Mega-successful iWeb trio play the startup game with Wealthica
Considering its cofounders sold their last business for $145 million, perhaps there should be more attention paid to new Montreal fintech startup Wealthica.
Indeed, Eric Chouinard and Martin Leclair, two of the three cofounders of Wealthica sold iWeb, a Montreal-based web hosting provider to Internap in October 2013 for the whopping sum. Wealthica’s third cofounder, Simon Boulet, served as iWeb’s IT director.
Wealthica officially opened its doors in April of this year.
The trio created the dashboard tool because they were tired of spending too much time understanding and consolidating investment statements from different providers. More than anything else the startup seems to want to help people who struggle to understand traditional financial reports.
More than that, the guys wanted an online dashboard to see their total net worth where they could see and remember events that impacted their portfolio, have lifetime access to historical wealth data, accurately assess fees, understand performance and currency impacts and get reports built for the investor, not the advisor.
Wealthica offers a dashboard that brings the user a complete and total picture of their money, specifically within investments. It’s an “accurate and unbiased, consolidated view of your wealth,” according to the guys.
All on the same screen, a person can see their Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA), their Questrade online stock portfolio, their retirement savings plan and even other liquid investments like their car or their mortgage. The dashboard provides daily updates, performance and transaction reports for an aggregated view of one’s net worth, investment performance and fees. Users get easy access to documents collected by their financial institutions consolidated in a single view that can be shared with accountants.
To date, Wealthica has about 120 users managing a total aggregate of over $250 million in assets.
See the impact of fees by comparing fees across institutions and how they affect your returns #investmentmanagement pic.twitter.com/pehHDnh2tv
— Wealthica (@wealthica) July 12, 2016
Boulet calls Wealthica the “Mint for investments,” referencing the popular mobile app owned by Intuit that allows anyone with a bank account to see their financial accounts in one place and set budgets.
They started Wealthica to “challenge the status-quo of financial institutions and portfolio advisors,” with a desire to bring “transparency and simplicity in an industry where fees often have priority over returns.”
“The whole idea is to manage your entire investment portfolio,” Boulet told MTLinTECH. “That also means assets like land, income buildings, a boat or a wine collection. You can track it all.”
The startup is still pre-revenue and the tool is completely free. Wealthica will add premium features including a Wealthica Advisors edition that will come with the charge. Financial advisors would use this to better serve their own clients with access to a more complete picture. Wealthica can also make money off of its API through other fintech companies interested in using the technology. They built integration with Canadian banks and financial institutions and the technology retrieves investment portfolio info from those places.
Wealthica’s goal over the next six months is revenue, and that will include a major push to improve the Advisors edition of the tool.
Wealthica isn’t the only fintech startup recently launched in Montreal. Former Les Affaires reporter Julien Brault recently launched HardBacon, a comparison tool for online stock brokerages and robo advisors. Brault continues to be active in tech-related content with his new weekly series on Les Affaires called “From Zero to a Million.”
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