Navigating FINTRAC Compliance: Exploring the Mission of ReallyTrusted

Hello, and welcome to the very first edition of the No

your compliance podcast, otherwise known as the KYC

podcast. I am very excited for both people who are listening

today, I'm very excited for you to have picked our podcast to

listen to, and really happy for you if you didn't. My name is

Greg dent, I am your host here. And the founder of really

trusted and really trusted is the one bringing you this

podcast. And I am happy to be joined today by my co founder,

who happens to share my last name of all things. Daniel

Daniel Dennett, welcome to the show.

Hey, good to be here.

So at the beginning of a podcast, it is customary to

do a bit of a biography of the guest. And I will, I've known

you for longer than anyone in the world, which should scare

you a bunch. But I'll be kind and give you a bit of a

professional biography today. So Daniel Dennett is the CTO of

really trusted he is the co founder of really trusted,

Daniel does all of the work on the tech side of things. And if

we think to his background prior to that, and we've been at this

for six and a bit years now, actually almost six years to the

day, and as I think about that, so not six and a bit, six years,

almost to the day. The prior to that Daniel has always been

geek, and has gotten deep into all sorts of technical things,

email marketing, network management, website, hosting,

you name it, his life has been in front of computers. And so he

is the perfect person to be the CTO of a company where I can

create problems that he then has to find technical solutions to

so Daniel, with that introduction, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Great to be here.

I wanted to do our first episode about the history

of really trusted and the who really trusted is and the why

really trusted is because people who are going to be listening to

this podcast, I hope, are going to be compliance nerds, just

like us who phones ring with the 24 theme song, in case people

missed it. And, and that's okay. But my really truly my hope for

the audience of this show is that it's gonna be a bunch of

compliance nerds, people who really kind of want to get into

the weeds on anti money laundering. And the similar

topics we're going to be discussing are really into the

weeds of of you, no adverse media, sees the assets, the pros

and cons of watch lists, like topics that are pretty AML

specific. And we'll go pretty deep on some of those. But I

think it'd be helpful for our audience to understand where

we're coming from as a company and why we're interested in this

topic. So we thought of that I thought I'd asked you to kind of

give us a two to three minute version of the history of, of

what really trusted is who we are and what we're doing out

there.

Yeah, that's a great question. I'm going to

start by talking about the name because I think the name

actually talks about who we are as company and how we got

started. really trust it. Why is that word trust in there. And it

comes from when the real estate industry lost public confidence

in British Columbia government stepped in and said, You guys

are not doing a good enough job of regulating yourself. We're

taking over? Yep. And as part of that process, they introduced a

bunch of disclosure and paperwork requirements. And we

were chatting one day, you've been a successful busy agent for

some time now. And there's the conversation. I remember you

having with me before it happens, saying, What are they

doing? This is going to introduce so much friction? How

am I gonna do business? Yep.

That was kind of where it started with a single forum

where it's like, I need to be able to fill out this form.

Before I can talk to a customer. That is a major point of

friction for me. And how can we make this easier? And, you know,

that's at the core of our company in a lot of different

ways. Because we are agent focused, we're starting from the

perspective of the customer, you know, you were our first

customer, right? Then it was your team, you know that it was

people at your brokerage people, people in our sphere that we

knew. But, you know, going back back to that initial thing about

the loss of trust. What the government forced down

everybody's throats, whether they wanted it or not, was the

beginning of the process of creating processes that create

accountability and that allow the public, the consumer to

start to have confidence that everything is on the up and up.

And I'm speaking in a really broad terms here. But that

foundationally, I think speaks to kind of how we got where we

are today.

Right, so if I could distil that, I think that's

probably a pretty good explanation, in fact, of why the

name and what we generally believe. And I think if I could

tease out a few of those, and there, some of these are in our

mission statement, and our vision, and our and our core

values for that matter, depending on which of the points

I'm making here, but conceptually around, making it

easier for professionals to fulfil their regulatory

obligations has been a really one of the foundational

principles for us. But doing that in a customer centric way.

And by the way, that's actually the mission statement of really

trusted is to make it easier for professionals to fulfil their

regulatory obligations. I think we've got the words underserved,

under technologically underserved professionals, but

conceptually anyhow. But doing it in a customer centric way.

And that's actually one of our core values is making sure that

all of our stuff is customer centric. And, and honesty is

also one of those core values. And that comes back to the trust

and making sure that we're establishing a we're helping

professionals establish a trustful relationship, or

trusting relationship with their clients, and creating in in our

case of regulatory or helping them with their regulatory only

required obligations, but doing it so that it's easier for them

to do that. I think if I were to distil it all. So that kind of

what you were saying there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that makes

sense. So that certainly speaks to the foundation of the company

and the the, the underpinnings and the core values. I touched

on a little bit there. What I think in my next question, you

might be able to unpack one of the other core values, I'll see

if you can get there. But what do we do today? And how did we

get to there? And why did we get to there?

Oh, so I mean, these days, were all about anti

money laundering. And, I mean, really, we got there from

talking to our customers from recognising that actually, the

disclosure forms that we started out dealing with were a small

problem, compared to their all of their anti money laundering

obligations, which, when we started, I'm not sure if anybody

in the industry was really paying attention to those

obligations. There was a yeah, maybe there were some people, if

so, I don't think we ever ran into.

There's an argument that some people still aren't

within the real estate industry. But that's a whole other

conversation. I'll hold the episode. I've got a whole

episode on that.

But, you know, what, when we started, the

conversation was, hey, build this out, to take the

information on the driver's licence and stamp it on a floor?

And that's it. Yeah. And if you do anything more than that,

you're complicating our lives.

And if you ask a real estate agent, in some cases

today, still, I'd like to think not at the brokerages we serve,

but some other brokerages, if you ask them what FINTRAC is,

they'll see it as that form that they have to fill out with the

ID information, which is such a, a lack of clarity of the

importance of the whole thing that it's it's almost funny to

me now. But sadly, it is still the belief that many, many in

the real estate industry have at this point, I think the the core

value I was hoping you'd get to was thoughtful leadership. And,

and you touched on it, but I kind of I'll put it out there

and let you kind of expand on a little bit from there.

So we've had and as you say, still have a lot of

customers were the way the thing that brought them to the app was

it makes their life easier. And what we've been able to do with

that is say yes, anytime we can, we're going to make your life

easier. And we're especially going to try to design the app

in a way that makes it easier for you to do the right thing

and it makes it easier for us to lead you down the path towards

regulatory compliance.

You So what I really want to touch on there, and you

said it, but I want to be really explicit about what you said.

And because I think it's super important is that we do want to

make it easier for people to do their jobs. But we also want to

put them into a position where they're better able to comply

and fulfil their obligations in a way that puts the what's the

whole industry, or at least the ones using our services in a

position where they're actually fulfilling their obligations in

a more real way? Is that, is that a reasonable reframe of

what you're trying to say there?

Yeah, absolutely.

I want to I want to belabour that point for a

second. Because ultimately, one of the things that I keep

saying, certainly internally and really, externally, if anybody

will listen to me, is that FINTRAC isn't about filling out

forms. And anybody who thinks that you can be a compliant

programme, just by filling out the form, just hasn't understood

their obligations. And we've, as a company have done a tonne of I

feel like a tonne of education and webinars and conversations

about that topic. And sometimes people get it. But sometimes I

feel like I'm screaming into the wind on that one.

Yeah, but I'd also say that the conversation has

shifted rapidly in the last six months, especially.

I would say it's been about a year, but yeah, I think

And thank goodness for that. Actually. Yeah, you're right.

It's maybe more than six months. But yeah, thank thank goodness,

I would say to knowing what I know today, and understanding

the importance of it, I am going to have a bunch any any realtor

who is listening up to this point is probably about to turn

it off. When I say knowing and understanding the importance of

FINTRAC. That's that's the Okay, I'm done with that podcast

message right there. But bear with me for a second here.

Because I actually do think there's, there's a case here

that I think is important for everybody to hear, which is that

it's really important for for our society, it's really

important for our businesses, it's really important for in my

case, for me personally, my ethical beliefs, that we do this

properly. And all of those things to me, all three of those

things are valid reasons to to make FINTRAC I don't think it

has to be a priority. You're a realtor, your priority should be

to sell houses. Let's be very clear about that. But I do think

it, you do, I have a hard time believing that, based on all

three of those things you wouldn't, as a realtor want to

at least do a good job of your FINTRAC obligations. Does that.

does that jive?

Yeah, it does. You know, I think there's something

you're touching on there that is really hard for most people to

see unless they spend a tonne of time digging into things, which

is that they're part of a machine. They're a cog in even

very large machine. And the consequences of doing a process

in an effective way that leads to suspicious transaction

reports being filed. That leads to people choosing not to even

try to do transactions because they know that if they were to

try to it would not lead to a result they want. These are

things that have downstream impacts that are completely

invisible to us. Yeah. Occasionally, we have like

little windows, but most of it, either because law enforcement

to protect their case doesn't want to share because they're

still building the case, or because there's a case that

never happens. There's there's people who are not getting

trafficked as a result of these processes. There are people that

are not losing their homes, there are people that are not

getting extorted or where the extortion is ending. There's all

these things which are like horrific prices versus society

that we don't like to look at too closely. But that happen,

that are being prevented by the simple act of a This is weird.

I'm gonna fill out this one. Well,

that is the perfect segue. I could not have asked

for a more perfect segue, in fact, into a bit of a teaser and

you know, in podcast world and in any sort of performance that

you're supposed to have teasers, right, so, here that is the

perfect teaser for a bunch of upcoming episodes where at least

two of the episodes where I can think of conversations I've had

or will be having, where we go through exact actual real life

examples of suspicious transaction reports that were

filed. And and all with the repercussions of those

suspicious transaction reports that were filed. So stay tuned.

And, and I think you're absolutely right. It is one of

the question Since I continually hear from real estate agents

when and it from from compliance officers within the real estate

sector as well, honestly. So what we send on all of these

reports, and what is the end result? And on this show, I'm

going to try and unpack a little bit of that in some of our

episodes, because it is a question that I know people have

so, so do come back. If you're, if you're still listening to us

15 minutes into this first episode. And you're still here,

I think you'll probably come back. But if for no other

reason, I'm giving you a reason. Now. We will be talking about

some really specific stuff. I have examples that I think will

be helpful. So what else? What else do you think people will

need to know about about either really trusted and or the the

KYC? podcast as as we kind of roll this out? And while people

talk about and invite people to come have conversations about

compliance and at the moneylender?

That's a great question. You know, I think one

of the other things that we really try hard as a company to

do is we try to have that close relationship with our customers,

you know, you were the original user of our app. And that made

it a lot easier for us to have that be part of that process.

Because the real estate industry, the nature of it is

that agents tend to know each other and build those

relationships over time. And I think as we've grown, that's

something that we're really cognizant of, and our entire

product development process, it doesn't matter what industry

we're talking about, we're always making a point of doing

our best to be part of the conversation to be solving

things, both from the perspective of the regulator,

and kind of what is the actual legislation here? What's the

public policy purpose? And then also, from the perspective of,

Okay, what does that look like for the person on the ground.

And I think we've got a unique perspective, in a lot of cases,

where, you know, we've seen regulations change coming down

the pipe, where, because of our connection to the professionals

that are actually dealing with the public that are performing

the service. Sometimes we've ended up seeing things that

aren't even necessarily obvious to the regulator. And so that's,

I think, an important part of who we are as a company and

something that we strive to continue to lean into. Yeah,

that's an interesting point, for sure. I think. I

mean, when I think about the products that we've launched in

the last couple of years, ignoring the app, and certainly

the app has been led by that, but the the other products,

we've developed the RT Academy platform, the RT manuals,

platform, and ultimately rolling that all up into FINTRAC.

Express. All of those were very much in response to this need

that we saw from compliance officers, that Canadian real

estate brokerage is through conversation after conversation,

where it became clear that they wanted to comply. And that's,

that has been the message I heard the most. But for the most

part, they don't know how, and that's, you know, I think that's

encouraging, but also really an important part of our fabric and

who we are kind of thing.

And, you know, it makes sense that they don't know

how it really does like these regulations, if you look at how

they started and kind of where they started. They started from

the assumption of big conglomerate businesses, you

know, big six banks, companies that have the resources to

dedicate teams keys to these processes.

Well, I don't know if you've been watching the FINTRAC

fines lately, but those big banks haven't been doing all

that well, either at these big processes.

Yeah, no, it's true. And that speaks to how

challenging it is. I mean, we've got an entire company here of

people that do this day in, day out, and it keeps us busy. And

that is all we're doing is making sure that we do our best

to understand all of this and build products in accordance

with that for a small business, which is most real estate

brokers, which is most mortgage brokers, which is like

99% of them, if not 99.9% of them. Yeah,

yeah. Yeah. Like, even if they can afford to hire

somebody whose full time job it is to do this, which let's be

clear, they can't that's just not that's not gonna work

financially. But, but even if they could, for that one person

to then go out and put in an effective compliance programme.

You still a challenge. And I think the fact that we're

fundamentally allowing the industry to pool its resources,

because a it's in a very indirect way, but you know, we

have a whole bunch of different like we have over 500 brokerages

using our software now, right? Oh,

we're probably into the seven or eight at this

point, actually. But yes, yeah, yeah.

So there's, there's leverage that all of our

customers get from the fact that, you know, we're serving

all those customers, we don't just have to recoup that

investment with 10 agents, we can do that over 10s of 1000s.

of agents, right. Yeah.

No, that makes sense. And I know that makes sense to

me. And I think that's kind of the what we've certainly tried

to do is to bring the best practice. But, again, if I were

to dilute what you've just said, it's we're bringing the best

practices to all of our customers, because we have

access to all of our customers.

Yeah, yeah. You know, we've definitely seen

situations where somebody's like, hey, I want to do this

thing. And we're like, whoo, we've seen somebody do this

thing. Here's why you don't want to do that this day. And they,

they don't need to know who did that. They don't need, like, the

fact that we can just give them reasons why it's a bad idea, or

why something's a good idea. You know, there's both the best

practices can cross pollinate within the industry. And I think

that leads to a result that is good for everybody.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Absolutely. Okay, well,

we don't have much time left. Is there any parting things that

you wanted to make sure that you had said before we before we

wrap this episode of The No, your compliance podcast?

You know, I think just like, as you said, at the

beginning, where six years in, I have a lot of gratitude for our

customers. And I think it's important to share that, you

know, we, it is unusual, to see some of the messages that we get

of like, thanks and appreciation for what we do. And, you know, I

just want to, to really, really tell people what a difference it

makes. You know, we're a small company. We're a small team, and

it's nice to be serving customers that appreciate us.

Yeah, I would echo that statement. So for both of

you who are still listening at this point in the episode, thank

you very much, both for your support of this show and for

your support have really trusted. I can think of no

better way to end episode number one of the KYC podcast. Thank

you very much for joining us today, Daniel.

Looking forward to being back at some point, I'm

sure.

I would imagine so I can't get readyrid of you yet.

Yeah, that's how it goes