IBS Intelligence Global FinTech Interviews

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...

Samier Khan, Managing Director APAC, Codebase Technologies Open banking in the APAC region is taking two distinct paths. While some jurisdictions have set out a defined regulatory framework, others have chosen to follow a more market-driven approach. Against that background the pandemic has only served to speed up the adoption of digital banking and open banking solutions with pre-built APIs. Robi...

Tushar Aggarwal, CEO & Founder, Persistence   Singapore-based Persistence is building an ecosystem of financial products to serve both institutional and crypto-native users, aiming for seamless integration across blockchains. The idea is to build the liquidity that new financial instruments and cryptoassets require but will this really lead to mass adoption of decentralised finance services as...

Phil Weisberg, EVP Strategic Planning and Partnerships, oneZero The foreign exchange (FX) business is a patchwork quilt of legacy systems. Perhaps more so than any other segment in financial services, tech lifecycles in FX are getting shorter and faster. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Phil Weisberg, EVP Strategic Planning and Partnerships, oneZero about how the FX market is changing.

 Andrey Yashunsky, CEO & Founder, Prytek ; Joe Channer, CEO, Delta Capita Delta Capita, backed by its parent Prytek, offers a BOPaaS (Business Operating Platform-as-a-Service) solution, a combination of tech solutions, managed services, and capital, giving banks the option of lifting out operations to create more efficient businesses. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Andrey Yashunsky,...

Yashwant Lodha, Co-Founder, PayNearby   PayNearby is one of the leading players in India in digital payments and branchless banking. The firm’s solution is to build a network of digital financial advisers from among the country’s ‘mom and pop’, mainly rural, retailers who are already trusted in their communities, providing them with access to digital financial solutions for their customers. Robin...

Julia McColl, Commercial Director, Chetwood Financial As the financial services sector moves towards genuine consumer-led innovation it must ensure that legacy financial inclusivity issues do not persist. FinTechs have a role to play in becoming the engine behind financial inclusion. The banking business model needs to adapt to deliver a truly ideal user experience. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence...

Sam Ranieri, Chief Executive Officer, Reach The pandemic has caused a boom in ecommerce but notably in cross-border ecommerce. A merchant of record model allows merchants to navigate the complexities of local payments methods, FX rates, and conversion rates without needing a physical presence in each region. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Sam Ranieri, CEO of global payment localisation...

Andrea Barbon, Assistant Professor of Finance, University of St Gallen The primary purpose in the establishment of cryptocurrencies is to avoid government censorship but the likes of Bitcoin are not behaving like currencies, rather they are at present simply highly speculative assets. Nevertheless, government attempts to control cryptocurrency serve to showcase the power of the blockchain. Work no...

Muddu Sudhakar, Chief Executive Officer, Aisera Addressing the problem of increasing customer wait times, US banking platform Dave’s solution was to employ an AI conversational interface that delivers customer self-service. With Aisera’s AI Customer Service solution, the challenger bank provides on-demand, personalised support options accessible through a 24×7 virtual assistant that has resulted i...

Eklove Mohan, Senior Director – Technology, Synechron Many financial services institutions have publicly announced a post-pandemic return to work policy with a majority offering a hybrid work scheme marrying remote WFH with some office presence. Goldman Sachs is a notable exception to this but for those going hybrid, what steps do they need to take to ensure secure working? Robin Amlôt of IBS Inte...

Eli Rosner, Chief Product & Technology Officer, Finastra What is the purpose of the organisation? Bankers (86%) are recognising they have a duty to support the communities they serve. A clear majority of the senior executives in financial services around the world (85%) also say Banking as a Service (BaaS) will make an impact over the next year, with 40% believing the impact will be significan...

James Hudson-Dale, New Partner Sales, IDnow Digital disruption in RegTech is all about making the connected world a safer place. Businesses and regulators need to find ways to work together to create an environment that capitalises on opportunities while ensuring safety and security. Regulation is increasing as is the focus on privacy with the introduction of GDPR in the EU and the CCPA in Califor...

Mac Thompson, Founder & President, White Clay US FinTech White Clay specialises in helping banks to clean up their act where data is concerned, data that could mean the difference between knowing what their customers want and being in a position to help or, eventually, going out of business! Mac Thompson, Founder and President of White Clay talks to Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence about findin...

Micky Watkins, Chief Executive Officer, World Mobile The World Bank estimates 1.7 billion adults are unbanked, unable to access basic financial services, including some 700 million people in Africa. World Mobile is working with Cardano to leverage a decentralised identity solution built on the latter’s blockchain to address this issue. Large scale trials are already operating in Tanzania and the c...

Corey Gross, CEO & Co-Founder, Sensibill Amazon is already doing it and banks should be doing it too! Bankers need to be thinking differently about data, especially data from third party sources and what it can tell them about customer behaviour and how they can leverage that information to tailor products. Manage this ‘alternative data’ properly and banks will be able to be more proactive in...

Eric Head, Vice President Experience Leadership, Verint The US banking industry appears to have weathered the pandemic storm in strong fashion with all of the top 15 US banks showing improved customer satisfaction scores in the Verint Experience Index: Banking (2021) . However, that doesn’t mean that they can rest on their CSAT and NPS rankings, customer journeys have become more complex, and expe...

Alan Vey, Chief Executive Officer, Aventus   NFTs are a part of decentralised finance (DeFi) that is rapidly growing, digitally representing ownership in a highly tradable and secure format, allowing marketplaces and more complex financial products to be built. There’s a lot more here potentially than just video clips and digital art. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence talks through the potential of...