Not Fintech Investment Advice: monk, MKIII, Wealth Architect, & CloutScore

Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I do what we do best: talk about fintech startups we're absolutely not giving investment advice on. First up is monk, an accounts receivable AI that helps small businesses get paid faster. Accounts payable has been well-served by spend management tools. Accounts receivable for small businesses is still stupidly hard. We dig into the power dynamics of getting paid, the channel partnership question, and why community banks might be the unexpected distribution answer. Next we turn to MKIII (pronounced Mark 3), embedded AI underwriting with model insurance for banks and credit unions. Drop the model into your lending workflow, approve more borrowers, and if the model drifts and causes losses, reinsurers on the backend cover it. Lending insurance isn't new. But as for insuring the underwriting model itself? We’ve never seen that before.  Then there's Wealth Architect, an AI financial planner that lets you share your goals in natural language and builds out a full plan, Monte Carlo stress tests included. Great concept. We argue about who actually owns the long-term financial planning conversation, and whether any standalone tool can establish that center of gravity against Revolut, Cash App, and Plaid-plus-Perplexity all showing up at once. We close with CloutScore, which goes directly to the platforms where digital earners make their money (like Uber, Etsy, Shopify), rather than just reading what shows up in their bank account. CloutScore's website cites 76 million Americans earning outside traditional employment, but their income is fragmented and irregular in ways traditional underwriting has no framework for. Plus, Simon's manifesting an end to being the disappointed dad of crypto (and this time, there's reason for cautious optimism).  This episode is brought to you by Persona.  Persona is the identity verification platform trusted by fintech's fastest-growing teams, from YC-backed startups to publicly traded companies. Build your identity program with enterprise-grade tools, starting at $0 with Persona's Startup Program. Fintech Takes listeners can get a full free year through Persona’s Startup Program at withpersona.com/ftt Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. Follow Simon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/ Substack: https://sytaylor.substack.com   Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Companies featured: https://monk.com/ https://mkiii.ai/ https://www.wealtharchitect.ai/  https://www.cloutscore.us/