Rebank: Banking The Future

Dave Birch (@dgwbirch) is Director of Innovation at Consult Hyperion, a secure electronic transactions consultancy.   Dave is an internationally-recognized thought leader in digital identity and digital money. He has been named one of the global top 15 best sources of business information by Wired Magazine, one of the top ten most influential voices in banking by the Financial Brand, one of the top three most influential people in London’s FinTech community by City A.M, and more. Dave is perhaps Europe’s most influential commentator on emerging payments and adjacent subject areas, including digital identity, blockchain and privacy.   This episode is a timely follow-on to recent episodes with Pascal Bouvier (Ep 22) and Taqanu founder Balazs Nemethi (Ep 23), both of which raised the topic of digital identity.   When it comes to digital identity and the technologies required to support its implementation, few are as knowledgeable as Dave Birch.   As always, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Tweet

Syrian refugees are facing one of the most difficult challenges humans can experience.   Balazs Nemethi, founder of Taqanu, wants to support them in their plight.   Taqanu seeks to provide banking to anyone, regardless of background and available documents. One of their first target user groups is refugees displaced by unrest in Syria, but the potential for a solution like Taqanu extends across refugees, migrants, the financially excluded and beyond - to any user group seeking a digital solution to identity and financial services. Combining digital identity, blockchain and a geography agnostic mobile-only interface, Taqanu seeks to revolutionize financial access for the unbanked.   Based in Berlin and supported by some of the most recognizable global change organizations, Taqanu is innovating in an area that could create real improvement in millions of people's lives.   We recently incorporated a new discussion platform into our website at www.bankingthefuture.com to support our community and an exclusive m

Pascal Bouvier (@pascalbouvier) is a full-time venture capital investor, fintech practitioner and prolific blogger.   Before becoming a full-time venture capitalist, Pascal founded and ran startups, worked for commercial and investment banks, and has been at one time or another a CFO, COO, CIO… the list goes on.   Pascal is currently Venture Partner with Santander InnoVentures. Prior to joining InnoVentures, he built the fintech venture arm of Route 66 Ventures into a top global fintech investor.   To anyone hoping to get into venture capital: check our Pascal’s bio for what high energy, proactivity and variety of experience looks like.   You can follow Pascal's thoughts on Twitter, LinkedIn and on his must-read fintech blog, finiculture.com.

Financial inclusion is a global issue. In fact, it's probably more global than most of us think. Even in developed markets like the UK, US and Western Europe, there are huge numbers of unbanked people. Pockit, a UK-based neobank, is addressing that problem in the UK. Launched in 2014 and currently serving 123,000 customers, Pockit is making a profound impact on the lives of a huge number of financially underserved individuals. Virraj Jatania, Founder and CEO of Pockit, joins us in Episode 21 to talk through the problem they're solving and the strategies they're employing to do so. We get into the economics of "neobanks," non-bank fintechs that leverage third-party authorizations to offer bank-like products. Let us know what you think on Twitter @rebankpodcast or @will_beeson. Connect with us via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or www.bankingthefuture.com to continue the conversation. We hope you enjoy today's episode.

This is Part 2 of a two-part review of our first 18 episodes. Before you rip out your headphones in disgust, let me explain.   I'm not a fan of the classic "year in review", I mean, we were all there, right? If we were paying attention the first time around, why do we need to get sentimental? Similarly, previews of the year to come, while sometimes fun, are often pure speculation and rarely add value.   In this two-part episode, we've attempted to do something we'd been planning for a while: analysis and commentary around the most important ideas that have come from our world-class guests so far. The extended discussions in the full episodes provide necessary context and completeness around important concepts, but I find broadening the perspective from time to time in search of patterns to be extremely valuable.   In Part 1, we broke down our first nine episodes, which was not only insightful but cringe-worthy at times as we ironed out our style - and our recording techniques.   The holidays are a time for gr

Episode 19 is a special one. We're celebrating the year-end with a long-overdue dive into some of the key concepts that have found their way across multiple episodes to date. We've interviewed some of the most noteworthy founders, investors, thinkers and doers in fintech & banking innovation over the past few months. Their insight and analysis will see us well into 2017 and beyond, so we're hunkering down over the holiday break to dig into it in detail. In Part 1 of our exploration, we break down our conversations with: Jeff Tijssen (@jefftijssen) Skylar Lyon (@skyyhigh) Jason Bates (@jasonbates) Chris Skinner (@chris_skinner) Faisal Khan (@babushka99) Alex Tapscott (@alextapscott) Slava Solodkiy (@slavasolodkiy) Michael O'Connor Duena Blomstrom (@duenablomstrom) We couldn't be more thankful for the wonderful guests we've had on the show so far. Word of caution: We dug out some of our earliest episodes, so please bear with us on the audio quality. We were still learning! Let us know what you think @rebank

Andra Sonea is a banking systems specialist. Until recently Lead Solutions Architect within the Innovation & Digital Development Directorate at Lloyds Banking Group in London, Andra is currently pursuing a prestigious Anthemis Fellowship to build on her work in banking systems architecture.   Andra has been involved in fintech for many years and is a keen supporter of collaboration between financial services institutions and start-ups.   Prior to joining Lloyds in 2014, Andra worked for over fifteen years as an international technology consultant with IBM, SAP, EY and KPMG, gaining first-hand experience building and transforming IT architecture at some of the world’s largest banks.    Today's episode was a fascinating dive into the challenges faced by incumbent banks struggling with legacy systems issues.   Andra is active on Twitter @andrasonea. Definitely check her out.

We've got a great episode today with Tom Blomfield (@t_blom), co-founder and CEO of Monzo (@monzo), a new, digital-only challenger bank in the UK.   Monzo is seeking to fundamentally change the way banking is done and challenge a lot of assumptions about the way people want to interact with their money.   Tom is a serial entrepreneur, he founded an e-commerce platform for students called boso.com while he was in college and later launched GoCardless, a B2B payments company that raised funding from the likes of Accel, Balderton and Passion Capital and went through Y Combinator in 2011.   In 2013, Tom and his GoCardless (@GoCardless) co-founders were named among the top 5 entrepreneurs by the European Commission. Tom got involved in the digital, challenger bank space in the UK relatively early, at the bank now known as Starling before moving on to found Monzo which plans to launch in early 2017.   Monzo has generated a phenomenal following and has a live beta with thousands of active users and an extremely long

Brett King (@brettking) is a bestselling author and was voted Innovator of the Year for 2012 by American Banker. Since 2010 Brett has released 5 Global Bestselling books, including Bank 2.0, Branch Today – Gone Tomorrow, Bank 3.0, Breaking Banks and his latest Augmented. His books have topped bestseller charts for banking in 18 countries and have been translated into 9 languages. A global thought leader in financial services and customer experience, Brett publishes regularly in his role as industry advisor on Huffington Post, Internet Evolution, and Finextra. He has recently been featured on Fox News, Bloomberg TV, BBC, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and The Economist.   As if that weren't enough, Brett is the founder and CEO of Moven (@getMoven), one of the first mobile-only banking apps, which was described by Wired, Forbes and the New York Times as a "bank of the future.”

David Robson leads IBM's Watson business in the European financial services sector. Perhaps the world's most recognizable AI system (after HAL 9000), IBM's Watson is live across multiple industries and is using artificial intelligence to solve hard, real world problems. For the uninitiated: Watson is a cognitive computer that can read, understand, reason and engage with humans in support of a broad range of knowledge workers including medicine, banking and insurance. David has been working with Watson for two years, advising banks and insurance companies on how to deploy cognitive technology within their operations. For more on Watson, follow them on Twitter @ibmwatson or visit www.ibm.com/watson.  

Brian Roemmele is the consummate Renaissance man. He is a scientist, researcher, analyst, connector, thinker and doer. More than anything, I've found Brian to be an observer of the world, asking questions and following his seemingly infinite curiosity to the root of an astounding variety of issues.   Over the long, winding arc of his career, Brian has built and run payments and tech businesses, worked in media, including the promotion of top musicians, and explored a variety of other subjects along the way.   Brian actively shares his findings and observations across fora like Medium, Quora, Twitter and his own podcast, Around the Coin. Brian is one of the most prolific producers of top quality analytical content I've ever encountered. I would highly encourage everyone to follow Brian and actively consume the information he puts out.

Devie Mohan is a prominent fintech writer, speaker and commentator. Devie is the co-founder and CEO of Burnmark, a fintech research company established in partnership with Berlin-based FinLeap. She is also a market strategist and UK coordinator with FinLeap. Throughout the course of her career, Devie has helped numerous banks, startups, innovation groups and investors understand the trends in fintech, helping them set their corporate, marketing and investment strategies. She is an adamant proponent of a fintech ecosystem in which banks and startups collaborate to drive innovation. Devie is featured on several fintech influencer lists, including the CityAM FinTech Powerlist and the SWIFT-Innotribe Power Women in FinTech list, to name just two.

Oaknorth is a startup bank in the UK. Joel Perlman, Oaknorth's co-founder, is a UK-based serial entrepreneur. After starting his career at McKinsey, Joel eventually left to co-found Copal Partners, a financial research outsourcing company with his business partner, Rishi Khosla. Over a period of 12 years, they grew the business to almost 3,000 people before selling it to Moody's in 2014. Subsequently, Joel and Rishi founded OakNorth, a new UK bank focused on lending to entrepreneurs and mid-sized growth companies. From an outsider's perspective, OakNorth seems to approach banking in a pragmatic, entrepreneurial way, seeking cost effective, non-traditional ways to deliver value for customers and outcompete incumbent banks. Formally launched in 2015, OakNorth is to date the only completely new UK bank to break even, doing so in an amazing 11 months.

Chris Gledhill is the #1 fintech influencer globally and regularly speaks and writes about fintech, banking and the future of financial services.   Chris was lead mobile architect and led the disruptive innovation labs at Lloyds Banking Group before founding Secco (@seccoaura), a next generation "bank."    Chris has expertise spanning a wide range of disruptive technologies including Blockchain, AI, APIs, Big Data, Deep Learning, Virtual Reality, Crypto Currencies, Biometrics, Mobile & Wearables.   Chris is a regular blogger and his twitter feed (@cgledhill) has become a ‘must follow’ for anyone in the industry looking to keep up to date with the latest fintech developments around the world.

APIs and banking as a platform will revolutionize banking. This week we’ve got a special two part edition, with two guests who represent arguably the future of banking and financial services technology. Martin Häring is the Chief Marketing Officer of Misys (www.misys.com), a global core banking provider that recently opened its systems to third party development, in yet another sign that the industry is moving toward an API-connected, platform model. I think Misys is doing revolutionary work, and it’s good to see an established organization–a stalwart of global banking systems–taking the lead with such an innovative move. I think it’s reflective of the way fintech is going, the way banking is going, the way financial services is going, and the way technology is going more broadly. We’ve also got Myles Stephenson, CEO of Modulr (www.modulrfinance.com), a UK fintech building out a robust, plug-and-play payments platform to support corporates and fintechs looking to gain more efficient access to payment systems

Duena Blomstrom is an independent digital banking consultant, entrepreneur, VC, speaker and, in her words, "uncomfortably opinionated blogger." For the past 18 years, Duena has worked across Telco and Finance on strategy and consulting for sales and marketing, including a 5-year stint as Head of Sales and Marketing for Meniga. During her time at Meniga, the company went from being a tiny Icelandic start-up to a market leader in customer engagement. Duena works at the intersection of technology and behavioral science. She's passionate about helping banks transition from thinking product set to thinking customer needs. She's a regular guest on blogs and podcasts including Breaking Banks, and we're lucky to have her with us today.

Michael O’Connor is a fintech & banking advisor and investor with extensive experience analyzing, structuring and investing in banking and financial services deals. Before going independent earlier this year, Michael was a portfolio manager looking at credit and banking transactions for Arrowgrass Capital Partners, a prominent, London-based, financial services-focused alternative investment fund. Prior to Arrowgrass, Michael was a founding partner at Portman Capital Partners, where he advised UKFI and HM Treasury on alternative disposal strategies for UK government-owned banking assets. Michael has also worked in various senior roles at GLG Partners, Polygon Investment Partners, Deutsche Bank and ABN Amro. Michael is a superbly sharp, thoughtful guy with keen insight into where banking and fintech are going and why.

Slava Solodkiy founded Life.SREDA, a fintech-focused VC fund, in 2012 and has been running it ever since. Life.SREDA 1, which was focused on A-rounds in the US and Europe, invested $40m in 13 companies including Fidor, Moven, Simple, Anthemis, SumUp and Rocketbank. In November 2014, Life.SREDA launched its second fund, a $100m fund focused on B-rounds in Asia. So far, fund 2 has invested in companies including Fastacash, Mobikon, Lenddo, Ayannah and SoftPay. Life.SREDA also runs a $100m global blockchain fund. Slava and his team at Life.SREDA also regularly produce amazing fintech reports, including Money of the Future, which I'd highly recommend anyone with an interest in the space check out.

Alex Tapscott is a globally recognized thought-leader, advocate, speaker and writer focused on the impact of emerging technologies on business, society and government. Alex is the co-author of the critically acclaimed best-seller, Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World. He is the author of dozens of articles featured in publications such as TIME, Harvard Business Review, The McKinsey Quarterly, Forbes, Fortune, Quartz, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and The Huffington Post. Alex is the Founder and CEO of Northwest Passage Ventures, a consulting firm focused on early-stage high growth companies. Alex is a passionate and vocal advocate for innovation, entrepreneurship and civic engagement.

Faisal Khan, a veritable payments & remittances guru, joins us for the show today. Faisal is a banking and payments consultant providing advisory services to banks, financial services companies and startups. He specializes is cross-border money transfer and all aspects of the value-chain associated with it, across B2B, B2C and C2C. Faisal has extensive knowledge in the design, integration & operation of payment networks and systems for international money transmission. Two things set Faisal apart in this space in my mind: his practical knowledge, based on extensive, on-the-ground research across the developed and developing worlds, and the depth of his knowledge around licensing, regulatory frameworks, and compliance. Faisal is extremely active on Quora as well at his own content-rich website faisalkhan.com. He is also on Twitter @babushka99.