Rebank: Fintech Analysis

Aman Ghei is a Principal at Finch Capital, a Venture Capital firm with offices in London, Amsterdam and Singapore. Nigel Verdon is the Co-Founder and CEO of Railsbank, a banking utility layer giving fintechs access to banking services in five lines of code. Aman and Nigel are two extremely insightful guys. We explore a range of subjects in today's conversation, including open banking, proptech, insurtech, platform banking and more. As always, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or on our website at bankingthefuture.com. If you like today's show, please subscribe on iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice, and leave us a review. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Aman Ghei and Nigel Verdon.

Today, we're joined by two excellent guests to discuss recent developments and new opportunities in emerging markets fintech. Ameya Upadhyay is a Principal at Omidyar, an impact fund that has deployed over $1.3bn over the past 10 years. Asad Naqvi is Managing Director of Apis, a growth stage private equity fund focused on Emerging Markets. We originally connected with Ameya in Episode 39 in May 2017. If you like today's episode, check that one out too at www.bankingthefuture.com. In this conversation, we discuss the importance of cash and human touch points as a part of the innovation equation in Emerging Markets, why fintechs are overvalued, how raising a series C round is similar to turning 40, where the most recognized players in cross-border payments fintech have fallen short and much more. As always, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or on our website at bankingthefuture.com. If you like today's show, please subscribe on iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice, and leave us a review. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Ameya Upadhyay and Asad Naqvi.

Today we have an epic line up to discuss the ever evolving topic of Open Banking. Formally implemented as law in Europe in January as PSD2 in Europe and Open Banking in the UK, we're still in the very early days of what will be a transformational change in financial services. Joining us to discuss current developments in Open Banking and where we're headed from here are Louise Beaumont, Co-Chair of techUK's Open Banking & Payments Working Group and a member of the Open Banking Implementation Entitiy Working Group, Megan Caywood, Chief Platform Officer at Starling Bank, a UK digital bank differentiating through Open Banking, and Jamie Campbell, Head of Awareness at Bud, a fintech leveraging Open Banking to create new revenue streams for banks. In the episode, Jamie mentions the book Bud have published on Open Banking, available here. You may have noticed that we've recorded the last few episodes in the offices of Saxo Payments Banking Circle, a new utility layer for banking. I was recently involved in a report they coordinated on Open Banking and other trends, and how they're reshaping the industry, which I'll link to in the show notes. As always, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or on our website at bankingthefuture.com. If you like today's show, please subscribe on iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice, and leave us a review. Thank you very much for joining us today, please welcome Louise Beaumont, Megan Caywood and Jamie Campbell.

Today, we're thrilled to be joined by four entrepreneurs working with data to change the world. Julian Ranger is the Chairman of digi.me, a platform that allows users to take back ownership of their data currently spread around the web and use it to their own benefit. Aneesh Verna is the Founder and CEO of Aire, a new breed of credit bureau improving access to credit. Charles Bradley and Hannah Leach are from Adapt, an advisory firm helping companies build strategies and governance around data. What more topical subject right now than data, with GDPR still brand new and the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica saga still fresh in mind. We talk about how people and companies should think about data, what's still missing from the data equation, the ethics of data and its capture, retention and processing, the tension between commercial and privacy concerns and much more. Connect with us on Twitter @rebankpodcast, on Facebook, LinkedIn or on our website at www.bankingthefuture.com. If you enjoy today's episode, please subscribe on iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice, and leave us a review. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Aneesh Verna, Charles Bradley, Hannah Leach and Julian Ranger.

Today, we're joined by two entrepreneurs making credit more understandable and accessible for people. Freddy Kelly is the Founder of Credit Kudos, a new model credit bureau making better data available to lenders. Matt Ford is the Founder of Pariti, an app built to help consumers improve their credit and qualify for new products. Pariti was recently acquired by UK challenger bank Tandem, who we've had on the podcast before. To help people get oriented, Freddy's voice is the one you'll hear in response to my first question about how credit scores traditionally work. We've got a number of group episodes lined up over the course of the summer. Let us know what you think of the format. Connect with us on Twitter @rebankpodcast, or on LinkedIn, Facebook or our website at www.bankingthefuture.com. If you like today's episode, please subscribe on iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice, and leave us a review. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Freddy Kelly and Matt Ford.

Gab Columbro is the Executive Director of FINOS, the fintech open source foundation. FINOS is creating an open source movement in banking and financial services the same way open source technologies like Linux, Firefox, Wordpress, Hadoop, NodeJS and many more have done for tech. Born out of Symphony, the open source platform launched to rival Bloomberg, FINOS has expanded to cover a range of technologies. In this conversation, we get into the benefits of transparent code, the challenges of governance by consensus, tension between open source and profit maximization, and where the platform model is likely to go. As always, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or on our website at bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Gab Columbro.

Dan Ramsden is the Chief Financial and Strategy Officer of StockTwits. StockTwits is a social media platform designed for sharing ideas between investors, analysts and traders. Founded in 2009, the company has been called one of the "50 best websites" by Time Magazine and one of the "top 10 most innovative companies in finance" by FastCompany. StockTwits has 3 million monthly active users, who spend an astonishing 51 minutes per day on the platform, on average. I thought this conversation was fascinating. Dan is an extremely insightful and eloquent guy with broad intellectual interests and years of experience in markets. The discussion covers a range of topics, including network effects, the impacts of the real-time, free flow of information, behavioral economics and social networks and human nature. Connect with us on Twitter @rebankpodcast or on LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube. If you like today's episode, please subscribe on iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice, and leave us a review. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Dan Ramsden.

This episode is different. It's part of a conversation I had with three smart and experienced entrepreneurs and thinkers, who all happen to work in fintech. Maybe I'll released the extended version of the discussion at some point, but today I wanted to focus on a part of it. Artificial intelligence and automation are becoming powerful forces of change in the world today, and the impacts of these technologies will shape the next few decades at least. Charlie Delingpole is the Founder and CEO of ComplyAdvantage, a data company leveraging machine learning to identify bad actors and feed that information to bank anti money laundering and compliance teams to prevent crime. Ricky Knox is the Founder and CEO of Tandem, a UK bank using data to provide personalized financial guidance to customers, and Lex Sokolin, the former Founder and CEO of NestEgg Wealth, a roboadvisor that was acquired by AdvisorEngine in 2014. Currently, Lex runs the emerging tech business for Autonomous Research, a buy-side research firm. Lex and his team recently published an excellent deep dive on artificial intelligence, which is available at: https://next.autonomous.com/augmented-finance-machine-intelligence. Lex also publishes one of the best fintech newsletters, which you can subscribe to at: http://bit.ly/autonomousnext. We pick the conversation up in full swing. Buckle your seatbelts, it gets serious fast. I'm going to publish an accompanying article with a number of the talking points that inspired this discussion at www.bankingthefuture.com/artificialintelligence. I'd love to share more of these types of conversations, from meet ups and private events and the like, if people find them interesting. Let me know what you think on Twitter @rebankpodcast or by email at will.beeson@bankingthefuture.com. The first voice you hear after mine is Lex's, followed by Charlie's and then Ricky's. Thanks very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Lex Sokolin, Charlie Delingpole and Ricky Knox.

Robin Tombs is a serial tech entrepreneur and investor. He is the CEO and Co-Founder of Yoti, a digital identity platform enabling secure onboarding anywhere online or in-person. Prior to Yoti, Robin co-founded Gamesys, one of the world's leading online gaming operators. He is also an angel investor in a handful of technology companies and a trustee of Future First. Today's conversation is a fascinating glimpse into what the future of data, privacy and identity might look like. Connect with us on Twitter @rebankpodcast or on LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube. If you enjoy today's episode, please subscribe on iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice, and leave us a review. Thanks very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Robin Tombs.

Today's topic is corporate culture: what works, what doesn't, what needs to change and how. We're joined by three extremely qualified guests to dig into this hairy topic. Duena Blomstrom is the author of Emotional Banking, a book looking at culture in banking specifically. Sharon O'Dea is the former Head of Digital Communications at Standard Chartered and current communications strategy consultant. Alessandro Hatami is the former Group Digital Director at Lloyds Bank and currently advises Tier 1 banks on digital solutions. This conversation was a bit experimental, in terms of both format and subject. Let us know what you think of the group discussion. I'm not sure we reached a conclusion, per se, dealing with a topic as broad as culture, but I think we surfaced some interesting considerations. What did we miss? Let us know on Twitter @rebankpodcast or in the comments section of the episode page at www.bankingthefuture.com/culture. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Duena Blomstrom, Sharon O'Dea and Alessandro Hatami.