YouSaid · the spoken record

Adam Dell

lines on the record
20
first
2018-07-20
most recent
2018-07-20
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “It's exciting to work at a place that recognizes the fundamental shifts that are coming in consumer finance. You know, I think about Amazon as a competitor. I think about data as a competitive advantage. I think about blowing up these business models predicated on fees and high interest. I think about those things as transformative shifts in the ecosystem of finance. And for Goldman Sachs, given its legacy and given that it historically has not been in the consumer-facing segment of the market, to make such a big bet on clarity, on Marcus, and to really part the seas and create an ecosystem and an environment where innovation and a startup can be built is a very exciting proposition. To me, it's a very...”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “You've been at Goldman now for a few months guessing working at this firm's a little different than your earlier life. What have you liked? What's been harder to adjust to in your short time here so far?”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “Think, well, this is my mortgage money, this is my grocery money, this is my vacation money, this is the money I have for, you know, the college fund that we need to create that's not quite there yet and not quite where it should be. And so by creating these separate buckets of savings, we help customers understand the power of setting it and forgetting it.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “It's hard to save. One of the behavioral economic principles that works quite well given the nature of human behavior is to set it and forget it. We're going to set aside a certain amount each month, each week, and it's going to go into this account, and we're not going to touch it. That feature is available on Clarity Money. Customers love it. It's one of these delightful things where, oh, wow, I can't believe there's already $15,000 in that savings account or $500 in that savings account. I just set it up a few months ago and look how much is already there. That's one of the things that we do to exploit the power of the psychology behind behavior. So that's an example of how we help consumers think about the importance of savings. It recognizes a very fundamental condition about money, which is that it is fungible. Consumers...”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Exactly Yeah, I mean, that's a very important point. I'm glad you raised it. The average person who gets a statement online or in the mail, there's a number at the bottom of the page. And it's either way too big or way too small. And they're holding that piece of paper and they're standing in front of a massive building with no windows, no doors, just a whole bunch of people inside that are hard to reach. And that is the plight of the average consumer as it relates to their credit card bill or their insurance statement or their cable bill. And they feel very powerless to navigate that in any meaningful way. If we can present real options, an arm's length view into what choices a consumer can make to better their financial lives, we will have one done.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “How do I get a table at a restaurant, right? Exactly. Yeah, no, it's interesting because obviously the big companies that extend you credit, the credit card companies themselves, the banks behind them, they're using big data. They're using AI about you and others to decide whether or not you deserve another $5,000 or $1,000 on your credit card. So what's interesting about what you're talking about is trying to leverage that data about yourselves and others in artificial intelligence on behalf of the consumer.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Constantly evaluating your behavior by looking at your spend patterns to uncover things about your life that we think we can improve. Similarly, when you use Google, it uses artificial intelligence to predict what it is you're really looking for when you start to tap keys into that search bar. And so recognizing that this is an incredible opportunity to augment the cognitive ability of any one individual to crack a problem. How do I get to the movie theater? How do I save for college?”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “At the core of artificial intelligence is a notion that a set of codified algorithms can learn from the behavior of a large set of data and get better at uncovering insights over time, demystifying AI is one of those things that I think is important because it helps people understand how it can help them. Artificial intelligence is an opportunity to empower consumers and individuals. It's a tool that we can use to strengthen the power of our understanding of the choices we face. And if you think about it, you have artificial intelligence at your disposal right now. In your pocket is a device that has clarity money on it and it is”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Surprised by how quickly putting aside even $100 a week, how quickly that grows. Okay, now I'm starting to have a little bit of a nest egg for some goal that I have. What else can I do to improve my financial health? Maybe I'll invest in the market. Maybe I'll take some steps to improve my credit score. It's these small incremental steps that ultimately get you there.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Well, again, you have to start kind of small. If you want to save for college, you should start now. So how do you begin to do that? Well, I don't have a lot of extra income each month. So how am I ever going to be able to pay for that for my kids or for myself? Well, let's look at how much money you have left over each month and let's set aside a little bit. And maybe you invest some of that. It's very difficult for someone to understand how to solve a complex problem like their finances in one fell swoop. It's about a journey. It's these small little steps that we begin with that gets a person on the road to financial health. I'll give you a specific example. We have lots of customers who download the app because they were compelled by this notion of, hey, I can cancel my recurring subscriptions. They do that and then they say, hmm, okay, well, now what can I do? Well, I'll open up a savings account. Okay, now I'm starting to save.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Gee, how am I ever going to get on top of my finances? We think of financial health as a journey, much like physical health. It's not something you can do in one day. It's something you have to work at constantly. By making it easy and by creating a set of defaults that require the customer to do very little to uncover those insights and take action on them, we're exploiting the natural inertia that exists and taking the complexity away from those steps.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Yeah, it's a very good question, and it gets to the great insights that have been uncovered by the behavioral economics trend. Thaler and Kahneman and the work done there in understanding how to nudge people in the right direction. It's very hard to change behavior. One of the things that you learn as you study the psychology of debt is that when you have debt, the thing to do is to pay off your smallest debt first because you need to have that dopamine hit to the brain and to have the recognition that, hey, it's possible for me to get on top of this. I can improve my financial life. Here are the steps to do it. And so by parsing out these specific actions in small discrete attainable steps, we've taken away the enormity of feeling overwhelmed by”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “You know, the notion that individuals are rational actors is a false one. Individuals are emotional, and they make financial choices based on emotion. And they're not checking their balance to figure out how much they actually have as much as they're checking their balance to determine whether or not they can afford something that they want right now, which is an incredible insight into the voracious emotional nature of the individual consumer. Before I started clarity, I spent about a year studying, really studying what the average American feels and thinks vis- ⁇-vis their money. And the reality is that the average consumer would rather drink a beer than think about their money. They would rather ignore the plight.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “25% interest with a lower interest rate personal loan. Those kinds of options are now proliferating in the marketplace. And it's very good news for the consumer because they now have a much richer set of options as they think about navigating their financial choices. It used to be if you wanted to borrow money, you could go to your friends and family. You could go to the bank. You could go to a pawn shop. And that was pretty much it.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “In consumer finance really created a perfect storm for the value proposition of clarity, which is a simple mobile device that uses data to give you a crystal clear view into your real financial choices and an ability to take action to change the course of your financial life. And that is a big shift. The other thing I would say is that There is a legacy in financial services predicated on a business model that is tied to fees, hidden charges, high interest rate that a number of the fintechs are effectively attacking. And I put Marcus by Goldman Sachs in the category of new entrants who are presenting consumers with very compelling choice. Pay off your credit card debt where you're paying 20.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “I think there are three things that are moving the needle for consumer finance. One is the smartphone. People are making profound decisions about getting a loan, getting a credit card, managing their money on a smart device. The second is data. There is enormous value to be gleaned out of analyzing your own transaction history and understanding where you spend your money, how you spend your money. And the third big one is this notion of transparency and simplicity. If you look at all of the noise in financial services over the last 10 years, those organizations that rose to prominence as startups are focused on notions of transparency and advocacy, simplicity. And so those three, what I consider to be tectonic shifts.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “And so while working on Civitas, it struck me that the same opportunity to apply data science and machine learning existed in consumer finance. And that led me to start clarity, which is we use your transaction history and your data to analyze your options and present you with better choices. And that is how I ended up at Goldman Sachs.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “And yet they're straddled with debt and no degree and therefore less capacity to earn additional income. Massive problem. A problem that can be solved by better decision making. What's the right school for you to go to? What's the right degree path for you to take? Could we use data science to help individuals make better choices along their career path? And so that led to the creation of a company called Civitas Learning, which is solving that very problem for universities. And actually, while working on Civitas, it struck me that the same problem exists for consumer finance. Getting a college degree requires discipline, delayed gratification, and an understanding of your options. And those are essentially the same dynamics that exist around consumer finance.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “Correct. And so I started a company called Message One that solved that problem. I was also very curious about education. I believed that over time education would be transformed by data. And one of the fundamental problems in our country is graduation rates, an incredibly high percentage of people who go to college don't graduate. And about half of those can't finish because of economic reasons.”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “I've been doing startups and venture capital for about 20 years. And I have a very specific approach to my work, which is I look for problems and I look for problems that I think are going to be solved by technology. If I can find a startup that is attacking a problem with technology, I'll invest in it. And if I can't find one of those, I'll start it. The first time I did that was with a company called Message One, which provided backup email systems to large corporations early in the 90s. It struck me that email was going to become an incredibly important part of the enterprise stack. And I had the fundamental question of what happens if it goes down and what do you do? How does a company continue to operate if their email system is no longer functioning?”

    2018-07-20 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Getting Clarity on Personal Finance's Mobile Shift · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT