Our project was featured in an article on Talent Egg, a Canadian career website for students and recent grads. Not only does the organization offer job listings, but it writes articles on student initiatives and career advice. True to their mission, they get students and recent grads to write the articles.
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You are invited to attend an organizational meeting for the Waterloo Banking Project. Learn more about our plans to create student-run financial services in Waterloo. Students from both the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University are welcome to attend. Find out how you can contribute to this worthwhile initiative.
Waterloo Banking Project Organizational Meeting (UW)
Wednesday 26 May 2010 5:30 p.m.
SLC 2143
Update: We added another meeting at WLU campus
Waterloo Banking Project Organizational Meeting (WLU)
Wednesday 26 May 2010 3:30 p.m.
SBE 1230
If you plan to attend the meeting or are interested in participating, please fill out this online form:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dEktQTJ2UUxGSUpxMExsb1JkV1VoZnc6MQ
The purpose of these questions is to collect information about potential staff members. We want to know about people, what they expect from the project, what they can offer, and when they’ll be available. As well we want to know people’s ideas.
Email questions or comments to waterloobanking.com@gmail.com.
So, people can get a better understanding of WaterlooBanking Project and our plans, we made a screencast presentation.
In it we describe our problem statement, our vision for student-run financial services, and the basics of our plan. We also outline our plans for the next two years and tell interested people how they can contribute to our efforts.
Please watch the video and tell your friends.
Prashanth Gopalan from TechVibes interviewed Abhi about the Waterloo Banking Project in April.
He posted the interview in question-answer format. Abhi’s answers describe the project well and he mentioned Megan’s contribution too.
Here’s an excerpt.
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A student named Peggy from Taiwan’s Chengchi University e-mailed us asking to interview us a few weeks ago. We agreed and she sent us some questions. We sent back responses and answered her followup questions.
About a week later she sent us the link.
After our press release a reporter from the local daily newspaper, the Waterloo Region Record, contacted Abhi. She interviewed him and arranged for a photograph. Our project was featured in the newspaper a couple days later.
Our survey is now closed and exams are finished. Now it is time to catch up on communications and analyze the survey data.
After we launched the survey we sent out a media release to try to inform more people about our vision and to attract more respondents to the survey.
This is what we sent out:
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Abhi made the final changes and published our student finance survey today.
With the responses we hope to find out more about Waterloo students’ financial situations and requirements for financial and banking services. The responses will help us as we work to develop and improve financial services for students in Waterloo.
As an incentive for answering our questions, respondents will be eligible for a draw prize of an Apple iPad. Only current students at University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College, who are registered at campuses in Waterloo Region, are eligible for a chance at the prize.
Alumni, faculty and staff and other people with relationships to the local university are welcome to respond, but are not eligible for the draw.
You can find the survey at:
http://www.askitonline.com/survey/waterloo-banking-project/
If you have questions, please comment below or e-mail us at:
waterloobanking.com@gmail.com
As a part of our market research we are implementing a survey to find out about their need for financial services, knowledge of financial management, how much people know about credit unions, and how willing they would be to support or use student run financial services.
In planning the full survey, we made a test survey specifically about personal financial management. The survey was not meant to represent the population, but help us with subsequent surveys. The results gave us an insight into people’s financial habits and ideas of how we might structure questions differently.
Here is a review of some of the results:
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Yesterday night I presented this project idea at Waterloo StartupCamp. It starts out with people putting up ideas for presentation on a whiteboard. We each talk for 30 seconds. Then attendees would then vote on which ones they wanted to hear.
My 30 second pitch was like this:
Hello, I am Ryan Chen-Wing. We want to start co-operative student-run financial services for students. There would be three main benefits. One, student staff would have an amazing experience. Two, students could use financial services that not only save them money, but make them money. Three, students would be educated about personal financial management. I want to get ideas for possible innovative financial products that make sense for students and would be pleased to answer your questions. So, please vote for me.
Out of 12 ideas, I was voted tied for seventh.
Then when it was my turn to give my five minutes, I said:
So, our project name is Waterloo Banking Project. In offering the services of a deposit-taking institution there are two possible was to set up. One is to get a charter independently and the other is to operate in partnership with an existing credit union. An example of the first one is at Georgetown University which is entirely student run and they control $10 million in assets. Examples of the partnership model exist in the student caisse system mainly in Quebec where high school groups operate a student branch of a local caisse
populaire or credit union.We see four main keys to success in our operations: cultivating a good partnership, raising capital from sponsors and from alumni, developing the students staff and building the organization, and attracting
students as customers.So, I’d like to get ideas for products and answer your questions. We expect to offer a full suite of products like chequing accounts and savings accounts, credit cards and things like that, but we also want
to have products that make sense for students. I’ll give you an example:There are many students in co-op at Waterloo. About half of them in any given year will have two co-op work terms and may end up owing some income tax. But under the lifelong learning plan funds only have
to be in a registered plan for three months before they can be withdrawn to pay tuition. So, we could set it up that in September of the year to put savings for tuition in an RRSP. In December they can withdraw it to pay tuition, just as they would from their savings account, but come tax time they would get more of a rebate.So, that’s something that gives the student more money for switching to us. So, that’s it. The project is called Waterloo Banking Project and our website is waterloobanking.com. That’s our project blog.
Then I got questions about stability, revenue model, and alumni retention. I also got suggestions like bidding to be provider of the alumni credit card.
After the event more people talked to me including designers, a guy suggesting a training program, and someone suggesting places to look for similar models.
update: A friend pointed out that the registered plan idea wouldn’t work as described. Since lifelong learning plan is a loan and doesn’t give additional deduction, in many cases it would be better to save your deductions for when your income is higher.
