Pocket Finance with Sheldon Brow | E222

Putting advisor collaboration in consumers’ pockets.

On today’s episode of the Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira is going to talk to Sheldon Brow, founder of Pocket Finance; it is a platform for greater collaboration between clients and advisors giving them a personal financial management app on their phone that not only helps track their wealth but also educates them.

Episode Highlights:

  • 1.04: Pocket finance is a dual interface fintech platform that could be a personal finance management tool for the consumers to help them safely and successfully navigate finance. 

  • 1.29: People at Pocket finance really focus on three pillars. First, streamlining the data at the press of a button because they know that typically it is easier to convince the client to shovel dog poop for 1/2 hour than to have them gather financial data. 

  • 1.37: Next identify and capitalize on those financial opportunities as they arise because financial advisors are not typically certified with JoJo psychic clients and clients don’t always have stellar financial literacy, so they don’t know when the right time is always to engage and really just offering that tool outside of those strategic planning meetings to bring daily relevance into financial planning and deepen that ongoing awareness and guidance for clients. 

  • 4.03: If a user has an average balance of 10,000 or more for six months or longer than they are making the minimum payment or low payment, you populate a notification that says you might want to change this to a different product to drop the interest rate in half to pay it off a lot sooner, says Sheldon

  • 5.01: The problem with banks is that the high-pressure sales that they have in there, it is this constant product dumping and doesn’t always mean it is a meaningful product for the client. 

  • 7.30: Through Pocket Finance Sheldon tried to mitigate the problem of an intermittency kind of transactional relationships with clients. If he declines somebody for a mortgage, for example, he tries to write them a fancy email explaining to monitor your debt ratio, but the email goes to oblivion. Clients never read it again. It is then that Sheldon thought there needs to be a tool where he can offload this burden of ongoing monitoring and help and have it dynamic to one. He thought this tool would be great for advisors as well. 

  • 10.48: Being able to aggregate the data as one thing, any company can set up aggregate data pretty quickly through all of these different conduits that exist. There are a lot of them out there, but then what are you able to do with that data in a meaningful way? And then how are you engaging the different relationships that there needs to be in that conversation and enhance that collaborative advice?

  • 12.21: The single biggest obstacle to getting financial plans done is data collection, and the number doesn’t matter how much money they make, says Jason.

  • 13.27: The average score of financial literacy in the G20 countries is 48% of the hundred and the only thing that makes that worse is that we are really choosy about our financial literacy, and we want to do it ourselves, and we think we can kind of navigate all this complex advice and tax strategies on our own. Sometimes it’s really being able to capture those opportunities proactively rather than reactively, says Sheldon. 

  • 15.29: Sheldon wants their app’s notification to not just be a notification in front of a user’s eyes. He wants it to be clickable and actionable for the next best. 

  • 17.12: Technology doesn’t need to be scary to adapt and increase engagement, and you can automate and personalize some of it very easily.

  • 18.33: As per Sheldon, there are so many things that need to be changed in the industry one is opportunities to collaborate on advice.

  • 20.53: In the startup world, there are all kinds of different polarizing advice, and everybody wants you to be cultural, but you can’t take all the advice at once. But more importantly than that, there are a million different incubators. There are a million different people trying to get their hands in a million different pots where they are not necessarily always in it for the right reasons.

  • 22.01: Everybody thinks they are an expert, and there is a reason why somebody goes sideways. 

  • 26.01: If the system puts a tremendous amount of onus on the individuals to not get hosed or screwed, then that is a predatory system.

3 Key Points

  1. Sheldon launched Pocket Finance by taking inspiration from two sides - one is the consumer side and the other one is the advisor side. 

  2. Sheldon Brow shares details of his career growth and how he noticed major problems in clients’ financial transactions, and how he helped to resolve big payment issues. He also shares what motivated him to launch Pocket Finance. 

  3. Sheldon talks about the importance of data within the financial conversation and how he enables that.

Tweetable Quotes

  • “Embarrassingly, I was kind of one of the number one creditor insurance sales for a while, which is better than nothing. And I sold it in probably the most ethical way of anyone in the banking system.” - Sheldon Brow

  • “There is a lot of noise in this space. There are many tools that are cute little budgeting apps and elaborate looking tools, some with a lot of features, some that look kind of not very attractive, and there are some beautiful ones as well. And I also realized, you know, I would like to have one that has a level of connectivity to myself and the professionals that I am dealing with.” - Sheldon Brow

  • “There are some advisors who believe that the heavy lifting is their value proposition” – Jason

  • “There are those who got everything budgeted down to the last penny and then there are those who really have no idea. Those who have no idea outnumber those who don’t. So, the single biggest obstacle of getting financial plans done is data and product applications.” – Jason

  • “Even creditor insurance on a credit card for independent advisors is a meaningful and quick conversation.” - Sheldon Brow

  • “Almost everything that matters to us in the modern day, especially digitally, lives as an icon on our phone.” – Jason

Resources Mentioned:

Fintech ImpactJason PereiraFintech