“Open banking is a teeny slice of that overall piece. It’s literally 2% of fintech,” said Christian Lassonde, founder and managing partner at Impression Ventures.
Lassonde made the remarks on the first day of Toronto Tech Week at a fintech overview event that took place at TechTO’s headquarters inside Startwell on King Street West. He offered a view that Canada is one of the best places to build a fintech company, and he challenged some of the most common assumptions on opportunities and barriers.
Open banking has become a popular entry point in fintech conversations, especially in Canada’s regulatory discussions.
The concept involves allowing consumers to securely share their financial data across banks, fintech companies, and third-party providers, enabling access to new financial services, improved borrowing options, and integrated digital experiences.
But while open banking garners attention, Lassonde argued that it represents only a small slice of a much larger fintech landscape. Financial technology also extends beyond consumer banking and payments to include sectors such as insurance, private capital markets, regulatory infrastructure, legal services and small business financing — many of which remain underdeveloped and underserved.
At the heart of Lassonde’s argument was a challenge to what he called a persistent misconception: that fintech’s most meaningful innovations have already been built. The focus on open banking, he argued, captures only a small fraction of what remains a much broader, largely untapped market where infrastructure, capital, and compliance challenges still create opportunity.
In his view, Canada’s combination of regulatory structure, talent, and emerging technologies positions it to lead in areas that many have overlooked.
Rather than being limited by regulation, Lassonde contended that Canadian fintech founders have unique advantages when they choose to tackle more complex, less crowded market segments.
Regulation reframed as Canada’s competitive advantage
Much of the skepticism around Canadian fintech comes down to regulation.
Lassonde argued that Canada’s principles-based, centralized regulatory system provides national clarity that most markets, especially the United States, can’t match.
In the U.S., fintech companies often face a patchwork of state-by-state rules, creating additional costs, compliance delays and complexity. In Canada, a company can scale nationally with far fewer regulatory barriers.
“Regulations here are way tougher everywhere else,” said Lassonde.
He pointed to Brim Financial as one example. The company launched a credit card in Canada without partnering with a traditional bank, a model far harder to replicate under U.S. state-by-state licensing.
“Build once under Canada’s pragmatic charter, and you can sell in New York, London and Frankfurt without rewriting your core,” Lassonde said.
While U.S. expansion still requires state-level licensing, Canada’s centralized system allows fintechs to build core compliance and product infrastructure that adapts more easily to both state and global markets.
Lassonde emphasized that this regulatory clarity doesn’t just benefit consumer banking startups. It also creates room for more innovative financial models — one example being immigration-linked financial services which was presented at today’s event.
Founders building into underserved fintech markets
Several founders joined Lassonde on stage to demonstrate how these gaps are already being addressed. Lassonde identified four major sectors that remain wide open for innovation: insurance technology, private credit, small and medium-sized business infrastructure, and embedded finance.
In the insurance industry, complexity continues to frustrate consumers.
“Insurance is absolutely confusing. You don’t know which broker to go to, who to buy it from, who sells what,” said Dejan Mirkovic, chief executive officer of Goose.
Goose addresses this confusion with an app-based platform offering direct access to life, critical illness, travel, accident, hospital and visitor insurance. With more than 70,000 policies sold, Goose is scaling its product lineup to meet growing demand for simpler, more transparent digital insurance products.
Private credit represents another large but operationally inefficient sector.
Private credit broadly refers to loans made by non-bank lenders to businesses, often for specialized or asset-backed financing. Unlike public markets or traditional bank lending, private credit deals are negotiated directly between borrowers and lenders, resulting in customized terms, higher complexity and limited transparency. Despite its rapid growth, the sector still relies heavily on fragmented data and manual oversight.
“Private credit is one of the most niche, unheard-of five trillion dollar markets out there,” said Mike Shum, chief executive officer of Cascade Debt. Transactions in this market often take months to close due to manual processes, custom reporting and scattered data management.
“Our goal is to be the single digital platform to scale debt capital and streamline operations,” said Shum. Cascade Debt is building automation tools to modernize underwriting, monitoring and compliance processes that remain heavily spreadsheet-based.
The intersection of immigration and financial access represents another overlooked frontier. In this space, companies such as BorderPass are applying artificial intelligence to automate complex legal and compliance processes, enabling immigrants to establish financial footing before arriving in Canada.
“Our traditional definition of fintech in this new world of AI is far too narrow,” said Josh Green, co-founder of BorderPass. “We’re redefining fintech and moving into mobility tech, the epicentre of the free movement of capital, people and legal infrastructure.”
Immigrant financial access represents a third underserved opportunity. Aditya Mhatre, co-founder of Beacon, shared how his personal experience returning to Canada in 2021 and being denied a mortgage despite strong financial credentials became a catalyst.
“There is no support system on the other side to allow immigrants to thrive and make a life for themselves here,” said Mhatre.
A chance Uber ride to Mississauga proved pivotal. During the long trip, Mhatre spoke with his driver about the financial challenges faced by many newcomers.
Recognizing the diversity of Toronto’s immigrant population, he deliberately began taking Uber rides across different regions of the Greater Toronto Area — from Brampton to Scarborough to Markham — using these one-on-one rides as an informal research tool. Each conversation added new layers of perspective, capturing variations in experiences tied to immigration status, employment background and family obligations.
The result is a platform that helps immigrants establish financial histories and credit profiles before arrival, enabling them to integrate more quickly into Canada’s financial system.
A wider fintech market with untapped momentum
The founders’ stories illustrated Lassonde’s larger point that fintech in Canada remains far broader than public discourse suggests.
Though much attention focuses on consumer banking innovations and open banking frameworks, Lassonde argued that the real opportunity lies in sectors where financial infrastructure remains complex, fragmented and underserved.
Despite this, he acknowledged that founder activity in Canada has slowed. His firm’s data shows that Canadian fintech deal flow has declined since 2018, even as U.S. deal flow continues to grow. From nearly 190 Canadian fintech opportunities reviewed annually in earlier years, that number has dropped below 100 in recent years. For Lassonde, this reflects hesitation, not a lack of addressable market.
At the same time, new tailwinds are strengthening the case for fintech founders.
Artificial intelligence adoption is accelerating across financial services, reducing product development timelines by an average of 55%. Traditional financial institutions are also rapidly adopting artificial intelligence, with 99% of surveyed leaders already using or planning to use AI solutions. Lassonde noted that fintech companies incorporating AI capabilities are now commanding valuation premiums of up to 42% higher than their non-AI peers.
Rather than a market saturated with solutions, Lassonde sees Canadian fintech as one where foundational challenges are only beginning to be addressed.
“The fintech space is massive, and we’re just getting started,” he said.
