You would think that Daniel Vranesic, CEO of Toronto-based TXIO, would be difficult to surprise with numbers.
For years, TXIO has licensed its banking, payments and brokerage platform to a range of global clients. But when the company developed Neontra, an app for managing and planning personal finance, Vranesic decided to test the product’s “non-essential spending” category on himself.
“I knew I made too many non-essential purchases, especially sports-related gear for my kids,” he said. “But when our AI-generated insights told me how my non-essential spending compared to the average Canadian, I was shocked.”
“When we envisioned what a perfect finance app looks like, it would be a single pane of glass for financial life.”
Daniel Vranesic
The struggle to understand and manage your own spending is what inspired TXIO to develop Neontra, which helps people better understand and manage their finances. Neontra aims to turn the daunting into the doable, making financial literacy and management an achievable goal for everyone.
“When we envisioned what a perfect finance app looks like, it would be a single pane of glass for financial life,” said Vranesic.
To create that simplified and streamlined view, Neontra integrates all facets of a user’s financial life, including spending, saving, budgeting, and investing, by pulling information from banks, brokers, and credit card companies into one platform.
The app analyzes each user’s financial data to give them a 360-degree view of their financial life. It uses artificial intelligence to generate personalized insights, such as ratios on savings, investing and debt, as well as recommend new products and services, and assist users with their long-term financial planning.
Lastly, the app connects users with a financial advisor, which Vranesic described as a critical piece.
“We think one of the most fundamental and important aspects would be connecting the user with professional financial advice, so we facilitate that connection within the app,” he added.
While there are a number of personal finance management apps on the market, Vranesic believes that Neontra is set apart by its powerful forecasting. By showing the client what their income, spending, debt and investments will look like five, 10 or 30 years down the line, Neontra helps them plan for a better and more secure financial future.
The app automatically updates and maintains information across all aspects of a user’s financial landscape, a true “set it and forget it” approach. It allows users to track their progress in various areas, whether it’s monitoring their net worth, budget status, investment performance, vacation savings, or retirement plans.
“You have to make the user experience as easy and frictionless as possible. If people have to constantly work to derive value from the tool, odds are they’ll get frustrated and give up,” Vranesic noted.
In addition to reaching individual consumers, including those currently seeking alternatives to the recently-shuttered Mint, Vranesic sees a broader potential for tools like Neontra within employee benefit programs.
Employers can already offer Neontra to their employees, and the company is in the process of launching a more robust offering that helps employers make the app a taxable benefit.
“Finances are on the majority of people’s minds, even if sometimes not consciously, and your financial health impacts almost everything you do,” Vranesic said. “We believe Canadian employers can help their employees and ultimately their bottom line by investing in their employees’ financial wellbeing with apps like Neontra.”
Vranesic also sees Neontra as ready for open banking, a system which gives users control over how their data is shared and used.
“Open banking will, in our opinion, benefit Canadians by providing access to new products and services, at lower costs, and also just reducing friction in the movement of data,” he said.
Despite numerous delays in Canada’s adoption of open banking, Vranesic said Neontra is already facilitating transactions across various institutions and asset classes, so that when open banking does arrive, Neontra users will be set to make the most of it.
“I think the average person knows a little about their own finances, and more often than not, they wish they knew more,” he said. “The more you work at it and learn, the better you get at it, and that was certainly true in my case.”
Start planning for a brighter financial future today. Visit Neontra at neontra.com.
Feature image courtesy micheile henderson via Unsplash.
