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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
In addition to many of the familiar faces who will be returning to London next month for FinovateEurope, this year’s conference also will feature a sizable number of newcomers to the Finovate stage. Here’s a brief introduction and welcome to these FinovateEurope speakers to whet your appetite for what we have in store on both our Digital Kick Off Day of March 15th and during the conference proper on March 22nd and 23rd.
With more than 20 years of experience in advisory services within Swedish bank Handelsbanken, Malin Lignell currently works with the company’s Digitalization and Innovation team to enable greater innovation and focus on the bank’s digitalization journey. Having a keen eye on the way emerging technologies influence customer behavior and drive new business models, Lignell will lead a Fireside Chat as part of FinovateEurope’s Digital Kick Off event on March 15.
Author of The Fifth Industrial Revolution, Inma Martinez will provide FinovateEurope’s Keynote Address on Wednesday, March 23rd. Martinez is a digital pioneer and AI scientist, as well as a member of the Expert Group at The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), an AI-based initiative sponsored by the OECD and G7. An advisor to business and government leaders on how to turn digital transformation into competitive advantage and contribute to social progress, Martinez will share her insights on creating an exceptional customer experience via UX-led design. Borrowing from the successful experience of technology giants, Martinez will explain how financial institutions can pivot away from a product focus to a customer focus by “unlocking data” and enhancing customer engagement.
Here are some of the other newcomers who will be joining FinovateEurope as part of our Power Panels, roundtables, and Executive Boardroom sessions.
Radboud Vlaar. Founder and Managing Partner at Finch Capital, Vlaar will join our Future of Fintech power panel on our Digital Kick Off, Tuesday, March 15.
Our Executive Boardroom on Financial Inclusion on Tuesday, March 22 will feature five fintech experts, all of whom are newcomers to the Finovate roster.
Anette Broloes. Fintech analyst with Broloes Consult.
Natalie Ledward. Head of Vulnerable Customers, Monzo
Sanghamitra Karra. EMEA Head of Multicultural Client Strategy & Multicultural Innovation Lab at Morgan Stanley
Neha Mehta. Founder of FemTech Partners
Ahmed Karsli. Founder and CEO of Papara
Tuesday will also feature an Executive Boardroom on Financial Crime. Among the new faces on this panel are Jane Barber, Regulatory and Trade Association Lead, NatWest Group; and Nitzan Solomon, Head of Surveillance & Financial Crime Technology EMEA, Nomura.
Wednesday morning will feature a pair of Power Panels with a number of guests who will be appearing on the Finovate stage for the first time. Our panel on achieving digital acceleration includes newcomers Christoffer Malmer, Head of SEBx at SE; Gunter Uytterhoeven, Chief Customer & Innovation Officer at AXA Next; and Carol Hamilton, Senior Vice President of Global Solutions at Provenir. Making their Finovate debuts as part of our panel on fintech collaboration and partnerships are Janine Hirt, CEO of Innovate Finance, and Thea Loch, Head of Strategic Design with Lloyds Banking Group.
FinovateEurope 2022 is right around the corner. If you are an innovative fintech company with new technology to show, then there’s no better time than now and no better forum than FinovateEurope. To learn more about how to demo your latest innovation at FinovateEurope 2022 in London, March 22-23, visit our FinovateEurope hub today!
According to Fintech Adoption Index’s research, one-third of all consumers globally utilize at least two or more fintech-based services, and the trend is growing. The fast-paced evolution of fintech necessitates organizations to keep up and continue to provide services that clients desire.
Headquartered in New York City, Tern is a fintech as a service innovator dedicated to enabling startups and established financial institutions alike to launch embedded banking and payments services products. The company, founded in 2015 by CEO Brion Bonkowski, offers a multi-currency, multi-language prepaid and stored-value platform with embedded AML, KYC, CIP, and fraud mitigation solutions.
We caught up with Brion to discuss a variety of critical topics in fintech – from the power of embedded finance and the future of neobanks, to the rise of BNPL and the challenge from Big Tech and Big Retail. We also discussed how Tern enables more companies to fulfill the promise of the banking as a service (BaaS) phenomenon.
What problem does Tern solve and who does it solve it for?
Brion Bonkowski: Tern is a fintech infrastructure company that exists to help virtually any company launch fintech products. Launching fintech products is hard and expensive. Anyone who has done it before knows the pains of contracting with banks, processors, and networks. Combined with long project timelines, these obstacles sadly prevent many programs from ever launching.
The emergence of Banking as a Service (BaaS) was the market’s initial reaction to try and serve this need. It was a way to package program management, processing, and banking under one roof. But BaaS had a narrow mandate aimed at serving startups for the most part when, in reality, the number and type of companies interested in launching financial services offerings is much broader.
Tern is the next evolution of BaaS in that we’re building tools that allow virtually any type of company to launch fintech products. This could include an early stage fintech startup, a legacy fintech, or a big global brand that wants to provide value-added financial services products to their existing customer bases. By offering no code (white labeled UX), low code (embeddable widgets), u code (API) options, we are striving to be every company’s answer to launching fintech products quickly and compliantly.
The rise of embedded finance has been one of the biggest trends in fintech of late. How do you see this trend evolving in 2022?
Bonkowski: We see a definite trend with more traditional enterprise players launching embedded finance applications, aiming to add stickiness to their service offering and additional lines of revenue to increase ARPU (average revenue per unit). The problem is, it is really hard to prototype, A/B test, and launch pilot programs to test a particular thesis in the market. We find marketing and product teams attempting to prototype and launch products quickly, however the problem is the complex compliance and regulatory oversight required. In response to this growing demand, technology providers will need to make their tools easier to deploy (with compliance baked in) to keep up with ambitious project timelines. Tern, for example, launched low code widgets to enable companies to launch core fintech services, such as onboarding, account issuance, and payouts, quickly and inexpensively.
Looking ahead, the real uptick in embedded finance will come when enterprise legacy companies, with established customer bases, realize the ROI of launching fintech services across a broad range of industries, and have a deployable vehicle to bring them to market. So, really, I would say we’re still at the beginning of this trend, and that’s exciting.
Another major trend in fintech is the proliferation of neobanks – especially those serving specific communities and consumer segments. What is driving this and how sustainable is it?
Bonkowski: New neobanks are popping up all over the place, and for good reason. Consumers have decreasing loyalty to traditional banks, so when a new online bank with messaging targeting a specific demographic appears, that demographic will typically at least test the waters, especially if motivated to do so by their peers. This is especially true if the account is free and offers services traditional banks do not, like earned wage access (EWA). Challenger banks like Chime started the wave of EWA programs and we find this function to be a big driver for neobanks to differentiate themselves and add new customers. Unfortunately, outside of EWA offerings, many of these neobanks have little to no differentiation. Many rely on celebrities and influencers to get the word out which is definitely not sustainable. Coupled with a bullish fintech venture market, we are sure to see some major casualties in the coming years.
Neobanks with specific functionality catering to their audience, however, still have a fighting chance at disruption. These differentiators vary, but even something like lowering the friction of moving funds into or out of accounts, or adding a utility like crypto or remittance to a portfolio, can be very powerful.
We’ve seen a number of different types of industries – from Big Tech to Big Retail – move into the banking services space. What kind of challenge does this represent for both “traditional” fintech providers as well as for banks?
Bonkowski: One distinct advantage that Big Tech and Big Retail have over banks and “traditional” fintechs is data. They know who their customers are, how they spend their time, and what they buy, which gives them a significant leg up in offering financial services and credit products. Traditional banks and processors see transaction data and know if you have paid your bills on time, but they haven’t a clue as to who their customers are and what makes them tick. Big data is playing an increasing role in establishing very specific cohorts of users. Within this construct, they can facilitate the orchestration of a variety of financial services, offered in different formats with cohort specific messaging, to see which one works.
The one saving grace traditional banks have is regulation and oversight, two things Big Tech and Big Retail want to stay as far away from as possible. They are already under the federal microscope, and the thought for some is that adding banking regulatory obligations could stifle growth and innovation. This has moved Big Tech and Big Retail to partner with banks, rather than compete against them…at least for now.
The Buy Now Pay Later e-commerce phenomenon seems very much in a boom phase. Is regulatory scrutiny inevitable and how might it change the way BNPL services are offered?
Bonkowski: BNPL feels like it’s the wild west of payments right now with little to no oversight. These services are, in fact, credit products and we feel they will eventually be treated as such by the CFPB. We expect new regulations and standards for things like fees, disclosures, payment due dates, penalties, etc. Our fear is these new regulations may stifle the BNPL form factor by adding steps to the process or forcing consumers to accept multiple onerous disclosures. This may increase shopping cart abandonment, the very thing BNPL is looking to obfuscate. With many products and programs, we feel the best and cleanest end use experience will prevail. BNPL providers need to remain agile and incorporate these new regulations as they come up with the least amount of end user friction possible.
This fall Tern announced a partnership with TransferMex. How did this collaboration come about and how does it help fulfill Tern’s mission?
Bonkowski: TransferMex is a great case study on the power of partnership. In 2020, Tern was approached to help an institutional Mexican labor supplier issue bank accounts for H2 Visa workers. The driver for the program was to service the employers by eliminating paper checks and, in turn, the exorbitant cost for employers to track down workers that have to leave unexpectedly to deliver their final paycheck. Looking to add value to not just the employer, but the workers, Tern suggested adding simple and inexpensive remittance capabilities to the program and TransferMex was born. The TransferMex team had limited technical resources or fintech experience so they chose to use Tern’s No Code deployment option, essentially outsourcing the entire program to Tern.
Today, the TransferMex program is live and is seeing dramatic increases in the number of workers and employers using the service. The TransferMex team does all of the marketing, onboarding, and customer support, while Tern hosts and manages all of the technology, applications, and fintech components. Tern sees growing demand for this model of issuing prepaid cards with remittance capabilities to existing brands, and will be launching two telecom companies with similar functionality in early 2022.
Last November, I chatted with Siri Børsum, Global VP of Finance Vertical Eco-Development and Partnerships at Huawei, as part of our Women in Fintech series.
At Huawei, Børsum is responsible for building a team that ensures Huawei has all of the financial apps for their mobile ecosystem. Børsum, who recently entered into the fintech industry, gained an interest in the tech arena while working at Google in the early days. The thrill of the new industry and betting on something big excited her about the field.
During our interview, we discussed the evolution of digital transformation and what to expect going forward. Below is a brief summary of our conversation. You can check out the full interview on the Finovate YouTube channel.
How has the digital transformation narrative changed?
Siri Børsum: I think companies are focusing even more on it and, for the first time, we as consumers have actually followed. It’s been one of those chicken-and-egg type of scenarios because we’ve all seen it’s been possible but the users haven’t joined in as much as we in the industry would have hoped for.
I now think that both companies and consumers see the extreme benefit of having better technological tools to do their banking. Consumers have now experienced good customer experience within not just the finance industry but within the tech industry– they’ve seen how apps can help them in their daily lives. This makes them more demanding than ever before and when customers are demanding, we need to step up.
What are your recommendations to help fintechs and banks keep up with changing consumer expectations?
Børsum: Start to focus on it. Have it top of mind. Not just something you say you want to do, but actually something you are measured on and that everyone in any management group or the C-suite talks about all the time. They know what KPIs there are. They know the development. It’s not something that’s left to the developers on the second floor.
Make sure it’s your highest priority. Make sure it’s measured and also don’t think you can do it on your own…. Also, you don’t drive innovation without the right culture. You need to look after your people, you need to make sure they feel safe, that they dare to try new things, and that they come to you with all the ideas. They also need information. They need to know what’s possible and they need to know what’s going on in the company in order to contribute.
What’s next for digital transformation?
Børsum: I’ve tried to bet on the future and I haven’t succeeded many times– I don’t think most people do. For me, I look more at what we see now. What are the current trends and what do I wish for as a customer?
I think embedded finance is obviously the next step and we need to see that work, truly. For me, personally, I would love to see payments disappear, totally. We’ve already seen these things and were moving towards it. It won’t happen straight away, but it’s definitely the direction we’re going.
Siri Børsum will deliver a keynote address titled, “Capturing Your Customers’ Goals & Finding New Revenue StreamsBy Putting Yourself At The Heart Of Their Lives” at FinovateEurope which is taking place March 22 through 23 both in-person in London and digitally.
With the new year just two weeks away, it’s a good time to reflect.
We spoke with Justin Passalaqua, Chief Market Officer of North America for Worldline, on what he has seen in the payments space this year and the payments trends he anticipates taking over in 2022.
Were there any payments trends that emerged this year that you didn’t expect to see?
Justin Passalaqua: I wouldn’t say any trends caught me by surprise necessarily. However, I did not expect how quickly businesses started adopting payment methods like contactless, e-commerce, and order ahead payments.
These trends have been in the works for a while. But the accelerated growth of these payment methods due to the pandemic, I think, caught everyone off guard. Not only have we seen tremendous growth in contactless and online payment options, but the more we see these used in the market, the more enhancements are made to make payments seamless.
How have embedded payments altered the course of fintech thus far?
Passalaqua: Users can make payments anywhere, at the touch of a button and, as a result, the industry has seen an increase in conversions by almost 40%. The fewer steps it takes a user to make a payment, the more likely they will complete a purchase. And if they have a great experience shopping with a merchant, they are more likely to shop there again.
Loyalty has become a huge growth driver, especially in the order ahead/food industry. The rise of mobile apps makes it easy for businesses to offer more rewards for repeat customers, establishing trust between the business and consumer. When software and app providers implement the right tools that simplify the checkout process and strengthen loyalty, everyone benefits.
What payments trends do you anticipate dominating in 2022?
Passalaqua: One trend I have seen a lot of over the years that I expect will evolve in 2022 is Integrated Software Vendors (ISVs) building their own payment gateway or leveraging a Payments-as-a-Service (PaaS) platform and white labelling it with their own brand. As ISVs aim to be an all-in-one solution for their customers, owning the end-to-end payments piece essentially transforms them into a payment provider.
Another trend that will continue to dominate next year is the further decline of cash and the increased adoption of cards and mobile wallets. In 2021 we saw a 12% global decline in cash payments due to COVID-19. People will continue to adopt card and mobile wallets at a faster rate, and not just for safety and sanitary reasons. With the more rapid and convenient experience offered by cards and mobile wallets, we will probably never see a backwards shift to cash again.
What’s in the pipeline for Worldline in 2022 and beyond?
Passalaqua: Without giving away our secret recipe, we have big plans for expansion next year. First, we are investing heavily in the U.S. market. Although Bambora and Ingenico are well known in Canada and the U.S., Worldline is relatively new to North America. Our goal is to make Worldline a trusted household name for ISVs and the payments industry.
We are also focusing on growing our contactless/card-present payment solutions with new technologies to make card-present payments even more effortless. We are enhancing our bank-to-bank technologies to expand our payment types, focusing on our ACH solution, which aligns with our plans for the U.S. market.
As the name implies, super apps are super in nature. They differentiate themselves from traditional apps by offering a much wider variety of services than fintechs typically offer, acting as platforms that fulfill more than just a singular purpose.
We recently spoke with Marcell King, Chief Innovation Officer of Payveris, for his view on the battle among banks, fintechs, and super apps, as well as his outlook on the future of super apps both in the U.S. and abroad.
What’s your definition of a super app?
Marcell King: A super app is a single place for users to go to for all of their financial, communication, money movement, entertainment, and shopping needs. It’s designed to provide consumers with the utmost convenience and frictionless access to a variety of services they use on a day-to-day basis. A super app earns a piece of the spend on everything the consumer purchases and can leverage this data to deliver personalized experiences and cross-sell products or services. The consumer gets ultimate convenience and the owner of the Super App increases the size of its revenue pool.
How do Super apps threaten FIs and fintechs?
King: The possibility of one dominant super app emerging in the US poses the biggest threat to smaller-asset financial institutions in particular because they often can’t match the resources Big Tech and Big Finance bring to the table. This answer grows more complicated depending on how you define what constitutes a true “fintech” company these days. Many fintechs have developed micro-niche applications, which a super app could likely consider to be a “feature” in the app. In that case, it would be easier for a consumer to access the feature in the super app versus opening up another app for the same purpose.
What opportunities do super apps have for Fis and fintechs?
King: I believe this could go one of two ways, or both. Use case number one is that the super app partners with specific types of financial institutions and fintechs for specific white label services. For instance, PayPal could partner with a large bank to support added new financial management features, offering consumers checking and savings accounts from the partner bank or credit union. The other is that multiple financial institutions link their branded services to the super app brand, enabling the super app to be a consolidator of services, similar to a brick and mortar mall. In both cases, the super app uses its brand power to consolidate services, making it easier for the consumer to get the benefit of convenience. The super app generates revenue and receives data that can be leveraged to cross-sell relevant products and services to that individual consumer.
Why haven’t super apps been successful in North America and Europe?
King: There are a few reasons for this. First, with intense competition between tech giants, the market is more fragmented with popular services such as Facebook’s WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage. There isn’t one player dominating a specific part of the market, which makes it more challenging to create a super app experience.
Another reason is super apps rely on a plethora of user data to be successful, which is a challenge in the U.S. and Europe, where there are more laws in place to govern consumer data and privacy. Both countries have a record of limiting the growth of companies that become powerful to protect consumer rights. Most recently, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued orders for info to tech giants, including Google and Amazon, on their use of consumer data. This will make it more challenging for one company to become a dominant super app.
What will it take for super apps to gain popularity in geographies outside of Asia?
King: We’re beginning to see the super app model emerge in places like Latin America. Due to regulation, it’s clear that North America and Europe will need government support in order for super apps to gain popularity. For instance, China’s WeChat and AliPay have benefited from strong government support and its regulation to block WhatsApp, Signal, and Facebook, which has removed the risk of competition.
A super app will need to gain popularity and trust in one market in which it can then expand into other services to succeed. Uber, for example, started out as a rideshare app disrupting a legacy industry when ridesharing was an untapped market. Even with competition emerging since its inception, Uber commands a majority of the market share. Due to its early success, Uber has been able to expand and establish itself as a top meal delivery service.
Last year, while the pandemic was heating up, banks’ attitudes toward small business lending turned cold. With lockdown measures in place, underwriting became difficult and risk increased across commercial lending.
We tapped ForwardAICEO and Co-Founder Nick Chandi to discuss what the current lending environment looks like, how data can help, and what we can expect to see in 2022.
A serial entrepreneur, Chandi co-founded ForwardAI, a fintech that helps banks, lenders, and businesses access and analyze small business data. The company launched earlier this year to help fill the gap in small business-focused technology available to companies that serve small businesses.
What are some unseen advantages in leveraging financial data when underwriting small business loans?
Nick Chandi: The trend I’ve seen has been a shift to leveraging direct financial data, as in connecting to banking, accounting, payments, and commerce software using APIs instead of having potential borrowers export to spreadsheet or PDF. In the past, all lenders did the latter option and that caused a huge hiccup. After all, whereas with accounting data you can see insights like client base diversification, profits and loss statements, and more, that data can be manipulated to look better than reality. With banking data, it’s the opposite; data is often context-less but it’s practically impossible to fake.
Previously, when lenders looked at financial accounting data, they would have to manually cross reference transactions. This was a tedious task often taking weeks, but one that with API technology these days can be done in seconds using machine learning and AI. This can lead to exceptional savings for banks and lenders in their loan underwriting time.
In 2021, what kind of appetite have you seen from banks when it comes to small business lending? Has the pandemic caused more hesitancy than in years past?
Chandi: For a while in 2020, many lenders completely stopped lending to small businesses. In 2021, we saw much of the industry has returned to or pretty close to business as usual.
Have you noticed a specific type of lender take on more small business loans?
Chandi: We have seen that revenue-based financing has become very popular in the last year. This can be seen from the valuation of Pipe ($2 billion in May 2021) as it provides an opportunity for entrepreneurs to transform their future revenue into an asset with instant access to annual cash flows.
Previously, it cost lenders about the same amount to review a business for a $50k application as it did for a $250k application. As lenders begin to incorporate automation and process loan applications faster, that cost goes down and becomes more profitable. I have noticed lenders are incorporating more small business loans into their offerings, even if it wasn’t a market they put significant effort into previously.
What trends do you expect to see in small business lending going forward into 2022?
Chandi: The biggest trend change is going to be that direct data access I mentioned earlier. Simply put, with modern lenders using direct access to permissioned data instead of spreadsheets and PDFs, we can expect lenders to process significantly more financing applications and faster than ever before. Traditionally, SMBs have been a market that most companies haven’t focused on, but after the pandemic I think a lot of the public sentiment has shifted towards desiring and expecting more support for struggling small businesses in their community.
Going into 2022, I expect to see financial institutions and fintechs across the world upgrade their services and begin offering better products; enhanced financial management portals, expedited lending options, personalized financing offers based on predictive data, and proactive cash flow alerts may soon one day be normal. That’s part of the reason we created ForwardAI.
Watch ForwardAI’s demo from FinovateFall 2021 below:
The Finovate Team was saddened to hear of the passing of Brandon Dewitt, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of MX. He was 38.
In a letter to company employees, MX CEO Ryan Caldwell, who co-founded the firm with Dewitt in 2010, wrote of his colleague’s “brilliance, boundless positivity, wonderful wit, and ability to be joyous and grateful, regardless of what challenges he faced.”
Diagnosed with Stage IV cancer in 2016, Dewitt was a staple of MX’s participation at Finovate events, including leading the company’s most recent Best of Show winning demo at FinovateFall in 2019. But it may have been his presentation at Finovate’s developers’ conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, that left the most indelible impression on so many of us. After a discussion of the company’s latest innovation, Dewitt retold the story of his battle with cancer, the way his teammates at MX rallied in support, and why he wanted to discuss this topic with our Finovate/FinDEVr audience.
What I want to say to every developer that’s here today, every entrepreneur that’s here to today, every builder that’s here today is about the seemingly impossible, certainly improbable, but necessary. I want you to know that we wake up every single day and say ‘but necessary.’ We know as an organization what our task is: to be ‘but necessary’. And I want to challenge every developer out there in saying, ‘are you working on something that is necessary?’
You may be thinking, ‘man he went from talking software to talking cancer and scared it me’ …” Dewitt conceded. “But if you look at the leading causes of death of humans, in the top ten is suicide … And if you look at the leading causes of suicide, one of the leading causes of suicide is financial stress. The World Health Organization considers financial stress one of the most significant problems facing mankind.
So what we’re doing here today and what you wake up and do on a daily basis, can be part of the solution to a very, very solvable problem. And so I want to challenge you not only as organizations, not only as builders, but as humans. Are you waking up every single day and doing something that is necessary? And if you’re not, there’s tons of organizations that are out in that hallway that have a booth set up that are doing something that is necessary, that is finding a way to change the world that is necessary for the future of humanity, and I would encourage you to check them out.
Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with Brandon Dewitt’s fiancé, Kara, as well as his family, friends, and his teammates at MX.
Veterans Day in the U.S. is a day to remember and honor the sacrifices our military veterans have made to preserve the freedom we enjoy on a daily basis. How can banks and fintechs give back by connecting and serving this niche clientele in return?
We interviewed Dennis Cail, co-founder and CEO of Zirtue, who shared his experience as a U.S. Navy veteran-turned-fintech entrepreneur. Cail told us how his military experience impacts his work at Zirtue and what banks and fintechs can do to give back.
Tell us the basic idea of Zirtue.
Dennis Cail: Zirtue is the world’s first relationship-based lending application, simplifying loans between friends, family, and trusted relationships by turning informal promises into structured agreements and automating the repayment process. Zirtue’s mission is to drive financial inclusion and freedom, one relationship at a time.
Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Zirtue sits at the nexus between two major pain points: a person needing a financial lifeline to pay their bills and a company struggling with bad debt. Corporate partners use Zirtue as an alternative payment solution, allowing individuals with past-due accounts to request loans from friends or family members in order to pay their bills. Zirtue has raised $6 million of VC funding and more than $10 million in loans have been processed on the platform to help users keep their lights on, pay their rent, and get access to critical healthcare.
How did you come up with the idea of Zirtue? What was the impetus?
Cail: Growing up in Louisiana, I lived in public housing and neighborhoods often surrounded by payday lenders and check cashing services; the same was true of the areas surrounding the naval bases I lived on. It wasn’t until college when I saw how different communities attract different types of neighborhood businesses such as banks, and that many neighborhoods didn’t have traditional banks.
Looking back, I saw how clearly and deliberately predatory lenders target those with few financial options and no access to traditional banking services, like my neighborhoods in Monroe and the Navy. These experiences led me to creating a loan option for these unbanked and underbanked folks that provided them with necessary loans and empowered them through the process. We all need a little help sometimes, and that is what Zirtue is all about. I also have experienced the challenges of loaning friends and family money myself. Even though I wanted to help my loved ones out, it made things awkward. I saw the impact that these friendly loans could have on my loved ones in terms of helping them achieve their dreams or simply make ends meet, without having to pay the high fees of predatory payday lenders who are the only available option for many.
As someone who has always wanted to found a company and had a background in finance, I knew I could create a solution for this problem that formalized these friendly loans, while simultaneously driving financial inclusion. Ultimately, this solution became Zirtue, and we’ve now processed more than $10 million in loans to-date and plan to continue until Zirtue is a payment option at every retailer you visit in-person and online.
You are one of a handful of military veteran fintech founders. First off, thank you for your service. Can you tell us about your military experience?
Cail: As a Systems Engineer in the US Navy working with hardware and software to ensure we had ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communications, my military experience gave me the technical foundation I needed to start a successful career in technology. The military is also a place that either makes or breaks you. At the very least it reveals who you are at your core and I learned a lot about myself during my military experience.
Funny, but true story… I didn’t know how to swim when I joined the Navy and when I shared this information with my civilian friends after I left the Navy, they would naturally ask me, “why did you join the Navy if you couldn’t swim?!” The answer is that I joined the Navy to learn how to swim and to serve my country. This may sound a bit extreme. However, entrepreneurs have to be extreme on some level if they are going to achieve what most people would consider impossible or too risky. Long before I became an entrepreneur and a fintech founder, I had the spirit of an entrepreneur with a high tolerance for calculated risk. My military experience only amplified that entrepreneurial spirit.
How does your military experience impact your work at Zirtue?
Cail: The military has absolutely influenced my career and led me to found Zirtue. First of all, the military taught me how to be a strong leader and how to navigate stressful situations – which are both imperative to founding a company and handling the complexities of entrepreneurship. Further, the military taught me to always look out for your partner, or in my case shipmate, and that we either win together or lose together. This concept has shaped the way I interact with my team, our customers, partners, and other entrepreneurs – we have to take care of each other.
Finally, being in the military taught me about the importance of structured, detailed plans, which has helped me integrate further structure into entrepreneurship and supported business growth for Zirtue. Looking back, I am incredibly thankful for my military experience for shaping me into the man I am today and forming a solid foundation as an entrepreneur and CEO.
What advice do you have for banks and fintechs looking to connect with and serve military veterans as clients?
Cail: It’s extremely important that banks and fintechs alike do all they can to help military veterans transition back into civilian life so that we can put them in the best possible position to be successful with skills that are highly transferable. Given the sacrifices made by these men and women, my advice is simply to be intentional about their DEI efforts to connect with military veterans with formal programs that include military veterans.
At Zirtue we actively recruit from this amazing source of talent and encourage military veterans to apply for any open jobs we may have. I would also like to call out that banks like USAA and Navy Federal Credit Union are very active in their efforts to support veterans and their families with financial products and customized lending options. Their efforts should be applauded and replicated.
At a time of almost unprecedented financial liquidity, being able to separate the investment-worthy wheat from the chaff may be more important than ever. Additionally, knowledge of where the so-called “smart money” is investing within the growing field of fintech is an invaluable aid for those attempting to better understand where fintech is right now and where it is going. And for those within financial services, or in industries adjacent to it, who are looking to do business with innovative fintech companies, knowing where the most informed investors are putting their capital can be a great guide to identifying where some of the best opportunities to partner and form collaborations may be found.
This is what makes Finovate’s All-Star Investment Panel: Where the Smart Money is Investing in Fintech one of the biggest and most popular attractions at our events. At our upcoming conference in March, FinovateEurope, we’ve put together a star-studded panel of some of fintech’s most informed and accomplished investors to help you gain unique insights into which fintechs the “smart money” is betting on and why. Check out a sneak peek of our All-Star Investment Panel below.
Rana Yared, General Partner, Balderton Capital: Yared joined Balderton Capital in 2020. She previously worked as a Partner at Goldman Sachs in their Principal Strategic Investments Group. Later, as part of GS Growth, Yared oversaw investments in financial technology and enterprise technology. Yared also oversaw the commercialization of Goldman Sachs’ technology assets in New York and London. LinkedIn
Aman Ghei, Partner, Finch Capital: Ghei led Finch’s investment into Twisto (sold to Zip) and sits on the board of AccountsIQ, Symmetrical, Lantum as well as being involved in the firm’s investments in Goodlord, TaxScouts and Squirro. Ghei’s experience ranges from Credit Suisse’s Technology team to Accel Partners in London to Facebook’s content distribution business in Europe. LinkedIn
Luis Valdich, Managing Director, Fintech Investing, Citi Ventures: Joining Citi Ventures in 2015, Valdich is responsible for fintech investing in both the U.S. and Europe, as well as in Latin America and Southeast Asia/India. Before Citi, Valdich founded and ran JPMorgan Chase’s Strategic Investments group for nearly eight years and invested in more than 30 companies. LinkedIn
Jay Wilson, Investment Director, AlbionVC: At AlbionVC, Wilson focuses on all aspects of technology, with a particular focus on how technology is redefining financial services from retail to institutional finance, and at every level of the IT stack including blockchain, AI and machine learning, predictive analytics, robotics, and the cloud. LinkedIn
The FinovateEurope 2022 Investor All-Star panel will be moderated by Sunaina Sinha Haldea, Global Head of Private Capital Advisory with Raymond James. Haldea founded placement agent and secondaries advisor Cebile Capital, which was acquired by Raymond James Financial in 2021. Also a prolific angel investor and non-executive director, Haldea’s leadership of Raymond James / Cebile Capital has enabled the firm to become one of the leading advisors in private equity and real assets.
FinovateEurope 2022 will be held in London, England from March 22 through March 23. Both in-person and digital all-access passes are available with big savings available to those attendees who register by November 19th. For more information, visit our FinovateEurope 2022 hub today.
At FinovateFall we had a number of conversations with fintech professionals on the challenges of forging successful fintech partnerships. One of the more illuminating discussions we had was with Ryan Ruff, Head of Fintech Relationships with ASA Technologies, who discussed his company’s unique approach to helping fintechs and financial institutions build more constructive collaborations.
As both a fintech executive and a fintech founder, Ruff has a unique understanding of the challenges that fintechs and financial institutions often face when trying to work together. In our discussion at FinovateFall, he explained what some of those pain points are and how ASA Technologies’ platform enables both parties – fintechs and financial institutions – to maximize their interaction with each other, minimize inevitable risks, and focus on core competencies.
On the challenges financial institutions and fintechs face when trying to forge meaningful partnerships.
One of the things we’ve noticed is that everyone understands banking-as-a-service. What that really (represents) is a relationship between one fintech and one financial institution. And there’s a lot of risk there. On the financial institution side, they are asking the question: is this fintech really going to succeed? Do they have the capital? Are they PCI compliant? SOC-2 compliant? There’s a lot of risk in that relationship.
What we do is (offer) a contractual agreement where one financial institution enters into a partnership with all of the fintechs (on our platform), so that if one of them fails, it’s not that big of a deal because there are more coming and there are others on the platform, so it takes away that risk of partnering.
On the other side, the fintechs, when they get on to our platform, they are now partnering with all of the financial institutions, so they can go and find the ones that are most conducive to their clients and can send all their clients to that institution.
On the importance of building understanding and trust among all parties
It’s important that the technology piece is secure, that it’s being done in a compliant way … that’s very important and we work on that. But it’s also important that the revenue models work for both parties as well. (For example) if a fintech has a lead for a banking service like a home loan or a car loan or a student loan, they can send that back to the ASA platform, where the customer is actually a client for the institution. That institution gets to do that loan and then the referral fee goes back to the fintech that provided the referral. So both sides are making money, and they are able to stay in their core competencies and really work at scaling their core value propositions.
What makes a fintech special is that it’s a niche application. It’s something that’s going to help a specific user. Ironically, when you try to go partner with a financial institution, they are looking at it and saying I don’t know if this is going to affect a big enough segment of our user base, so I don’t know if it’s worth doing the partnership. The very thing that makes your fintech special, is what makes it hard to partner.
Now in (our) model, the financial institution is not just getting this one fintech that gets one sliver, they’re getting all the fintechs (which will) hit a much wider base collectively. So it makes more sense for both parties when you’re doing it “multiple (fintechs) to multiple (financial institutions).”
On the way that the current social and economic climate has impacted the work ASA does
It’s made the need for what we do even greater. People are changing what they need out of a bank, and they’re changing what they need out of a fintech because our world is changing. We’re trying to come into a new normal right now that a lot of people don’t understand, and wonder what the future is going to look like. We’ve got a platform where people can build those user experiences really quickly, get them to scale, and get them to market quicker than ever before. So really this moment brings an opportunity for our institutions and our fintechs to be able to collaborate together quickly to build those experiences that people are going to want in this new environment that we’ve all been thrown into.
Check out the rest of our conversation with Ryan Ruff from FinovateFall 2021 on creating successful fintech partnerships – and the importance of moving beyond open banking to what he calls “collaborative banking.”
When it comes to financial inclusion, it’s easy for some people to turn a blind eye. However, when banks and fintechs help to solve gaps in the current environment, there’s more potential to boost everyone’s financial health.
Lloyd Pitchford, CFO at Experian, is working on promoting financial inclusion via Experian’s Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) program, which helps Experian improve its performance across ESG matters, including supporting financial inclusion and financial health.
We spoke to Pitchford about the program and his view of the current financial inclusion environment and how the industry should respond.
How have you seen financial inclusion awareness evolve into what it is today? What has prompted the increased awareness?
Lloyd Pitchford: The United Nations includes access to financial services, such as credit and microfinance, among its Sustainable Development Goals. Access to affordable credit opens the door to opportunities for people to transform their lives – from homes and healthcare to education and entrepreneurship. This has never been more important than it is today, following the global pandemic.
There are times in most of our lives where we can’t get access to the financial system in a way that we want, be it for a mortgage, a car, or a business loan. We’ve all experienced the frustration when you feel you’re on the outside of the system and you can’t do the things you want for yourself or your family. At Experian, it’s our job to change that. We want to make sure everybody is included and has access to fair and affordable financial products. Financial inclusion is fundamental to our business.
When it comes to financial inclusion, what are some of Experian’s offerings you are most proud of?
Pitchford: As the pandemic took hold in 2020, we stepped in with data and analytics to support governments, health services and national emergency response efforts. Our data and analytics helped them plan ahead and direct health care and financial support to the most vulnerable people through major initiatives such as COVID Radar in Brazil and Experian CORE (COVID Outlook & Response Evaluator) in the USA.
It soon became clear that the impact, not just on physical health, but on financial health, would be far-reaching for people around the world. We looked at how we could mobilize our expertise and resources to help communities through the crisis and focused on financial education as the best way to strengthen their resilience and support their road to recovery.
Through the launch of our United for Financial Health programm we rapidly established 11 NGO partnerships across our biggest consumer markets to deliver targeted financial education for some of the communities hit hardest by COVID-19. By the end of the year, we had reached nearly 35 million people, more than double our original goal of 15 million, and we’re not stopping there. We aim to reach 100 million people by 2024.
Part of our efforts include our member relationships around the world. This year, we surpassed the milestone of 100 million direct relationships with consumers globally and delivered further innovations to support people through our business, such as the launch of products like Experian Boost in the UK and Serasa Score Turbo in Brazil. This, of course, is on top of our ground-breaking Experian Boost launch in the United States a few years ago. Our goal is to have a direct relationship with as many people as possible; to truly become the Consumers’ Credit Bureau and power financial opportunities for all.
What advice would you give other incumbents who are trying to drive financial inclusion within their organizations?
Pitchford: I would point to our culture of innovation. It helps us harness opportunities to drive business growth. We are continually investing in product innovation and new sources of data to address emerging market opportunities that can make a real difference to global communities. In 2020, around 1,000 innovators from across Experian joined our annual Future of Information Conference – which was held virtually because of the pandemic – to encourage them to think differently in their work. Topics included fairness in artificial intelligence, transforming agribusiness, and enhancing the consumer healthcare experience. Teams at our DataLabs in Brazil, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S.A. tap into our culture of innovation to continually create new solutions to global challenges. The result of all this is that our Social Innovation products have now reached 61 million people since 2013. We aim to reach 100 million by 2025.
What challenges exist in serving underbanked communities as an incumbent? Would it be easier as a startup?
Pitchford: Our annual Sustainable Business Report notes that more than a billion people in Asia Pacific lack access to formal financial services, 45 million in the U.S.A. have no credit profile or are unscoreable, 45 million in Brazil are unbanked, and over five million in the U.K. have no credit history. So we know we’ve got more work to do and we remain focused on using our business to make real and sustainable change. With social innovation running so deeply through the core of our culture, and our commitment to improving global financial health front and center of our thinking, we will continue to push to find new solutions to help people, serve communities and protect the environment, helping to create a better future for all.
