Welcome to Breaking Banks, the number one global fintech radio show and podcast. I’m Brett King. And I’m Jason Henricks.

Every week since 2013, we explore the personalities, startups, innovators, and industry players driving disruption in financial services. From incumbents to unicorns and from cutting edge technology to the people using it to help create a more innovative, inclusive, and healthy financial future. I’m J.P. Nichols.

And this is Breaking Banks. If you were at Money 2020, the talk of the town was either AI, artificial intelligence, or the latest guidance as it relates to data sharing, also known as open or connected banking under the CFPB’s part 1033. Now, just before this, I had a great opportunity to talk to Matt Wilcox, president of digital payment solutions for Pfizer, Raja Chakrabarty, who is the partnerships lead for universal access at Plaid, and Ali Aras, an executive on the financial access team at Plaid.

What we were talking about is, hey, we think it is actually going to be difficult for the mainstream to be mandated from regulators in the US versus what happened as part of PSD2 in the EU. We do think, actually, that there is a market-led solution and potential, regardless of what happens from the regulatory point of view. Important to note, as part of 1033, it actually only impacts the largest banks.

So what is the case for why banks and credit unions of all sizes are going to adopt? You’re going to have to listen to find out on this episode of Breaking Banks. So open banking was mandated in Europe with financial institutions being forced by regulators to provide open access, transparency, and they had until originally in 2019, extended deadline to 2020. So they’re three years into the journey.

And as we’ve watched that unfold, for the longest time, there was doubt that it would ever happen in the US, largely because we never saw that regulators or regulators in the US or legislators would get behind it. And it went so far that you even had some bankers claim that it was their data. It’s not their customers’ data.

That data is theirs. And they treat it like an asset to be locked up in the vault, like they’re used to locking up gold bars and stacks of bills, except the world has actually changed. And so we might not have a capital O, capital B open banking, but there’s the lowercase O, lowercase B open banking here.

And Matt, like this is literally your job at Pfizer. What is the state of the state related to what’s happening in US and open banking? Yeah, I mean, I think the industry, the US has started to evolve. I think we plan to see forthcoming legislation around that.

The EU kind of had standards that propelled that marketplace to something farther along. I think that’s going to help navigate and move the US market further ahead. I think recognition by Pfizer, who supports banks of all sizes, community banks, regional banks, large banks, and partnerships and providers such as Plaid are all working collectively and cohesively together to really try to move forward standards and create that open data, open banking environment that ultimately benefits the end consumer.

I mean, that’s kind of what this is all about. The consumer has data. They want to utilize that data in applications that are powered by Plaid and others.

And we have the responsibility to enable them to get that data in a secure fashion. So happy 10th birthday to Plaid for Ron Alley. Raja, 10 years that Plaid’s been pursuing this mission of creating connectivity and access to data.

How have you seen the industry evolve? Yeah, I love that question, and thanks for having us today. So the industry has evolved significantly. Actually, on the question you were just talking to Matt about, I think the big delta in the U.S. that we’ve seen is that whereas in Europe you had kind of like a regulation-driven market for open banking, in the U.S. it was really market-driven.

And so you saw this kind of advancement in the development of different fintech use cases and just this rapid response of consumers wanting to be able to utilize it. And that’s really how Plaid evolved, because the first fintechs that were starting to be built to build on new use cases for things like peer-to-peer payments and other solutions didn’t really have an efficient way to be able to connect users to their bank accounts. So the only solution was, hey, let me build a bespoke integration to Bank 1, Bank 2, Bank 3, Bank 4. And that really pulls those fintechs away from being able to focus on the primary business that they actually want to focus on.

So here came Plaid, which was an opportunity for us to actually build those connections in a way that was manageable, that was secure, and that really focused fundamentally on the ability of the consumer to actually just get to the end of whatever it is they wanted to do. And so while that’s been a journey and there’s been a lot of technology evolved, what we actually saw was that in the U.S., the market response to all of those situations was huge. And honestly, the way in which we are now starting to see how the ecosystem is evolving, I think is very supportive of what those use cases are.

And so as we start to think about the regulatory environment and things that we’re going to see here in the U.S., I think there’s a lot of great evidence to pull from in terms of what it means for consumers to have that fundamental right to their data, that those consumers are able to have universal rights to their data no matter where they bank, whether it be large financial institutions, regional financial institutions, community banks, credit unions, and frankly, even connecting the same sort of use cases between fintechs and fintechs. So, Ali, in your role, you support over 2,000 partnerships. And I was blown away by that number that’s happened.

What was the tipping point that this adoption has begun to accelerate and has reached that level of magnitude? Yeah, I would actually say we’re way above 2,000 at this point. I think we’re over 6,000. So get ready for your mind to be blown there.

I’ve been applied for four years now. And so I really had a complete front row seat to this extreme acceleration that we’ve seen in adoption across the ecosystem. I think there can still kind of be in pits and pockets that only a handful of institutions have access to API connectivity to the fintech ecosystem.

And that just really, really is not the case. I would say it’s been the last maybe 24 months-ish where we’ve really seen rapid acceleration of adoption of APIs. I think a lot of this has to do with standardization in FTX, financial data exchange, as well as just the industry prerogative and alignment that it’s beneficial for consumers, for financial institutions to move to secure connectivity, has just become such a no-brainer and such table stakes that it’s just a day one imperative for all of these businesses.

It’s partnerships though like Fiservs where we’re able to really create scale and really help create that hockey stick of adoption that would be impossible if we were just going out and building direct connectivity with every single one of 12,000 banks in the US. Well, speaking of the 12,000 banks and not sure who wants to opine first, I think there’s a misconception in the market that this is really about the big banks or the tech forward banks or the fintechs that I’ll hear from some community banks, some combination of either my customers don’t want that, or maybe that’s being driven by some latent fear of I can’t do that or can’t afford that. Yeah, I think if the bank is saying their customers don’t want that, then they’re probably not talking to all of their customers.

I think that we realize across community banks, this is more prevalent than ever, regional banks, large banks, this is certainly not a mega bank, large bank play. Banks of all sizes have customers, all customers have data, all customers that have data are using applications powered by Plaid and others. And it’s our responsibility to provide secure connectivity for their data so that they can use them in those applications.

And that’s what this partnership with Plaid has done. It’s created secure connectivity for Ali and Plaid so they don’t have to have that connectivity in different ways across thousands of institutions that could be prone to break, etc. This is a single connectivity to thousands of institutions to power those applications that consumers across all banks want to use.

So let’s talk about that a little bit more, the specifics of the partnership, because it’s really powerful what it does for leveling the playing field, Ali. Yeah, exactly. I think it’s really powerful, particularly when we talk about community banks and credit unions to create this type of access that allows them to continue focusing on what’s most important for them within-house.

They’re not having to do additional technical development to align to an API standard. They can benefit from the investment that Fiserv and Plaid have made together to do this on their behalf. I think it’s also just really exciting because we are creating outcomes for the users, regardless of where they bank, that is at par or exceeding par to users and consumers at the largest financial institutions in the U.S., which is really a competitive edge, I think, for the community banks and credit unions that allows them to continue to focus and excel on what makes them special to their members while also benefiting from this access to the digital revolution.

Yeah, and I think the other piece about that, and to go back to the comment around, do the banks think they need it or know they want to need it? They really find out that they need something when that connectivity breaks because their consumers are already using these applications. And they also find out when they recognize that maybe the data is getting used for things that they didn’t want to have it be used for. And so this does two things.

It creates secure connectivity that’s less prone to break, that powers all those beautiful apps that Plaid has been powering for a long time. But the other thing it does is it gives the consumer the ability to grant or revoke that access for those applications, which is something else that we need to put in the power of the consumers and the small businesses that want to use those applications and use their data. Speaking of data ownership and permissions, now that open banking has arrived upon our shores and regulators were looking for a market-driven solution, now that it’s here, I think we’re entering a new phase where they’re gonna have to figure out sort of what do we do about it to instill those market protections that you mentioned, Matt.

What are you seeing about the response or hearing from regulators now about this idea of permissioning data? Yeah, I think we’re heading down the path of the partnership we’ve established with Plaid will conform and fit to those forthcoming standards that are gonna come out from regulators. It protects consumers’ data. We provision it in a secure way and we give the consumer the ability to say yay or nay on sharing their data with a particular application.

For instance, maybe they’re willing to share their data with a mortgage provider during the time of mortgage and the origination, but then they wanna be able to turn off that access. Well, now that access just continues until it breaks or something else changes. This gives the consumer the ability to then turn it off post-use of that data or maybe they wanna allow their data in perpetuity for something like Robinhood that is powered by Plaid, stuff like that we think will conform and fit with those standards.

Yeah, just to build on what Matt was talking about, I think what we’re really excited about is creating an established set of standards that will allow all consumers to be able to do the things they wanna do. So for example, the consistency of strong data rights, no matter where you bank, whether it be a small bank or a big bank, you can use the same FinTech products with the same rights, the same quality and the same reliable connectivity. The protection of data privacy is a really important one as well.

To Matt’s point, just making sure that consumers know what’s happening to their information and have the right to revoke if they want to and create connections. Importantly also, I think what we’re really excited about with this partnership with Fiserv is helping to drive this industry shift to APIs. So Plaid right now has about 75% of our data either through APIs or enabled to be through APIs.

And that’s really exciting because it starts to minimize risks that might be perceived by a system around unsecured credentials or other things like that. But importantly, also reducing infrastructure burdens into the industry. And then finally, I’d say like oversight and ensuring that all of this access is similar no matter where you go to so that you build into that whole consistency of data rights, along with ensuring the scopes are consistent, the ability to do what you wanna do.

And that finally, that point about making sure that data is a two-way street. So ultimately, it’s not just anymore about like a consumer being able to have their bank data flow to a FinTech, but it actually goes the other way around in that FinTech data should be able to easily be pulled through for a banking relationship. And by the way, what does that mean for a smaller financial institution? Well, now all of a sudden they start to look like a fairly digitally savvy financial institution.

They can start building out solutions without necessarily having to have a crazy investment on their own digital banking infrastructure, but can build upon these solutions and start being actually like quite competitive and actually be able to better serve their consumer base. Yeah, Ali, I know you manage a lot of the banking as a service relationships. Are there nuances to how either the neobanks are leveraging the data access or the banks behind them? So in general, when we think about data connectivity, we build integrations with the partner who has the relationship with the consumer.

And so in a neobank or FinTech ecosystem, it plays out slightly differently than with financial institutions, but generally it’s the same. We’re onboarding net new BaaS players and net new FinTechs generally via our FTX Alliance Backcore Exchange. So there’s just as much interest and buy-in to aligning to an industry standard with those cohorts as there is with traditional financial institutions.

And I have about equal financial institutions and FinTechs and neobanks in my inbox every day seeking to join the network on Plaid and move to API-based data connectivity. So I think the value prop for what this connectivity provides to the end users is really equal and meaningful across the board. So we’re talking a lot about the positive that can be powered by open banking.

Are there downsides, either institutionally or for the consumer? I’m curious what keeps each of you up at night related to open banking? I mean, I think one of the potential downsides is if a financial institution of any size is really caught flat-footed in being able to provide this secure data connectivity for these applications that we know that their consumers want. And it was important to us, Jason, and really kind of I think our responsibility as Pfizer because we have so much connectivity into these community banks to give them the ability to do this without all the heavy lifting. They don’t have the tech infrastructure and people infrastructure that maybe some of the large banks have.

And so giving the ability to create that secure connectivity and the access points, what keeps me up at night is making sure that we’re doing enough and leveling the playing field for banks of all sizes. And this went a long way in this partnership with Plaid and being able to do that. Yeah, Alec, I liked your comment around some of these banks appearing more digitally savvy.

Are there specific use cases that you think are important for any of those banks that may self-identify into the, we’re not the most digitally forward that you think they should be thinking about first and foremost? I mean, I think considering open banking strategy is something that every institution in the US needs to have a plan for, particularly as we expect a regulatory obligation to be coming in the short term. There are generally two pathways that individual financial institutions can take to get that type of API access. They can utilize our really powerful skilled partnerships like what we’re discussing here with BISERV or we are also investing heavily in supporting individual financial institutions to build the Plaid network directly.

And so if an institution has the technical resourcing and they have one developer who wants to build FDX, we are making it as simple and straightforward and seamless to do that, to go live, to utilize skilled tooling. We have a data partner dashboard experience. We have a whole team of solutions engineers who really support financial institutions and other types of data providers making that open banking transition.

And so people have options on the table for them to weigh in their 2024 strategy, but pretty essential, I think that people take a few minutes to think about what is best for their institution, what’s best for their technical strategy going into the new year and figure out what that pathway will be. So there’s always this tension that I find between the, you need to just start doing it to figure out what you’re going to be doing. And the other extreme, and maybe by excuse is the, no, no, no, we need to, whether it’s RPA or AI or data, we need a full fledged strategy before we can do anything.

Allie, let’s start with you. Where do you fall on that spectrum and what would you recommend? I mean, it’s one of the things that I would say falls in the what keeps me up at night strategy is watching partners strategize and strategize and strategize and not start creating a plan to move forward. We’ve worked directly with individual community banks who have stood up FDX in a handful of weeks.

And so the time and investment that sometimes can get spent on really thinking through all corners could have been potentially invested in actually getting some of the technical dev established and move forward onto the next part of folks’ roadmap. So I think, I’m slightly biased because I’m really in the field and I’m talking to financial institutions and working with partners like BISERV every day. And I want folks to move to action because as Matt referenced, a lot of times people don’t understand how deeply essential this is to their business until there’s a fire drill, until some sort of connectivity goes down, et cetera.

And we’d love to be proactive and maintain that connectivity and just move to the more secure, reliable connectivity, ASAP. That’s such a hard thing, I think, for boards to get their head around, especially in the market environment, which is, show me where the ROI is. And what I hear you saying is the ROI is called relevance.

Is that too extreme, Anna? Yeah, I think the ROI is relevant. The ROI is like, their consumers are actually telling them that they need to be able to do it. So I think about it this way, like I like to call it the battle for consumer account privacy.

So you’re not necessarily seeing a lot of consumers closing their bank accounts, but if they don’t have connectivity to simple things like peer-to-peer payments, or let’s say their financial institution doesn’t offer them wealth management services, for example, but they want to be able to connect to a financial management tool that also, by the way, incorporates a small set of crypto holdings. They’re going to choose other institutions to start slowly diverting assets away. And that is a long-term ROI impact to all these financial institutions.

And the reality is like, we actually do hear that. We do hear that from smaller financial institutions saying like, hey, during the pandemic, we were really there to be with our consumers and our customers at the time of need. We built these really great connections with them, and that is actually a great benefit.

But how do we make sure as we evolve into this next era that we start to not just continue to maintain them, but build upon them? Now, you’d ask a question about like, well, then what keeps you up at night? What do really like these institutions then prioritize? Like, do they do the whole shebang or are they like down to a couple of things? And I think our recommendation is like, do it in a way that is kind of methodical, like build the first level of connectivity. But importantly, you’re gonna need to, as things advance, outsource some of the activities that may be kind of ingrained within your structure. So for example, like security.

So as new fintech applications come up, as new opportunities for them to connect their accounts come through, then you might think about like, well, what does that mean for data security? How do we think about it? And by the way, the more that things like digital identity become a major driver for new use cases, how do we make sure that we’re managing that effectively? And ultimately, this is where I think we’ve really spent a lot of our energy at Plaid, but along with our partnerships with organizations like Pfizer, really helping to resolve some of those key pain points that they might anticipate moving forward, and then kind of taking it off the table so we can simplify the decision matrix for them. And that I think is the thing that allows them to generate greater ROI over time. Jason, to your relevance comment, I think the goal of every financial institution should be to be the primary provider of financial services for their consumers.

But clearly, companies like Plaid are celebrating their 10-year birthday, happy birthday, because there’s 6,000 or so applications that Ali mentioned that are providing a unique service. And so in order for a financial institution to continue to be the primary relationship or provider of financial services, they have to allow this data to flow in a secure way and to be able to permission it, because those applications exist regardless. And it is just another component of a financial institution remaining relevant, to use your word, because this is just the ecosystem that we’re in.

Those 6,000 applications are there for a reason. And in order for that institution to remain primary, they have to allow access for this data. Otherwise, they become secondary.

And that’s not what we want for any of the financial institutions. Given it’s our 10-year birthday, I’ll actually also correct the stat. It’s actually over 8,000 applications.

There you go, 8,000, even more important. And I think there’s something that the banks need to look at, right? And that’s this, the iPhone. And think of the strategic choice between what Apple made in terms of opening up to other developers to build on their platform versus say what Nokia did, where they wanted to own the entire ecosystem and said, no, no, no, we choose what goes on your phone.

And we’re the only ones that develop it. I don’t know anyone who uses a Nokia phone anymore. Yep, yep.

And you think about it, those applications, the 8,000 applications, they have a particular use case. They may be there is something that they’re interested in or invested in that a financial institution is not going to be. That doesn’t mean that a financial institution should shut the walls of the data and not allow access to it because it’s clearly important to the consumers.

And so I just think it’s another component of being a financial service provider is being good stewards of that data and doing it in a secure way through these partnerships is critical. And this is like the idea around the US being a market driven sort of place rather than regulation driven. So like consumers have already chosen all of these applications.

So those use cases are the ones that need to be supported, right? Like you’re not going to limit the use cases that consumers can use if they’ve already decided that that’s where they wanna go to. So I think our belief and our hope is that the regulatory environment is understanding of where that is, that it supports innovation and innovative use cases. And that the institutions that have helped proliferate kind of that use case are ones that are gonna be primarily helpful to be able to help define kind of what those rules should look like.

So the consumers can keep making the choices they wanna do all in a secure manner. Now, speaking of the on the secure manner, so a couple of months ago now actually had Jonah Crane from Claros Group, Dara Tarkovsky from the Tech on Reg and then John Pitts had a policy for Plaid. We’re talking about the exciting topic of third-party due diligence.

As banks begin to think through this connectivity, what do they need to be worried about, right? Like, because banks have the regulatory relationships and now the data is flowing out from the institution. How do they need to get their head around what their responsibility is to these third parties or from a security for their customers? I mean, I think that’s why we built the tool that we did for All Data Connect. It is, think of it as a layer between the bank and partnerships like with Plaid that allows for that secure connectivity of the data.

We recognize that this was something that they were going to have to do. You’re unlikely to see data sharing agreements for thousands of institutions for direct connectivity to all of these different providers. And so this enables and creates scale for the financial services industry.

And that’s why it was critical for us to not only have that inner layer, that middle layer, but also establish these partnerships with Plaid and other aggregators because we recognize this is where the market is going. Yeah, just to add to that, I think a couple of key things. One is APIs are a secure way to transmit data.

And so helping facilitate that move. And again, this is like very much cornerstone to the partnership that we have with Pfizer is helping accelerate API usage in the ecosystem. But also I think one of the areas that we’ve focused on investing is networks like Plaid really are positioned to minimize data collection and permission only the use cases that consumers want.

But again, importantly, be able to do permission. And so this concept of data minimization through secure data connectivity, I think those are going to be very important concepts. And so I’d say while we move into an environment where regulation starts to come in, it doesn’t mean that just anyone can go in and aggregate data and you should just trust it with anyone.

I think the key focus with financial institutions is ensuring that they’re working through trusted counterparties who have an established way in which all of that data transmits. They have established technology to make sure that it works really well. And that when they’re working between the different nodes in the ecosystem, that they’re focused on key infrastructure concepts that are really kind of future-proofed against the next layer and the next levels of innovation that a bank might want to engage in.

I’m curious if there’s any lessons learned from the EU or Asia that were so much further ahead in these areas of open banking, whether it’s a positive lesson or a negative lesson in terms of how our banks and fintech should be thinking about open banking. I mean, I think the standards are critical. I think the way that Raja was talking about the API connectivity and giving consistent ways to connect for that data, and then the permissible nature around who can use my data and who can’t, and putting that in the consumer’s hands, I think is very, very important.

So I think we learned a lot around what we saw there. But I think, to Raja’s point, this was very much market-driven. There was a need and a demand for it.

And so we’re playing a little bit of catch up here. But I think that these partnerships that we’re establishing and creating that consistent connectivity are things that we certainly learned are best practices. And I think on the other side of that as well, Jason, is I think the regulatory bodies actually have seen how to learn from what’s happened there to also get to a better place.

And so when we think about the regulators, we think of them as our partners, not really we work together to start to establish, like, look, we know these are the use cases. We know that this is what needs to happen. So let’s make sure this market is oriented around it.

So a good example of that we’re big proponents of this multidirectional flow of data. So in the US, like what we know is that, hey, you might want to connect your Chase or your Bank of America or your Wells Fargo account to Venmo, for example. But you also might want to connect your neobank to the same sort of application.

Or you might want to be able to connect one of your crypto accounts into a PFM tool. Like all of those are use cases that may not have been contemplated in like the initial regulation that you might have seen in Europe, because it was very much oriented around like a bank to fintech or bank out. Whereas what we’ve really talked about is, well, how do you start establishing the mechanism for a two-way street? And whether or not that comes out in the first version of regulation or not, I think that whole concept, and this is kind of where we partner so that the regulators understand where is that market going and how do we work together to just build the best practices? I think that’s going to be pretty fundamental.

Yep. We can’t actually have a podcast without mentioning artificial intelligence, right? Like I think that’s mandatory these days. So AI insert here.

But if there’s anything we’ve learned about AI that is relevant to open banking is just how quickly new technologies are being adopted in reaching mainstream. And I think this data access has an important element to that, which is that pressure to move faster and to have more access and to offer more is not going to let up mysteriously for these banks. And so, Raja, for any of the banks that are struggling with this, how am I going to keep up? What would you say to that board? Yeah, absolutely.

So just one thing, I’m super bullish on the opportunity for AI. I think there’s so many things that are opening up as more people invest in digital services, like fraud management tools and kind of rapidity to building different things. But I think it very much hits on the point, which is these technologies are happening.

They’re going to happen quickly, like moving rapidly to adopt open banking is going to be, I think, paramount for financial institutions of all sorts to ensure that they’re able to meet consumers where they are. And ultimately, I think that’s exactly what’s going to matter is that consumers are serviced the best way possible. And so working with partners that can help do that, I think is going to be critical.

So Ali, I think we close with you. You made this point around that you can’t afford to wait. What would you say to that board of directors? Is there thinking about what their open banking and data access strategy is going to be? Sure.

I think my call to action for financial institutions going into 2024 is to have a clear and articulated path for how you will be entering into this open finance ecosystem. The team at Plaid is incredibly invested in helping folks think through what the options are on the table. So happy to be a partner there.

We’re helpful. But in general, we want folks to pick the path that’s most efficient and most supportive of their consumers. So whether that’s activating partnerships like the Plaid Fiserv integration or building direct FTX connectivity to Plaid, I think all financial institutions need this on their 2024 technical roadmap to feel confident going into this new regulatory environment that we anticipate showing up very soon.

So Matt and Allie, if a bank or a fintech wants to learn more, Allie, on the Plaid side, where can they access more resources? Yeah, you can literally try to find me on the internet. Hit me up on LinkedIn. I will always connect folks to the right resourcing.

We have a landing page for our data connectivity solutions at Plaid that will also get you connected to the team. So definitely happy to do those kind of one-on-one consults to help financial institutions understand what connectivity options are available for them. Yeah, and similar, you can find me on LinkedIn as well.

And we also have pages dedicated to this on Fiserv.com. So information is out there and readily available, Jason. Well, thanks to the three of you for providing some creative education on the world of open banking, because it is finally here. And excited to see what partnerships like Fiserv and Plaid begin to power.

Thank you for having us. This show is brought to you by Alloy Labs. As much as we love talking on the show, we believe that action is more valuable than talk.

Alloy Labs is the industry leader in helping fearless bankers drive exponential growth through collaboration, exclusive partnerships, and powerful network effects that give them an unfair advantage. Learn more at AlloyLabs.com. Alloy Labs, banking unbound. Well, it’s always a pleasure to welcome Scarlett Sieber.

Thank you, JP. Happy to see you years later. And here we are.

Yeah, good to see you. So Chief Content and Strategy Officer of Money 2020. Did I get that right? Strategy and growth, but same thing.

Strategy and growth. It’s fine, though. Content, marketing, product is all part of my remit.

So it’s fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we’re here at Money 2020 in Las Vegas.

And so kind of back up a little bit, tell us what were the major themes of the content that you curated for this and in particular, the startups that you worked on. Tell us a little bit about the startups and what are kind of the major themes? Sure. So it’s, you know, when we use the word like things like themes, JP, there’s obviously a lot of things that you’re going to hear buzzword bingo here.

But to get a little bit broad, we can start there. Of course, we’re talking about AI. You can’t be here in 2023 at a fintech conference not mentioning that.

It was one of the most talked about things that are show over in Europe with your colleagues over there. We had a similar conversation around that, certainly picking up here. Right.

We had, you know, Ollie from Databricks last night, the CEO, not super into fintech at this point, coming in and talking about AI and the impact of that. Ben Horowitz last night went there as well. AI is obviously huge.

The other probably biggest thing that you’ll see, which has been the case for a while, you know, my background in the space and regtech was big a few years ago. But the whole role of regulation, giving some of the things that’s happened earlier this year has become more and more prominent. So when as the team and this is them, not me, of course, but as they were putting together the agenda and the program, we actually were really, really stacked on the regulator side to start things off because that’s who the industry wants to hear from as we start moving forward through some of these other things.

So we have plenty of themes. But in my mind, the two that really get me excited are those two to kind of kick things off because they cover so much. So I didn’t get to sit in on any of the regulator sessions so far.

Did they say anything? They never said anything. So yes and no. Right.

So I think one of the things that we’re doing slightly different is that we do have some ex regulators as well. So you have the current sitting ones, which are obviously, as you know, it’s a little bit more challenging. Rohit Chopra is very scripted.

Yes. But there is there is a deep dive because obviously CFPB made an announcement with us last year and then Rohit’s back and they’re doing a little bit more in-depth conversations, actually, with Rachel Morrissey on a podcast. But we do have the ex regulators as well at Yana McWilliams and others who when you get to take the hat off, that’s when things get really interesting.

And we do have a keynote session around that, which I’m quite excited about. And we do have some of the acting senators as well. So we had Senator Warner yesterday and I got to catch the second part of that session and I walked in and it was deep into geopolitics.

I’m like, what is happening here? But it was also kind of amazing that we went there. And of course, Nigel Morris was the moderator of that session. So it was quite funny.

Good opportunity for him. Yeah. Yeah.

Yellen McWilliams, certainly more outspoken and even more so now as an ex regulator. Yeah, her and Randy are doing a session together. So that’s going to be quite quite the banger.

Yeah. So how do you then filter those macro themes into what some of the newer upstarts are looking at and trying to accomplish in the market? Yeah. You know, there’s there’s a lot that we look at for that.

So one of the big things that we did this year is something that we’re calling a startup network, which, JP, you are one of the godfathers of fintech, been around so long and doing so many amazing things for the space. And so there’s never a shortage of lists of fintech. So when we started thinking through this, we didn’t want to have a typical list and we didn’t want to have something we could go apply to be in this cohort, so to speak.

What we did is the content team, our content team is now full of experts in fintech, whereas that’s an evolution that we’ve had over the years across the globe. And so in the US, the team went and picked seven startups that they felt like we could give our official stamp of approval for to be the future of the space. And guess what? One of them happens to be one that we have in common with Themis.

So we picked a variety of reasons. So it’s not just about going into those macro themes, but also the type of people. Our team cares a lot about the humans.

Zach Pettit, our US content director, is obsessed with that word and it is true. So it’s really about the individuals and who they are leading these businesses. And so we should, I mean, you know Themis probably even better than I do, given that you are an investor in them.

But Nipa is incredible. And X, talking about regulators, she worked at the OCC and what she’s doing there and the impact for those the small banks is actually really incredible. Well, and there’s also an intersection between that and AI, right? The ability for AI and in the press briefing this afternoon, we talked about AI and what financial institutions are thinking out of that and compliance is a major opportunity for that.

A hundred percent. And that’s exactly the case, right? So if you think about the startups that we picked, all different backgrounds, you’ve got digital wallets in there. You’ve got people focusing on small business payments, you name it.

But I think then if you look on, as you just talked about, because you were with me earlier on the press briefing room, we took the other approach and started the small companies. There was some mid-sized companies in there, but then you have the Google Clouds, then you have the NVIDIAs. Of course, you were sitting right next to me, Google Cloud came out and announced a partnership with Moody.

And Zach had a lot of really interesting things to say about that as well. Where Moody’s data is going to be allowed in the large language model. So that is a lot of very important data.

A hundred percent. Yeah. But if we sat there and I think, if not everyone, almost every single one used the word AI at least once or twice in that conversation.

Well, it is currently state law. You’ll get kicked out if you don’t say it at least twice this week, right? You have to. You have to.

It was like big data. I remember back when we were in Singapore together a number of years ago, going around in everything with big data. So it’s the next big data.

Well, at least we got past PFM. There you go. Yeah.

So how have you been, as the industry and the topics and the technologies evolve, how are you evolving your approach and the ways you’re, not only curating content, but delivering content and using data to be able to connect people to all of these things? Yeah, I think there’s a few things that we’re doing. You know, I feel like it is our responsibility. You know, we say things like we set the pace for where the industry is going and, you know, you come here and whether you are a CEO of a small community bank or whether you are on the executive team of a large tech company, so much of what happens in the industry happens here.

And I take that and we take that with extreme amount of responsibility. So what we want to make sure is that we give you that content in a way that’s digestible because everyone says they want to talk about AI, but some people really just care about the themes and high level. Maybe the main stage is a better place for you for that because you’re not going to get into a lot of depth or you actually want to talk about specific use cases on how you’re implementing AI.

That’s what spoiler alert. It’s still really hard to do well, but you want to talk about those things. Let’s have a smaller room where there’s 20, 30 people to really get into the weeds.

So we try to make sure that we can adapt based off of what your needs are. Now, obviously, it’s evolving. It’s always changing and growing, but we really want to try to be as flexible as possible with the press briefing room, which is our stage actually dedicated to the press.

Anyone can go in there, but it is really about big announcements, AMAs, Q&As, where it’s like one of the things that we kept hearing from people was we want to talk more to the speakers who actually want to challenge them in other ways. So let’s give them a stage so that they can do that to what we were talking a second ago about the off the record stage, where there was a pretty famous founder who the company is being shut down and she’s going to open up and in that room of 20 people and say what really happened. So stuff like that is what we’re really trying to do.

Great. And how about technology? You announced a new technology platform. Talk about that.

And what’s the idea behind that? So it’s called 20 fold. And one of the things is, you know, Money 2020 has such a strong brand name and we’ve been thinking about how we continue to grow, how we continue to evolve and where we see potentials in the market. Our data is obviously a big play in that.

And so it’s our digital intelligence platform. And the team that’s been working on that has been spending a lot of time thinking through how we can take what we believe is our unique value assets and then put that into a digital product. So if you think about there’s plenty of other ones out there, but what’s really unique about it is as an investor, you know, you can get inundated with LinkedIn messages, but you want to know what you don’t know.

So who are the three striped people who left that are in stealth? Those are the ones that you want to make investments in. So we really connect the data with the people. And that’s what we’re focusing on.

And it’s going to announce and go live in January. Well, that’s exciting. What else are you cooking up? Oh, so many good things.

Well, I’m sure, I hope we’ll see you in Asia, Bangkok, April 23 to 25, 2024. Maybe Brett will let me stay at his apartment. Exactly.

That is that is such he’s did that to COVID is what him and Katie went there now. Yeah, partially. And I think lots of other reasons.

Yeah, but it was around that time frame, though. Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. We’ve been out there twice.

Tina and I have been there twice already this year. It’s a blast. Each each geography is so different and so valuable for different reasons.

And that that ecosystem really wants to help each other. And there is so many differences with each country, how they operate. And, you know, we talk about things.

I know you care a lot about this from from the past and the the opportunities with financial inclusion and people who have not had access to financial products is just so high there that I really hope that back to where I believe we, I as an individual and we as a brand have a bit of that responsibility is to help bring financial services to to a large group of people. And that’s what I think we can do with my 2020 Asia. Yeah, so many emerging markets throughout, especially Southeast Asia.

Yeah, we’ve been so we do these things called world tours where we go across different cities around the world and the interest and desire on places that we did not choose still like, hey, you need to come here. You need to go. You need to go to Jakarta.

You need to go here. It’s just it’s been really exciting to see. And so we’re trying to add as many as we can because there’s so much opportunities.

That’s great. What else should we know? We didn’t ask you. Let’s think about that.

I mean, we have the highest number. Speaking of this is you. We have the highest number of press ever.

We have the highest number of startups ever. So obviously, when you think about the year that we’ve had, it’s been a tough macroeconomic environment. But I feel as an ex-founder, which is when I first met you, really encouraged by the fact that despite that this is the state of the union, so to speak, that we have more startups than ever, because this this is what happens when the economy is not great is when people have to switch things up and get creative.

And we have the data to show from our side that that’s the case here. So startups are not everything, obviously, but that’s just one of the exciting things that keeps me going for what happened this year. Well, there’s a very old saying in banking, some of the best loans are made in the worst of times and the worst loans are made in the best of times.

And I think there is a startup analog to that. I would say so as well. That’s right.

Well, Scarlett, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thank you.

That’s it for another week of the world’s number one fintech podcast and radio show Breaking Banks. This episode was produced by our U.S.-based production team, including producer Lisbeth Severance, audio engineer Kevin Hirsham, with social media support from Carlo Navarro and Sylvie Johnson. If you like this episode, don’t forget to tweet it out or post it on your favorite social media.

We’ll leave us a five star review on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Facebook or wherever it is that you listen to our show. Those actions help other people find our podcast and in return, that helps us build an audience that can be supported by sponsorship so we can continue to provide you with our award winning content every week. Thanks again for joining us.

We’ll see you on Breaking Banks next week.