Searching for Mana with Lloyd Wahed

Luck is on your side this week as NYU and LSE faculty member Christian Busch joins Lloyd to discuss his new book, The Serendipity Mindset .The Director of NYU’s Global Economy Program, Christian has extensive experience with social entrepreneurship. He co-founded the Sandbox Network, a global hub for young innovators, and has advised companies like TED and Haier. And with The Serendipity Mindset ,...

It’s time to get innovative as Lloyd welcomes acclaimed writer and speaker Alf Rehn. From becoming the youngest university chair in Finland to serving as a chairman to a Gold Lion-winning ad agency, Alf has led a vast and varied career. Today, he’s a professor of innovation, design and management at the University of Southern Denmark and the author of Innovation for the Fatigued: How to Build a Cu...

Dr. Louise Beaumont joins Lloyd for a far-reaching conversation that covers the future of open banking, the history of UK FinTech and everything happening in between. Louise is an ideal guest to comment on it all. Since completing her PhD in just 15 months and working as a consultant for Capgemini, she’s led a versatile and varied career, making an early investment in Funding Options and advising...

The future of money is here as Octopus Ventures Partner Zihao Xu sits down with Lloyd to discuss how he finds tomorrow’s fintech behemoths. After starting his career with renowned strategic consultancy Roland Berger, Zihao moved into the venture capital sphere with Octopus, which identifies “unusually talented entrepreneurs” and offers early-stage funding. In this in-depth conversation, Zihao tell...

PensionBee Founder and CEO Romina Savova joins Lloyd to examine a sector that’s ripe for disruption: pensions. That’s the idea behind PensionBee, which Romina founded after working at behemoths like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. When she tried to consolidate her pensions in one place, she found the task impossible and received little to no help from financial advisors or her provider. That led...

Meniga Co-Founder and CEO Georg Ludviksson sits down with Lloyd to outline how to found a successful FinTech. That’s a topic Georg has plenty of first-hand experience with. After developing one of Iceland’s most popular video games, Georg moved into tech, partnering with Nokia on an early mobile internet venture. That led him on to Harvard Business School before he founded Meniga, a digital bankin...

Scalable Capital Founder Adam French tells Lloyd Wahed how he went from a student at LSE to the founder of a wealthtech leader that partners with the world’s largest asset manager. So what accounts for Adam’s tremendous career growth? After interning with Goldman Sachs, he quickly moved up into director roles within the bank’s trading division. But his relentless pursuit of self-betterment led him...

Searching for Mana dives deep into WealthTech this week as Ned Phillips (Founder and CEO of Bambu, co-host of the WealthTech UnWrapped podcast) sits down with Lloyd to talk robo-advisors, sales and so much more. After starting out as a London insurance salesman in the early 1990s, Ned found success in the east as Etrade’s Managing Director for Asia. Since then, he’s become a leader in the global W...

Julie Ashmore Dann (CEO, Rapid Cash at NatWest) sits down with Lloyd to talk about how her company is making loans simple for SMEs. After entering the industry as a remittance processor, Julie developed her expertise in small-business lending at such companies as Bibby Financial Services, HSBC and Growth Street. In January 2020, she joined Rapid Cash, which helps SMEs get loans in a matter of days...

Michael Brown (Senior Market Analyst, Caxton FX) joins Lloyd for a special Thursday episode tackling the latest economic developments in the UK.Since joining Caxton FX in 2016, Michael has shown an impressive knack for predicting developments in the foreign exchange markets. In this episode, he shares why traders are bracing for a no-deal Brexit and tells us which currencies to invest in for Q4 20...

Richard Davies (CEO of Allica Bank, Non-Executive Director at Revolut) joins Lloyd to discuss the state of SME lending post-COVID and what it takes to succeed at the UK’s biggest fintechs. And he should know. Throughout his career, Richard has moved seamlessly between major incumbent banks and innovative digital challengers. He served as a Managing Director at Barclays and as COO at HSBC, but he h...

Gregory Pastore sits down with Lloyd and tells us how financial consultancies are preparing big banks for upcoming changes to global regulations. After building up impressive experience with a major US bank (JP Morgan) and a Big Four consultancy (EY), Greg has made waves as Baringa’s Director Finance, Risk and Compliance. He tells Lloyd about the company’s game-changing work on climate risk, why m...

Drs Beatriz Carrillo Garcia and Vivianna Rodriguez Carreon talk to Lloyd and Mana Search Co-Founder Mimi Nguyen about the hidden factors in great leadership! Since collaborating at the University of Sydney, Beatriz and Vivianna have used their Theory U framework for measuring and imparting leadership skills in students. Joining us from Australia, the duo explains how to prevent personality clashes...

Design: it’s a fundamental way for companies to understand their end users’ needs. Jyothish Nair understands this better than anyone. A VP and associate partner at McKinsey, Jyo has been helping clients create optimal physical, digital and spatial experiences for over two decades. Sitting down with Lloyd and Mana Search Co-Founder Mimi Nguyen, Jyo tells us about his journey with McKinsey, whether...

On a special edition of Searching for Mana, Lloyd chats with Nicky Morgan, Baroness Morgan of Cotes. After serving for over a decade in Parliament – a term that included cabinet positions as Education Secretary, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture Media and Sport, and more – Nicky earned peerage in January 2020.In a wide-ranging chat that touches on politics, education and leadership, Lloyd an...

This week, Binance UK Director Teana Baker-Taylor joins Lloyd for an enlightening chat about career progression, crypto and so much more! A financial veteran with over 20 years’ experience at companies like HSBC, Global Digital Finance and Coinfloor, Teana offers incredible insight into both blockchain and financial services in general. Touching on everything from the importance of community build...

On this episode, Lloyd sits down with Joseph George, Managing Director and Partner at Dufrain. In his work with both Dufrain and Deloitte, Joseph has worked with major financial institutions such as Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, JPMorgan and more. Earlier this year, DataIQ named him one of the UK’s most influential people in data and analytics. In a wide ranging discussion, Lloyd and Joseph talk...

This week, Lloyd chats with Dr Karen Elliott, a Senior Lecturer in Enterprise/Innovation at Newcastle University. Karen was voted one of Innovate Finance’s #Standout 35 Women in FinTech, and in 2018, she and her colleagues earned a £1.2-million grant to help Atom Bank elevate its FinTech services. In this interview, Lloyd and Karen discuss the future of work, why a strong sense of purpose is the b...

[03:45]: Charlie explains the importance of anti-money laundering efforts and why it’s ‘the hardest problem within FinTech’.[16:20] After raising $40 million for a company he founded in his room, what challenges does Charlie continue to face?[30:50] Charlie explains how his approach to company culture has changed over the course of the past year.[39:35] How Charlie went from picking fruit to earni...

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 iwoca9:45 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 did C...

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 &a...

[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 m...