.  Key Quotes: "Almost all insurance agents in America are individually commission based. Meaning, they profit when they sell you a policy, and the larger the policy they sell, the more profit they receive. And this is what we've always found is a bad misalignment center. And so none of our individual agents are commissioned and are compensated in any way to sell a life insurance policy." "As far as these big brand celebrities and influencers who we were able to get to join, I think there was something common in that they all understood the issue we were trying to solve, which is that every year less people in America buy life insurance. Which is a problem because it's intrinsically good. Less and less families are getting coverage. So 20 years ago roughly 77% of families who could afford and should have life insurance had it. Today that's down to 60%." And so when Lingke, my co-founder and current partner, was 20 years old he was sold a permanent life insurance policy by an alumni, this college agent. He aggressively convinced him to purchase a policy that he had no legitimate need for life insurance. Rarely does a 20 year old without a family have a need for life insurance. Especially permanent life insurance. He was in the process of lapsing this policy when we were in business school together. And we did a lot of research and figured out that his predicament was not unique. When you lapse a policy you lose a lot of what you paid into it." Ethos: https://www.getethos.com/ For more information on life insurance click here  (https://www.benzinga.com/money/cheap-life-insurance/) Visit pro.benzinga.com and use code: "FOCUS" to get 25% our fintech product, Benzinga Pro.

**How Do You Build An Investing App That Has More Users Than E*Trade? Ask Acorns** Benzinga is rolling out the Fintech Focus podcast, a series of interviews with leaders in the fintech space. Our fifth episode features Manning Field, Chief Operating Officer of fintech startup Acorns. Acorns is an investing app with a core service that lets users invest small amounts into a portfolio. The app has since expanded to offer retirement saving and a suite of financial education products. **Key quotes:** “What we really do is look after the financial best interests of people who make under 100,000 dollars a year. The core idea that the company was founded upon was the fact that young people weren't saving and investing and didn't also have the confidence to save and invest because they were financially illiterate. What we've tried to do at Acorns, is to give access to that kind of population through technology, through design and through education and get them started, whereas, in the past they wouldn't necessarily start till much later in their life. Then in some cases, when you think about building long term wealth, those ended up being kind of fairly significant mistakes for people when they actually finally figure out they want to start investing. “ “We are a mission-led company, and that mission is really to look after the financial best interest of the up and coming, which is really kind of the handle we use to describe our target customer. And then we believe that it's starting with the empowering step, that first step of micro-investing. For us, this is the rallying cry for all of our teams. It's how we evaluate performance. It's how we recruit. And so, that's what brings everyone together. Often, in companies what brings people together is the stock price or valuation or some of these other things that are a little bit more rational, but don't really speak to mission purpose. And I think at any company, you always want to have a “why” and oftentimes that actually doesn't exist. And so, or you have to fabricate it. And I think the way in which the mission has kind of been embedded into our culture, like, we have a “why” and I think that's the way, that's how we will continue to benefit from that over the long-term because we're not going to veer from it. “ “Though we are a fintech company, we don't really have a strong bias towards fin or tech. We're much more of a brand company that uses fin and tech and so we think that that sets us apart and you'll continue to see us be set apart in that way.”

**A Dive Into The Startup Keeping Financial Advisors Accountable** Benzinga is rolling out the Fintech Focus podcast, a series of interviews with leaders in the fintech space. Our fifth episode features Aaron Klein, founder and CEO of Riskalyze, the startup disrupting the way financial advisors relate to their clients. **Key quotes:** “When my co-founders and I decided to start the company it was around this realization that investing felt very broken for the average individual, that individual investors really struggle to understand how to think about risk, and their financial advisors were frankly equipped with really, really bad tools, and really bad—almost nonexistent—technology to help them figure that out, and to help them understand it and communicate it well with their clients.” “You know, basically the 2 different approaches that financial advisors used is they either used old wives tales. A really popular one was investor agent bonds, right? So, if you're 20 years old you should have 20% in bonds, 80% in equities, and if you're 80 years old you should have 80% in bonds, 20% in equities. And the reality is is that people are individuals and they have different levels of tolerance for risk and you've got to take that into effect and not just stereotype people based on age. And then you're right, they also did it a lot based on feel, and I would put it this way, the industry used a lot of qualitative language, and you still see it out there from advisors who aren't using Riskalyze yet. They'll sit down with a client and they'll say, you know, after talking with them they'll say, ‘Well, you feel like a moderate investor to me.’ And the client sort of nods and says, ‘Okay, yeah. That sounds good. I feel moderate today.’ And they'd say, ‘Great. We're going to put you in the vanguard moderate portfolio.’  Well, we have no idea if the 3 people at this table, the advisor, vanguard, and the client mean the same thing by the word moderate right? So, it's as if you're building a house and instead of using feet and inches your contractor says, ‘Okay, so we're going to do a moderately conservative hallway leading to the moderately aggressive bedroom.’ And something tells me that they're not going to have the right amount of materials there at the job to get the job done. The house is not going to come together.” “You know, we kind of invented this space 7 years ago, and so today, if you look at the advisors who are actually using some kind of risk alignment tool we've got, you know, we've got somewhere around 80% market share. So, we're pretty dominant from that perspective, but when you step back and you look at the fact that only a small percentage of the financial advisors in the United States and in the world are using quantified risk alignment to serve their clients, all of a sudden we've got like 4 or 5% market share. So, we look out there and go, you know, we feel like we're just getting started, just scratching the surface both on the advisors that we can serve and the innovation that we can deliver for them.”

Andrew Jamison is the CEO of Extend, a platform backed by Point72, Plug and Play and American Express that enables business owners to digitally share their credit card with employees without exposing sensitive information. At AMEX, Andrew managed all B2B payments solutions, including virtual card platforms and products, before he left to start Extend, which Point72 Steve Cohen backed. Extend is slated to be the “PayPal of credit cards." **Links:** Andrew: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-jamison/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-jamison/) Extend: [www.paywithextend.com](www.paywithextend.com) Benzinga Fintech Summit: [https://benzingafintechsummit.com/](https://benzingafintechsummit.com/)

Cory is the Chief Market Strategist of Ripple. In his current role, Cory is focused on managing the company’s growth and telling Ripple’s story to regulators, Wall Street and global financial markets. Prior to Ripple, Cory worked as a hedge fund portfolio manager at Kingsford Capital Management and journalist at Bloomberg and CNBC covering high-growth technology companies. Earlier in his career, Cory ushered in many startups, including theStreet.com, the Industry Standard, SLAM and Vibe magazines. **Links:** Cory: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-j-600718/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-j-600718/) Ripple: [https://ripple.com/](https://ripple.com/) Benzinga Fintech Summit: [https://benzingafintechsummit.com/](https://benzingafintechsummit.com/)

Kamran is a Venture Partner at Greycroft, where he has led a number of deals for the firm in the areas of mobile platforms, payments & commerce, and financial technology. At Greycroft, Kamran has led the fund’s core investments in Azimo, Boxed Wholesale, Fortumo, and Recurly, and driven the firm’s seed investments in Bread (fka Lon), Highlight, Cord, and Dasher. He also led Greycroft’s prior investment in Venmo (acquired by Braintree), Braintree (acquired by PayPal), and BalconyTV (acquired by Orchard). **Links:** Kamran: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamranansari1/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamranansari1/) Greycroft: [https://www.greycroft.com/](https://www.greycroft.com/) Benzinga Fintech Summit: [https://benzingafintechsummit.com/](https://benzingafintechsummit.com/)