IBS Intelligence Global FinTech Interviews

Daniel Harman, Co-Founder, Darksquare Capital   As but one example of how alternative assets can outperform, over the 15 years to 2021, UK forestry generated an annualised return of 18.9%, while the FTSE 100 averaged 9.2% over the same period. Portfolio diversification will be a key trend in investment in the future. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence discusses the FinTech trends driving a focus on a...

Kealan Lennon, Founder & CEO, CleverCards Through a customisable and configurable Digital Mastercard, used by public and private sector organisations of all sizes, the CleverCards payments platform enables instant payments without the need for a bank account. Businesses may make payments for all their business requirements – from paying out employee benefits to paying consultants, and from pay...

Mushegh Tovmasyan, Chairman & Founder, Zenus Bank Zenus Bank is claiming a mission to democratise finance by offering people in developing nations a secure alternative to holding funds in local currencies. Unlike the vast majority of banks in the international banking system, Zenus is a full reserve bank, meaning deposits are retained and not loaned out.  So, what is the significance of an int...

Paul Brown, COO, TechPassport The bank/FinTech landscape is changing but establishing a working relationship can be a slow process of investigation and due diligence, potentially negating the advantages of speed and agility that FinTechs can offer. But with a list of enterprise ready questions (ERQs), TechPassport is aiming to simplify and speed up the engagement process. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intell...

Rick Woodham, Head of Product Management & Business Solutions, Tagit Yet again it appears that banks are in danger of overlooking the opportunities presented in the SME segment. Attention is now focusing on the corporate banking sector after some years of digital development in retail banking, but are SMEs and even micro SMEs being served as they should be? Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence spea...

Paul Thomalla, Head of Industry & Regulatory Affairs, Finastra ; and Craig Wellman, Managing Director Financial Services, Microsoft The number of banking payments in the UK processed via the current Faster Payments regime grew from 2020 to 2021 by 3.6 billion and this is a figure that is only going to grow. The replacement scheme, the New Payments Architecture should be in place in 2024. What...

Kathy Gormley, Principal Solutions Engineer, Resistant. AI The UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that 2-5% of global GDP is laundered each year. The threat to FinTechs from financial crime is very real, so what can FinTechs of all sizes do to fight this? The answer would appear to be to embrace the opportunities presented by the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to help iden...

Omar Mansur, Managing Director APAC, Codebase Technologies Half of the population over the age of 15 in countries in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) do not have a bank account. That’s a serious drag on potential economic development and growth. What needs to be done? Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Omar Mansur, Managing Director APAC for Codebase Technologies.

Kalpesh Mistry, SVP & Head of BFSI Europe, ITC Infotech The bank of the future and its products are likely to be very different to the institutions we are familiar with today. Cloud-native Banking as a Service will change how the bank operates and the kind of services it provides to its customers. But perhaps the future of banking rests mainly on the proper management of data to shape and focu...

Rob O’Farrell, CTO, ID-Pal Despite frequent incidents of data breaches, many of us are still unaware of or ambivalent about what organisations hold our data. A self-sovereign identity profile could allow individuals to take back control of their data. How would this work in practice? Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Rob O’Farrell, Chief Technology Officer of identity verification provider...

Rohit Garg, CEO & Co-Founder, SmartCoin Smartcoin is stimulating MSMEs’ and individuals’ development and financial inclusion in India through the application of AI/ML in financial services. The firm aims to provide accessible loans to customers, especially those who reside in Tier-II and III markets while keeping default rates low. Puja Sharma of IBS Intelligence spoke to the firm’s CEO and Co...

Victor Basta, CEO, DAI Magister After a slowdown in FinTech investing in the latter part of 2022, we review the outlook for FinTech funding in 2023 and what FinTechs need to do to create a successful exit strategy. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Victor Basta, CEO of investment bank DAI Magister about what private equity and venture capital players are looking for in a FinTech, and the i...

Christian Frahm, Founder & CEO, United FinTech United FinTech is a new type of FinTech entity, not private equity, not venture capital but building an ecosystem of best-in-class FinTech businesses into a single ecosystem and solutions provider to corporate and investment banks active in the capital markets. Christian Frahm, the firm’s Founder and CEO tells Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence that...

Henrik Rosvall, Co-Founder & CEO, Dreams Technology Nobody does banking for the sake of banking – managing money is not an end-goal in itself. What banking customers need is access to tools and feature that help boost their financial health. Traditional personal financial management tools and financial literacy models just don’t provide the motivation that individuals need. So, what does? Robi...

Will Tumulty, CEO & President, Rapid Finance   Around a fifth of all new SMEs fail within the first 12 months and the number one dilemma facing small businesses is lack of access to working capital. While not every business can be saved and made a success, we suggest that there is more that innovative FinTech lenders can do that banks cannot or will not.  Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks...

Kundan Shekhawat, CEO & Founder, Ascent Business Technology The implementation of technology solutions by the financial sector has increased the speed of financial decision-making and allowed for the dream of hyper personalisation. But it has also led to increased risk within the sector, making operational resilience (of which old-style business continuity is but a part) even more of a ‘must-h...

Dharmarajan Sankara Subrahmanian, Founder Director & CEO, Impactsure Impactsure, which was established in 2019, uses AI/ML and natural language processing technologies to build user-centric tools and scalable and secure solutions that process, classify and extract structured and unstructured data from documents. At the core of the company’s SureSuite of microservices is the patent pending Secu...

Henk van Hulle, CEO, Open Banking Implementation Entity The UK has led the world in the development of open banking solutions with more than 6 million consumers now using open banking services. What comes next – consolidation, more cooperation? Have we reached the limits of the top-down approach to open banking? Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence discusses these questions and more with Henk van Hulle...

Mukesh Kalra, Founder & CEO, ET Money Tech-first and personalised, ET Money claims to be on a mission to simplify the financial journey for retail investors in India. The company believes that personalisation is the future of WealthTech and is leveraging technology to shift the power back to consumers, offering access to simple-to-use investing platforms. Puja Sharma of IBS Intelligence speaks...

Dhaval Patel, AVP Product, EbixCash Financial Technologies Protecting and growing client wealth and making smart investment decisions on behalf of the client is what wealth management is all about, but the traditional model of the wealth management business is undergoing profound change as a result of digitalisation. Where do new platform solutions leave the old-school relationship managers (RMs)...

Nicholas Soo, Regional Head of Payments Products, Asia, HSBC A majority of the central banks around the world are researching CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) but they are not all looking at the same thing. In this podcast, Nicholas Soo, Regional Head of Payments Products, Asia, for HSBC explains to Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence the differences between the types of CBDCs and what they cou...

Andrew Doukanaris, Business Director FinTech, Europe, Intellias Finding funding for FinTech is increasingly challenging. What will it take to decongest the FinTech sector and stop the fall in investment? But you do have to be in the game to win the game. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Andrew Doukanaris, Business Director FinTech, Europe, of global technology partner Intellias, a firm fo...

Julien Traversini, Head of Financial Services, Valtech Having shown interest in payments, lending, and insurance, BigTech companies appear to have financial services providers firmly in their sights. In response, banks should act to embrace digital technologies more quickly, shifting their focus from being simply providers of financial services to being customer-driven, client-care-focused hubs. R...

Andres Korin, Co-Founder & CFO, Debite Getting early-stage financing for a FinTech startup can be a challenging and expensive prospect. Funding is a key hurdle for any new business – much of the focus in SME funding schemes has been on the ‘M’ of SMEs. But now there could be a useful option available for helping to turn your bright idea into a business. Tailored to early-stage and high-growth...

Shelby Austin, CEO & Co-Founder, Arteria AI Information is important but information in the wrong format, the wrong silo or even gathering dust in a filing cabinet is worse than useless! However, with an AI-driven, data first approach, financial institutions may digitise their legacy documentation processes and contract lifecycle management (CLM). This ‘forgotten transformation’ can provide a...