Voice of FinTech December highlights!

Photo by Robert Ruggiero on Unsplash

In case you missed out on the December episodes of the Voice of FinTech podcast, here is the monthly summary! You can listen to all the episodes on the Episodes pages of this website or when you subscribe to your favorite podcast apps under Subscribe.

Founder’s story: Martins Sulte, CEO and co-founder of Mintos, a global marketplace for investing in loans

Martins Sulte, an INSEAD MBA alumnus, is CEO and Co-Founder at Mintos, an award-winning global marketplace for investing in loans, headquartered in Riga, Latvia.

We talk about:

• Martins’s motivation to start his own business
• Martin’s way of picking co-founders to maximize success
• What is Mintos? How does it work?
• Where are the investors on the platform from, and which loans does Mintos finance?
• What’s their unique selling point?
• Did the pandemic affect the loan business and how?
• Martins’ way of keeping with the ever-larger company
• Did he always believe this will work out, or did he have a moment when you thought you would give up?
• Mintos has raised more than EUR 7m on Crowdcube recently. The biggest crowdfunding round in Europe (excl. the UK) ever! Why the crowdfunding route?
• What will they do with the money?
• Martins’ book recommendation: The hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz
• Where can interested parties reach Martins or Mintos?

Voice of FinTech Americas with Clementina Giraldo (in Spanish / En español): Introduction to FinTech in Mexico / Introducción a FinTech en México con Diego Creel, cofundador y CEO de Creze

En este episodio de Voice of FinTech: Americas Series, conducido por Clementina Giraldo, fundadora y CEO de Dots & Tech, con sede en Colombia, Clementina habla con Diego Creel, cofundador y CEO de Creze, líder de la industria FinTech en México, sobre las oportunidades que ofrece México en esta imparable industria.

In this episode of Voice of FinTech: Americas Series hosted by Clementina Giraldo, Founder & CEO of Dots & Tech, based in Colombia in Spanish, Clementina speaks to Diego Creel, co-founder and CEO of Creze, a FinTech leader in Mexico, about the incredible opportunities in this industry. English description below.

Diego Creel es emprendedor mexicano, con más de 15 años de experiencia profesional. Ha trabajado en banca de inversión, planificación estratégica y dirección general en México y España, incluyendo empresas como UBS, Cemex, Cash Converters LATAM y Polygon Fintech. Co-fundó Tuyo y lo vendió a EZCorp después de 5 años. Es emprendedor Endeavor y finalista de E&Y en 2012. Miembro de la junta directiva de 6 startups de FinTech. Ingeniero del ITESM y MBA del IE en España.

México cuenta con más de 500 empresas FinTech y lídera después de Brasil, el desarrollo de la industria en América Latina. En este episodio Diego Creel, nos cuenta cómo identificó la oportunidad para emprender y cofundar Creze en 2015, una de las FinTech líderes en el segmento de crédito digital para pequeñas y medianas empresas en México. Nos compartió cómo fue el proceso de levantamiento de capital para el desarrollo de Creze, en medio de la evolución de la industria de fondos de capital emprendedor en su país, enfatizando qué aspectos ha tenido en cuenta, además del capital, para elegir a sus inversionistas y cómo ha sido la relación con ellos.

Adicionalmente presentó algunas cifras de la industria FinTech de México, el contexto y posibles repercusiones de la Ley FinTech en el país, las empresas FinTech que acompañan a Creze en el liderazgo del segmento de crédito digital, sus avances y desafíos. Hablamos sobre el interés de diferentes emprendedores del mundo de conquistar el mercado mexicano y las oportunidades que ofrece México en el contexto latinoamericano.

Open innovation and partnerships with Lloyds

Andrea Melville is MD Commercialisation & Propositions at Lloyds in London. Andrea is also a board member at Fnality, a network of decentralized Financial Market Infrastructures (dFMIs), where Lloyds invested.

We talk about:

• MD Commercialisation & Propositions at Lloyds in London — what does it mean in real life?
• Andrea previously said, “Why shouldn’t banking be just as simple as booking a hotel or ordering a taxi?” Why it’s sometimes not the case and what can be done about it?
• Lloyds is a systemically important organization, so giving rewards to employees to bring down its systems as a test like some tech companies do, doesn’t work. How does Lloyds then infuse agility into an organization with such constraints?
• Lloyds’ approach to innovation and working with start-ups: from investing to partnering
• How do your scouting and outreach at Lloyds work?
• How does the selection process work?
• How does economics work (broadly)? Do you work on pilots and proof of concepts?
• Long-term partnerships. Check out the FinTech Pledge that Lloyds signed up to and how to get onboarded by Lloyds.
• What are the metrics of the partnerships and monitoring
• Can you share success stories of the start-ups with whom you have partnered up? And the lessons learned?
• Favorite book: Guns, Germs and Steel (and some podcasts:)
• Wrap up: appeal to inspiring entrepreneurs to learn more about working with Lloyds and the best way to get in touch

Voice of FinTech: Live Speaker Series — Ask us anything about FinTech, AI, VC investing in APAC, the US and LatAm

We recorded this live virtual panel discussion with the Voice of FinTech hosts in the Asia Pacific and the Americas on December 10. Our hosts are outstanding entrepreneurs, investors and start-up community leaders focused on FinTech or related areas such as AI! We talked about what’s going on in the FinTech or start-up scene, early-stage investing or open innovation in Singapore, South East Asia, Latin America or the US. More specifically, RegTech in Singapore, VC investing in South East Asia, Data Science and AI in the US and building FinTech community in LatAm. Which are the hottest FinTech verticals? Which countries are FinTech leaders?

Angela Conroy, Co-founder and CEO of Notarum, a great RegTech, automating corporate due diligence, in Singapore. Included in the inaugural Singapore 100 Women In Tech List this year!

Chia Jeng Yang 谢征阳, Principal at Saison Capital, the VC arm of Credit Saison, one Japan’s largest consumer credit companies, based in Singapore.

Clementina Giraldo, Founder & CEO of Dots and Tech. Founder of FinTech Latinoamérica community, based in Colombia. Top ten FinTech influencer in LatAm and Spain among Colombians. Voice of FinTech habla español!

David Yakobovitch, Education Delivery Specialist at SingleStore, HumAIn Podcast Host, Angel Investor, Start-up Advisor, based in New York.

Remote work in Finance and opportunities for FinTech with INSEAD Finance Prof. Lily Fang

Lily Fang is Finance Professor at INSEAD. We discussed Lily’s fascination with Finance, innovations in the field like FinTech and the results of our survey among listeners on the impact of remote working in Finance and the opportunities this may present for FinTechs.

We talk about:

• What drove Lily to become an academic after her Ph.D. at Wharton
• Trends in education (MBA, EMBA) since the early 2000s
• Lily’s main research interests focus on financial intermediation, financial institutions, asset market, media, financial markets, and China and how the rise of FinTechs fit into all of these
• Our survey we have done in November on the remote work in Finance and opportunities for FinTechs. The make-up of our respondents:

- Over 40% worked in various Finance functions, another 15 % in FinTech and 15% in VC or PE roles, and 10 % in Investment banking. Over 75% of responders have working experience of 10 years and more. They come from a mix of independents and small companies (35%) and large companies (30%) and the rest in between. Nearly 60% are in senior roles (Director, MD, or Partner). Lastly, nearly 60% are based in Europe, over 20% in Asia, 10 % in the Americas, and the remainder in Africa and Australia.

• We asked the respondents about how remote working, made more commonplace by the pandemic, impacted their work in Finance: Were you impacted by remote working a lot or not? Do you think it’s temporary or permanent? Where do you see the biggest impact (e.g., teamwork, leadership, creativity or productivity)? Do you prefer a home office or not? Why?
• Then we focused people’s attention on how to turn these changes, which seem to have a profound impact on the way we work for the years to come, into opportunities for FinTechs:

- Where do you see the biggest opportunities for FinTechs if remote work for Finance professionals becomes more extensive and permanent than before the pandemic? E.g., client onboarding / KYC or CRM, automation/insights or cloud-native core banking systems/cybersecurity? Are these opportunities global, or do they highly depend on the local culture in your view? How long will it take for some of these innovations to take hold? Would commercialization of the biggest opportunities you see be best achieved by cooperation with incumbents or disruption from outside?

Listen in for the results and Prof. Fang’s commentary.

• Research and teaching priorities for 2021 and the best way to reach out
• #1 priority: INSEAD’s new online FinTech course starting in March 2021!

Asia Pacific Series with Taneia Bhardwaj: Building a neobank in India with Vinay Bagri, CEO and co-founder of Niyo Solutions

In another episode of the Asia Pacific series with Taneia Bhardwaj, Taneia spoke to the founder and CEO of Niyo — Vinay Bagri, based in Bangalore, India. Niyo was one of the first neobanking platforms to go live in India — 5 years on, Niyo is serving over 1.5 million customers through its digital banking services!

Here is what Taneia asked Vinay:

• FinTech founders are closer to being finance people, than technologists and that rings true for you too. You’ve been a career banker, having worked with some of India’s finest private banks. And I’m guessing that it was your time at these banks that the idea of Niyo came to you? Tell us a bit about how you ended up founding Niyo?
• Let’s talk about Niyo -its offerings and the approach you took to build this company –from what I can tell, you have identified segments that were either unserved or underserved by banks and then built offerings around that. Tell us about some of the products that you have rolled out? And what are you solving for?
• The idea of banking without banks and banks without branches is yet to completely take off in India — compared to, say, the UK where 9% of British adults have a neobank account — here we have close to 10 neobanks and a handful in the pipeline — given your first-mover advantage, what can you tell us about customer adoption?
• How do you generate demand? For instance, how are you reaching out to India’s 100 million blue-collar workers who span the length and breadth of the country?
• Your offering is also anchored in the context of a large and unbanked Indian population. To what extent do you believe Niyo has added value to people’s lives?
• Globally, profitability for neobanks is a huge challenge. Is it any different in India?
• Vinay, neobanks are seen as challengers to the high street banks in India. Yet, because our regulator doesn’t grant a virtual banking/ digital banking license, players like you need to work with a licensed entity — a bank partner. Is this a challenge and do you see it

Asset management & trading of crypto assets with Base58, Switzerland

Fabio Federici is a serial entrepreneur, based in Zurich, Switzerland. We talk about his latest venture, Base58, an asset management and trading firm specializing in crypto-assets and recent events in the crypto or digital assets and the prospects for the future.

More specifically, we talk about:

• What has attracted Fabio to the blockchain or crypto space?
• What’s Base58 about? What’s the problem they are solving?
• Solution?
• Target clients? Retail or institutional?
• What’s a cryptocurrency? A currency or an asset or both?
• This year, the halving of bitcoin happened. What does it mean, and why is it important?
• Cryptocurrencies are very volatile — how can one manage an asset like that?
• Many use cases are being explored with crypto — where are we with scalability and KYC that have been hampering wider adoption?
• Ray Dalio from Bridgewater says governments will kill bitcoin. Is he right?
• When you look at the crypto market cap and Google Search trends, is there a correlation? It seems to me that crypto has lost some steam over the years. Why?
• Fabio’s favorite business book: The man who solved the market by Gregory Zuckerman
• What’s the best way to reach out and find out more about Base58

Keeping you safe in the online world with Entersekt

Christian Ali is Senior Vice President Product at Entersekt, headquartered in South Africa. Christian leads his global team from Toronto, Canada.

We talk about:

• Christian’s motivation to join a FinTech
• What is Entersekt? How does it work? How did the founders come up with Entersekt’s key idea?
• Some breakthrough innovations that Entersekt brought to the market
• How did the pandemic affect Entersekt’s business and the way you work?
• Key trends in the payments space:
• Worldwide adoption of contactless payments
• How peer-to-peer payments will play a larger role than ever
• The increase in banking and payment options for consumers
• Pandemic has also brought us more cyber and phishing attacks. Why this has been happening? What does it mean for authentication solutions and your banking clients?
• What are the next steps in the next 12 months and beyond?
• Christian’s favorite business book: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
• The best way to reach out and find out more

If you have suggestions for topics or guests on the show or have ideas about how to make this podcast better for you, please e-mail us at info@voiceoffintech.com. You can also leave feedback using a quick form here: https://www.voiceoffintech.com/feedback. Alternatively, you can also leave a voicemail here.

Keep safe!

Sincerely,

Rudolf Falat