Searching for Mana with Lloyd Wahed

Freddy Kelly is the CEO and co-founder of Credit Kudos, a challenger credit bureau that uses financial behaviour to measure creditworthiness. Credit Kudos aggregates and interprets transaction data for use by lenders, brokers, and financial institutions: going beyond traditional scoring to provide a comprehensive view of a borrower’s creditworthiness. Freddy started his career in Silicon Valley, w...

4:10 how was iwoca in 2014 at Series A and the power of people behind creating products and innovations (guest Mimi Nguyen) 7:21 iwoca in 2020 funding last year over 1 billion. Culture being a big part of iwoca 9:45 Mission of SME lending and what is iwocaPay? 22:45 How is technology supporting the underwriting process?   The balance between machines and humans in the decision process. 24:50 How d...

Joe is Head of the UK Banks and Digital Channels business at BlackRock - The World's Largest Asset Manager. He is responsible for delivering BlackRock’s full suite of investment products, bespoke client solutions and propriety technology capabilities to some of the firm’s largest clients, including UK & Global Private Banks, UK Retail and Challenger Banks and Digital Channels (Robo Advisors & brok...

[00:05:00] Fiona talks us through her work overseeing one of the worlds largest strategic alliances between the Volkswagen Group and the Ford Motor Company [00:18:30] We learn more on Addleshaw Goddard and how the practice breaks down [00:27:45] Fiona and Lloyd talk about the opportunities still to be uncovered in the Middle Eastern Tech market [00:34:00] Lloyd begins to dig into Fiona’s biography...

Christian is the co-founder of LendInvest, the marketplace platform for property finance, and one of the leading Fintech businesses in the UK. The business has raised well over £1 billion in debt and equity, from institutions such as Atomico, the European Investment Fund, Citibank, HSBC, and the National Australia Bank. Christian comes from a legal background having practised as a real estate lawy...

Christian Gabriel is the CEO & Co-Founder of Capdesk - a social shareholder platform that makes investments in private growth companies accessible to all. Despite widespread economic challenges across the world - Capdesk have bucked the trend and in April 2020 secured £3m in Series A funding Founded in 2015 by Christian, alongside Mikkel Boje & Martin Damhus, Capdesk provides a cap table managemen...

For episode 3 of our second season - Lloyd was delighted to be joined by Isabel Woodford - Fintech Journalist at Sifted.eu the leading (and FT backed) media site for Europe’s innovators and entrepreneurs. Isabel has been featured in The Guardian, Reuters, The New York Times, and prior to joining Sifted, as a reporter at US crypto news outlet, The Block. Please do continue to like/share/comment/sub...

Breaking: Exclusively on Searching for Mana - Conrad reveals to us the details of his latest venture Conrad Ford is the founder of, SME finance broker, Funding Options - having founded the company in 2011 - Conrad and his team built the business into the leading SME marketplace winning multiple awards along the way and accumulating an exceptional leadership team. Conrad left for new projects in 20...

To kick off Season Two of Searching for Mana - Lloyd was delighted to be joined by Anna Brailsford Anna is the CEO of Code First: Girls and a Board Member for the Institute of Coding. Before joining CF:G Anna was the CEO and co-founder of Founders Factory incubated EdTech startup Frisbee. Prior to that, Anna was the Commercial Director of Lynda.com and LinkedIn. When LinkedIn acquired Lynda for $1...

It's the Season One Wrap Party - and to celebrate we are releasing a 'Best of' episode featuring highlights from our wonderful guests. Including: Nick Ogden - Clearbank/Worldpay Julian Sawyer - Gemini/Starling Bank Charlotte Crosswell - Innovate Finance Husayn Kassai - Onfido Keith Grose - Plaid David Brear - 11:FS Ed Vaizey - Former Tech Minister and the musical stylings of Ray Brash and The Love...

This week Lloyd was joined by David Brear - founder and CEO of award-winning Fintech Consultancy 11:FS. Having worked on both the industry and consultancy side of financial services, in early 2016 alongside some notable Fintech superstars - David founded 11:FS - determined that they would be the consultancy equivalent of so many other lauded financial disruptors. David takes us back to his early l...

“You don’t pivot, you refine” This week we were delighted to be joined by noted entrepreneur and inventor of e-commerce, Nick Ogden From building the first online shop in 1994, Nick has since founded 4 businesses - Worldpay, Cashflows, Clearbank and RTGS. Nick spoke fascinatingly about his entrepreneurial genesis on the Channel Islands and pitching his first idea to Sony executives in Japan, to fo...

We were delighted to be joined by Peter Briffett - CEO and founder of Wagestream, the Fintech with a truly fantastic social purpose. Recorded from his amazing ‘work from home’ shed and giving Lloyd surely the most unique opening to a show he’s had so far, Peter speaks in-depth about how Wagestream is truly helping people to manage their finances by utilising open banking to stream their wages into...

We are thrilled to have with Searching for Mana our next guest Husayn Kassai, CEO and co-founder of Onfido. He is sharing with us his 8-year journey from graduation from Oxford University to building up an AI company. He also explains the concept of "immunity passports" for governments battling coronavirus. Onfido has just raised $100 million, reaching a total funding amount of $200 million. Husay...

"It doesn't really matter what your education is, you can make that change" - Charlotte Crosswell. Charlotte Crosswell is the CEO of Innovate Finance - the industry body for UK Fintech. Charlotte speaks passionately about the need for financial wellbeing education in schools, how Fintech can emerge from the current crisis and accelerate the need for digital adoption and transformation. We learn of...

Ed Vaizey was the UK’s longest-serving Minister for Technology, working for UK Prime Minister David Cameron from 2010-16. During his time as Minister, Vaizey oversaw a major expansion in fixed and mobile broadband coverage; helped the UK become a world leader in tech investment, working with companies such as Google and Facebook, as well as supporting the start-up ecosystem. Ed was educated at Mer...

In this episode, Lloyd Wahed is joined by Melanie Palmer - Chief Marketing Officer at Nucoro . The Nucoro Wealth Engine provides solutions to automate, personalize, and accelerate wealth management for businesses who want to grow and thrive in the modern world. It provides Wealth Management as a Service for B2B markets in the UK and CE, enabling large institutions serving mass-affluent clients to...

Our guest in this episode is Rory Stirling - Partner at Connect Ventures - the London based Venture Capital seed firm is a product-focused, seed stage firm investing across Europe. They are singularly focussed on investing in purpose-led founders, obsessed with solving hard problems at scale, by creating products and companies that people love. Previous roles... - Partner and co-founder at BGF Ven...

My guest this week is CEO of the leading business banking challenger for cryptocurrency and blockchain companies - BCB Group. Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie has been in the finance and technology markets for over 20 years and we cover so much in this podcast. A self-professed 'Geek', after achieving academic excellence and securing an MBA from Cass Business School, Oliver found himself in the thick of...

In Episode 9 of Searching For Mana, I had the pleasure of welcoming Keith Grose to the podcast, Head of UK for Plaid. After expanding into the UK and Europe last year, Plaid has excelled, recently being named “Best Enabler” in the 11:FS 2020 Pulse Awards. With their acquisition by Visa underway, this is set to be a massive year for the fintech giant. Keith is from a small town in North Carolina, b...

In Episode 8 of Searching for Mana, I was delighted to be joined by Shefali Roy, COO & CCO at TrueLayer. Shefali was a brilliant guest. She had energy, she was open and she also gave some great insight into the innovation behind TrueLayer's success so far. We talk about so much! She started her journey in Bombay before moving to Australia, achieving academic excellence from an early age as she wen...

On Episode 7 of Searching for Mana, I had the chance to sit down with Julian Sawyer. Quite simply, Julian is an expert in the current FinTech market. He co-founded Starling Bank and led it through a period of incredible growth, advises the board of Australia's first neobank, Volt, and is currently MD of Europe for Gemini, the world's first licensed crypto-currency exchange platform, founded by Cam...

On Searching for Mana this week I was delighted to be joined by Ray Brash, CEO at PPS. In the podcast we cover everything from Ray's 15 incredibly successful years at award-winning PPS - including a recent partnership with Visa; his insight into the future of FinTech; and all the bits in between his career that make him such an engaging and fun personality, like being the base player in his own ba...

For episode 11 of Searching For Mana, I was delighted to welcome Richard Wagner, CEO of Cashplus. Cashplus are a leading UK challenger to banks and Richard has been the driving force behind it's growth over the last 16 years. We talk about his journey to the UK (he's from across the pond), the dreams and vision he had from the start, his incredulity at how long it took him to set up a bank account...

Episode 5 is a juicy one as I was joined in conversation with Sasha Yanshin, Founder and MD at Strategy Desk. Sasha has helped industry leading businesses build and grow successful products by developing astute commercial strategies, combined with digital innovation. Companies like MasterCard, Tesco, Barclays, HSBC, RBS, and Bank of America. Now he's helping banks innovate and grow by creating tra...