October 6, 2010 in Blog, Project Updates by Ryan

Summary of Waterloo Banking Project launch meeting presentation

We held our launch meeting for the fall term last week.

Obviously, viewing the slides and reading some some of the presentation is not the same as experiencing it, but we want to make the ideas and content available to our supporters, so they can stay informed as our initiative develops.

Project Slide

Title Slide

Welcome to the Waterloo Banking Project launch meeting. Thank you for coming. The purpose of this initiative is to create student-run financial services in Waterloo.

This presentation will give you and understanding of the project and let you know how you can get involved and contribute. Then we will have a discussion about some of the issues we face and let you share your ideas about our project.

The directors who were presenting (Tricia, Ryan, Helena, and Eric) introduced themselves followed by each of the supporters who were at the meeting.

Vision Slide

As the cost of being a university education increases, money is becoming more and more a factor for students. For example, a third year Waterloo engineering student in 25 years ago could earn enough money for tuition in two weeks on co-op; now, it takes eight weeks of co-op salary to pay tuition.

Our project is about creating banking services and a educating students about personal finance so they can better handle the cost of being a student.

Our vision is to help students graduate with more money, less debt, and better financial skills.

Experts on Student Finance Slide

To help realize our vision, we must be experts on student finances. The more we know about costs and financial strategies, the better we will be able to help students plan and manage their money, so they can focus on their studies.

Successful Members Slide

If we can realize our vision of students having more money and better skills, they will be more successful. With more resources they will have more freedom to pursue opportunities and better skills will help them do more with the opportunities they take.

Business Model Slide

Our business model is based on three main parts: our student staff, a partner financial institution, and benevolent investment.

Our business will depend on an well-trained but unpaid student staff to serve our student members. Like the volunteer staff at the student credit union of Georgetown University, our staff will benefit from the amazing experience.

We will partner with an established financial institution to offer financial services, so we can focus on serving our members and benefit from the expertise of our partner.

We will also need capital to operate. We will approach individuals and institutions that support our worthwhile mission to contribute investment towards our working capital. Because they support our endeavour, we will ask them to accept a lower rate of return to keep our cost of capital low.

Motivation Slide

A big reason to get involved is that this has never been done before in Canada. You can tell you mom or your friends at other universities that you, a student at Waterloo or Laurier, helped start a bank (or financial institution). Not only will this project help students, but it will be something that we can be proud of starting.

Operations Slide

We intend to operate as a virtual organization. Supporters can become staff by taking on projects and assignments that help advance the project and bring us closer to launching.

We hope to offer students a reasonable opportunity to contribute and learn about this worthwhile endeavour, allowing them to contribute as their abilities and time allow.

Because of the significant co-op population at both universities, we want to ensure that students can stay involved and informed while away from campus.

Roles Slide

Our project has four classes of contributors: supporters, staff, directors. and advisors.

Supporters endorse our mission and want to stay informed of our progress. There isn’t any minimum level of commitment apart from joining our e-mail list, but supporters can help from time to time.

Staff take on projects and assignments and actively contribute to bringing us closer to creating our financial institution.

Directors commit to the project for at least a term and manage staff and co-ordinate activities of the project and we advance toward launch of student-run financial services for students in Waterloo.

Advisors are alumni and experts who can offer advice and guidance in launching our venture.

While anyone who agrees with our endeavour can be a supporter, the other roles — staff, director, advisor — sho0w the normal path of succession.

Departments Slide

For the next year our project will have three departments: Marketing & Communications, Human Resources & Training, and Research & Planning. They match our current goals of: spreading the word and sharing our ideas, developing our student staff, and creating our business plan.

We answered questions near the end of the presentation and then moved on to discussion.

For discussion, we posed three questions to our supporters and got them involved in thinking about some of the issues and challenges we face.

Our next staff meeting is at 5 p.m. on Thursday 7 October at UW Velocity.