The FinTech Report

KYC/CDD: Moody’s helps fintechs meet compliance at speed Our guest is Choon Hong Chua; Senior Director – Head of Financial Crime Practice, APAC & Middle East, Moody’s Analytics, where we discuss know-your-customer (KYC), covering how fintechs are performing customer due diligence (CDD), i.e. verifying the identity of a customer, whether an individual or business.Choon is the APAC and Middle East Head of subject matter expert team for Compliance Solutions in Moody’s Analytics. He is responsible for driving compliance related initiatives across Asia Pacific and Middle East. Choon is active in the compliance community in the public sectors, banking and corporate space and understands the emerging trends in combating financial crimes through these interactions. Choon leads a team of 8 specialists and practice leads providing consultancies and solutions in helping fortune 500 clients in understanding the risk-based approach to Anti-Money Laundering, and assist in data mapping workshops to operationalize the use of MA information through the AML processes. His experience helps client in building a holistic compliance risk framework and solutions to navigate through complex regulatory environments.Choon comes with over 15 years of experience in the enterprise software solution space and he has spent the last few years advising major financial institutions across Asia Pacific in AML, fraud and trade compliance. He is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist and he is a current member of the Association of Fraud Examiners. He participates actively in leading financial crime conferences across Asia Pacific.About Moody’s: Moody’s Analytics enables banks and fintechs to Make Better, Faster Compliance Decisions, to Identify Risks, and to Prevent Financial Crime. Moody’s Analytics provide best-in-class tools and data, empowering you to understand the risks associated with your customers, suppliers, and extended networkTheir services enable you to understand the potential for a wide range of important issues; from trade-based money laundering, asset confiscation & recovery, negative news screening for risk management, and many moreIn this interview, Choon discusses how Moody’s offers help to fintechs and banks:-          Moody’s helps organisation mitigate the risk when it comes to regulatory compliance-          Regardless of the size of the organisation, Moody’s helps to look at how to improve the process of understanding your clients and assessing the risk of doing business with them.-          The idea is to help you make the journey as smooth as possible, at the same time comply to the regulatory requirements. Who are your customers?-          Moody’s work with large and small organisation alike. Moody’s has solutions ready made for fintechs and corporates where we try not to over complicate the whole implementation process.Journey to date-          Moody’s has seen the digital transformation across APAC and are embarking on that same journey with many of the new start-ups taking the lessons we learnt from the much more established bigger enterprise.Trends in the sector you want to discuss?-          Regulatory demands increasing….-          Client demands for faster and easier access to financial systems and market-          Balance between privacy and security-          Operational viability in a risk-based approach. Contact: Choon Hong ChuaSenior Director – Head of Financial Crime Practice, APAC & Middle EastChoonhong.chua@moodys.com 

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 24: Interview with Jaco Veldsman, Co-Founder, PaytronWe started with payments and accounting, customers then asked us for corporate cards and FX, and Open Banking for Business will be a game changer, says Paytron Paytron is a cloud-based payments platform built for SMEs and accountants.  In 2020, Jaco Veldsman met co-founder Francois Henrion, where they lamented the disparity of finance tools available to SMEs and accountants versus bigger businesses.  Together they focused on developing Paytron, an all-in-one payment platform that removed the manual work for SMEs and accountants covering accounts payable, accounts receivable, cashflow management, FX, and payroll and employee expenses. In this episode we cover:·       Accounting packages haven’t innovated, Paytron saw the opportunity·       Focus is on SMEs, small business up to $100m turnover·       Paytron’s philosophy was to launch fast, and innovate fast·       Laser focus on what the customer wants; out of this came the request for corporate cards·       Partnership with JP Morgan is huge·       FinTech & Banks are a perfect partnership and each brings their own skills and advantages·       Next major problem is business banking, business financing needs, which can include corporate cards·       Business banking needs to change, and Paytron will be moving hard and fast in this sector·       Expansion plans to English speaking Commonwealth countries; NZ, Singapore, South Africa, Canada, UK. The JP Morgan partnership opens up other countries, eg USA·       Great benefits of being in the Commonwealth; same language and very similar regulations, taxes etc·       Paytron will expand into FX (foreign exchange)·       Jaco explains the role of corporate cards·       Jaco explains their amazing funding journey (US VCs as well as Australia), and building the team·       Open Banking is huge and will be big; banks need to ‘choose a side’ says Jaco·       FinTechs can access bank accounts (via Open Banking) and offer new services: when fintechs can have “read and write” access, then fintechs will offer services as well as payments Qy2Pt8Aij9VtVpZbbxU1 

The Fintech Report Podcast: Interview with Paul Apolony, GM Australia, MambuBanks and the Race to High VelocityIn this podcast we discuss:  ●      How does a lifelong banker end up running Mambu Australia? ●      Discuss wider industry experience that crosses over to MambuWhat does Mambu do?●      Mambu is the market leading cloud banking platform – launched in Berlin in 2011, Mambu now operates globally. Series E funding round in December 2021 raised an additional €235m, taking total valuation to €4.9 billion (‘double unicorn’ status)●      Mambu provides the technological foundation – a SaaS based cloud-native banking platform – for banks, financial service providers and other fintechs to launch innovative digital banking products and services●      Think of the Mambu platform like the engine in a car – it provides a powerful core for digital banks, and enables other providers and services to ‘plug in’ to the platform via open APIs, so customers can build the digital bank or digital product that their customers want●      hundreds of customers all over the world have launched some of the most innovative and forward-thinking banking products and brands ever seen – full digital banks banks, digital arms of conventional banks, payment providers, ewallets, lenders, BNPL – any financial product or service you can think of can be built on Mambu●      Mambu’s cloud core banking platform replaces expensive and monolithic legacy core banking technology stacks – cloud native and soon to be cloud agnostic across(Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure,)●      Many banks in Australia, and in fact the world, have legacy technology stacks coming to the end of their life cycle – this on-premises core banking technology is expensive and time-intensive to run, and very slow to update or make changes. This is especially evident in the Mutual/Customer owned banking space.  A cloud native core like Mambu brings speed, agility and flexibility, meaning traditional, old-school banks can start to operate like nimble fintechs, launching new products in weeks rather than years, and responding to changing consumer expectations on the fly●      Companies can launch an entire digital bank on Mambu, OR launch specific digital products●      A popular and effective way of transitioning to digital is by incrementally replacing individual components within a bank’s existing tech stack – reduces risk of a rapid ‘rip and replace’ approach and allows the bank to bring customers along on the journeyWhat’s the status of Mambu in Australia?●      AU entity established in Jan 2022●      Actively recruiting – current team is 22 FTEs working from Syd, Mel, Bris and Per●      Leveraging Mambu’s experience in Europe, UK, APAC ●      Current customers include fintechs like Shaype (formerly Hay), ADIs such as Tyro, lenders such as Lumi, Bluestone, Prospa and Nimble, and soon to be announced tier 1 bank in Australia.What is ‘composable banking’ and why is it gaining traction?●      Mambu coined the phrase ‘composable banking’ more than 10 years ago, and it’s recently been picked up by competitors in cloud core banking space - a compliment ●      Composable banking is the rapid and flexible assembly of independent, best-for-purpose systems●      Mambu are now speaking to our customers and prospects about the “Race to high velocity” – Mambu’s ability to enable them to scale in a quick, flexible and cost effective way and meet the growing demands they are encountering on a daily basis.●  &nbs

Mark Monfort, Co-Founder of the Australian Defi Association, and Nick Bishop, Co-Founder of Bishop & Fang to the podcastMark is an expert on DeFi #web3 and #blockchain – he’s worked in both the finance and technology sectors. His professional career started off in insurance as well as working as an auditor for a Big 4 firm (PwC). It was through his next role as an analyst at Commonwealth Bank that he first formed his passion for analytics and the power of technology and data to transform the way we make decisions. In his role with the Australian Defi association, or ADA, Mark’s vision is to make the topic of DeFi more mainstream, build a community of partners contributing to grow the sector, and provide educational resources and news from the world of blockchain, DeFi, web 3.0 and all things crypto.Nick is the Co-Founder of Bishop & Fang, a Specialist advisory firm for Investment and management consulting, Corporate finance, due diligence, restructuring, debt advisory, capital raising, investor relations, asset management, commercialisation. Established network of institutional investors and service providers. Nick is an advisor and investor to a number of tech startups, and his experience includes stints at Gresham Partners, Standard Life Aberdeen, Deutsche Asset Management and Canada LifeWhat we discuss in this episode:What is DeFi?Who does the DeFi association represent?What are the key areas of DeFi you focus on? Mark and Nick discuss the NotCentralised team and how its projects include various internal ones like the Aus Defi Association and a payments protocol called TradeFlows and how they are helping other 3rd party projects How crypto is more than meets the eye and about the innovation in this spaceHow things are built and similarities and differences between web2 and web3We could also talk about how to get involved in this space and do some encouragement etcWhat are some of the hot topics in DeFi at the moment?All of crypto seems like its in the dog house right now – what are your thoughts on that?https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmonfort/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-bishop-cfa-94760173/

Paul Weingarth, Co-Founder of SlypPrior to co-founding Slyp, Paul worked for the Commonwealth Bank, Microsoft and PayPal.  Paul’s now on a mission – he wants to end paper receipts and plastic loyalty cards; how is it that in 2022 we tap our phone or card or watch to make a payment in-store, then we are handed a chemically coated non-recyclable piece of paper to keep a record of the purchase. 20,000KM of paper receipts are printed every day in Australia. Imagine what the global total is?About Slyp: https://www.slyp.com.au/home With Slyp you can pay with your bank card and automatically receive an itemised tax receipt inside your mobile banking app or via SMS, at no cost – Slyp calls these ‘smart receipts’ – A Smart Receipt is a tax compliant, easily accessible proof of purchase that lives directly in the mobile banking app, or via SMS - Slyp is available in the NAB banking app and other banks will follow soon.  Slyp has navigated unchartered territories by becoming Australia’s only independent fintech to gain the backing of all four major banks. 'Obsessive Customer Disorder' leads Slyp to digitise receipts and loyalty for Australia’s Big Four BanksKey points in the conversation:•Contactless payments is only half finished; Slyp wants to end paper receipts – the ‘last mile’ of the payment process•Paul and the other Co-Founders are obsessed with the customer – Paul calls this ‘OCD – Obsessive Customer Disorder’•Nothing good comes from paper receipts•Paul’s PayPal experience helped him understand the payments process•The Slyp Smart Receipt has been built on ‘pipes’ that haven’t been connected before•Slyp integrates directly into the POS terminal (Point of Sale); merchant side•Plus Slyp has built pipes into the banks, so connecting/matching transaction to receipt in a few seconds•Everything is standardised – so Slyp is the one provider that offers a standard experience for all banks (Apps) and all Merchants•Often standardisation & collaboration happens because of regulation (eg EFTPOS, NPP, Open Banking); but Slyp wasn’t driven by regulation – it’s driven by Slyp.•Slyp receipt is inside the customer’s banking app; receipt is displayed inside the banking App. Completely frictionless for the customer.•Fully tax compliant tax receipt. •For Slyp, the receipt is just the start – the customers digital data is available to the Merchant; so the Merchant now has the possibility of starting an ongoing relationship with the customer; eg loyalty, tailoring offers. •Who owns the data? – all parties to the process; Slyp, the Merchant, and the bank, all retain their component parts to the data, and Slyp wants to provide the insights for all parties – Paul uses the term “Data for Delight” – Paul says Slyp is the “Switzerland of the system”•NAB now, the other three banks in the next 12-18 months•Slyp Smart Receipts will always be free. •Business model is a SaaS model for the banks, and Freemium service for the merchants; they can take up additional services if they want.•Australia is a great place to start a fintech. Australian consumers who love using new technology, and adopt new technology very fast, especially mobile and payments.•The fintech and banking eco-system is a leader in contactless payments. •Concentration in banking of the four majors (NAB, CBA, Westpac, ANZ), plus two large / dominant merchants/supermarket chains (Coles, Woolworths), plus only two card providers (Mastercard, Visa) means it was easier for Slyp to create a standardised product. Paul says this set-up is ‘the perfect storm”•Funding: Slyp has received investment from all four of Australia’s big banks: NAB, ANZ, CBA and Westpac – the first time ever in

Build your dream on Oracle Cloud - Interview with Pijush Mukherjee from Oracle and Karthik Srinivasan from Ziksu.About our Guests:  Pijush Mukherjee from Oracle https://www.linkedin.com/in/impijush/ Pijush is a Technology leader with 2 decades of experience in business development, partner management, consulting, solution and delivery management of digital transformation initiatives across industries. - Working as Head of Digital Natives, he and his team are helping Fintechs to grow their business in APAC, partnering with OracleOracle Fintech InnovationNext-generation cloud from Oracle, with industry-leading solutions such as open banking APIs, Pre-configured blockchain, autonomous database and many more , provides an ecosystem and platform to help drive innovation. Banks & fintechs can deploy the industry’s most comprehensive set of  cloud solutions for financial domains to test out solution hypotheses, roll out MVPs and scale fast, reducing the deployment time and cost significantly. Fintechs around the world have joined Oracle for Start-ups or the Oracle Partner Network to help accelerate their growth leveraging Oracle’s world-class platforms and ecosystems.Karthik Srinivasan from Ziksu https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthik-srinivasan-z25/ Karthik Srinivasan, Founder and CTIO of Ziksu, has responsibility for the strategic direction for Ziksu and its product portfolio. Karthik has over 17 years of professional experience working across Australia and APAC region. Karthik has had stints in varied capacities with banks and global technology organisations. His area of expertise lies in the convergence of financial services and technology.Ziksu, is an Australian fintech that offers a suite of digital financial products for Retail and Business customers. Ziksu has developed a fully digital, 100% mobile only product, Scan n Pay, that delivers a third alternative for instore payments using QR codes with real-time settlements. A single, seamless, and easy to use app for merchants and personal consumers. Ziksu’s provisional goal of financial services for every Australian is to be convenient, accessible, and affordable.Key Points discussed during this interview:•            Overview of Ziksu•            What problem does Ziksu solve for?•            Who are Ziksu’s customers?•            Team size, number of customers, growth•            How is Oracle helping Ziksu?•            What is Oracle’s interest in fintech?•            Thoughts on technology selection – especially ‘Scan & Pay’ vs ‘Tap & Pay’ – including features, scale up costs•            Why did Ziksu choose Oracle Cloud?•            Experience of Oracle to date•            Why is Oracle different? Oracle's Deep Roots in Financial Space•            Global Presence supporting India and APAC expansion Plans

Cake Equity offers free “1 click ESOP” to early stage fintechs to democratise the fundraising process  Founders want to quickly and easily understand how to issue options to their team. And when raising capital from Angels, investors and VCs, they want a good deal using industry standard terms that will protect them.Cake solves the problems inherent in fundraising at the early stage; the cost and complexity of the whole process by offering very early stage fintechs the option of a free account for up to five founders/staff.Cake Equity is part of the democratisation of the fundraising process, such as Seed Legals in the UK, who enable Founders to manage their ‘cap table’ from startup to IPO.Typically this involves creating and managing all sorts of documents, from Shareholders Agreements, Term Sheets, ESOPs (Employee Share Option Plan) – Cake Equity has built a service that allows a “one click ESOP” – a huge benefit for Founders looking to streamline this process in their business. For very early stage founders/startups, Cake offer this for free. After 6 people, Cake start charging – typically $30 PCM per person.Cake integrates with ASIC and crucially, enables founders to showcase all the shareholder information to potential investors – enabling the ‘due diligence’ to be completed in days not weeks. 

“Time to Yes” is FinTechs Key Issue says Experity CapitalEpisode 18: Interview with Clint Howen, Founder at Hero Broker & Director/Head of Digital at Experity CapitalKey items discussed in this interview:1.      “Time to Yes” is the Number One Issue2.      Time to Yes is driven by FinTech ‘Super Apps’ because they offer greater insight into a customer’s financial/wealth position 3.      Super App’s only possible because of data aggregators (such as Yodlee, IDS, Core Logic etc)4.      Large numbers of Mortgage Brokers to retire soon, creating opportunity for FinTech to offer technology at scale for home loans Clint Howen from Experity Capital says he built Hero Broker to offer a fully digital home loan experience, but he realised that customers still want to speak with, or be guided by, another human when it comes to the home loan experience.Whilst the number one driving force for the technology is how to reduce the complexity and time is takes to originate a home loan, human psychology is such that customers still require explanation on the process for applying for, and getting a home loan. FinTech allows Brokers to ‘do more with less’ – Clint is planning to use technology to scale how many clients a broker can deal with at any one time. Additionally, a large percentage of the current home loan/mortgage brokers are over 55, and will retire soon; Experity will look to buy their ‘mortgage books’ and use their brokers plus their technology to service the clients.FinTech allows Brokers a greater and deeper insight into each customers, whereby the technology pulls more data into the ‘one view’ of a customers income/wealth profile, allowing a Broker to help the customer, especially on the home loan journey. This issue is often referred to as the ‘benefit of the Super App’Clint discusses how a large percentage of Mortgage Brokers will be retiring over the next decade, creating a huge opportunity for online/fintech if they can get the balance right between technology at scale and human-to-human interaction.Yodlee and other data providers play a crucial role in enabling the ‘Super App’ by bringing the data together in one place About Clint Howen, Hero Broker and Experity CapitalClint is an experienced startup founder with a mission to connect the design, technical and business worlds to help build innovative, user-centric products. Clint is the founder of Hero Broker as well as Director and head of digital at Experity CapitalExperity Capital is a fintech and mortgage broker that offers customer the ability to Manage All their Money, Assets, Investments In The One Place. Experity customers can Manage & view all their bank accounts, property assets and investments in the one place.https://www.linkedin.com/in/clint-howen-794a2b75/ https://experity.com.au/  Listen to all the episodes here:https://fintechsummit.com.au/the-fintech-report-podcast/    

Hay-as-a-Service leads Embedded Finance revolution Interview with Mark Hansell, Chief Product Officer at Hay-as-a-Service Hay-as-a-Service – or HaaS - is leading the embedded finance revolution via their platform that enables any company to ‘stand up’ financial products in as little as 10 days.  The team at HaaS believes that the future of finance does not start and end with digital transformation, rather the seamless integration of those services into any customer journey.  HaaS solves for the problem of launching financial products even if you are not a financial services company.  Through a single API, clients can access HaaS’s full suite of microservices for payments, KYC/AML, and a range of accelerator tools.  HaaS removes legacy constraints, prioritising speed, flexibility and control, to deliver value and innovationHay as a Service (HaaS) is an embedded finance platform that lets any company offer a financial product to their customers, without having to build it themselves.  More importantly, they can do that with total control and flexibility over how they bring it all together, so they can build their brand and their customer experience the way they want it to be (and the end customer doesn’t see the Hay/HaaS brand).Clients are financial and non-financial companies who in turn have consumers - and in some cases small businesses - as their customers. Clients pick and choose from the HaaS suite of microservices – and they access it all through a single API.  The platform is modular so clients can pick and choose the services they take. The majority of clients anchor their product around three core HaaS products; 1.      Accounts2.      Cards3.      Funding railsThey then add additional services depending on their specific needs – such as onboarding. In addition to the core offering, HaaS have a range of accelerator tools and support services, that are designed to get products to market better and faster.  HaaS has a multi-rail sandbox environment for both bank transfer and card payments testing – including via an app - and clients can use a staging environment to do controlled development without impacting production.  HaaS enable rapid proof of concept so clients can get to market fast.  Thank you to our Partners; Australian FinTech and Envestnet YodleeAll episodes available here: https://fintechsummit.com.au/the-fintech-report-podcast/ 

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 16: Interview with James Vaughan, CoreLogicCreating the digital property DNAJames is the Head of Data Products at CoreLogic, and has extensive experience across the data, banking and financial services sectors. He holds a deep understanding of property data trends, digital customer engagement, and risk management from his years in leadership roles across sales, account management and customer solutions. https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-vaughan-a3396616/ CoreLogic Asia Pacific is a leading, independent provider of property data and analytics. They help people build better lives by providing rich, up-to-the-minute property insights that inform the very best property decisions. With an extensive breadth and depth of knowledge gathered over the last 30 years, they provide services across a wide range of industries, including Banking & Finance, Real Estate, Government, Insurance and Construction.  https://www.corelogic.com.au/ Topics covered in this interview:What does CoreLogic do? What problem do they solve?Who are their customers? What is their best work? How do they measure results for your banking and lending clients? How does house price information impact ‘responsible lending’?What is the sweet spot for CoreLogic and banking clients right now? {Digital Mortgage}·       The value of real-time data at every touchpoint in the customer journey·       Helping to modernise the mortgage process and improve the customer experience  How will machine learning and Ai impact CoreLogic and their clients?What role do you see data playing in helping connect the property ecosystem and the energy sector in the sustainability space?