Adam Rice, BA '08, is the epitome of a strategic thinker – I don’t know if he plays chess - but if he does it must be at a Grandmaster level.
As a young child with a summer job mowing lawns, he learned quickly about the risk/reward ratio. If Mr. Jones didn’t hand over the required number of quarters his lawn got no free haircuts! His summer gig was just the beginning of Rice’s passion for business.
While studying International Relations at the University of Hong Kong, he found time to run some small businesses on the side – a children’s clothing export company, and later on, an online real estate service. The real estate platform collected data for consumer use. However, it turned out not to be as straightforward as Rice expected - as not all agents were completely upfront in their dealings. Rice saw an opportunity to pivot the business to report the bad apples to their parent companies. A successful strategic move – if somewhat risky.
Then in 2012, tragedy struck. Rice suffered a seizure and fall which left him with a traumatic brain injury that needed hospitalization and left him with ongoing memory problems. Friends and family thought a long rest was the cure. Rice disagreed. He thought flexing and retraining the brain was a better choice.
He enrolled at Western University to pursue a graduate degree in Communications and Management, which he followed up with an MBA. With his ongoing brain issues, the school work proved incredibly challenging, but he persevered. Rice credits these studies as being a vital part of his rehabilitation. Today he sits on the board of Head Injury Rehabilitation Ontario to help others facing similar challenges.
It was during his MBA that Rice had the proverbial entrepreneur’s “AHA” moment.
Rice was in a dental office and overheard another patient asking if the dentist could finance her necessary dental work. The answer was a resounding “no”.
Rice thought wouldn’t it be great if the answer could have been “yes.”
In fact, wouldn’t it be better if she had multiple people on a platform vying for her business? Lenders that would give her better choices than being trapped in a predatory payday loan system which usually results in a hopeless treadmill of debt. Rice soon found out there were a lot of online lenders that were digitized and had capabilities for full online adjudication. These lenders could help the dental patient access the credit she needed quickly, conveniently, and at better rates than the quick - but not so easy - credit cards or payday options.
As a result of this experience, and his subsequent research, Rice founded Asset Direct in 2015 with the goal of providing global financial services to help people get control of their financial future.
It is through their Canadian subsidiary, LoanConnect, Asset Direct got its start helping match borrowers with appropriate lending solutions. The platform is a two-part system. The first part is an online search engine that enables consumers to search for loans from Canadian lending institutions that offer loans outside of traditional mortgages or lines of credit. The second part is for business owners and sales professionals to allow them to offer their customers a portal to access credit solutions that match their needs, in real-time.
Unlike the dentist, these companies can now say "yes."
Rice quickly saw that these services created a unique opportunity for Canadians, especially new Canadians who had no credit history and no means to approach a traditional bank. He engaged MaRS Market Intelligence to find out where else globally this model might benefit people. Their research pointed toward opportunities in India, Brazil and South Africa.
Entering the Indian Market
Rice chose India for several strategic reasons – they have an established fintech system with alternative lenders, they have a more open banking structure than Canada, they have a universal identity card system, nearly everyone has a mobile phone, and the language of business in India is English.
All solid reasons to support the decision to expand into India.
The most compelling reason of all was that only 7% of people in India have been able to qualify for a bank loan. That meant a whopping 93% of the population was underserved by traditional banks. Many have never transacted with a bank through the course of their entire lives.
Rice hopped on a plane to India to investigate.
With hundreds of millions of underbanked people, Rice decided that he would need to serve them in their local communities through people they trusted; and who better than their local corner store. He thought to empower small shop owners to say, “I can sell financial products that will fit your needs and work for you.”
Through Asset Direct’s Indian subsidy, CreditLinks, a shop owner is easily onboarded by simply scanning a QR code. The shop owner would then have access to a system that gives them all they need to know to sell the product, with weekly calls to support them and prizes and campaigns to inspire them.
The shop owner displays a QR code their customers would scan and through a few personal questions they can get matched with access to a variety of financial products tailored to fit their needs. They can be approved in as little as five minutes.
This platform opens up a world of hope. Even the smallest shop owner can build a book of clients to generate consistent income – and the customer suddenly has a whole new horizon of financial opportunities - starting with the establishment of credit history, to eventually getting a credit card and entering the world of the online economy.
Rice notes that it can be fundamentally life-changing for people to go from being totally offline and cash-based to entering a world where online transactions are possible.
We are turning the developing world from off to on.
Instead of visiting each store, Rice’s company, Asset Direct, cleverly partners with distributors who are already calling on these shops – such as wholesale phone card suppliers, and potato chip suppliers. The distributors earn a small commission for every QR stand they get into the hands of the shop owner and CreditLinks’ partner network grows at zero cost of acquisition.
Rice notes everyone is super-motivated; the distributors build their own book of clients as do the store owners. Essentially the business is isolated from competitive attack as everyone is invested in the success of their own client book. Asset Direct rewards shop owners who refer traffic over long periods with a retirement income – providing them with commission payments for 10 years after they have ceased referring. Something unheard of and potentially life-changing for entire families.
Rice notes the platform generates a tremendous amount of valuable data which is highly protected and anonymous. The consumer enters their personal information, and data on past payment history - usually the ubiquitous mobile phone payments - and other pieces are gathered from various social sites. This information lets the customer receive personal loan choices based on their best fit and the highest propensity to convert. Many lenders have unique requirements for an applicant, Asset Direct acts as an intermediary and asks all lender-specific questions of the applicant, so the customer has a simple application process to submit to multiple lenders. During the tracking on the conversion side, Asset Direct garners further data on payments and defaults from external sources. This results in vital big picture information as the cohort grows.
We essentially have a credit score for the developing world.
With a view toward long-term growth, Rice selects venture capitalist partners who not only have access to funds but the ability to share their existing connections within developing markets.
The company currently has over 400,000 users and receives over 7,000 financial product and insurance applications each week. The company has generated millions in revenue to date and proven the concept to be viable.
Rice recently launched a crowdfunding initiative through FrontFundr, and is looking to raise $500,000 USD to continue scaling through Canada and India as well as entry to additional markets. He is excited to offer everyday Canadians the chance to be part of the Asset Direct success story with as little as a $250 investment.
I am hopeful that within the next 18 months we can have the world’s largest network of financial sales agents ever!
Rice believes passionately in his mission of bringing the benefits of banking to the underbanked. With Rice’s strategic mindset at the helm of Asset Direct, this is an ongoing Canadian success story that we can all play a part in.