When Tefari Bailey’s parents immigrated to Canada from Jamaica, they worked sometimes two or three jobs at a time to ensure he and their family had enough food on the table. Bailey recalls their work schedules being near-constant as a child, making just enough time to drop off and pick him up from school every day as a child.
“So I always had that motivation to ensure that nobody should ever have to go through the same financial struggles and issues that my parents had to go through when they first came to Canada,” the entrepreneur said.
It was part of what inspired him to found Hutsy, an AI-powered financial guide and planning app that applies personalized, real-time guidance and goal tracking based off of unique financial data.
The idea started as an online central bank where individuals wouldn’t have to pay fees (Canadians have some of the highest banking fees in the world). “But after talking to customers, the main point wasn’t necessarily that they needed another bank channel — they already had so many,” Bailey said. “It was that they needed access to financial guidance; they were financially stressed, they were living paycheck to paycheck, and they needed something to solve those needs.”
That’s where the artificial intelligence came in: “It wasn’t humanly possible to [provide financial advice] at an affordable rate for people. So we custom built out our own AI to do it,” he said.
Bailey learned from his own experience working at a bank that financial planning and advice isn’t accessible to everyone. “My dream job was to work at the bank, and I did that — I did everything from the entry level teller position all the way up to a financial investment advisor. I realized quickly that I thought I would be in a position of power to help people, but it wasn’t necessarily that way,” he said. “We had sales quotas, and for people who were coming in and needing financial advice, we could only give them advice based off of the products that we offered. It was all about, what can I sell you?”
He also saw that financial planning and advice through the bank was only available to those with a certain amount of wealth. “Many times you need over $250,000 in liquid assets. For those that don’t have that, private financial planners can cost $250 an hour,” he said.
And so Hutsy was born with the goal of serving those demographics that are excluded from traditional financial planning models — including young professionals that have just graduated from college or university, marginalized communities, low-income Canadians and new immigrants.
Bailey’s idea caught the eye of Dragons’ Den‘s Wes Hall in 2022, who provided a $500,000 investment after Bailey made it onto the show. And in 2023, Hutsy won the Black Entrepreneur prize worth $100,000 at Startupfest 2023 along with the Audience Choice Award, which was part of the Best Pitch competition as a top ten finalist.
Right now, users of the app can connect their bank account and have Hutsy analyze all of their transactions and banking history and give them personalized recommendations. Hutsy can provide advice on everything from spending and saving to investments and credit building.
Going forward, Bailey hopes to expand Hutsy to become more of a one-stop-shop to replace all your banking applications, such as integrating with credit bureaus to advise users on improving their credit scores. He also hopes to have a lending facility be a part of the app one day.
“Two million Canadians are using those payday lending services annually, and they’re trapped in the life cycle of debt,” he said. “I saw this firsthand working at the bank; a single mother would come to see me to put food on the table for her family, or they needed loan for emergency dental surgery or their car tire popping. But it wasn’t me approving or denying them, it was an algorithm. For those that got denied that $500 loan from us, they’d go to the Money Mart in the same plaza to get it instead.”
Through Hutsy, Bailey hopes to give individuals access to interest-free loans one day. “They won’t have to use those predatory payday lenders anymore.”
