IBS Intelligence Global FinTech Interviews

Stuart Neal, GM-Identity, Boku The issue of onboarding is a significant barrier. One survey suggests up to 42% of millennials and Gen Z’s would abandon an onboarding process that required offline completion. But the tech behind our mobile networks already holds a potential solution to this. It could enable a ‘user-free’ identity verification factor allowing financial institutions to background che...

Blake Kannady, Chief Product Officer, Intelliflo   How has the pandemic affected the financial advisory business? Intelliflo offers open software architectures to financial advisers, providing its services to more than a third of all financial advisers in the UK. The company was acquired by Invesco in 2018 but operates independently. Its solutions support around 30,000 financial professionals worl...

Ola Oyetayo, CEO and Co-Founder, Verto FX As emerging markets are increasingly joining the global marketplace, companies looking to pay suppliers abroad must transact in less liquid currencies. That can be a logistical challenge for businesses as international payments can be an expensive proposition where liquidity is scarce, and spreads and FX fees are high. VertoFX was founded to enable fairer...

L Guru Raghavendran, Senior Vice President, BFS Products, Azentio Software Azentio Software topped two categories in IBSI’s latest Sales League Table: compliance management with Amlock; and Islamic lending (retail) with Kastle. The company offers core software to financial services providers and ERP solutions to mid-market enterprises across the Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa, and India. Azenti...

Kathy Schneider, Chief Marketing Officer, FD Technologies Northern Ireland-based FD Technologies has launched as a new brand to a business that’s been around for 25 years. The firm powers data analytics for 38 leading banks and is one of the world’s leading capital markets consultancies. So why the rebrand? Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Kathy Schneider, Chief Marketing Officer of FD Te...

Sundip Patel, CEO & Co-Founder, Avana Avana established LendThrive to offer performance-based loans for small businesses. The aim is to empower diverse SMEs to create new jobs and build economic value in their communities, while rewarding business owners for timely repayments by reducing the interest rate charged over the course of the loan. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Sundip Pat...

Oliver Werneyer, CEO & Co-founder, Imburse Payments The use of fully integrated SaaS technology could reduce the costs and waiting times associated with global connectivity, enabling cross-border payments and expansion into new markets. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Oliver Werneyer, CEO & Co-founder, Imburse Payments , on the impact of integration-free access to any payment tec...

Kartik Swaminathan, author, 3F: Future FinTech Framework Kartik Swaminathan is the author of 3F: Future FinTech Framework, a book that builds on his more than 2 decades of experience in innovative products, projects, processes, and solutions. He is Founder Consultant at Fintastech , where he coaches and consults on Product and Go-To-Market in FinTech. The book simplifies understanding across key t...

Sahar Salama, CEO and Founder of TPay Mobile   The percentage of women in executive roles across the Financial Technology space is still disproportionally lower than men. Sahar Salama, CEO and Founder of TPay Mobile is one of them. On the occasion of Women Equality’s Day, IBS Intelligence’s Reporter Gaia Lamperti interviewed Sahar to discuss how the industry can begin to move towards a more balanc...

Kristian Gjerding, CEO & Head of Strategic Execution, Cellpoint Digital Airlines have had a tough pandemic but even at the best of times they are managing a complex payments ecosystem, operating with multiple currencies, countries, financial regulators and consumer payment preferences. This is where a payment orchestration platform comes into its own. It’s a concept spreading to and being used...

Amarnath Chowdary, Founder & CEO, Modefin In the 2021 IBS Intelligence Sales League Table (SLT) Modefin was ranked “SLT New Entrant – Star Performance” in the category Digital Banking and Channels. The IBSI SLT 2021 includes systems purchases made by over 1000+ banks across 180+ products from 60 suppliers across the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, APAC and ASEAN. Headquartered in Bengal...

Hristo Borisov, CEO and Co-Founder, Payhawk   Fragmentation in FinTech is coming to an end. Following the explosion in demand we have seen in the last few years, the market is at the tipping point of consolidation and now big banks and FinTechs will have to learn how to coexist. Hristo Borisov believes big banks really need to stop seeing FinTechs as competitors and start exploring areas of collab...

Tamer Al Mauge, Managing Director MENA, Pakistan & Bangladesh, Codebase Technologies The Middle East has been seen in the past as overbanked despite some sectors of the population still being underbanked. But that hasn’t stopped the development of a clutch of neobanks as institutions invest in digital banking solutions, launching new brands alongside existing banks. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intellig...

Ash Narain, Founder, Marquee Equity FinTech fund raising is breaking all records this year. It is perhaps inevitable that the tech developments in FinTech should be mirrored by tech developments in fund raising for such companies. Proprietary AI systems allow for the automation of much of the traditional investment banking process on a platform capable of handling much greater deal volume than the...

Jamie Burke, Founder & CEO, Outlier Ventures What are the opportunities for investment in the blockchain space in the wake of the correction in cryptocurrencies earlier this year? And will the breakthrough of NFTs see the creation of true mainstream usage of blockchain solutions? These and other issues under the spotlight as Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to blockchain venture capitali...

Dr Kurt Nielsen, President, Partisia Blockchain Foundation The lack of privacy on blockchain is hampering the technology’s disruptive potential as a WEB 3.0 platform supporting value transfer. Industry players need to take urgent action to safeguard privacy and confidentiality. The Partisia Blockchain Foundation is working on marrying the distributed cryptography of multi-party computation technol...

Bhavin Patel, Co-Founder, LenDenClub There is huge scope for small-ticket lending in India. However, this is not an area that is economic for established banks to move into. Peer-to-peer lending offers both an investable opportunity and a platform for small-ticket loans.  Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Bhavin Patel, Co-Founder of Indian P2P lender LenDenClub, whose instant personal loan...

Simon Beresford, Chief Executive Officer, Teachers Building Society ; Anand Subbaraman, General Manager Banking, Finastra Teachers Building Society has selected Finastra’s Fusion Essence Cloud to deliver a new digital core banking service, including pre-built integration with software specialists BEP Systems , for origination, and Fairmort , for regulatory reporting. The building society, which is...

Ashraf Rizvi, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Gilded Millennials are by far the most digitally savvy investment cohort overall and they are now entering the investment scene in earnest. Expectations of one-click access to online banking are a given for younger people and this is already extending to their investments as well, with WealthTech beginning to respond. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intellig...

Sandeep Bagaria, Chief Executive Officer, Tagit How is the digital banking landscape in Asia changing and how has the impact of Covid-19 changed attitudes among bankers? Are the key tenets of omnichannel banking now understood and what is the importance of using an open technology stack? These questions and others come under the spotlight in a discussion between Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence and...

Zak Lambert, Product Manager, Plaid Plaid is an API-based open banking platform bringing together the technology of PIS (Payment Initiation Services) and AIS (Account Information Services) so that developers may create payment journeys. The platform currently supports more than 11,000 financial institutions. Zak Lambert, Product Manager at Plaid discusses all things payments with Robin Amlôt of IB...

Eric Huttman, Chief Executive Officer, MilltechFX Back in 2019 a European Central Bank paper suggested banks had been overcharging some corporate clients by as much as 25x more than larger clients for foreign exchange hedging. MilltechFX streams live rates from 10+ banks and claims clients may trade on the same execution terms as its parent, currency investment manager Millennium Global, which has...

Brad Yasar, Chief Executive Officer & Founder, EQIFI DeFi – decentralised finance – offers an alternative to traditional financial products. The evolution of cryptocurrencies, whether offering the volatility of Bitcoin or the stablecoin link of Tether to the US dollar, are having a profound impact on innovation and investment in DeFi through the creation of new potential investment vehicles fo...

Edgardo Savoy, Chief Technology Officer, TransferGo The FinTech sector contributed £6.5 billion to the UK economy last year. But FinTech faces a battle to onboard and develop talent in line with growth and demand. It is critical that issues such as the digital skills gap, talent retention and diversity are addressed before the UK FinTech sector begins to lose ground in innovation. As Edgardo Savoy...

Dilip Modi, Founder, Spice Money Spice Money is a rural FinTech firm working towards building India’s largest ATM network. Less than a fifth of the country’s ATMs are in rural areas – with just 1 ATM for every 10 villages. More are needed, to create a more inclusive financial system for India’s rural population, who face twin problems created by a digital divide and a lack of financial understandi...