Wealthica Archives - Financial Data and Technology Association (FDATA)

In 2015, Martin Leclair and Simon Boulet launched Montreal-based Wealthica to “challenge the status quo of financial institutions and portfolio advisers.” The company continues that mission today by helping tens of thousands of investors see all their investments on a single dashboard.

How does it work?
Wealthica automatically imports a user’s data from more than 100 Canadian investing platforms using secure application programming interfaces, or APIs. Wealthica syncs portfolio information daily, after markets close. After only five years in business, the company is tracking about $5 billion in assets.

For families, Wealthica offers a tool where groups of individuals can work together to expand their wealth and track financial goals. The family dashboard and report card can be used to help assess the impact a certain event will have on a family’s investments, for example.

To protect consumers, Wealthica offers two factor authentication as well as email notification when logging in from a new location. The company also encrypts all financial information, and Sitelock, a global leader in website security, verifies Wealthica site security every day to protect users from spam, viruses, and scams.

The remarkable thing?
Wealthica’s basic platform is free to consumers (it also is ad-free) no matter how many accounts a user tracks. That makes the platform ideal for investors who are just starting to build their wealth, or who are unfamiliar with the market.

Unfortunately, as CEO Boulet explained in this 2017 interview, “Most of the financial institutions in Canada are closed and don’t offer a simple way to share your financial data with third party applications without sharing your credentials. For most of the institutions we have to ask the user for their credentials and retrieve their data through web scraping.”

A formal Open Finance system in Canada would make it easier for investors to connect and aggregate the data from all their investing accounts into Wealthica’s dashboard and give more control to the investor over their own financial data.

FDATA North America Welcomes Five New Members

Contact: Kerrie Rushton, (202) 365-6338, [email protected]

July 9, Washington, DC – The Financial Data and Technology Association (FDATA) of North America today announced it added five new members in June, bringing the association’s total membership to 22.

“The remarkable growth over the last month indicates support for Open Banking in the United States, Canada and Mexico is expanding rapidly,” said FDATA North America Executive Director Steve Boms. “Financial technology firms are eager to engage in Ottawa, Washington, D.C. and Mexico City in an effort to create a modern and safe system that puts consumers in charge of their data, and their financial lives. As Open Banking increasingly becomes a global phenomenon, we hope FDATA’s growing presence will spur policymakers in North America to act with the same haste.”

The following organizations joined FDATA North America in the last month:

Axcess. Based in Ontario and Victoria, Australia, Axcess provides solutions in the product management area, including loans and investments, to financial institutions.
Mogo. Serving more than 800,000 consumers throughout Canada, Mogo leverages technology and design to help users manage their finances and improve their financial health.
The ID Co. Based in Edinburgh, Scotland with operations in Canada, The ID Co. works with banks, lenders, innovators and nonprofits to help businesses use their financial data to expand.
TransUnion. With operations throughout North America, TransUnion uses credit data to provides the tools and insight that consumers need to make informed financial decisions.
Wealthica. Based in Montreal, Wealthica works with more than 60 Canadian financial institutions to give consumers an unbiased view of their investments.

“In the United Kingdom, nearly 10,000 consumers a day are signing up to access the Open Banking network,” said FDATA Global Chair Gavin Littlejohn. “Our member companies were an important part of the movement that is giving consumers more control over their financial data in Europe. To ensure their constituents have the same opportunities, North American policymakers must move quickly but deliberately. Axcess, Mogo, The ID Co., TransUnion and Wealthica, along with FDATA North America’s other member companies, provide some of the most innovative products on the market today. We look forward to a landscape where more consumers and businesses can capitalize on these tools.”

Existing FDATA North America members include: Cardlytics, Envestnet Yodlee, Flinks, Intuit, Kabbage, Lendified, Moven, Morningstsar, MX, Onist, Questrade, Quicken Loans, Petal and Plaid, among others.

FDATA North America recently published white papers for Canadian and U.S. policymakers that outline the benefits of Open Banking and provide policy and oversight recommendations for lawmakers and regulators. “Opportunities in Open Banking” for the United States is here. The Canadian paper is here.

ABOUT FDATA NORTH AMERICA
FDATA was heavily involved in the UK Open Banking Working Group in 2015. In 2016, the working group’s output was published by Her Majesty’s Treasury as the Open Banking Standard. FDATA North America was founded in early 2018. Its members collectively provide tens of millions of consumers in Canada, the United States and Mexico with aggregation-based tools to better manage their finances.