Wax with Richard Vinhais | E268

Insuring your collectibles.

In today's episode of Fintech Impact, Jason is going to talk to Richard Vinhais CEO of WAX. It is a platform for ensuring collectible items of high value and making sure that if anything goes wrong with your treasured collectible or sentimental value object that basically you are protected. In addition, they have helped people with custody and leverage of these assets with that.

Episode Highlights

  • 0.52: Wax is a collectibles company that's geared towards kind of empowering a general collectors experience from start to finish. So, whether a collector is looking to protect an item, organize it through a collection management platform or unlock some liquidity or vault it Wax as a company is trying to be at the center of a collector's universe.

  • 1.42: Richard talks about his background and how his journey started. 

  • 03.20: Richard wanted to create a company that's kind of geared towards a collector. He emphasizes that part because focusing in on the underlying tech, whether it's insured tech or fintech or whatever type of technology, if you are not really looking at it through the lens of the individual that is going to be using the product, it will by and large, fall on its face. 

  • 05.25: Richard says that they are a venture back startup right. So, Ventures is one of their lead investors or is a lead investor along with a number of wonderful investors, and the timing was just right at the time of that seed raise that happened a few years ago and really just comes down to more and more people were investing in the things that they enjoy.

  • 08.22: Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurer. They have 200 billion in assets, maybe 40 billion plus in gross premium. They are who you want and they kind of concentrate on the high network space. 

  • 10.10: Richard talks about the lending business that they launched the previous quarter which is really in pilot.

  • 11.15: Richard explains in the collection management process there is an element of doing kind of a rapid income analysis on the individual rapid employment data. 

  • 13.14: Richard shares how they determine the value of assets and what is the process that they follow. 

  • 17.08: Cash is not as cheap as it, it was even six months ago. If you look back even a year ago when money was virtually free, that is just not the market conditions today. But there is still always a space for an individual that's looking for a quick infusion of cash, says Richard. 

  • 19.05: Once we are vaulting, we are responsible that means the insurance needs to be fully in place. The conditions of the vault need to be exceptional, says Richard.

  • 22.05: As per Richard, understanding the collector mindset is everything because every collector, they have their own tribe. Every collector also has their why behind, why they collect.

  • 25.12: As per Richard, they could open up the valves to allow anybody to enter their ecosystem which will certainly grow the top line of the business, but as claims start rolling in because they not thinking about the quality of what is coming in, then you are no longer running a profitable business. 

3 Key Points

  1. Richard explains the technology aspect of Wax and where is the tech coming to play, and how is he delivers Insurance on collectibles?

  2. Richard talks about the range of products that they have launched or will launch in future. The list included the collection management, model line insurance, lending, and then vaulting.

  3. Richard talks about appraisals, how that was going to work and how it changes the current experience.

Tweetable Quotes

  • "Collectibles are now seen as an alternative investment whereas in the past it was just kind of seen as a toy or a strange hobby or target demo has disposable income." - Richard Vinhais

  • "We kind of introduced the model line insurance product, and this goes to the heart of just understanding the type of insurance that our collectors are looking for and this was kind of a long journey to kind of get the right carrier partner behind us." - Richard Vinhais

  • "When you are underwriting insurance, you are underwriting the individual very often on the lending side you are very often underwriting the asset because that is where the value is and the event but default on the lending side of the house." - Richard Vinhais

  • "The lending product was an experiment that we put into play last quarter, and we see this as a great way for individuals to kind of unlock value in the collectibles that they have." - Richard Vinhais

  • "The amount of research we went into to find the correct vaulting partner was staggering, mainly because we want to make sure we're doing right by our clients, and we don't have to worry about it." - Richard Vinhais

Resources Mentioned

Fintech ImpactJason PereiraFintech