Fintech

Canadian Lenders Summit Recap

November 23, 2019

The Canadian Lenders Association’s largest annual event brought together hundreds of executives from the fintech and lending industries. It was hosted at MaRS, a dedicated launchpad for startups in Downtown Toronto that occupies more than 1.5 million square feet and is home to more than 120 tenants, many of which are global tech companies.

After OnDeck Canada CEO Neil Wechsler was introduced as the new chairman of the association, the day kicked off with a presentation by Craig Alexander, the Chief Economist of Deloitte Canada. Alexander explained that after some major warning signs sounded off late last year and early this year, Canadian growth and positive economic indicators have returned. He opined that politics in Canada and the United States will play a strong role in the economic outcomes of both countries going forward.

Panels on a variety of topics dominated the rest of the day with an interlude keynote from author Alex Tapscott who spoke about the financial services revolution.

The sessions concluded with an award ceremony focused around the Top 25 Company Leaders in Lending and the Top 25 Executive Leaders in Lending. The Canadian Lenders Association will make videos of the sessions available online. deBanked was in attendance.

Google to Begin Offering Checking Accounts in 2020

November 16, 2019

Article by: Brendan Garrett

This week Google announced that it plans to offer checking accounts to customers in 2020. The news comes after the release of the Apple Card, Apple and Goldman Sach’s controversial joint project, in August; this week’s release of Facebook Pay; and the mass exodus by payments companies from Facebook’s Libra Association last month.

Titled as Google’s ‘Cache’ project, the accounts will be the result of a partnership between the tech giant and a selection of banks and credit unions. Thus far, Citigroup and a credit union based in Stanford University have been confirmed as partners, with more to be announced. Speaking on the venture, Citigroup spokesperson Liz Fogarty said the “agreement has the potential to expand the reach and breadth of our customer base.” Whereas Joan Opp, President and CEO of Stanford Federal Credit Union, remarked that the deal would be “critical to remaining relevant and meeting customer expectations.”

As of yet, not much is known beyond these partners and that the checking accounts will be in some way “smart” according to Google spokesperson Craig Ewer. Whether or not there will be fees attached to the accounts, or who will be the target audience remain unsure. The latter especially given Google Pay’s poor take up in America.

As well as all this, it is equally unclear what exactly Google will be bringing to banking that is new. In his statement, Ewer said that “we’re exploring how we can partner with banks and credit unions in the US to offer smart checking accounts through Google Pay, helping their customers benefit from useful insights and budgeting tools while keeping their money in an FDIC or NCUA-insured accounts.” Such “insights” and “tools” are yet to be expanded upon and may give cause to alarm, as the company has recently come under fire for its questionable use of data after it was revealed that Google has secretly gathered the personal medical data of 50 million Americans from healthcare providers; and has recently been accused of using both human contractors and algorithms to tweak search engine results, potentially exhibiting favoritism as well as a willingness to change results related to at least one major advertiser.

When asked by CNBC about Google’s plans to enter finance, Senator Mark Warner (D) was apprehensive, remarking that “large platform companies have not had a very good record of protecting the data or being transparent with consumers.” Warner, who was a tech entrepreneur before entering politics, believes more regulation should be in place as the number of tech companies looking to enter finances continues to increase, saying, “once they get in, the ability to extract them out is going to be virtually impossible.”

Such comments come in the wake of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg’s testimony to Congress last month, in which he told the representatives: “I view the financial infrastructure in the United States as outdated.” Just how outdated Zuckerburg and his contemporaries believe it to be will become clearer as more of these Big Tech-Wall Street hybrids are released.

Apple Card Under Investigation by State Financial Regulator

November 14, 2019

Article by: Brendan Garrett

Apple and Goldman Sachs came under fire this week after numerous users of the Apple Card, a joint venture by the two companies, took to social media claiming that the algorithm used to determine credit limits discriminated against women.

It began when Danish tech entrepreneur and racecar driver David Heinemeier Hansson wrote up an expletive-laden teardown of the card and the companies behind it after he discovered that he had access to twenty times more credit than his wife, despite the couple having filed joint tax returns. Following the twitter thread’s viral surge, other men came forward with similar stories, some noting that their wives had better credit scores than themselves.

Upon dealing with Apple’s customer service, who gave Hansson’s wife a “VIP bump” to her credit limit, raising it to match her husband’s, the entrepreneur lamented the giant’s response to his questions about the decision-making process behind Apple Card.

“Apple has handed the customer experience and their reputation as an inclusive organization over to a biased, sexist algorithm it does not understand, cannot reason with, and is unable to control,” Hansson wrote after being told by two Apple representatives that they were unable to explain the reasoning behind the inequity other than say that “it was just the algorithm.” Hansson went on later to criticize the implementations of algorithms that incorporate “biased historical training data, faulty but uncorrectable inputs, programming errors, or malicious intent” as a whole, pointing to Amazon’s recent use of an algorithmic hiring tool that taught itself to favor men.

And in a surprise twist, Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak weighed in, saying, “The same thing happened to us. I got 10x the credit limit. We have no separate bank or credit card accounts or any separate assets. Hard to get to a human for a correction though. It’s big tech in 2019.”

Over the weekend word came from the New York Department of Financial Services that it would be investigating the practices behind the Apple Card to determine whether or not such an algorithm discriminates on the basis of sex, which is prohibited by state law in New York. This is the second such investigation recently, with the NYDFS announcing last week an investigation into the healthcare company UnitedHealth Group and its use of an algorithm that allegedly led to white patients receiving better care than black patients.

“Financial service companies are responsible for ensuring the algorithms they use do not even unintentionally discriminate against protected groups,” wrote NYDFS Superintendent Linda Lacewell in a blog post that explained the decision to investigate and called for those who believed they were affected unfairly by Apple Card to reach out. “[T]his is not just about looking into one algorithm – DFS wants to work with the tech community to make sure consumers nationwide can have confidence that the algorithms that increasingly impact their ability to access financial services do not discriminate and instead treat all individuals equally and fairly no matter their sex, color of skin, or sexual orientation.”

In their response, the Goldman Sachs Bank Support twitter account posted a note listing various factors that come into consideration when determining a person’s credit limit, asserting that they “have not and will not make decisions based on factors like gender.”

And it would appear that this is correct, at least in the literal sense, as the application process for the Apple Card does not include any questions relating to gender.

Bruce Updin of Zest AI, a company that provides machine learning software for underwriters, said of the controversy that “there’s bias in all lending models, even human lenders … race, gender, and age are built into the system. It can show up just due to the nature of the credit scoring system as FICO scores at the end of the scale can correlate to race.”

Explaining that there are connections between identity and information many humans might never perceive without machine-learning algorithms, like Nevada license plates being an indicator of the likelihood of someone’s race, Updin asserts that such links need to be weighed, balanced, and supervised by those in the banks. For Updin, transparency and explainability are the real problems here rather than the algorithms themselves.

Software exists that can pinpoint which variables are producing results that, for example, skew to prefer women over men, and can remove such factors and run the tests again, probing for differences. The trouble arises when banks find themselves unable to communicate such details for whatever reason, be it an inherent misunderstanding of their own programs or an unwillingness to explain why some of their models prefer certain groups over others.

It’s really a case of “giving up a little bit of accuracy for a lot of fairness” when choosing to remove variables that are proxies for gender, race, age, or a variety of other identifying features, according to Updin. “It’s just a lot of math, it’s not magic. The more you automate the tools, the easier it is.

“I’m convinced in 5-10 years every bank will be using machine-learning for underwriting … we don’t need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.”

2019 Top 25 Executive Leaders in Lending – Canadian Lenders Association – Presented By BMO

November 11, 2019

Article by: deBanked Staff

The Canadian Lenders Assocation (CLA) received 124 nominations for these awards from leaders in lending across the country. The CLA’s goal is to support access to credit in the Canadian marketplace and champion the companies and entrepreneurs who are leading innovations in this industry.

The Top 25 ﬁnalists in this report represent various innovations in the borrower’s journey from innovations in artiﬁcial intelligence powered credit modelling to breakthroughs in consumer identity management using blockchain technologies. These ﬁnalists also represent solutions for a wide spectrum of borrower maturity and needs, ranging from consumer credit rebuilding all the way to senior debt placements for global technology ventures.

See The Leading Companies Report Here

See The Leading Executives Report Here

	Mark Cashin CEO of myBrokerBee \| Ontario After a career in commercial ﬁnance and being CEO of Transpor, Mark Co-founded myBrokerBee a mortgage broker platform that provides transparency to private lenders and their clients.
	Avinash Chidambaram CEO of Ario Platform \| Ontario Through his experience as Product lead at Interac and Blackberry, Avinash has helped bring together an accomplished and talented group of experts in Data Science, Machine Learning, Security, Software Development to successfully develop this banking services software platform Ario.
	Evan Chrapko CEO of Trust Science \| Alberta Evan is the founder and CEO of Trust Science, a leader in organizing alternative credit data. As a saas founder and CEO, Evan has done over 500mm in startup exits.
	Kevin Clark President of Lendified \| Ontario Kevin is a recognized leader in the ﬁnancial services industry with over 30 years of experience. Kevin has helped create the voice of Canada’s SME lending ecosystem through his leadership of Lendiﬁed and the CLA.
	Jerome Dwight VP of Cox Automotive \| Ontario Jerome established Nextgear Capital in Canada to become the largest specialty ﬁnance company in the automotive sector. Jerome is a Globe & Mail 40 under 40 winner and previously lead RBC’s international wealth management, private banking and asset servicing business.
	Saul Fine CEO of Innovative Assessmer \| Israel Saul is a licensed organizational psychologist and psychometrician, and a former lecturer in psychology at the University of Haifa. Saul is a global leader in the use of psychometric data for credit scoring and ﬁnancial inclusion.
	David Gens CEO of Merchant Growth \| BC David is the Founder and CEO of Merchant Growth, which grew from its humble beginnings in his apartment to ofﬁces in both Toronto and Vancouver. David now leads one of Canada’s largest online small business ﬁnance companies.
	Bryan Jaskolka COO of CMI \| Ontario Nominated for the 2018 Mortgage Broker of the Year, Bryan Jaskolka is an expert in Canadian mortgage ﬁnancing with a particular focus on the alternative lending space and mortgage investing.
	Peter Kalen CEO of Flexiti \| Ontario Peter is a leader in Canada’s retail ﬁnancing market. Before founding Flexiti, Peter was in senior leadership positions at Citi, PC Financial, and Sears Canada. Flexiti was recently named #7 on the Deloitte Fast50.
	Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf CEO of Flinks \| Quebec Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf is the co-founder and CEO of Flinks. Under his leadership, Flinks has become a Canadian leader in banking data enablement.
	Derek Manuge CEO of Corl \| Ontario Derek, also known as the “the quant from Canada” is the founder of the data-driven venture ﬁrm, Corl. Corl is one of Canada’s leaders in the use revenue-share ﬁnancing models.
	Keren Moynihan CEO of Boss Insights \| Ontario Keren Moynihan is co-founder and CEO of Boss Insights, a company that uses big data and AI to accelerate lending from months to minutes. With a Joint JD/MBA, Keren has a diverse background as a commercial banker, wealth manager and former founder of an impact startup.
	Jason Mullins CEO of Goeasy \| Ontario Jason is President and CEO of goeasy, a publicly listed consumer lender. Jason has lead the company to become one of the largest and most innovative lenders in the country.
	Paul Pitcher CEO of SharpShooter Funding \| Ontario After founding First Down Funding, an alternative lending ﬁrm for SMEs in Baltimore, Paul expanded his business to Canada through the subsidiary Sharpshooter Funding.
	Brendan Playford & Cate Rung Co-Founders of Pngme \| USA Cate, ex-Uber and Brendan, a blockchain and agro-ﬁnance entrepreneur are the co-founders of Pngme, an alternative lending platform for ﬁnancial institutions in emerging markets who serve Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises.
	Wayne Pommen CEO of Paybright \| Ontario Wayne is the President and CEO of PayBright. Wayne is also a director of IOU Financial Inc and of HBC. Previously, Wayne was a Principal at TorQuest Partners, one of Canada’s leading private equity ﬁrms, and a management consultant with Bain & Company in the UK, the US, and Canada.
	Adam Reeds CEO of Ledn \| Ontario Adam is a pioneer and thought leader in the digital asset backed lending space. Ledn is focused on building innovative ﬁnancial products in the emerging digital asset space, with a focused mission to help people save more in bitcoin.
	Adam Rice CEO of LoanConnect \| Ontario Adam has played a pivotal role in building one of the largest online markets in Canada for unsecured loans.
	Mark Ruddock CEO of BFS Capital \| Ontario Mark is an experienced international CEO with two successful exits and over 20 years of experience at the helm of VC backed technology and ﬁntech startups. In 2019 Mark announced BFS Capital’s expansion to Canada with a new 50 engineer data science hub in the heart of Toronto.
	Vlad Sherbatov President of Smarter Loans \| Ontario Vlad Co-founded Smarter Loans in 2016 with the goal of helping Canadians make smarter ﬁnancial decisions. Since then, Vlad has grown the platform into one of the go-to resources for Canadian borrowers.
	Steven Uster CEO of FundThrough \| Ontario Steven is the Co-Founder & CEO of FundThrough, an invoice funding service that helps business owners eliminate “the wait” associated with payment terms by giving them the power and ﬂexibility to get their invoices paid when they want, with one click, and in as little as 24 hours.
	Dmitry Voronenko CEO of Turnkey Lender\| Singapore Dmitry, CEO and Co-founder of TurnKey Lender, holds a PhD in Artiﬁcial Intelligence. Dmitry was recently named SFA’s Fintech Leader of the year.
	Neil Wechsler CEO of Ondeck Canada \| Quebec Neil brieﬂy practiced law before becoming President and CEO of Optimal Group Inc. where he grew the company from a start-up to a leading NASDAQ-listed self-checkout and payments company. Neil later co-founded Evolocity, which in 2019 became OnDeck Canada.
	Michael Wendland CEO of Refresh \| BC Michael has led Refresh Financial’s rapid growth since its founding in 2013, including a recent ranking of number 40 on Deloitte’s Fast 500.

Canadian Lender’s Association Awards Leading Executives and Companies

November 11, 2019

Article by: Brendan Garrett

Today the CLA announced the winners for its 2019 Leaders in Lending Awards. Highlighting the efforts of exceptional players within the fintech and alternative finance fields, the awards seek to “celebrate the industry and celebrate all the cool fintech things happening in Canada,” according to the CLA’s Strategic Partnerships Director Tal Schwartz.

Now in its second year, the Leaders in Lending Awards are split into two categories, with one focusing on the efforts of companies in the industry and the other on individual executives. 2019 will be the first year that the latter of these categories is incorporated. The awards will be imparted to their new owners at the Canadian Lenders Summit later this month, where a special prize will also be given to one winner from each category.

Among the winners in the first category are Borrowell, IOU Financial, and Michele Romanow’s Clearbanc. While making an appearance in the second category are David Gens of Merchant Growth, Paul Pitcher from SharpShooter Funding, Smarter Loans’ Vlad Sherbatov, and Kevin Clark from Lendified.

The criteria for the awards were based upon three tenets, these being a commitment to the “use of advanced fintech solutions” to solve challenges in the lending process, the “implementation of new or innovating lending strategies or business models,” and evidence of successful outcomes following the implementation of new fintech or a new business model.

When asked about possible expansions to the awards in the future, Schwartz was receptive to the idea of covering more ground with the prizes, saying “I definitely think we’ll expand the categories.” Mentioning that there’s a host of niches that are worth highlighting, such as blockchain, psychographic credit scoring, and credit rebuilding, which deserve their day in the sun.

“We have a mandate as a trade group to celebrate the industry,” emphasized Schwartz. And that celebration will be taking place on November 20th at the Canadian Lenders Summit in Toronto.

See The Leading Companies Report Here

See The Leading Executives Report Here

2019 Top 25 Company Leaders in Lending – Canadian Lenders Association – Presented By BMO

November 11, 2019

Article by: deBanked Staff

See The Leading Companies Report Here

See The Leading Executives Report Here

	BDC The 75 year old ﬁrm is the only Canadian bank devoted exclusively to supporting entrepreneurs.
	Borrowell Borrowell helps Canadians make great decisions about credit. They were the ﬁrst company in Canada to offer credit scores for free, without applying for credit, and currently has over 800,000 users. Eva Wong and Andrew Graham were the joint recipients our the CLA’s awards in 2018.
	Clearbanc Clearbanc offers a new approach to capital access for entrepreneurs that uses AI to determine funding terms with a focus on unit economics and repayment through revenue share as a way to get founders access to the capital they need to fuel their growth.
	CreditSnap CreditSnap is a best in class pre-qualiﬁcation and cross selling engine to deliver highly relevant pre-qualiﬁed loan offers to CreditSnap banks and CUs.
	Dealnet Capital Dealnet Capital services the home and retail sectors providing end-to-end ﬁnancing plus innovative technology and communication solutions.
	Espresso Capital Since 2009, Espresso Capital has provided over 230 early and growth stage technology companies with founder friendly capital. Espresso offers lines of credit and term loans to enable entrepreneurs to grow their businesses without dilution, board seats, or personal guarantees.
	Financeit Financeit is a market leading point-of-sale consumer ﬁnancing provider, servicing the home improvement, vehicle and retail industries.
	First West Capital First West Capital is a leader in Canadian mid-market business funding. First West Capital helps ventures acquire and transition through innovative junior capital ﬁnancing.
	Home Trust Home Trust Company is one of Canada’s leading trust companies. Home Trust offers Canadians a wide range of ﬁnancial product and service alternatives, including mortgages, Visa cards, deposits and retail credit services.
	Inverite Inverite is the ﬁrst Canadian designed, developed and focused real-time bank veriﬁcation service. With coverage for over 240 Canadian FIs.
	IOU Financial Based in Montreal, IOU Financial provides small businesses throughout the U.S. and Canada access to the capital they need to seize growth opportunities quickly.
	Lending Loop Lending Loop is Canada’s ﬁrst and only regulated peer-to-peer lending marketplace focused on small business.
	Magical Credit Magical Credit has been helping Canadians consumers get approved for quick and simple short term personal loans since 2014. They offer personal loans up to $10,000 regardless of the borrowers past ﬁnancial issues or credit.
	Manzil Manzil is the market leader in the manufacturing and distribution of Islamic Financial products for Canadians who wish to balance material pursuits with their spiritual obligations.
	Marble Financial Marble Financial uses smart technology and socially responsible lending practices to help Canadians rebuild credit once their past debt has been settled by a consumer proposal.
	Owl owl.co is a customer insight engine that helps ﬁnancial institutions make better decisions. By connecting to tens of thousands of trusted data sources, Owl is able to instantly aggregate and synthesize millions of data points to learn more about customers and entities.
	Paays Paays is a Canadian eCommerce ﬁnancing solution for a new generation of digital consumers seeking “point of inspiration” ﬁnancing.
	PayPal Canada PayPal Canada recently announced a new SMB loan offering in Canada – a quick application process that can approve an applicant in minutes and transfer funds in one to two business days.
	Progressa Named by CB Insights to the 2018 Fintech 250, a list of the world’s top ﬁntech startups, Progressa is Canada’s fastest growing ﬁnancial technology lender focused on changing the way pay cheque to pay cheque Canadians access and build credit.
	Shopify Capital In its effort to become a one-stop e-commerce shop, Shopify Capital allows Shopify business owners to secure funding through revenue sharing on daily sales.
	Silicon Valley Bank For more than 35 years, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has helped innovative companies and their investors move bold ideas forward, fast. SVB provides a full range of ﬁnancial services and expertise to companies of all sizes in innovation centers around the world.
	Spring Financial Spring Financial is a subsidiary of Canada Drives, one of the leading brands for auto ﬁnancing in Canada. Spring provides accessible solutions for Canadians to establish a positive payment history.
	Thinking Capital Thinking Capital is a leader in the Canadian Online Lending space, leveraging technology to be at the forefront of the FinTech industry. Since 2006, they have helped more than 14,000 small-to-medium sized Canadian businesses reach their full potential
	Uplift Uplift’s mission is to make travel more accessible, affordable and rewarding by enabling travel providers such as JetBlue, American Airlines, and United to offer ﬂexible payments to their customers.
	Venbridge Venbridge is a leading Canadian venture debt ﬁrm. Venbridge provides SR&ED, grant and digital media ﬁnancing and consulting.

Presented By:

Lendio Says There’s Been a Strong Uptake Of Sunrise

November 6, 2019

Article by: Brendan Garrett

Last week Lendio announced that its bookkeeping and invoicing service, Sunrise, had partnered with WePay, an integrated payments business of JPMorgan Chase, to form the freemium product Sunrise Pay.

Stemming from an acquisition in Q1 of this year, Sunrise, formerly Billy, was picked up by Lendio after the company realized many of its customers who were small business owners were struggling to manage their accounts and invoices.

As such, Lendio CEO Brock Blake claims that there’s been a strong uptake of Sunrise amongst their clients. “They love that it goes out and pulls your bank data every day. That you can sync your credit card to it. That it is a double-entry accounting system. And that it does all your invoicing, your profit and loss, and balance sheet.”

The service is free to Lendio customers, with tiered versions that offer human bookkeepers being available to those willing to pay. Sans such add-ons however, the base product will allow small business owners to collect payments faster through WePay’s streamlining of the payments process.

“Simplifying the invoicing and payments processes for small business owners means they have more time to spend growing their operations,” said WePay VP of Marketing Jennifer Lewis. “WePay’s partnership with Lendio will help small businesses across the country to grow, create jobs, and increase their economic impact.”

Lenders, Leaders, and Las Vegas: Money20/20 Review

November 3, 2019

Article by: Brendan Garrett

Two things arrived in Las Vegas last month: the first being an unusual dip in local weather, with temperatures dropping to the low forties at times and woolen hats making an appearance; the second being Money20/20.

Now in its seventh year, the conference runs smoothly to the point of being habitual, a trait several attendees mentioned to me when asked how they felt about the 2019 edition.

Running from Sunday the 27^thto Wednesday the 30^th, each day offered a different focus. The first of these being alternative finance, blockchains, and cryptos. Here, leaders from LendingClub, Kabbage, and OnDeck, among others, took to the stages to discuss issues ranging from strategies in the face of a recession to AI in lending. Running throughout were conversations about where cannabis banking regulation was headed and what can be done to prepare. Of note was Jontae James of NatureTrak, who spoke from the Leadership Lodge Stage, pitching his company as a solution to compliance issues facing lenders who want to work with cannabis companies.

The following days contained a mix of subjects, with Monday featuring many events relating to payments and entrepreneurship; Tuesday being the day for cybersecurity, regulation, and banking; and Wednesday closing the show with various talks on emerging technologies. Among the highlights of these were a talk from David Marcus of Calibra on the currency’s efforts to alter the financial landscape, a discussion on growth in emerging markets from Ant Financial’s Douglas Feagin, and words from BlueVine’s Eyal Lifshitz on the needs of small businesses.

Outside of the stages where these were held was the main expo hall. Dotted with booths and stands, the narrow pathways that were carved out by these were lined with a mix of businesses.

In overwhelming numbers though were companies offering identity verification services. A growing industry in today’s increasingly online world, their presence dominated the hall, with it being hard to turn around without being offered a pamphlet on the importance of knowing who your customers are and how much it will cost to confirm their existence and authenticity.

And while walking through the hall and stopping at stalls to talk offered pleasant and informative conversation, there was an underlying tenseness to some of the chatting. Perhaps it was the unrelenting air conditioning that caused this? Or the endless stream of coffee available had rattled some nerve endings? Or maybe it was the frequency with which an oncoming recession was referenced in the titles of talks?

Who knows, what is likely though is that if it is the last of these possibilities, in the case of a “looming crisis,” as one event labelled it, what was talked about in Vegas may not stay in Vegas.

	Mark Cashin CEO of myBrokerBee \| Ontario After a career in commercial ﬁnance and being CEO of Transpor, Mark Co-founded myBrokerBee a mortgage broker platform that provides transparency to private lenders and their clients.
	Avinash Chidambaram CEO of Ario Platform \| Ontario Through his experience as Product lead at Interac and Blackberry, Avinash has helped bring together an accomplished and talented group of experts in Data Science, Machine Learning, Security, Software Development to successfully develop this banking services software platform Ario.
	Evan Chrapko CEO of Trust Science \| Alberta Evan is the founder and CEO of Trust Science, a leader in organizing alternative credit data. As a saas founder and CEO, Evan has done over 500mm in startup exits.
	Kevin Clark President of Lendified \| Ontario Kevin is a recognized leader in the ﬁnancial services industry with over 30 years of experience. Kevin has helped create the voice of Canada’s SME lending ecosystem through his leadership of Lendiﬁed and the CLA.
	Jerome Dwight VP of Cox Automotive \| Ontario Jerome established Nextgear Capital in Canada to become the largest specialty ﬁnance company in the automotive sector. Jerome is a Globe & Mail 40 under 40 winner and previously lead RBC’s international wealth management, private banking and asset servicing business.
	Saul Fine CEO of Innovative Assessmer \| Israel Saul is a licensed organizational psychologist and psychometrician, and a former lecturer in psychology at the University of Haifa. Saul is a global leader in the use of psychometric data for credit scoring and ﬁnancial inclusion.
	David Gens CEO of Merchant Growth \| BC David is the Founder and CEO of Merchant Growth, which grew from its humble beginnings in his apartment to ofﬁces in both Toronto and Vancouver. David now leads one of Canada’s largest online small business ﬁnance companies.
	Bryan Jaskolka COO of CMI \| Ontario Nominated for the 2018 Mortgage Broker of the Year, Bryan Jaskolka is an expert in Canadian mortgage ﬁnancing with a particular focus on the alternative lending space and mortgage investing.
	Peter Kalen CEO of Flexiti \| Ontario Peter is a leader in Canada’s retail ﬁnancing market. Before founding Flexiti, Peter was in senior leadership positions at Citi, PC Financial, and Sears Canada. Flexiti was recently named #7 on the Deloitte Fast50.
	Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf CEO of Flinks \| Quebec Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf is the co-founder and CEO of Flinks. Under his leadership, Flinks has become a Canadian leader in banking data enablement.
	Derek Manuge CEO of Corl \| Ontario Derek, also known as the “the quant from Canada” is the founder of the data-driven venture ﬁrm, Corl. Corl is one of Canada’s leaders in the use revenue-share ﬁnancing models.
	Keren Moynihan CEO of Boss Insights \| Ontario Keren Moynihan is co-founder and CEO of Boss Insights, a company that uses big data and AI to accelerate lending from months to minutes. With a Joint JD/MBA, Keren has a diverse background as a commercial banker, wealth manager and former founder of an impact startup.
	Jason Mullins CEO of Goeasy \| Ontario Jason is President and CEO of goeasy, a publicly listed consumer lender. Jason has lead the company to become one of the largest and most innovative lenders in the country.
	Paul Pitcher CEO of SharpShooter Funding \| Ontario After founding First Down Funding, an alternative lending ﬁrm for SMEs in Baltimore, Paul expanded his business to Canada through the subsidiary Sharpshooter Funding.
	Brendan Playford & Cate Rung Co-Founders of Pngme \| USA Cate, ex-Uber and Brendan, a blockchain and agro-ﬁnance entrepreneur are the co-founders of Pngme, an alternative lending platform for ﬁnancial institutions in emerging markets who serve Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises.
	Wayne Pommen CEO of Paybright \| Ontario Wayne is the President and CEO of PayBright. Wayne is also a director of IOU Financial Inc and of HBC. Previously, Wayne was a Principal at TorQuest Partners, one of Canada’s leading private equity ﬁrms, and a management consultant with Bain & Company in the UK, the US, and Canada.
	Adam Reeds CEO of Ledn \| Ontario Adam is a pioneer and thought leader in the digital asset backed lending space. Ledn is focused on building innovative ﬁnancial products in the emerging digital asset space, with a focused mission to help people save more in bitcoin.
	Adam Rice CEO of LoanConnect \| Ontario Adam has played a pivotal role in building one of the largest online markets in Canada for unsecured loans.
	Mark Ruddock CEO of BFS Capital \| Ontario Mark is an experienced international CEO with two successful exits and over 20 years of experience at the helm of VC backed technology and ﬁntech startups. In 2019 Mark announced BFS Capital’s expansion to Canada with a new 50 engineer data science hub in the heart of Toronto.
	Vlad Sherbatov President of Smarter Loans \| Ontario Vlad Co-founded Smarter Loans in 2016 with the goal of helping Canadians make smarter ﬁnancial decisions. Since then, Vlad has grown the platform into one of the go-to resources for Canadian borrowers.
	Steven Uster CEO of FundThrough \| Ontario Steven is the Co-Founder & CEO of FundThrough, an invoice funding service that helps business owners eliminate “the wait” associated with payment terms by giving them the power and ﬂexibility to get their invoices paid when they want, with one click, and in as little as 24 hours.
	Dmitry Voronenko CEO of Turnkey Lender\| Singapore Dmitry, CEO and Co-founder of TurnKey Lender, holds a PhD in Artiﬁcial Intelligence. Dmitry was recently named SFA’s Fintech Leader of the year.
	Neil Wechsler CEO of Ondeck Canada \| Quebec Neil brieﬂy practiced law before becoming President and CEO of Optimal Group Inc. where he grew the company from a start-up to a leading NASDAQ-listed self-checkout and payments company. Neil later co-founded Evolocity, which in 2019 became OnDeck Canada.
	Michael Wendland CEO of Refresh \| BC Michael has led Refresh Financial’s rapid growth since its founding in 2013, including a recent ranking of number 40 on Deloitte’s Fast 500.