Rebank: Fintech Analysis

Immad Akhund is the founder and CEO of Mercury, a bank for startups. Mercury, which launched to market in April, has raised $26 million from Andreessen Horowitz and a number of others, including the founder of Silicon Valley Bank, a respected player in the startup banking space. Mercury offers FDIC-insured checking and savings accounts, along with payments, cashflow analytics and API-access to its customers and plans to continue rolling out functionality. The startup banking space is hot, with players like Brex and Divvy capitalizing on the credit card and corporate spend side, and new players like Mercury exploring banking more comprehensively. We hope you'll bear with us on audio quality today. We picked up a bit of background noise while recording, but the conversation itself is great. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Immad Akhund.

Naftali Harris is the Co-Founder and CEO of SentiLink, a synthetic fraud prevention company. Naftali was the first data science hire at Affirm, where he built some of the lender's first fraud models. For the past couple years, Naftali has been working to solve the problem of synthetic fraud, a surprisingly pervasive and little-discussed source of credit losses for banks. Earlier this year, SentiLink raised a $14 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, in which Affirm's Max Levchin, and Plaid CEO Zach Perret also participated. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Naftali Harris.

Lex Sokolin is the Global Fintech Co-Head at ConsenSys, the leading crypto software development studio and venture builder. As regular listeners know, Lex is one of the world's leading authorities on the intersection of crypto, disruptive technologies and financial services. In this conversation, we get Lex's perspective on where crypto is focused today, the emergence of decentralized finance and the practical implications for financial services. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com.

Joseph Healy is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Judo Bank, an SME challenger bank in Australia. Fresh off a A$400m equity raise from Bain Capital and others, Judo is on track to lend A$1 billion by year end. Prior to starting Judo, Joseph held executive positions at NAB, ANZ, CIBC World Markets, Citibank and Lloyds. From 2008-2014, Joseph ran NAB's Business Banking unit, the largest business banking division in Australia. Joseph and I discuss the state of business banking in Australia, why he needed to start a new bank rather than seeking to reform an incumbent bank from the inside and the learnings from decades as a traditional banking executive that Joseph is applying at Judo. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Joseph Healy.

Oliver Prill is the CEO of Tide, a leading business banking provider for UK SMEs. Charles McManus is the CEO of ClearBank, the first new clearing bank in the UK in nearly 200 years. Tide and ClearBank recently won a £60 million grant as part of the RBS remedies program, which we've discussed before on the podcast and which Charles describes to start us off. With the funding, Tide, backed by ClearBank, aims to achieve high single-digit market share in the UK SME banking market with its digital proposition. In this conversation, we discuss Tide's plans as well as the UK SME market in general. The first voice you'll hear in the conversation after mine is Charles's, followed by Oliver's. You'll hear us refer to the BCR, or Banking Competition Remedies, the body responsible for administering the remedies program. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Oliver Prill and Charles McManus.

Seth Rosenberg focuses on fintech at Greylock, one of Silicon Valley's most storied venture firms, with noteworthy investments including LinkedIn, Facebook, Airbnb and many more. In this conversation, we talk through Greylock's fintech thesis, Seth's view of where the industry is going and the way the firm looks at investments in general. We reference a deck Greylock published, accessible here. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Seth Rosenberg.

Mike Massaro is the CEO of Flywire, a Boston-based payments company. Flywire specializes in large-value payments for education, healthcare and travel. Flywire has raised over $140 million from leading investors including Spark Capital, Fidelity's F-Prime, Bain Capital, Temasek, Accel Partners and QED Investors. In this conversation, Mike and I discuss the drivers and implications of recent consolidation in the payments industry, existential threats to payments incumbents and the trend of payments integration into vertical software platforms. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Mike Massaro.

Ryan Gilbert is a General Partner at Propel, a San Francisco-based venture firm with investments in companies including Coinbase, Personal Capital, Trussle, Prosper and many more. Prior to joining Propel, Ryan founded and ran SmartBiz loans, a leading SBA loan originator. In this conversation, we explore a few interesting fintech verticals, including mixed commerce, insurtech and payroll benefits, by way of recent investments Ryan has made. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Ryan Gilbert.

Sankaet Pathak is the Founder and CEO of Synapse, a platform banking provider. Fresh off a Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, Synapse is operating at the leading edge of the potentially massive platform banking trend. In this conversation, we discuss the issues with existing sponsor banking infrastructure, examples of new propositions that can be created using a platform like Synapse and the implications of big tech and non-banks increasingly surfacing banking and financial services products within their offerings. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Sankaet Pathak.

Donna Parisi is a Derivatives Partner and Global Head of Financial Services and Fintech for Shearman & Sterling, a leading global law firm. In addition to her work on a range of derivatives, structured products, securitization, capital markets and commodities matters, Donna has built specific expertise in crypto, tokens and digital assets, which are the subject of our conversation today. Donna and I discuss regulatory frameworks and institutional infrastructure for digital assets, where the space is going and why. You'll note that we intentionally don't dig into Facebook's Libra project, which I may pick up in a standalone episode in the future. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Donna Parisi.