Tuesday Team Talks №1
Live Telegram AMA With Our Co-Founder Conrad Lin
Dear Community,
We are proud to present a brand new series: Tuesday Team Talks! In our newest initiative, we will cover topics such as AMAs/interviews with team members, development updates, and open discussions with our partners involved in making our ecosystem a success.
On June 19th, 2018 from 2–3 pm UTC, we held our first ever live Telegram AMA featuring our Co-Founder, Conrad Lin. In the exciting Q&A session, he answered burning questions about the direction of our platform, hinted at future partnerships, and our expansion plans. If you happened to miss this session, you can read it all here in this summary blog.
Partnerships
Q. @Samgrams: Can we have more details on partnerships — I understand you can not disclose names because of NDA, but can you touch upon how many, which geographical location and at what level?
Regarding project developments, we plan to release information in two ways. At the moment, releasing specific names about partners who have joined our initiative is not allowed under strict NDA. All we can say, is that banks and insurance companies are working very closely with us to ensure our product is ready to market and enable them to lend to a whole new market segment — small businesses and startups. We are currently working on valid use cases of the FintruX Network platform that we can release in the interim and make our token have an early utility. I am travelling to Vietnam on Sunday, to hopefully wrap up a deal that would take our expansion there and bring about customers within the next 2 quarters.
Q. @Samgrams: Do you have a number as to how many partners?
I think the most significant thing for us at the moment is to partner with well-established and connected institutions with solid userbases. A general example is this: we go into a developing country that is in need of lenders for their small businesses, let’s say in this case farmers (and I’m probably already disclosing too much). FintruX can position ourselves as the automated and technologically advanced platform solution for a local lender, to quickly expand their lending pools and provide liquidity to their borrowers.
Q. @Blockchainbrainx: In terms of KYC providers, service agents, etc,. are you still looking for partnerships on that front, or any other front where you could use help of the community to find suitable partners?
We are still looking for partners in specific geographic regions, but most notably we want to find innovative companies that are doing things that can better help us reach a larger user base and better help the underserved. We always appreciate feedback from the community, and look forward to your insightful opinions as they ultimately shape the future of our product. I personally make sure to read and understand anybody who comes to me with an opinion about something, and I am humbled that everyone in our community is so willing to offer up ideas on how we can improve.
BLOOM PARTNER, @DerekSilva responds: I will add that, as a FintruX partner, we’re doing our best as well to have massive, worldwide reach. That will make life easier for anyone that has a BloomID and wants to use FintruX to access credit. Bloom has several documentary (e.g., government ID) verification providers we’re looking at now, and will integrate with soon.
Direction:
Q. @Samgrams: Are you looking at crypto asset based financing as well?
If you are referring to a structure like SALT, that’s definitely in consideration. However, the vision doesn’t quite align just yet. Let me explain. In a nutshell, our goal is to help companies in need who do not have traditional collateral, or collateral at all, to get unsecured financing that we make more secure. For asset based crypto loans, we are assuming that they have crypto to operate as their collateral instead. While we have already implemented this via using FTX as their “crypto collateral loan”, we see it more that they have access to FTX due to their participation in our marketplace, and therefore we want to reward them, rather than they are already crypto rich with ETH/BTC and need cash for day to day expenses
Operational Developments:
Q. @driantest: So far have SMEs from Singapore made use of the platform to take any loans?
Currently our status in Singapore is a successful $300,000 loan (which we are monitoring very carefully), and a long waitlist of hopeful SMEs. We are currently well on our way to getting our own license in Singapore to lend, and will be the home base of operations. However, we are looking outwards towards Indonesia, etc., as the regulations are more lax and we would be able to go to market a lot faster. Currently, our bottleneck is not our technology, which is well on its way to production. However, it is the legal restraints on handling money.
Q. @driantest: I thought MAS would be quite open to blockchain technology? The bottleneck is the regulator?
I don’t think blockchain component is the problem per say, but it’s the financing aspect. Most regulators are very picky about who can lend money, interest % rates, etc. For instance, in Singapore, the maximum interest rate you can impose on a loan is ~55%. However, because we see that the path towards multiple licenses in every jurisdiction we wish to offer our platform in is going to be quite the struggle, we are instead looking towards opportunities like the ones mentioned above, where we go into a region with a well established finance company, with a user base. We input the FintruX platform technology, and our token adoption drives overnight. Additionally though, as each region has its own niche market that will play best (for instance, what works best in Myanmar is microloans for farmers to get through the off-seasons), our focus is to build a diverse platform that can handle all sorts of loans and situations. This is definitely possible with our no-code technology. Our goal now is to position FintruX as the go-to-financing hub of the world. We wish to develop products that help SMEs grow from small businesses, to medium, to large. We plan to do that by providing solutions for financing, manage their finances, as well as teaching them how to grow their money (investing back into the platform).
Expansion Plans
Q. @driantest: Would that be like white labelling the platform so that a certified lender can make use of the platform to give out loan?
There are definitely many ways to tackle this, but white labelling would not be out of the question. The idea is that if FintruX comes in, providing a source of new funds (which is one of the biggest things that the lending companies are looking for), it provides incentives for them to adopt the platform, and all loans that go through us, is facilitated by the FTX token.hus, when they see the power of our system, they will eventually include their portfolio as well. Doing it this way gives us intimate access into their customers and historical data to better help us build comprehensive credit profiles to target more and more of the unbanked. Through this model, even if our platform is white labelled (the end borrower does not know it is FintruX), it is still driving our ecosystem.
Q. @driantest: I am happy that Fintrux is looking at different initiative in South East Asia but it would be great if the platform could be fully operational ASAP in one market (hopefully Singapore) and drive other market to come on board due to that use case.
Hey Adrian, while I definitely agree with that sentiment, after careful consideration and research in this area, just waiting for Singapore to finalize the regulatory hurdles as well as bringing in the correct lenders and borrowers in this small market space will take a very long time, as well as not be very profitable in the end. We are actually considering doing it the other way around. For us to have many viable use cases across South East Asia, and have Singapore look to that and say “I don’t want to miss the boat”. For example, companies like Grab (biggest ride-sharing app in Asia) started off in Malaysia, grew across SEA offering taxis, bikes, etc.; now has an iron foothold on all things, payments, food-delivery, financing, even banking.
Q. @driantest: Actually I would like to know where platform will be operational first and when it is expected. Understand waiting for regulators is out of your control, but an estimate?
We are currently working on valid lending use cases in Myanmar, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Provided everything goes smoothly, there should be some sort of launch of FintruX users in those regions by the end of this year. What I’m excited to share however, is that as part of our “powerful and production ready incremental products” — I mentioned above that we plan to launch — we will be focusing on products that provide services that do not need to answer to regulations that will help us drive adoption, and build our user base in preparation of our full product launch. We fully understand the process of bringing a product to market, and one of the main things is that we need to have an underlying user base by the time. We are going to build an ecosystem where lenders and borrowers are brought in incrementally. Without disclosing too much; we are building apps that people will use and interact with on a daily basis to manage their finances, pay their bills, manage payroll, etc., that will have a natural path towards using our lending ecosystem. Similarly with the micro financing examples, those borrowers can quickly graduate to bigger financing amounts as they grow into bigger and bigger operations.
Q. @AJCwir: (Follow-up question on use cases) This would be great I imagine. Can you explain this a bit more? Any ideas you could speak of?
We see opportunities where companies with seasonal cash flow can help other companies with an opposite seasonal cash flow with liquidity, and grow together. There are definitely many exciting opportunities such as those that we can leverage.
Q. @Blockchainbrainx: Thanks a ton for the interesting insights Conrad. It’s a shame its all NDA’d, as we could surely use updates on the progress to further enhance the marketing campaign. The roadmap states that at Q4 the platform will be delivered, can we expect it to be at its final form so-to speak? And how long would you say it takes to onboard customers at that point?
Regarding partnerships, yes, unfortunately it is a shame that way. Building on top of the topics I have touched so far, my official statement is that we need to focus on short term deliveries that can be best made use NOW, instead of later in Q4 (end of the year). We plan to release powerful and production ready incremental products to drive adoption and build our user-base in preparation of our full product launch. This is part of our “Operation Phoenix”, to bring new life to our project. Similarly, as we see a need to diversify our product offering in different regions/cultures, we plan to build a more flexible end-product that can be used by our partners everywhere. We plan to do this with parallel development teams.
Clarifications
Q. @Blockchainbrainx: I don’t quite follow this step: “While we have already implemented this via using FTX as their “crypto collateral loan”, we see it more that they have access to FTX due to their participation in our marketplace, and therefore we want to reward them, rather than they are already crypto rich with ETH/BTC and need cash for day to day expenses”. Am I correct to assume FTX can be used as collateral? Or what does they have access to FTX due to participation in our marketplace mean?
Yes, definitely! FTX can be used as collateral for loans, and we would consider that as another level of our credit enhancers making our loans more secure. What I meant by earning FTX through participation in our marketplace, is that we expect FTX to be the payment medium for all services rendered; whether it be as a service agency (KYC/Payments/Exchange, etc.), reputation management (leaving reviews), referrals, etc.
@YTOKR: Question regarding cross border lending. How is exchange rate risk going to be handled. If I let someone borrow 1000 usd and he gets 1100 or whatever in CAD. And by the time lender pays back 1100 cad is only 900 usd what happens?
Glad that this came up. We plan to lock all exchange rates at the time of the borrowing contract initiation. Thus, even if the exchange rates have fluctuated by the time the loan has matured, the repayment will still be in the original rate. However, we are still coming up with new ways to handle cross-currency lending, that I can’t disclose quite yet as they are still in testing, but in involves an internal token that we can use to stabilize rates.
Q. @Xilog: Conrad, if I recall correctly, you mentioned in a previous Q&A that social indicators could be used to evaluate risks. Could you expand a bit on it? And since the recent issues with data sharing and social media, don’t you think the public would be against such indicators?
Hey JP, thanks for the great question, and I’m very happy that you read up on my previous Q&A! Privacy and the whole premise of “owning your own data” is really important to us. Personally, it’s the whole reason why blockchain should exist, and why movements like GDPR is important for us as a people. We need the right to be “forgotten”; and similarly, if we provide more information than others needs, we should get rewarded for it. Our targets for these alternative credit scoring mechanisms are the people who have been having a hard time getting the financing they need from traditional sources, like banks, who need hundreds of documents proving a history of repayment, etc., that many new businesses can’t provide. We offer them a reason to provide us with more intimate information, such as psychometric scoring, behaviour data mining, habits, etc., to be able to offer them more affordable and accessible funding sources. They would know that if they provide X data about their behaviours, they would be instantly gaining access to hundreds of new lenders. Lenders are excited about this opportunity as well, as it opens doors for new investment demographics that they couldn’t access via traditional means.
Thank you to our supporters from the FintruX Nation who were able to participate in this AMA. Our team appreciates the active engagement from our community of diverse and passionate individuals. If you missed it, know that there will be many more AMA’s to come. We had a lot of fun organizing this, so we just might make it a regular thing! We hope to see you there next time!
Sincerely,
The FintruX Team
About us: FintruX Network is the global P2P lending ecosystem powered by blockchain and no-code development. FintruX facilitates marketplace lending in a true peer-to-peer network to ease the cash-flow issues of SMEs that typically face challenges getting loan financing, such as startup companies.
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