How AI changes Canadian banking with Venn Co-Founder Ahmed Shafik | Building The North ep 002

Yeah, exactly.

I think in the beginning, it was almost like you're a reverse engineer.

Who are the people that are willing to take risk on using a fintech or trying a fintech? And I think initially, in the beginning, we always thought the US is always ahead.

The Europeans are always ahead when it comes to software, innovation, AI, banking, etc.

So initially, we actually targeted...

Canadian founders or Canadian CEOs who used to live in the US, who used to live in Europe, because they had that mindset of like, why is Canada so behind? I want a solution that I used to use in the US or I'm used to Europe on a daily basis.

And then they come here, they're using more legacy software, legacy banks.

So that was actually a bit easier for us where you target the folks that are looking for these solutions.

If you go to people who, one, you have no customers yet, are more traditional, and want to see brand building safety and trust is a huge thing, which Canadians typically are quite

more

conservative, it's an uphill battle.

So you kind of pick and choose initially who you want to target and then it helps you expand over time.

It's interesting that trust is such an important part of the process.

I know for me, I was banking with RBC for a long time and I actually had them charge me or try to charge me $40 to access my own statements.

And I was so confused.

I was like, this is my account.

Why do you need to charge me? And it's digital too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

To pay for their back office to go and get this.

And it's like, I don't really understand why this industry hasn't been disrupted sooner.

Yeah, yeah.

It's taken a while.

And even initially, there's a few other players doing the consumer side first, right? And it took them like five-ish years to even start making some dent in the market.

And then because trust and safety takes so long to build in the Canadian market.