Cashwerkz Director John Nantes talks about the company's platform and how it provides better returns without the need to shop around or move money at maturity.
Rachael Jones: Hello I’m Rachael Jones for the Finance News Network. Joining me today from Cashwerkz is Director, John Nantes. John welcome to FNN.
John Nantes: Thank you, great to be here.
Rachael Jones: John for those who don’t know, could you start by giving us an introduction to the company?
John Nantes: Cashwerkz is one of Australia’s leading fintech businesses. And what we’ve been able to do is solve a very old problem, which is the investors have always invested their cash and defensive assets, in a manual way. And what we’ve been able to do is bring the banks and investors very very close together, in the most efficient way that no one’s thought about before. Such that within three clicks, you can now invest your money in a very transparent and fast way. And for the ADIs of the banks, it’s a great way to increase their capital opportunities. And for investors, it’s a great place to go and have a transparent marketplace, to make really good decisions on their cash investments.
Rachael Jones: Now firstly to a more general question, before we talk about the Cashwerkz marketplace. Can you tell me, what was the genesis behind the idea and what is the value for Cashwerkz, in the post Royal Commission world?
John Nantes: We spent about three to four years building the technology off market. And our goal was to fundamentally transform the cash investment sector in Australia. And having done that, having built out the technology, we learnt that the fastest way to success was to partner with someone, who had been doing it for a long period of time. And that was Trustees Australia Limited
(ASX:TAU). They’ve been around 31 years and we’re managing about $1-2 billion in a $2.2 trillion size marketplace, albeit they were doing it manually.
So we were able to take our technology and their history and their experience, and combine the two into the company that we are today. And that’s allowed us to really accelerate our growth. In terms of the Royal Commission, they have been very clear all the learning’s and findings about advisors, investors, providing a very transparent and clear marketplace, and actually operating in their clients’ best interest. And the solution at Cashwerkz allows advisors to do exactly that.
They allow you to look across the market, select what’s best for your client and make a very verygood decision, without that outcome beingridden by fees. And most importantly at Cashwerkz, we don’t touch the money. It’s not a case of us holding the money and making decisions for you, we just facilitate the transaction. And the speed of that means that your clients are making real time decisions, across up to over 41 banks currently.
Rachael Jones: Is there anything new planned for Cashwerkz platform?
John Nantes: Innovation for us is at the heart of what we do. And when we started our journey, the very first thing we put on our platform was term deposits. And offered a serious opportunity across from anything from one month, through to 12 months plus. Recently we’ve added our call cash accounts and we’ve found that that’s been a complete game changer for the industry, particularly stockbrokers, fund managers and advisors. And I can see us over time adding more and more products, based on what our users of the technology are requesting, to make very good decisions for their clients and act in their clients’ best interest.
But one of the unique things that we’ve built is that our technology,fits in with current technology, within financial institutions. And the way they go about solving their clients’ problems. What that means is, we don’t ask people to change their processes and how they help their clients, our technology actually fits in with what they do. And that’s one of the secrets in our process. And I see that as something we’re going to continue to innovate around, because it gives us a significant advantage. And the last thing I think we’re going to end up doing, which we’re starting to get pretty excited about, is go global.
We’ve learnt that the problems in Australia are managing cash, are not an Australian problem only. We did a road show in Singapore and learnt that to open a term deposit, can take anywhere from four weeks to nine months. And our technology can solve that problem. So we are very excited about the way we’ve addressed the opportunities in Australia and we are growing at a very fast rate. But Australia’s not the only place I think we can win and I think we can win big globally as well.
Rachael Jones: Last question now John. Is there anything else you would like to add?
John Nantes: As I said, innovation is absolutely at the heart of what we do. One of the things that’s happened in the finance industry globally, is this push on open banking. It is something that’s going to change the way our Australian banks, but also international banks behave, and deal with their customers and their clients. The technology that we’re building internally is absolutely positioned for this change. The ability for the banks to make real time and more effective decisions, to help their customers, is coming. [VIDEO: It’s an enlightened bank that I think realises can’t do it all themselves. The banks are starting to wake up that we’re a big engine, and we’ve got certain things that we do well and need to do very very well. But there is things that we just aren’t’ gonna to be good at and we have to find a way to partner with them].
And we’re well placed to be able to help the banks in that space, to grow their capital, to actually find more customers. And to do it, using technology rather than a very traditional bricks and mortar approach. In fact, most of the ADIs or banks that use our technologies do not have the ability, to open up new branches and spend money acquiring new clients. But we can actually do that for them. In fact in Australia, the Australian banks actually trust us to identify the clients at a KYC AML process. We actually do for the banks and that in itself is a game changer. The fact that the banks are now trusting other providers to identify clients, to facilitate new introductions and build on customer share of wallet, and also their ability to make excellent and wise finance decisions.
So open banking as a strategy, to allow technologies like ours and the traditional models, come together for the benefit of the client, is a very very exciting thing. And it’s happening right now and we’re extremely well placed. And to be fair to the banks, they are sprinting to this. They’re really opening up to what it’s going to be about and preparing themselves.
Rachael Jones: John Nantes, thanks for the introduction to Cashwerkz.
John Nantes: Thank you.
Ends
