Tag Archives: Overview

LFP177 – Fintech’s Success: Past, Present (esp re Kalifa Report) and Future w/Nigel Verdon Thrice Fintech Founder

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The recent report by Ron Kalifa, for the UK Govt to identify priority areas to support the UK’s Fintech sector and maintain the UK’s global reputation in re, gives us an excellent opportunity to zoom out from that to discuss The Past: why Fintech so successfully started in the UK; The Present: how well the Kalifa Report advances UK Fintech and move on to The Future: what will make UK Fintech successful going forwards.

There is perhaps no one better to discuss this long view with that Nigel Verdon who was at the centre of the digitisation of mainstream  blue-chip FS in the 1990s and subsequently founded three UK Fintechs (Evolution 1997; Currency Cloud 2007, Railsbank 2016).

In all of this sectoral focus however we should not forget that all sectors are part of an economy as a whole and a Government balance sheet. Huge increases in deficits and expansion of money supply is unlikely unless addressed to promote a strong and stable country as a backdrop to Fintech activity and this remains by far the biggest risk to all UK citizens into the future. In terms of the current Kalifa report however, unsurprisingly he wasn’t asked to come up with a fiscal and monetary approach but more bottom-up measures.

Covering such a wide canvas of UK FS over decades this is more of a conversation than something to be precised. However major topics include: Continue reading →

LFP176 – Sci-Fi Creeps Ever Nearer – Automated Detection of Emotion In Voice Audio w/Rana Gujral Behavioral Signals

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Behavioral Signals aims to “turn your conversational data into actionable insights for your business” via the automated cross-cultural detection of emotions in the audio of conversations. This is a super-new front in machine language recognition and usage one which has to date been rather simplistically approached but one which as we all know every day is essential to real human interaction – witness all the confusion that for example emails can cause which would not occur if we saw people’s body language and heard the tone of what they were saying as well as simply the content in Times New Roman. Indeed it is this deficiency of the latter which led to the invention of emoticons to crudely add back some disambiguation.

Rana Gujral, CEO of Behavioral Signals, is a super-experienced veteran entrepreneur and CEO in Silicon Valley and in this episode he draws the curtain back on if not the final frontier then certainly a might important new one of man-machine interfacing.

Alexa and Siri can do an amazing job today compared to their predecessors a decade or two back, yet neither of them have any sense that they are dealing with a human being – they simply detect “words in Times New Roman” as it were and have no concept that the person asking is a human being for whom words are at times a small part of the bandwidth.

In this show Rana covers one Case Study of a usage of this technology in FS which ably demonstrated that when one is dealing with real technological innovation the use case innovation is itself also truly radical and requires large amounts of initiative and imagination to think beyond the obvious – after all if people already detect emotion how could a computer supplement that?

Topics discussed include: Continue reading →

LFP175 – The Ever-Increasing Importance of Creating a Company Culture w/Keith Smith CEO Payability

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Back in the day when business was more monocultural in many dimensions, and indeed today in more monocultural societies, “culture” was implicit and did not need explicitly defining. However in the modern, ever-more globalised, ever-more multicultural world binding together a group of people, possibly in different countries into one coherent entity is an ever-increasing challenge.

Keith Smith is a serial Founder who created a Fintech first in 1992 (this sounds like the earliest the LFP has ever heard about…), followed by four businesses in other industries until returning to Fintech co-founding Payability.

Keith thus has considerable experience of what works and what does not and a long track record in experimenting and finding ways to bind people together both within a company and at the same time “being able to think like your clients do”.

Naturally the challenge of corporate culture has only increased with governments reactions to covid – onboarding people into a culture for example being far more of a challenge when people don’t meet in the flesh.

Topics discussed include: Continue reading →

LFP174 – The Huge Success of Digital Wallets and their Future w/Bjorn Goss CEO Stocard

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Stocard are perhaps Europe’s most successful Fintech measured by numbers of users – they have over 60 million users of their App (which gets 4.7* on Google Play) and process an amazing 2 billion transactions per annum – a phenomenal achievement. Their users save some 2-5% on average on their shopping and in some countries up to 20% of the population use Stocard for their daily shopping :-O

But what are Digital Wallets? What are their use cases?

Where are Digital Wallets going in the future? Will they keep encroaching further into retail Financial Services as a whole?

There is perhaps no-one better placed to address these questions that Bjorn Goss, co-founder and CEO of Stocard who has roughly a decade on the case and, along with explaining shopping to me (which I clearly don’t understand as I am not getting these available savings)  lays out a clear and credible ambitious vision for the future of the Digital Wallet.

Topics discussed include: Continue reading →

LFP173 – The Blockchain Digitisation of Tuvalu & Implications of Digitisation At Large w/Dave Washburn CEO nChain

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nChain are part of a small consortium are working on a project with the Tuvalu govt to put all of its records on a digital ledger – aka Blockchain, thus becoming the first country to do so. Tuvalu, comprises 9 islands, has a domestic revenue of $60m (a chunk of which comes from its ownership of the .tv domain), has a ca 11,000 population but does not have an electronic banking system. The plan is to move the country’s national register to the Blockchain, will be followed by an exploration into digital currency, a huge feat of technological leapfrogging.

In this episode we are joined by Dr Dave Washburn CEO of nChain who discusses not only this landmark project but the broader and wider implications of digitisation as a whole.

Digitisation is neither good not bad in itself – like a knife it can be wielded for good or for ill. However as digiitsation of everything continues apace what simplifying criteria, what simplifying metrics are we to use in particular cases of digitisation?

Topics discussed include: Continue reading →

LFP172 – The Multiple Dimensions of the Challenges of Digital for Incumbent FS Projects w/Tony Clark CEO NextWave

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Little more than a couple of decades ago IT was a very back office function in large FS organisations. Now it has completely inverted to become centre-stage in roughly every dimension of being in business, FS included.

Tony Clark, serial entrepreneur, founder and CEO of NextWave Consulting has over thirty years experience of large City  FS projects and takes us on a tour of the all-encompassing challenges facing all large incumbent FS players in not just reacting to but in leveraging the digital technologies and digital ecosystem to ensure they are at the leading edge not the trailing edge of the 21stC digital revolution so changing business right now.

Tony’s premise is that FS institutions need a phase change of approach to successfully leverage change. Topics discussed include: Continue reading →

LFP171 – The Past, Present and Future of Venture Capital w/Josh Bell Dawn Capital

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Venture Capital is nigh-on essential for many ambitious, big-build, fast-scaling Fintechs and Techs in general. Fund raising is essential. Thus how the VC market is evolving is of the utmost importance to ambitious firms and founders.

In this episode Josh Bell one of the founding partners of leading London-based European-wide VCs Dawn Capital who have raised over a billion to invest in growing businesses joins us to look back, look around now and look into the future. How can you best raise funds? Plenty of learn…

Topics discussed include: Continue reading →

LFP170 – Three Major Indicators That Insurtech Is Making Demonstrable Progress Changing An Industry w/Andy Rear

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Andy Rear was until recently head of the innovative Digital Partners, MunichRe’s London subsidiary which pretty much invented Reinsurance (/Insurance) As A Service (which he covered way back in LFP074). In this episode he rejoins us to present evidence that Insurtech is actually changing an industry.

Andy himself is off to do Non-exec-ing and a PhD in Pensions behaviour and so this might well be his swansong podcast on the topic of Insurtech and as such an industry leading figure it’s a must-listen! Has Insurtech changed an industry – Andy lays out the evidence and you decide…

Topics discussed include: Continue reading →

LFP169 – A Serial Entrepreneur’s Guide To Fund-Raising w/Peter Keenan CEO Apexx Global

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Capital-raising is an absolutely core-skill for entrepreneurs and their growing businesses – and every tech business de facto needs to grow (margins low and intense competition).

Peter Keenan, CEO and co-founder of merchants-payments provider Apexx Global, has raised capital in a total of five companies and thus talks to us from a position of considerable personal experience.

Most capital raisings most of the time for most companies are challenging processes. Thus all can benefit from hearing experiences and case studies – whether one has never done it, or whether one has done it many times.

Topics discussed include: Continue reading →

LFP167 – Traditional Insurance Model Inverted, Community Insurance Reinvented w/Tobi Taupitz CEO Laka

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The alignment of economic interests between buyer and seller is much spoken about but little done. Over two and half years ago when Tobi was first on the show he spoke about the idea of aligning Laka’s interests with their clients. Now we hear this narrative all the time but rarely is it deeply true.

In Laka’s case they do not take payment for the insurance but rather earn money when they pay-out on an insurance claim – the opposite of the insurance industry. Its a “back to the future” approach – back to the origins of insurance as being collectives, co-operatives of say Swiss dairy farmers up an alp bonding together for mutual (sic) support.

Well back then it sounded like a wonderful idea but one that would need careful paramaterisation. As with anything in life one needs to balance compassion for others with compassion for yourself – all too many teachers, doctors et al go into their profession to help people but come out of it decades later bitter and cynical. In the same way you can set up a company tomorrow that is totally focused on client-value (which many say of course but no-one really does) but if you are 100% on client-value then that’s zero value for your business and at some point you go bust.

In this episode we look at truly aligned Insurtech. How has the model gone? Is it widespread? Will it catch on? What does the future hold?

Topics discussed include: Continue reading →