Expanding access to credit and access to incomes, with Adam Rice

This is not investment advice, but I’m going to put it out there: Adam Rice is one of the most exciting entrepreneurs I’ve spoken to on this show, with AssetDirect a bold embodiment of his ambitions - providing access to credit to underserved populations in Canada and now around the world. That alone is great, I love an ‘access to credit’ story on this show, but there is another layer to it, by turning existing pillars of their communities into his sales network, Adam is also creating new income streams for corner store owners, rickshaw drivers, and other micro-entrepreneurs.

And he is poised to build “the largest network of financial sales agents the world has ever seen”.

Join us in this episode to get as excited as I am.

To learn more about AssetDirect head on over to https://www.assetdirect.io/ (or to learn more about CreditLinks specifically, https://www.creditlinks.in/

While their crowdfunding campaign is at https://www.frontfundr.com/assetdirect

You can learn more about myself, Brendan le Grange, on my LinkedIn page (feel free to connect), while you can find my action-adventure novels on Amazon, some versions even for free.

If you have any feedback, questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page on this site.

Regards,

Brendan

The full written transcript, with timestamps, is below:

Adam Rice 0:00

I'm the crazy guy who travels around the world, I hop on a aircraft, I fly out to India, and, you know, you're talking about a country where 90% of the population is under banked. And as we took a look at our business in Canada, what we really enjoyed about it was a lot of these new credit, people were coming through us, establishing credit. So that was our business here, but obviously with a much smaller group of people - in India, it's the vast majority.

And so we sought to service these people in corner stores in their local communities. I mean, we like the corner store model, so essentially what we're doing is, we're empowering hundreds of thousands of corner stores to display a QR code. And they now tell their customers that they sell financial products through CreditLinks. And then we set you up with a network of alternative lenders that are based in India. But yeah, you know, the idea is that this store owner can now build a book of business through us - anything we sell that individual, any financial product we sell, we revenue-share with the store.

Brendan Le Grange 1:01

I've now worked in retail lending for a little over 20 years, and that can shape the way you think. So I'm sure that if you listen back to previous episodes of this show, you'll find me at times equating access to credit with access to finance. But that's not really where that conversation should end.

Sure, sometimes a little bit of credit is all that somebody needs to get onto - and then move up - the income ladder. But sometimes it isn't.

Sometimes people could really do with a little income generator of their own. And that's what's so excites me about Adam Rice's latest venture: Asset Direct - with the Credit Links product - is creating the world's first truly global network of financial sales agents, all already embedded in their communities as corner store owners, rickshaw drivers... there's hundreds of thousands of these global partners that can drive traffic to 1,000s of financial institutions across the world, all the while building income streams for micro-entrepreneurs.

Welcome to How to Lend Money to Strangers with Brendan le Grange.

And hey, I'm going to put this right up front for a change. In this episode, Adam and I talk a little bit about Hong Kong, and how much we both enjoyed living in its surprisingly green surrounds - if that sounds interesting to you, you're in luck, sort of... my second book was set in the hills about Lantau Island and I currently have too many copies cluttering up the bookshelves in my new office. So if you don't mind sharing your address with me, drop an email to brendan@howtolendmoneytostrangers.show and I'll send you a copy.

Great, well, Adam, thank you so much for joining me on the show. Before we even talk about Asset Direct and the work that you've been doing. It's a really interesting route that you've taken to where you are today - so would you mind just talking a little bit about what you've done in the past, and maybe how those experiences have shaped the entrepreneur that you became later?

Adam Rice 3:16

Yeah, thanks for having me, it's great to be here. Yeah, it's been quite a journey. You know, when I was young, we used to travel quite a bit, to a number of different countries. I spent some time in India, spent some time in other areas in the developing world. And I got a real feel for culture, and just how incredible it is, you know, it's one of the world's most beautiful things.

As I grew up and I went through university, I decided that I move out and finish my degree at the University of Hong Kong. And while I was doing that, I started a couple of businesses in China. And you know, the plan was to be there for a short period of time, and I ended up staying about seven years. So Asia sucked me in.

Lots of things going on in China at the time, kind of the time where the Beijing Olympics were occurring. So we started a couple companies out there, we started a company that was exporting children's clothes, and we wholesaled them to the Middle East. And then I started another company up in Beijing, that was like a multi-listing service for real estate. So, like, where you can go and search all available real estate, essentially, there were thousands of websites across China that were doing that. So we built a system that would aggregate all that information and bring it to one spot.

We realised there was actually a really massive opportunity. The brokerages, or the real estate houses, estimated about 20% of their agents in China were doing deals under the table. So somebody would come into the agency trying to sell the house and the agent would say, yeah, we'll sell it, we just won't kick the commission up to the parent corp. We used our system to search out these people. And then we created lists of these folks, and we sold them back to the parent corporations.

So you know, the best boardroom experience ever had was to go into one of these brokerage houses, go up to a whiteboard and put a 1 with a bunch of zeros after it and say, you know, this is what you're losing a day. I'll tell ya, utter silence.

Brendan Le Grange 4:56

Yeah, I mean, obviously, without sort of pre empting too much but you I both lived in Hong Kong and I didn't live on the mainland in China, but just in Hong Kong, the number of property adverts, the number of flats that are going, and the speed at which they rotate, I can imagine that a service like this was a huge benefit, never mind all the backend shenanigans that it's picking up!

Adam Rice 5:15

Yeah, it was wild, like, you know, the city of Shanghai I think had 200 different websites for real estate at the time - just a mess, to try to look through all that stuff. So you know, the idea was, okay, aggregator let's make it easy, but that was fun. It was, you know, we lived in Beijing for a while and had a really great time out there, lots of momentum going on, you'd go out and sit with a bunch of expatriates who are starting different businesses, doing different things, and I really enjoyed it. Also, I think, Brendan, the connection to Hong Kong, I mean, what a what an amazing city that was. I was able to finish my undergraduate degree there, and I love that city, a really, really, really, really great spot. How long were you out there?

Eight years. We'd been living in Denmark at the time, got a job offer before we were married and had kids. So my now wife and I knew little of Hong Kong, one of my brother's good friends live there and had told us 'yeah, it's very green, it's not like you would expect' and that was probably the only thing in our mind, that and 'okay, but it's going to be a small apartment'. So this popped up and we went over, we said, 'yeah, hin a couple of years, see what it's like' and a couple of years became eight.

Brendan Le Grange 6:17

And we only moved somewhat reluctantly, you know the pollution indexes had us looking for an alternative. And then yeah, we got out. It wasn't any great political insight, but we got out and then things started getting a little bit more hectic. And then there's been COVID. So our timing was probably good. But yeah, as we're saying before we started recording, the mix that you can get in the city, of all the cultures, modern and old world, but also the amount of nature - I think it's 75% of land there that's green space - old fishing villages, and then 20 minutes later by ferry you're in the most advanced city in the world.

So it's something we're definitely got a miss, and yeah, hopefully COVID clears up and I can go back...

Adam Rice 6:58

Ditto. Ditto, I hope I can go back, too. It's amazing, right? Because the city so metropolitan, you think of Hong Kong is the centre where there's people absolutely everywhere, but there is so much green space. You can hop on a ferry and head out to an island with very, very little walking paths between between homes, right, no cars.

Brendan Le Grange 7:16

Sa Lamma where you were, Lantau where we were, bikes and pedestrians and animals. Yeah, very much out of the stereotype.

Adam Rice 7:24

Yeah, so it's great. So I mean, for me, the thought process was to go for six months, I stayed for seven years, I started a couple of businesses, you know, was successful. Actually, we ran into an issue in mainland China with one partner that we were selling this product to, they built the whole thing behind our backs. So we were a couple of young guys, we went out for a meeting with these guys, it was extremely awkward and, you know, within a couple of days we found out they'd gone behind our backs and signed all this contracts to kick us out.

So it was a little ironic because we were helping them catch people who were doing things illegitimately, and then we got totally treated illegitimately! In the end, it was definitely a learning curve for a young guy trying to start a business overseas.

But I ended up coming back to Canada, I worked in advertising for a while, lots of online campaigns and marketing and, you know, really enjoyed that. And then I came back to London, Ontario, which is close by Toronto. I was doing an MBA, and I was sitting in a dentist's office, and there wa a woman sitting in the room next to me, talking to the dentist about financing her dental work, she asked him if he had any solution for her. And he said, 'no'. So I'm sitting there in the other room and thinking, well, couldn't we create a financing programme that that woman took with her wherever she went?

And then my aggregator hat came on and I said, 'well, what if we had multiple lenders compete in real time for her business?' So I'm sitting in this dental chair with one of those bibs on, right, and I'm having this epiphany - of this is a really interesting new business and so we dug in and realised that there was actually a very substantial opportunity.

And a lot of people here in Canada, who were tremendously underserved by the main big banks, so the business kind of flowed from there.

Brendan Le Grange 8:56

When you're describing the property business. I was wondering if that aggregator approach was the link there.

I spoke it in an earlier episode to a friend and he was talking about Canada, and essentially how much wealth has been created by property. But it does feel like a market with a lot of people that may be capital rich, but there's not as much of a competetive personal lending/ personal credit environment as there would be south of the border. So what was that context, or what would the market have looked like when you launched Loan Connect?

Adam Rice 9:24

So in Canada, we have the big five banks, and they control the majority of banking relationships in our country. Those banks are very, very focused on credit modelling and lending based on your credit score. For people who didn't have good scores. Maybe they are new to Canada, they never established a credit score that they can utilise here. Maybe they have some form of history, some kind of card they missed a payment on or something like that, that affected their score. These people were really being underserviced.

The other side with the the prime consumers of the big five banks is there's not much competitian, you know, rates are very similar. So, you know, on one end, we were able to help consumers who maybe were unable to access loans, when those banks access them through a network of FinTech lenders who were, you know, really, there are a few, when we started that were kind of on the scene.

And then over the past four years, there's been a lot more that have come out, helping them access credit, and maybe even establish a credit history and then move to lower interest loans. And then on the other side, you have the prime consumers, and you can offer them competitive rates through alternate lenders that may be able to service them, we have a lot of crowdfunding sort of solutions here as well, that would allow you to get good rates as a prime consumer, too.

Brendan Le Grange 10:38

We're about to talk quite a lot about access to credit in India, with Credit Links, but already in LoanConnect in the Canadian business, you were already working in that sort of space. Yeah, I think as an outsider, if I'd thought of Canada, it wouldn't have been a problem I would have imagined a lot of Canadians to have - and I guess immigrants is one I should have thought about because I've previously spoken about the importance of immigrants to Canadian lending. But if we're also looking at, as you said, consumers who've maybe got a slightly damaged credit profile, or maybe just operated without the need for credit for some time - is Canada, generally speaking, fairly conservative on that front that six years ago, when you launched, there wouldn't have been many routes?

Adam Rice 11:20

Yeah, before that, a lot of that lending would fall to payday lenders. These payday lenders, I mean, they fall anywhere, you know, around 500% APR - it's insane. The loan is meant to bridge you between one paycheck to the next paycheck, but the majority of people in payday loans stay for around seven months. And it's a struggle to get out. So you know, a lot of these people, they had access to credit alternatives, but they were very, very expensive. So for us, we've really built a network of alternative lenders that can lend to them at much lower interest rates. So we don't do any payday lending. It's really, it's really focused on finding alternative lenders that are willing to offer them a longer term loan.

And through that loan, they can establish credit history. And you know, hopefully, as they're doing that, we can move them down to lower interest rates as their credit score evolves.

Brendan Le Grange 12:05

And I guess giving those lenders the scale to be able to speak to the customers. So I guess the payday lenders would have been investing some of the exorbitant rates into marketing and into getting their name out there. Whereas smaller alternative finance startups might have struggled to get a reach - bring it all together in one place, sure it's now a competitive space, but at least consumers can see you so puts the ball in their court that if they could make a good loan offer, they can win business.

Adam Rice 12:33

It's interesting, you're kind of tying the stories together between India and Canada. But yeah, a lot of these alternative lenders don't have distribution, right? They have good products, but it's very hard for them to access new traffic, and they can get new traffic but a lot of that traffic may be absolutely terrible quality. So by partnering with us, we're able to drive traffic to them that's meaningful, you know, we do a lot of the pre qualification. So we cover off costs of credit pulls and things like that. And by the time we send it to them, you know, the goal is to have about an 80% chance of them converting with that lender.

So their cost of underwriting is lower, they're getting the lead flow that they want to get. And it's efficient, right? They don't need to do any marketing, their cost of acquisition is predictable. They pay us a per-funded fee. So again, predictable, you don't have to pay per lead. But yeah, they want a distribution. And we could provide the distribution.

And it's unique because we talking about these payday lenders and like on my way to work every day. And when I did go to work, I drive by a payday lender, and there'd be a line out the door, right? These places are busy. They're local access spots, where people see this sign and they can go in and they understand it, like they have lots of physical infrastructure, a lot of these alternative lenders don't have that. And so kind of what we're doing is we're actually bringing around the other side of that, but we're actually opening our platform to storefronts in India and across Canada.

So you will see corner stores being able to sell products to our lender network through a QR code that they set on their cash desk. So we'll have the physical distribution and we'll be able to offer that to lenders that are plugged into the infrastructure

Brendan Le Grange 13:58

For a long time, lenders could get away with a fixed cost approach, that if you've got a small loan, the APR can sort of disappear into 'oh, it's only another $5, $10, $20 a month'. But as you said, with the compounding of interest in some of those old payday loans, it can create an inescapable vortex.

Here in the UK, they've largely been regulated out of business. So what happened was the ombudsman here, there's a fee just for having a complaint raised, whether you're guilty or not. I'm not sure they really lawyers, but legal type companies set up and had people complain to the ombudsman about the payday lender - and at a few $100 a pop, they suddenly became unprofitable whether they had been misslending or not. Now often they had been mislending, so it's really the the right result from the wrong approach but the threat now is 'I can't lend somebody $500 and then get fined $250, whether I'm guilty or not', so it shut it down.

But the scars of that still run deep and every time a newspaper headline's running and they want to make a shorthand for your over lending or poor lending controls, payday loans are referenced. And usually now it's in the context of buy now pay later, but it's good to see them in the rear window, but with credit still there.

Adam Rice 15:14

I think Brendan, that is right. At that time, five years ago - it's funny how much has changed over that period, right - but, you know, they're typically the last door on the block, there was no other option for these people. So when there's no other option, and they need the money, you know, what do you what do you get to not allow them access to that, and I mean, there's many, many sides of that would say that's quite unfair, too.

It's just great that there's been such an emergence of FinTech lenders that are digitally able to do underwriting and offer rates that are far superior. And so it's almost like the payday lender has become obsolete. And that's happened relatively quick. And, you know, it's been kind of cool to be part of that, being able to help people access credit at a much better rate than they would get at that store around the corner.

Brendan Le Grange 16:01

Yeah, and as you said, that access to credit and empowering storefront lending is also descriptive of the new business you're rolling out in India with Credit Links, let's turn our focus to that you've been really busy, as you said, over the last couple of years. I mean, "a couple of years", I think I spoke to you just six months ago and it was still being planned out and now it's already live and running - so last six, seven months, I imagine you've been between Canada and India rolling out what to me is a really interesting sounding business.

So I don't want to preempt it too much, instead could just start right from the beginning of what is Credit Links? And what are you building out in India?

Adam Rice 16:42

Well, I mean, we like the corner store model, you know, it worked for payday for a very long time. There's a very unique opportunity to distribute through a network of corner stores. And you know, as we kind of dug in and took a look at our business in Canada, what we were they enjoyed about it was a lot of these new to credit people were coming through us, establishing credit, we said, 'well, where else in the world can we do this?' And we engaged research company to kind of dig deep with us and look globally: in India, Brazil, South Africa actually came up as being some of the places that we really want to look.

So I mean, I'm the crazy guy who travels around the world, I hop on an aircraft within a week, I fly out to India and we engage a team locally to dig in, do a feasibility study for us, really look at the market opportunity and where we could go and you know, you're talking about a country where 90% of the population is underbanked, very, very difficult for them to access traditional financial products through a bank. And so that was our business here, but obviously a much smaller group of people - in India, it's the vast majority.

And so we sought to service these people in corner stores in their local communities. So essentially, what we're doing is, we're empowering hundreds of thousands of corner stores to display a scan with a QR code on it, they set this up on their cash desk, and they now tell their customers that they sell financial products through Credit Links. And the deal is you basically scan the QR with your phone and you end up in our infrastructure, we walk you through onboarding, we do credit analysis, and then we set you up with a network of alternative lenders that are based in India (actually we are even looking to bring Canadian lenders over to that side as well).

But yeah, the idea is that this store owner can now build a book of business through us. And if you look at the store owner, in general, a typical corner store, a mom and pop shop, makes maybe $5 us a day take home - we're giving them a huge opportunity to build a new revenue line and potentially a business that's far more substantive than the one they have selling Coca Cola as they build their book over the years.

I often come back to like the life insurance agent, right? In the early years, he's building his book. In the later years, it gets larger and larger. And that nets him more and more commission, we're doing the same with the storefront, as they net more people's scanning into our infrastructure, anything we sell that individual any financial product, we sell, we revenue share with the storefront. And there's a unique opportunity to change the life of the store owner, his kids, his family. And we also give him an opportunity to service people in his local community, the 90% that can't get anything from a bank.

So he's helping himself but he's also helping his local community get access to financial products that were inaccessible to them. And the unique thing about these corner stores is they're in a lot of tier two, tier three cities where these people are extremely underserved

Brendan Le Grange 19:24

I only very briefly - actually, when I was in Hong Kong - oversaw some of the lending we were doing as we were growing in India, and from what I remember, even for the big banks with all the cheap capital and access they have, India's quite a geographically specific rollout plan, where you go city by city and really lots and lots of paperwork just to say we're doing exactly what we did in Mumbai, but now we want to do it in Hyderabad. (Right?) And you've got as you said, now you've got already there, this network, you don't have to try and build out. Do we go into the city? People are there.

Adam Rice 19:59

We use existing infrastructure, exactly. And, you know, a unique piece about it is, that instead of going from corner store to corner store, I plug into distribution hubs that service the stores. So I get these distributors to hand out my QR stands to 10s of 1000s of stores. And so we get this one:many distribution opportunity where hundreds of 1,000s of corner stores are not a challenge, you're going through existing relationships.

And I think the other unique thing about this business in that style, it allows us to scale across multiple countries very easily, again, plug into the distributors get into 10 - 20,000 stores, you get the traffic from that store, you drive it to the infrastructure, so we're not looking at landing in a new country and having to spend considerable money on advertising or boots on the street trying to, you know, get the distribution up

Brendan Le Grange 20:45

In terms of what the the store owner has to do, they simply put that up, they don't have to sign up to anything, pay any fees, they just have the code in their window, and they're good to go?

Adam Rice 20:54

So on the front of the stand is a QR for the customer, and on the back is an onboarding QR for the store owner. So essentially, what happens is the store owner gets this from the distributor, the distributor tells them to scan the onboarding QR, and then we walk that store through the process of selling the product, and then we engage with them on an ongoing basis to help them to better position the product. But really, their job is to get scans, they don't have to position a financial product, they essentially position a QR code for scanning and allow them access to the broader ecosystem of financial products that they wouldn't have been able to get. And then we take over, it's our infrastructure, our marketing engine, our call centre, everything behind the scenes that works that customer through the funnel, and you know, they're basically getting commission on each person, they get to scan.

Brendan Le Grange 21:40

Yeah, and that ecosystem can obviously grow without, again, the need for any extra roll out, the more product types you bring on there, they're there. And it might not be alone, it might be an insurance product, or it might be anything else in the future, which I think is turning that physical network of stores into a half bricks and mortar/ half online Super App, which is, I think, remarkable. And with the ability to grow the communities, which I think is really important - that it's communities supporting communities not a big head office somewhere that's putting in shiny new building.

These are lots and lots of micro-entrepreneurs that are running their stores that suddenly have a way to scale up, which you can't put physical goods. I mean, there's only so much physical product, you can move through to your community.

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When I looked at the numbers, my colleagues would give at the credit bureau (in India) dealing with the big esttablished banks, they're still getting 20% year over year growth in balances. That's the boring part of the market. That's the slow growing only 20% a year part, whereas this underserved huge population makes it twice as exciting to talk about.

Adam Rice 22:55

I mean, we're talking about billions and billions of people, right, it's just an absolutely humongous group of folks that are underbanked and unable to access these products. There's so much opportunity out there to change lives. I mean, it's just been really neat to be part of that.

Brendan Le Grange 23:09

And you're already on the ground. You've already got those out there. Have you had chance to hear back from store owners or customers about the differences is making?

Adam Rice 23:19

Yeah, so our call centre contacts folks who've been funded, and you know, it's funny, right? Like, you were talking a tier two city in India may be just a little bit smaller than the City of Toronto, Canada, right? That's a big city. A lot of people live in there. But I mean, you set the QR code up. And the consumer thinks that if they scan the QR, they get a loan, they don't think that there's a process beyond it or anything like that. They don't think there's adjudication beyond it. They essentially are thinking that I scan this, I'm getting a loan, so we have to educate them through this process. But I guess you're looking at the group of people that we're going after, I mean, it's massive, but there's a whole other layer there that they don't understand, you know, financial products and how to access them. And so we get to be part of that whole journey we can we can walk them through, you know, kind of how they can access credit, how they can build credit, what they can do to better establish themselves.

We're talking to them for the first time ever that they've been chatted to about savings products, investments, and getting them micro insurance on their mobile phones. It's kind of virgin territory,

Brendan Le Grange 24:15

And with that friendly, familiar face. So I think it goes a long way to breaking down some of that embarrassment that might be felt - if I don't know how the bank works, because I've never been in the bank, I'm not going to walk into the marble floor bronze statue outside bank branch. But if it's the guy I have bought my cigarettes from for 20 years, I don't mind asking him 'hey, what's this?' And as you say, as a route in, that takes away some of those reasons that people might have been slow to take up, that as a traditional FinTech you might not have swept away. You would have just not understood quite why there wasn't a take up you thought.

Particularly... aah, it's a bit of a stretch because I don't really know the market but there's parts of India that are fully modernised and parts that aren't and parts that are in between and it gives those people that haven't got caught in that first wave of the modern economy a link between the two.

Adam Rice 25:07

It's the majority of the world, which is weird, right? We look at the world through our own goggles, and we see what we see. But this is the majority of the world, the majority of the growth in the world are in these markets. It's the future.

And there's a process in which these people are becoming digitised, you know, and we can become part of that. And so we can be the next chapter on the global scene for banking, working to bank the vast majority of the world. It's an absolutely humongous opportunity.

Brendan Le Grange 25:33

And in terms of the infrastructure you need, what sort of phone do you need to use a QR code is this smartphone specific.

Adam Rice 25:40

So the unique piece about India and this is one of the reasons why we dove in is because people were very used to making payments through QR code. So you have Paytm and other incumbents out there that are doing digital payments through a QR scan. Even some of the larger telco companies are producing phones that are Android based that have cameras that, you know, they can sell for $25/ $30. So they're making it much more accessible to people. And people are used to using the phones to transact that way.

Brendan Le Grange 26:08

And you're not using a big data download to download an app or anything it's simply scan the QR code.

Adam Rice 26:15

I mean, it's funny, we started with physical infrastructure, and you know, there's more trust in a corner store that's got bricks and mortar than an online, potentially scam artist - who knows what's gonna go on? I think it's even more true in some of these tier two/ tier three cities across India, you know, there's a lot of fear there. So when you're meeting them in a local communities is the guy who buy cigarettes from, you're getting that trust.

Brendan Le Grange 26:37

You're out there, you're already rolling this out, you're getting feedback from your customers in terms of your plans, and where you are. What's next for you. What are you focusing on the sort of six months to a year from now?

Adam Rice 26:49

Yeah, so I mean, we're pushing towards 100,000 stores. So that's, that's a big push for us. And right now, we're doing a lot of optimization, so we're spending a lot of time working with people in funnel, doing a lot of training on the corner store front, talk about the stuff, walk people through it, get the scans, working on layers in the funnel of how we optimise that traffic and ensure that we're taking care of them as they go through and, you know, answering any questions they may have.

We launched with SMS, and in India SMS is it's just like a canon of stuff being sent to you every day, so we're now using WhatsApp. And then on the tail end, it's finding the FinTech companies that are good at servicing this group of people. So you're integrating the guys that are looking at this. And they have alternative modes of adjudication that are non-credit score based, right, they may scrape bank data, they may scrape cell phone data based on location to determine that you're going to and from work, they've got lots of creative things, telco information on your payments, your phone, heck, we even got a company that make you walk a path and you take decisions, you go left or right, and as you walk through that path and make a decision to issue a micro loan.

So there's lots of creative guys doing interesting things there. And then you repay your micro loan, and then they work with you further and give you something larger for us as getting those guys integrated and ensuring that we're doing a great job. The goal right now is really to optimise so that the storefronts are happy, you know, and that the consumers going through the flow are also happy.

So you know, when we talked six months ago, we're doing a lot of building. Now we've got a lot of users coming through the part of this optimization process, when new lenders being integrated new partners, you know, working on offering things like the cell phone insurance and other things that might fit that particular demographic. And then you know, once we're there, we hit the 'scale' button. And then we're doing this I didn't mention this yet, but maybe we talk about it a bit, we're doing a big crowdfunding raise.

Brendan Le Grange 28:37

Let's jump into that. So in terms of funding that growth, what are you looking to do?

Adam Rice 28:42

Yeah, so we've already had some VC investment through a few VCs this past summer. So one of them was called SOSV, they're a venture group from New York that's running a programme across Asia and Africa, called MOX, which is going after the next billion who are mobile first. These guys are investing in two types of companies: one is an acquisition and another as a monetization company.

And they've invested in a number of distributors. So one of the larger ones in South Africa, a number across the Middle East, a large army of gig workers across India, a large group across Indonesia. And so essentially, you know, they invested but the the idea is to leverage their network to expand into these new regions, so we can immediately plug into their distribution networks on a revenue share basis.

We also took investment through Plug and Play Ventures in California, they have a huge network of investments globally as well. And the idea is partnerships strategically, right? So with their other investments, we can build on the backs of infrastructure that they develop. Before that we took some investment from the Holt FinTech accelerator there out of Montreal in Canada, going after fintechs around the world doing really cool stuff.

And now we're actually in the process of another raise and, actually, next week, we're going to be launching a crowdfunding campaign here in Canada. So we're really excited about getting that off the ground and allowing retail investors to put some money in and be a part of this movement. So it'll all be listed, you'll get all the information about the company on the platform, the platform is called FrontFundr (https://www.frontfundr.com/assetdirect). So we're looking forward to getting that up and running, that'll be going probably over the next two and a half months or so.

Where are we in six months, where are we in 18 months? I see us in a few other countries, I think we could have the largest network of financial sales agents the world has ever seen, I really do. And we grow it organically, which is pretty cool.

Brendan Le Grange 30:38

It's one of those 'look back and it looks obvious' type of solutions, because you're leveraging the system that exists, you're making it better and cheaper for the FinTech lenders or, or the sort of lenders who are willing to take a bit more of a chance or a creative approach, you're making it cheaper and easier for them to give the loan - which actually can be a lot the reason people don't lend to 'new to credit' or to these markets, it can be cost based, it can just be I can't afford to make a loan to you for the amount you want. So if you take away the costs, I can do it.

And then the other problem in the old approach was okay, somebody would give you a chance, and then they would see you're a good borrower, and the lender would lend they would lend but you'd be stuck in their ecosystem or they they pipeline, and you wouldn't know Are you now getting the best rate? Maybe it was the only one who would give you a chance, but 10 years later, hey, why am I still paying almost the same rate, whereas a marketplace solves that. So you create a way in and then a marketplace.

And it doesn't need bricks and mortar, but it understands that bricks and mortar approach you're not building branches, but you're still leveraging that trust and human connection that makes the branch a little bit more special. You know, people have tried a little bit and you'll often see a bank that partners with a grocery stores, but I don't know who works behind the checkout when I go to the groceries, its whoever's there on the day, whereas you're using these community builders, these literal cornerstones of their community where that does exist. And I think yeah, all those pieces fit together so neatly that you do say, 'well, why is no one else done it?'

Adam Rice 32:07

Last night, I was chatting with the Trade Commissioner Service for Canada and Indonesia, I've been chatting with some folks in Pakistan, we've been chatting East Africa, this doesn't exist. I mean, we're onto something big. I mean, maybe I shouldn't be telling you that it doesn't exist in East Africa, you know, and Indonesia. But there's definitely a staggering opportunity to use this network to bank the world.

Brendan Le Grange 32:30

Well, it's interesting that you, you talk about East Africa, because in my mind, the mobile money explosion we saw in East Africa was on some of the similar principles that we need a existing infrastructure that people have, and we will leverage that. And so in that world, it was SMS technology and saying, 'well, if we pair down what it means to be a bank, we can provide the basic services by SMS and that will work around the lack of physical infrastructure, the lack of IT infrastructure. There's similar calling cards, but - and this is not their fault, its just on the technology, on a feature phone there's only so many things you could see by SMS - you're not getting that marketplace. So it's a concept, or philosophy, that's worked well before and now it's the 20 year later upgrade to that.

Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about that we haven't?

Adam Rice 33:20

So a couple ofthings. Actually, we're launching in ABMs, automatic bank machines.

Brendan Le Grange 33:25

So how does that work, you're going to pop up as a QR on the screen while people are drawing their cash out?

Adam Rice 33:31

Correct. So you can go up to these unbranded cash machines - there's tonnes of them across the country - and you can select 'apply for a loan' and then up a QR code will pop. And then you'll be able to scan it with your phone and then go through the app on your phone. Initially, the money will be directed to mobile wallet or submitted to you digitally somehow, but we're working to have the machine dispense the cash itself with an adjudication process that takes less than 25 seconds. So that's one thing that we're doing across India, as well.

And we're also installing our QR code in the back of a bunch of rickshaws. Well, they have a captive audience, they've got somebody in the backseat for a certain period of time. So you know, we're essentially installing in, I think about 350 rickshaws around Delhi to test the model and to optimise. But the idea is there's a sticker in the back of the rickshaw that tells you about the product and put a bigger sticker back there and give you some good insight about how it works. And then the QR code is there for you to scan. And that rickshaw driver, he gets to build a book of business as well.

And again, there's a really unique opportunity to change his life. So we're excited to trial it. It could be something really massive. I mean, you know, dealing with some of these auto rickshaw associations, they've got 50,000 to 100,000 rickshaws they work with!

Brendan Le Grange 34:42

Yeah, the scale is is always impressive when you're talking to you talk india, when you talk Indonesia or China, but it's also great that it spreads that wealth. It's the ability to impact the lives of 100,000 Rickshaw riders. If I think through my time in Asia, you couldn't book a taxi without sitting down, in Thailand and then having little folders in the back that are telling you where the local zoo is or where some attraction is. And the drivers obviously getting some commission on the side with that, and it's a, it's a great vision.

And if people want to learn more about Asset Direct's businesses in Canada or in India or, well, around the world, where's the best place to start looking?

Adam Rice 35:21

Of course, assetdirect.io.

Brendan Le Grange 35:23

And best of luck with it, it does sound like such a great mission and a great business. And the speed of which you've rolled this out is impressive totally means or keep an eye on that and see how it continues to grow and expand around the world, so, wishing you all the best. And thank you so much for your time today.

Adam Rice 35:39

Thanks, Brendan was really good chatting. I grew up always wanting to do something that'll change the world. You know, this is me as a young seven year old with my cape on and I think we're really, you know, we're really gearing up to do that. And I'm excited. It feels great. And I mean, it also feels great for store owners that they can be involved in that, too. I'm just I'm looking forward to what's to come. Absolutely, looking forward to it.

Brendan Le Grange 36:02

And thank you all for listening. If you enjoyed that, please do rate and review on your preferred podcast platform and share widely including on LinkedIn. And while you're there, send me a connection request. The show is written and recorded by myself Brendan le Grange in Brighton England and edited with assistance by Kane Hunter. Show music is by Iam_wake and you can find full written transcripts now in several languages, show notes and more content at www.howtolendmoneytostrangers. show.

And I'll see you again next Thursday.