What Is Tech?

What is Tech? What are tech departments doing? In LFP125 I am joined by Charlie Barker CTO of Europe’s fastest growing company in 2019 Blue Motor Finance to take a deep dive into the past and present of software and software development.

AI/ML

Naturally one of the biggest areas of innovation is “computers” – which can do increasingly clever things. In LFP221 joins us in 2023 for the third time to discuss Generative AI, Excess Data, AI-API-isation, Quantum Computing & AI. Previously in 2019 in LFP134 Tristan discussed new trends in AI/ML especially around forecasting and Alt Data and way back in 2016  in LFP063 we discussed separate the reality from the hype of AI in FS.

APIs

In LFP045 Stephane Dubois founder and CEO of Xignite joins us to discuss the building block of much of Fintech – APIs their past, their present and their future and how they enable that all-important Fintech characteristic of customer satisfaction.

Challenges Incumbents Face With Tech

In recent decades in incumbent FS IT has gone from a limited back-office function to being all-encompassing. In LFP172 Tony Clark CEO of NextWave Consulting joins us to discuss the multi-dimensional organisational challenges that “digital” presents to the modern FS organisation.

Crypto and Blockchain

The LFP was one of the first to explain how Bitcoin worked was back in 2014 in LFP003 Lifting the bonnet on Digital Currencies with Dr James Smith to get beyond the hysteria and poor explanations to explain these (and the vital and flexible underlying tech – the blockchain) simply and clearly.

The LFP has viewed crypto as highly speculative in value and as a piece of tech. One admittedly which was a great experi9ment and originally well-intended but which has many flaws. FS and money is fundamentally about Trust. In LFP206 Omid Malekan author of a best rated book on Bitcoin joined us to discuss his new book “Rearchitecting Trust” and we discuss Rearchitecting Trust: FS, Crypto and CBDCs.

Blockchain has come to mean many things rather than one specific thing. However all technologies have social/societal impacts – in LFP173 Dave Washburn CEO of nChain joins us to discuss the interaction of tech and society and the digitisation of Tuvalu,

Data

“Data” is the fuel of the modern tech revolution. In LFP080 Jason du Preeze CEO of Privitar joins us to discuss the science, art and regulation of data privacy.

Tech is all about data. In LFP093 Max Pell CEO of Validis joins us to discuss how it’s actually used  – compared to the propaganda for example most Fintechs focus on a short customer journey rather than collecting lots of data.

Digitation

In LFP150 Dan Garrett joins us to discuss how he is digitising “the world’s least digitised market” – wills, probate and cremations.

Human-Machine Interaction

Sometimes sci-fi is upon us. In LFP137 Marek Zwiefka-Sibley discusses two-way interactive man-machine interaction via holograms or 2D in-browser Avatars (think Holly from Red Dwarf). It sounds phenomenal but it’s real – check out the 40 sec YouTube in the link for yourself.

Sci-fi creeps ever-nearer. In LFP176 Rana Gujral, CEO of Behavioral Signals, joins us to discuss the automated detection of emotion in the audio of a human conversation.

Regtech

Hyper-regulation is the zeitgeist in roughly all economic sectors these days. In Fintech it has grown higgeldy-piggeldy for over a decade incurring what one might call Reg Debt cf Tech Debt. In LFP228 Alistair Cotton co-founder of Integrated Finance and I discuss some examples that point to the need for a refactoring – cf refactoring the code base.

In LFP136 Evgeny Likhoded who started his Regtech in 2012 so has long experience compared to the market explains how to manage the reg tsunami one needs to move beyond a model of “data as just information” to one where a reg change is a domino which sets in process a whole series of other dominoes falling and consequent actions in organisations.

Security, Credit and Regulatory Information Enhanced By Tech

Financial Crime is an issue for #oldFS and #newFS. In LFP115 Vishal Marria joins us to discuss what types of FinCrime there are and what is required to combat it.

In LFP219 Jeremy Annis CEO and co-founder of unique tech firm Ripjar – perhaps the only firm to be founded by five ex-GCHQ-ers wach with over a decade at the heart of the UK’s intelligence gathering under their belts joins us to discuss Automating Intelligence Gathering from GCHQ to Scanning 18bn News Articles for Credit/Reg/Biz-Relevance.

No security system is ever 100% safe. In LFP215 Martin Rehak CEO of Resistant.AI joins us to discuss plugging gaps in security systems with adaptive AI.

Fraud is an ever-present problem for all online businesses. In LFP196 Bence Jendruszak co-founder of SEON joins us to discuss fighting fraud in a truly digital fashion.

The Cloud

An example of Enterprise Fintech is CloudMargin. In LFP082 their CEO Steve Husk joins us to discuss Collateral Management, the Cloud and Scaling-Up Fintechs.