Joe Robinson, Co-Founder and CEO of Hummingbird — Fighting Financial Crime and the unsung heroes of FinTech
“The only people better than VCs at finding early stage fintechs are criminals.” While FinTech has grown exponentially in the last decade, so too has the complexity of investigating financial crime.
Joe’s Background:
“How does one get into this world? Well, I started my career in product management in FinTech. I was at Square in the early days of that company and led to their different products…. After that, I went to the cryptocurrency industry, and I joined circle as VP of product, worked with the initial team on launching the first product about a year after I joined. And then I shifted my own focus to focus on some of the financial crime issues that every company faces. “
Joe Robinson is the co-Founder and CEO of Hummingbird. He started his career in product management within FinTech and has held roles including VP of Risk and Data Science at Circle, and Senior Product Lead at Square.
Founding Hummingbird:
“We’re a mission driven company with the mission to fight financial crime. Before we knew exactly what we were going to build, we knew that that’s what we wanted to do.”
Hummingbird is a platform that enables fintechs and financial institutions to conduct their investigations into potential financial crime. Joe also discusses Hummingbird’s product-centric design roots and an unsung hero of finance, the compliance professional.
Modernizing KYC and AML investigations:
“It absolutely kind of boggles the mind how quickly criminal enterprises learn about early stage fintechs. I think the reason for that is over the last 10–15 years, they’ve just learned: “Okay, here’s a FinTech, it’s a money movement service, something like that, it’s going to have less sophisticated controls than, you know, your average tier one bank.” So they will, you know, actively watch for those posts about them, and forums and things like that, and then exploit those loopholes as quickly as possible.”
Joe expands on how newer, more sophisticated financial criminals have targeted early stage fintechs, and the key steps that founding teams should take to guard against financial crime. In particular, Joe elaborates on AML (anti-money laundering) which he believes is often overlooked compared to financial fraud.
Financial Crime and Crypto:
“You know, several of us on the founding team worked in crypto before this. We were early adopters, and we’re still big believers in it. At Hummingbird, we work with quite a few crypto companies, some of the biggest in the world… I think they’ve become the biggest crypto companies because they really are progressive in their thinking about compliance. They aggressively go after financial crime.”
Joe discusses his excitement for the future of digital currencies and the potential for compliance to be embedded into digital currencies. We also discuss the similarities between financial crimes conducted in fiat and digital currencies.
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Joe Robinson:
Joe Robinson is co-founder and CEO of Hummingbird, a regtech that sells KYC and AML software to banks and fintechs. Hummingbird’s mission is to fight financial crime by helping financial institutions better understand their customers and collaborate with law enforcement. Joe is a veteran of the FinTech world with prior experience at Block (formerly) Square and Circle.
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About the Author:
Andrew Janssens is a second-year MBA Candidate at The Wharton School, where he is part of the Wharton FinTech Podcast team. He has a passion for the nerdy corners of financial services, venture capital, and all things FinTech. Don’t hesitate to reach out with questions, comments, feedback, and opportunities at ajanss@wharton.upenn.edu.
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