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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
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