IBS Intelligence Podcasts

Niccolò Gamaleri, Senior Director, Royal Park PartnersAs the FinTech sector becomes increasingly regulated, and its funding base evolves, knowledge of regulatory requirements and financing solutions is crucial. Ex-Barclays Niccolò Gamaleri, recently appointed Senior Director at financial advisory firm Royal Park Partners, discusses how FinTech's continued growth is increasingly requiring the same investment banking skills as more traditional financial institutions, in terms of capital raises, M&A transactions and IPOs.

Anuj Kumar Sen, Co-Founder & CTO, Cuelebre ABSuccess in the implementation of AI and ML depends on having a foundation system that can scale and serve your data. Cuelebre is an end-to-end technology services provider that caters to data analytics needs. The company focuses on building strategies, architecting platforms, and deploying dashboards in the cloud or on-premises. Anuj Kumar Sen, Co-Founder and CTO, Cuelebre, speaks to Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence about the challenges involved and how to achieve maximum value for your business. 

Jasmeet Chhabda, Senior Vice President, LentraWith the clear intent of creating a smoother digital lending process Lentra is offering new-age lending solutions to the Indian financial services sector. Jasmeet Chhabda, Senior Vice President at Lentra discusses how the firm has created a range of offerings across embedded journeys, BNPL, credit card journeys, small ticket loans, co-lending and more. He spoke to Puja Sharma of IBS Intelligence about trends in lending and how new-to-credit millennials are changing their approach to availing loans. 

Simone Mazzuca, Founder and CEO, Wallex How can the evolution of banking lead to more democratised financial services offered to a broader base of individuals that are in need of better banking? In this episode, Simone Mazzuca, CEO and Founder of Wallex, discusses how blockchain technology will transform banking as we know it. In his view, the bank of the future should embrace multi-currency fiat platforms, offer greater access to digital assets and develop fully compliant tools to help the users trade, save and navigate all financial markets. 

Omar Mansur, Enterprise Lead Global Projects, Codebase Technologies; Dr Jasmin B Gupta, CEO & Co-Founder, LXME You can’t have one without the other! Embedded finance may be defined as offering access to a range of financial services and solutions via a merchant website on a customer journey that is not interrupted by the need to leave the site you are on to go to that of a financial institution. Banking as a Service (BaaS) is the technology solution that makes this seamless experience for the consumer possible. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence discusses the potential of both embedded finance and BaaS with Omar Mansur of Codebase Technologies (pictured) and Dr Jasmin B Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder of LXME, India’s first financial platform for women.

Arjan Verbeek, CEO & Co-Founder, PerennaThe UK’s newest bank, Perenna, has been awarded a UK banking licence ‘with restrictions’ by the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority. This is the penultimate step before a full banking licence is granted. When that happens, which the bank expects in Q1 2023, it will begin offering long-term fixed rate mortgages (30-year, 95% LTV) in the UK housing market. These are new products in the UK and with housing affordability a constant issue, are likely to prove popular. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Perenna CEO and Co-Founder Arjan Verbeek about the bank’s plans and proposed products.

Mahmood Shamsher Ali, Pakistan Country Representative, Alif BankAlif is a Central Asian FinTech operating as a full-fledged bank in Tajikistan and as an e-commerce and FinTech company in Uzbekistan. The company, originally established in 2014, has a full banking licence in Tajikistan and a payments licence in Uzbekistan. It has also applied for a digital banking licence in Pakistan – one of 20 applicants for 5 licences on offer. Alif now has more than 1 million users and, for example, a market share of more than 50% of all Visa payments in Tajikistan. The group’s ambition is to become a global Islamic FinTech unicorn. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence discusses Alif’s ambitions with the bank’s Pakistan Country Representative, Mahmood Shamsher Ali.

Serge Tohme, Managing Director EMEA, Finastra, & Gary McDermott, Treasurer, The Co-operative BankThe Co-operative Bank selected Finastra Kondor in the cloud, available via Microsoft Azure, to upgrade its treasury infrastructure and automate manual reporting and processes. Finastra’s focus on ESG concerns fits with The Co-operative Bank’s stance on ethical banking. Moving from an on-premises model to a cloud-based managed service is a key part of the bank’s operational strategy for treasury activity. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence discusses the attractions of a cloud-based solution with Serge Tohme, Managing Director EMEA, Finastra, and Gary McDermott, Treasurer, The Co-operative Bank (pictured).

Ellison Anne Williams, CEO & Founder, Enveil Privacy-enhancing technologies for secure data search protect data while it's being used or processed. The development of privacy-enhancing technologies is a hot topic for financial services. The UN estimates that up to $2 trillion of cross-border money laundering occurs each year. Greater information sharing and collaborative analytics among financial organisations could transform the detection of this activity in a secure manner without compromising jurisdictional requirements. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Ellison Anne Williams, CEO and Founder of Enveil about the potential for secure data usage.

Jacob Rider, Head of Payments, ProjectiveNovember 2022 marks the point of migration for some of the top global payment infrastructures to ISO 20022, an international standard for exchanging electronic messages between financial institutions, covering cards, payments, securities, FX and trade. Most banks, corporates and payments companies use SWIFT MT financial messaging for transactions, which will migrate over to the new system and eventually come to an end in 2025. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence discusses the coming of ISO 20022 with Jacob Rider, Co-Head of Projective’s Payments Practice.