Act Analytics with Zachary Dan | E156

Empowering ESG investing with a better data platform.

In this 156th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Zachary Dan, CoFounder and CTO of Act Analytics, a platform that helps financial advisors make better decisions around environmental, social, and governmental factors!

Episode Highlights:

  •  0:41 – Zachary Dan introduces Act Analytics.

  • 1:04 – What led Zachary to create Act Analytics.

  • 2:14 – Jason discusses the issues that exist in the ESG area.

  • 4:12 – How does Zachary score industries with ESG factors?

  • 8:09 – Zachary discusses the challenges presented by a high–level of customization in regard to customer experience.

  • 9:12 – What does the user experience look like from start to finish?

  • 11:14 – How often is the data updated?

  • 11:38 – Zachary dives into the sources of data that Act Analytics utilizes.

  • 14:01 – What has the feedback been like from Act Analytics’s earliest users?

  • 16:00 – Zachary shares his thoughts on future innovations for the platform.

  • 17:49 – If Zachary could change one thing about his industry, what would it be?

  • 19:17 – What has been the biggest challenge for Act Analytics during its growth?

  • 22:46 – Zachary explains what excites him about natural language processing.

3 Key Points

  1. Zachary saw that neither the data nor the ratings were constructed in a way that served most people, so he created a tool that utilizes both in a way that translates to the end-user.

  2. At the moment, Act Analytics has about 20 paying clients with most logging on every day and utilizing the news–analytics feature of the platform.

  3. Zachary hopes to see the commoditization of ESG and financial data, making it widely available for everyone to choose how to use that information for themselves.

Tweetable Quotes:

  • “If companies in all sectors are being pressured to change over time and everyone’s doing this, that’s one way to change the world.” – Zachary Dan

  • “I think one of the mistakes of what’s out there is this idea that you can become the standard scoring methodology for ESG because...it’s different for everybody.” – Zachary Dan

  • “There’s lots of opportunities to include more built–out portfolio construction and AI that helps people build portfolios using both ESG and financial considerations.” – Zachary Dan

  • “You can’t fully fit on a spreadsheet about just how ethical a company is but you have to figure out how to measure that in real-time.” – Jason Pereira

  • “If someone doesn’t have a belief in something, why are you forcing it on them?” – Jason Pereira

Resources Mentioned:

Fintech ImpactJason PereiraFintech, Investing