Where do you get your financial advice? Google? Podcasts? Instagram? If you chose Instagram, you may recognize Funding Talent co-founder Jessica Ghaney.
In December 2019, Ghaney worked in nursing while growing her online brand ForexTips101. She became a very successful expert in the forex industry, garnering over 230,000 followers on Instagram alone. She was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal in March 2020 in the article “The Financial Gurus Millenials Listen To.”
“From here, she started Funding Talent, a gamified educational platform where people could develop trading skills and potentially generate revenue while doing so,” says Wade MacCallum, VP Marketing with Funding Talent.
Her and co-founder Anthony Sartor have been growing the business from Halifax ever since.
The forex industry is a combination of foreign currency and exchange. Investopedia defines foreign exchange as “the process of changing one currency into another for a variety of reasons, usually for commerce, trading or tourism.” According to a 2019 triennial report from the Bank of International Settlements, the daily trading volume for forex reached $6.6 trillion in April 2019.
The growing industry is ripe with opportunity. Our globalized approach to trade, commerce, and finance has turned forex markets into the largest and most liquid asset markets in the world.
“The industry is an emerging one with new companies spread across the world. It's been successful partially due to the gig economy as the work from home shift that was escalated by COVID,” says MacCallum. “Today there are three major players in this world with Funding Talent being one of these and by all accounts the one growing the fastest.”
The financial industry is known as competitive and cutthroat, but for Jessica, her true passion lies in helping people become self-sufficient. According to the 2019 Canadian Financial Capability Survey, more than half of Canadians aged 18 to 34 (56%) have taken steps to strengthen their financial knowledge, mainly through online study.
“Learning how to trade in a safe environment where emerging traders are not risking their own capital is an ideal way for her to realize her dream,” says MacCallum.
Building their business in Atlantic Canada has led to exciting opportunities for Funding Talent. Their team currently has 35 employees locally and they are still hiring. Their new office in Alderney Landing is expected to house up to 50 employees by the end of this year, and potentially more by the end of 2022.
“Atlantic Canada has an abundance of talent. One of the limiting factors pre-COVID has been the reluctance of some traditional and more established businesses based in major centers to employ a work from home team. This is shifting, and we see more opportunity in Atlantic Canada because of this.”
Their local roots run deep through strong relationships with several local experts and professional firms. The Funding Talent team is seeing big industry growth as their studies show the market is still expanding rapidly. “The sky is the limit for us,” says MacCallum.
Not slowing down any time soon, the company is launching a unique product this fall, the Funding Talent Blitz.
“We feel this will be a giant step for this industry and potentially our most successful product to date. We are keeping the details under wraps for now until our public launch.”
They will continue their focus on the educational side of the platform as well. Helping a new generation learn how to trade effectively is an important part of their mandate, while providing rewards along the way for demonstrating trading skill.
Organizations like Funding Talent are attracting and retaining talent to the region. Their impact in the growing forex trading industry is only just getting started.
“Honestly, one of the most exciting part of our growth has been the fact is we started in Halifax, and plan to keep growing, and hiring here.”
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