Hey Product Hunt!
Zen Finance aims to make high quality financial advice more accessible to young professionals. Sorting through the sea of information online and understanding which advice pertains to you can be tricky, and fees at traditional financial advice firms can be intimidating.
We want to connect users to financial advisors and prepare them beforehand so that they can make the most of their chat. We’d love to get your feedback.
Cheers,
Devin and Manu
@dfinzer Interesting idea. But here's my question. I get calls from financial professionals ALL the time. Too much actually. I absolutely understand most people don't have this problem. But isn't this really just a customer acquisition platform for financial planners?
Because SMS has a much higher view/interaction rate, you're much more likely to land a client in person and close a deal.
Now if I could by texting have that financial guru analyze my spending habits (instead of computers like Mint), figure out places to save, call my school lenders and deal with renegotiating my loans, optimize my credit card APR and move all of my billing dates to the most optimum day of the month etc... now THAT would be incredible.
@steven_rushing Thanks for the great feedback. We think current services are often inaccessible to younger folks. A big part of that is the pricing model for a financial advisor, which we are addressing with this product. We also think financial advice is intimidating because people aren't prepared, so part of our service is to prepare you for your meeting with the financial advisor. You're right that if this a popular interaction method for users, it may also become a customer acquisition platform for financial advisors.
Really like your point about action-based financial services. We're also trying to explore how to move from advice towards taking action on the user's behalf.
This is another Invisible App! --> now for financial advice.
It's super simple:
1. Ask us a question like: "How much money should I put in my 401(k)?"
2. Get prepared for your consultation by answering (more) questions.
3. Speak with a licensed financial advisor.
A licensed financial advisor will call at your convenience. $25 for half an hour of professional advice.
@dfinzer can tell us more!
@dfinzer@bramk isn't it $50 a half hour?
Why would anyone pay for this advise? It can be automated.
I see these Qs on the site:
Q1. How much should I put in my 401k?
A. For 99% of us, as much as possible. If you are in the 1% you've already got a Swiss bank account :)
Q2. Can I currently afford a house?
A. If the mortgage is more than 4x your combined income, No.
Q3. Should I spend from my HSA account?
A. No, no no. Unless you've nothing else to buy food with.
Q4. Should I exercise my options?
A. You've got stock options? Nice. Ask your smartest co-worker, what he's doing.
Fatuous of me. Apologies.
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The project died? Link is offline.
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This is really cool. Love it.
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How do you curate the Fin Pro's? Are they contractors? Can any Fin Pro sign-up? I really like the idea of texting as a starting point - much smaller of a threshold to convince ppl to text first before setting up an appointment. Is the "chat" in-person or via Skype? Can I text a question and get an answer w/o having to setup a follow-up call? Overall, like I said above, I really like this platform and concept.
@jkent2910 Thanks for your feedback! Right now we hand select our financial advisors. They are all independent financial advisors, as opposed to contractors. We're definitely open to more Fin Pro's.
We see our value in making the process less intimidating to the customer, and helping them adequately prepare for their Fin Pro meeting. The chat is by phone at the moment, with video chat being a possibility. At the moment we can't give a full answer via text but that is definitely a next step.
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@dfinzer Gotcha. Is the reason for not being able to give a full answer have something to do w/ not having the right E&O insurance?
@jkent2910 Currently our model is set up this way because we're trying to provide the most reliable advice for our customers by ensuring it comes from certified financial planners or RIA's.
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This is definitely an interesting product, and i am personally interested, however got some questions on the service and/or the flow
a) How does the financial advisors curated? also do you also charge both user and financial advisors or only user?
b) There is service fee of $50 for 30min, if the meeting overruns, how do you plan to charge the user?
c) bit of tech question, how exactly this number work? meaning is this a normal AT&T type number , can we call the number to book appointment with financial advisors?
@ranjita_rs Thanks for your interest. Great questions.
a) At the moment, we hand pick our advisors. But we're open to letting new Fin Pro's sign up in the future too.
b) If the 30 minutes is up, the financial advisor will let you know and you can re-schedule another 30 minute slot.
c) Our number is text-only at the moment, but we've considered supporting direct calls. Do you see an advantage to supporting calls?
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