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.

Welcome back to Breaking Banks. This week, we spotlight our sister podcast, Breaking Banks Europe, on the special occasion of its 250th episode. Seriously, when we started Breaking Banks, I had no idea we’re going to be still going 11 years later or that we have these spinoffs in regions like the EU.

Matteo Rizzi, he celebrates 500 unique guests on the show, five years of Breaking Banks Europe. And it’s a really insightful conversation with six of the hosts of the show reflecting on the one word that really represents the last 15 years in fintech. In terms of the culture that’s shaping fintech’s future strategy, you know, the keys to success foresight, looking ahead, discussing the future, how things are evolving, the possibilities, the various challenges faced.

This rollercoaster of a ride we’ve seen over the last 15 years in fintech. This is an opportunity to really drill down on how that’s sort of happened from a European perspective. There’s a special focus also on inclusion, on emerging markets and talent, which is increasingly critical for upskilling.

So celebrate with Breaking Banks as we celebrate the 250th episode, 500 guests over five years on Breaking Banks Europe. Celebrate it with us. Cheers to another five years.

Hey guys, welcome back to Breaking Banks Europe for something truly special. Our episode number 25250 in actually five years. Renata, our dearest producer of the show, always behind the scene, just told me before we were recording this show that we hit 500 unique guests in these five years, which I think already per se, it’s incredible.

And what we wanted to do to celebrate this milestone is, of course, to give the floor to all the hosts that made it possible, you know, to get to here. I want to also acknowledge the fact that when we started, of course, you know, the fact that if someone would have told me, you’re going to be here five years from now, I wasn’t even 50. You would be here five years from now, still recording Breaking Banks Europe.

I would have said that, you know, that fact would have been highly improbable. But that was not the case. So here we are.

We changed format a little bit, but always keeping that openness, that conversational tone, the fact that, you know, we like to prepare, but we also don’t show that we prepare because most of our dialogue seems like literally two people sitting and having a conversation. We will start this Kermess of Breaking Banks Europe post with a former banker, amazing entrepreneur, good friend, and one of the OGs of Breaking Banks Europe, my friend, Matthias Krohner. Okay, guys, now I am with Matthias Krohner, one of the OGs of the show.

And hey, Matthias. Hi, Matteo. How are you? I’m good.

I’m good. So you and I hosted the very first episode together, right? Remember that? I remember quite clearly. No, I absolutely do remember that.

And it was a very exciting topic, which I think still is extremely relevant. It’s about corporate culture, right? Would that be your word, your one word for this? Oh, yeah. Financial services? No, no, no, no, not for that.

But the relevance of corporate culture, in particular in an innovative environment like FinTech, I think cannot be rated high enough. So those days, I think it was back in 2019, I guess. I was just coming out of, let me say, a very turbulent relation, if I may say it like that.

And I was extremely aware of the relevance of corporate culture and how to mess up a company within just some months by culture. So that, I guess, was a little bit of a therapy for me, mostly. I think that that year, if I remember correctly, we had a lot of episodes, not only talking about culture, but also about gender balance, impact.

I remember, for example, that episode with, you know, Nektarios was around. Yeah, I of course remember. Yeah, absolutely.

So it was, I don’t know why, maybe because we were all traumatized by different things, right? Yeah, and then COVID just started, right? So not knowing that one big trauma is ahead of us. So I think maybe those days we’ve been on a level of development where we thought that we can take care of those topics, burning topics, now finally not realizing or not expecting that actually we will walk into a setback, which brings us more like, you know, like in a Maslow’s pyramid to the very basic understanding of it and into the very basic questions. But, you know, we entered first in 2020 into the heights of FinTech valuation and everything is possible before we then finally had a hard landing, right? Indeed.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And then almost like through COVID, the panorama changed a bit, right? So we were, everyone now work differently and also like the interaction has completely changed.

Now we build companies from remote and maybe you see some of your teammates, you know, two years after they’re hired, which, you know, before it was completely impossible or unthinkable. Totally. Fully agree.

Not saying, I’m not definitely not stating that this is better now, right? Not at all. I personally experienced that change drastically in the same time. Of course, I see the positive sides on it, of it.

Also that international collaboration is happening and you, as you said, Matteo, you form teams like you never did before, you know, and, but of course we come back to culture, right? It’s a different culture now and it’s a different way of leadership now, if possible, in any means, right? It’s, yeah, you have to change your management style, your leadership style. It’s not that you would have these informal chats at the coffee machine, this is impossible, but they are so relevant normally, you know? So yeah, we will see. I’m a bit, I’m not decided how good or bad this is, right? One last, one last bit.

Is there like one episode beside, of course, that culture, which is the, the, the word you choose, is there one episode that you remember with particular, you know, you have to, you know, with, with, with particular, I’m feeling, yeah, no, it’s, it’s. Actually, I, I remember all those conversations, you know, as being extremely positive and insightful. There was not a single conversation in which personally I, you know, I’m not speaking, of course, for the audience, but at least for one of the moderators, I’ve, I’ve seemed to be totally bored and saying, oh my goodness, we know all this, that, that definitely is not the case.

I think these conversations always deliver the opportunity that we could double click into various areas where you normally cannot double click into, because just by reading the news somewhere in a block or so, this is not possible to interact on this. Personally, I always had the ambition to be somewhat entertaining and not only boring fintech guy, but also having a bit of a fun, all in all, you know, speaking about, you know, the overall topic. So is fintech still around maybe? And how relevant is that actually? I think it’s more relevant than ever.

Maybe the, the phrases and the words that change, but the combination of technology and finance is more relevant than ever material. Think about it. Just, you know, what we also discuss in our various conventions where we meet everything around, you know, quantum computing, AI, which also this year will be the headline topics of the Singapore Fintech Festival by our Elevandi family.

So this is also something which is, you know, we, I think we cannot even estimate how much that is changing the industry, our industry, but not only our industry, but also finance and always the financial industry is always a part of the real world industry. If you want to split it like this and no matter what changes we will see around financial services or financial industry, it will definitely impact us as well. So I think the combination of technology and finance is more than ever given.

It’s less on the, you know, on the user experience side, maybe as we had it in the first wave of fintech, you know, it was about the app. It was about cool. The innovation was maybe about the brand and the way of communicating.

And suddenly, you know, some finance comes along very easy and nice, you know, so this is this is not it anymore. So it’s definitely also not about the processes anymore. It’s really about the engine itself.

So what is it driving? What is decision making? What is the, you know, the complexity we suddenly can handle? And is this to our good only? So this is, you know, I think there should be another 2000 actually series about breaking banks, about those topics. So, yeah, it’s more than ever. Maybe we don’t call it fintech anymore.

I don’t know. Couldn’t care less. On these on these wide words, our this this intervention is that, Matthias, thanks a lot.

Now we’re going to go over to our common friends, Paolo. And it was amazing to share this this first, you know, the 250 episodes together. Thank you, my friend.

Thank you so much, Matthias and Renato, always in the background. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Here now with Paolo, another one of the OGs of Breaking Banks Europe. My friend, welcome back. Ciao Matteo, it was good to talk together and address our audience.

Listen, you know, for you as well, I want to say one word to sort of describe the importance of fintech in the in the whole in the whole universe. I almost want to say and and also a highlight, you know, of this past 150 episode. And I and also like I want you to highlight your own special contribution because you almost sort of created a show yourself within the show.

Well, I enjoyed this year launching a monthly show within the Breaking Banks Europe that is titled The Banker’s Bookshelf. And The Banker’s Bookshelf is where we invite authors of the most interesting books and research papers to discuss their perspective. And I think it makes a difference in the rich set of our episodes because we have a key word that we very mind when we discuss with everyone in the topics, which is strategy.

Of course, execution is important, but without good strategy and an understanding of the long-term perspectives, we can easily lose track in the making. So I guess that The Banker’s Bookshelf enables us to identify the key pillars that helps bankers and fintech entrepreneurs to anchor their action into a real and proper understanding of what is going on in the market, what is at stake in the future and how technology can help in the transformation. So we get rid of the noise, we get rid of the buzzwords.

And if those buzzwords are needed, we re-qualify them to make sure that they make sense for everyone listening to The Banker’s Bookshelf on The Banking Bank’s Europe. OK, so now we started with the news. Can we say that the word you’re going to pick is actually strategy or you want to pick another one? I like the word strategy because it encompasses quite a number of topics that we cover that I can tell you some of them.

First of all, the platform economy. We opened with Sanjit Pachodari, who is acclaimed author of Platform Revolution, a huge bestseller, and he was so kind to join us. The platform transformation is the one which is more profound in financial services.

Actually, in all economies, Airbnb, Amazon, but also Alipay, Stripe, PayPal itself, they’re all platforms. So there’s no way the future of financial services will not be dominated by platforms as well. Then the second has been AI.

AI is a topic for everyone, but we try to do something different here. We wanted, again, to divide the noise from the truth. And we talked about what really can AI do.

So we discussed the fact that AI will not rule the world because it cannot become artificial general intelligence, as some are proposing today, mainly to push the stock evaluation instead of clarifying what the technology can do. And by demystifying these concepts, I believe that a lot of entrepreneurs will be able to understand exactly where they need to invest in order to make the best usage of this technology, which is the one dominating the landscape in the next 10 years or even more. And then we had papers from central banks, like the one from the European Central Bank discussed with Arnaud Bout, professor at Amsterdam University, which is really a strategic perspective about how the business model of banks are changing, that I also leveraged in my Banks and FinTech on Platform Economies.

So we really bring together regulation and frameworks for transformation, the understanding of AI in a way that is more unbiased, more substantiated, and the key shift on platform economy that touches the technology stack, the business transformation. So the combination of all of this, if you like, is the bankers’ bookshelf, that I believe also adds value to the other episodes of Breaking Banks Europe, as we discussed all topics around this one, also focusing on the latest news, the short-term trends. So again, the combination of all of this is the best podcast about FinTech that you can possibly follow.

I think that this is a great conclusion, also a segue to our next friend, Roberto. Paolo, for now, thank you for this first 250th episode and onward to the next 250s. And you know, we are a show with a jingle and I want everybody to follow us.

OK, ciao. Thank you. Ciao, ciao Paolo.

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. Hey, Roberto, my favorite go-to person for everything blockchain, Bali, and also an amazing friend. Welcome back, Robby.

Thank you. Hey. So, a couple of peculiar points for Roberto, who is one of our late joiners in terms of Breaking Banks Europe host.

He recorded, you know, most of the episode in 2024, so 2023. Sorry, sorry. Apologies.

And I think you’re a close tie with me, if I’m not mistaken. And something that is completely out of the box, he launched a new series called Conquest, which is actually, you know, super interesting, is the story of not to get hacked or the story of very, I don’t know, you tell it yourself, because… The analysis of the con artist in the fintech world. Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, what can I say? I think that fintech in the past decade has transformed industry. OK, if we think of the first example of fintech is the ATM machine, I think, you know, we’re replacing the teller in person with the machine that you can go to. And then with the Internet and new things, you know, introduce innovation.

And lately, we saw the central finance blockchain based payment system, you know, bring the water on my meal first, peer-to-peer lending, just because peer-to-peer is the word that belongs also to blockchain, but the disjunction that comes from fintech is the ability to bypass the traditional financial intermediaries, reduce transaction costs, bring financial service to unbanked population globally. And if you ask to find a word to define fintech, which is already a name that is a mix of two words, financial technology, and you want one word only, to me is future. A future that we are living still in the present, OK, but there is the evolution, the direction that we are going.

I love how something derived from the bottom moves the things up. Large financial institutions, they are like elephants, stable, solid, but slow. Regulators, they also are even like even dinosaur, I would say, without mental any offense, but are forced to start moving a little faster and innovate, else they’re going to risk to lose the grasp on what is coming next.

So I like that many banks have become also software houses, for example, and this is a disruption that is not small, if you think about it, right? Many banks were real estate agents just because they confiscate the houses to people that don’t pay the loan. And this was the first thing. But becoming a software house is a way more interesting in the direction that is produced for the years to come.

It’s a slow process, but this process, the start is not going to stop. In the meantime, sorry, guys, you see that I became a little bit darker and that’s maybe two sides of getting the tone of this, you know, the dark net, the dark net that is, you know, one of one of Roberto’s favorite. The reason is that I’m in a box in Milan and they just turned off the lights and there is no way I can put them on.

I hope you all forgive me. But Roberto, you’re in a bright light right now. So how about sharing one conversation that you particularly remember and maybe one sort of con artist scam that became your favorite? Right, this was very interesting because I had the opportunity to interview some very some famous YouTubers, people with millions of subscribers that do spend their time to fight scammers online and help the victims.

And the biggest take out of the conversation I had, and this is a good opportunity to share this also whoever is listening, scammers tend to rush, make not even time for people to think. So rush the decision. So when you get a strange phone call later, they push you for what is another hospital emergency.

Polices, they come to arrest you or something and do something that involves money, then pay attention and call back the person they pretend to be, make sure that everything. So this is, I think, an important aspect of online scammers that we don’t think about, but something that seems legit, but is in a rush, never act on rush. And do you want to share one episode or one conversation that you particularly liked? Well, I suggest people to go on the YouTube channel and search for Conquest.

There are many episodes. I don’t want to favor one particular person to another. They all been amazing guests with amazing story.

I clicked Kit Boga is one of those YouTubers and I had a very, very good personal connection. I really found the conversation flowing very well, fun and engaging. But we had the Trilogy Media.

They’re very, very famous as well. Very fun people. We had many other interesting YouTubers.

I suggest people to go watch the interviews. Robby, I am pretty sure that the next 250 episodes will have also you as one of the main characters because you’re very good at it. And guys, go and follow Roberto.

Thank you very much. Okay, guys, after our friend Roberto, I am back to Europe and my dear friend Liz. So Liz started with Breaking Banks Europe in the middle of the Monet 2020 storm.

And I think she’s our Fintech for Good lady because she was hosting most of that episode. Liz, welcome. Thank you.

Yeah, that’s my subject is so close to my heart. What can we do with Fintech to help others? Indeed. So for you as well, one word to define what Fintech means to you and then we talk about the rest.

Well, possibilities. That’s interesting. Develop a little bit more, please.

So Fintech enables possibilities that weren’t there before. And in the beginning, maybe it was possibilities where as a consumer, we look to things that make our lives easier. But at the end of the day, it’s possibilities to connect those who have been unbanked, underbanked, less financially excluded, but also to connect more folks who can offer Fintech solutions to creating a kind of infrastructure that allows others to through API connections, you know, aggregate things and make each other’s lives better too.

So, so that we can enable more consumers, etc, etc. I get it. So which part of the Fintech for good do you like the most to talk about? It’s more like the investment part, the technology part of the impact part, you know, and or maybe some of it that doesn’t come out right now.

I suppose the impact part, like I want to understand who is getting access to things that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. But I’d also like to understand, you know, like, is the impact that’s happening in South Africa? Are they solving different problems than maybe what’s happening in Kenya? And, you know, are farmers struggling in different parts of the world, like not just Africa, but let Tom and other places and how can we use this to help them or mining miners to have safer conditions and, you know, those kinds of things. I don’t know if I’m totally, totally, you know, everything, everything you’ve said, like, it sounds a lot, of course, with the work that, you know, we are doing, you know, in the, in the continent, in the continent, especially.

And I actually think that I don’t actually agree that we should find more contamination, you know, between Europe and the rest of the energy markets, because, and I also think, I don’t know if that’s your experience as well, that the learning is far from being, you know, one sided, it’s really reciprocated, don’t you think? Absolutely. I mean, cross fertilization is so important, right? And it’s definitely not a one way street. And I feel enriched every time I speak to folks who are in totally different communities, totally different circumstances.

I think, wow, look what you’re doing to enable people to, you know, normally doing business by going to a small little shop and buying more phone credits or whatever to do so much more business by linking the dots, connecting it all. Liz, you know, I am really happy that you have been part of this, of this journey, even if you joined maybe the last 70 to 80 episode, which are already, you know, a huge, a huge chunk. And super happy for you being with us for our next 150 episodes.

Well, thank you very much. I’m very grateful to have been able to join. And while we started at Money 2020, I can say the last Money 2020, one of my big learnings was from an episode that you did with the Nala founder.

And I’ve been using that knowledge to help all sorts of founders and from emerging markets to others of, you know, best practices and getting in touch with investors that you might not have known. Indeed. So, you know, big up to Benji.

And I think that that also makes, you know, one of the conversations that inspired myself the most. So with that, thank you very much, Liz. Thank you very much, Matteo.

Thanks. After our friends, Liz, we stay in the Netherlands with my friend Don. Don, welcome.

Thanks, Matteo. So it’s, you know, you are also a latecomer to the Breaking Banks Europe family. Nevertheless, an amazing contributor.

You build up, I want to say you almost built by yourself together with FRA, that is actually speaking after you, the whole Dutch ecosystem and beyond. So what is your world? So if I would try to capture Fintech over the past period, I would say it’s been an exciting journey. Hard to capture that in one word.

But it’s because it has a lot of ups and downs. And I think some people are really going into the doom and gloom. Not by now, since we see there’s a crunch on venture capital and, you know, the incumbents get just doing all boring stuff.

And it’s hard to start a company now with all the compliance. But at the same time, I think that the world has changed so much in the last 10 years. It’s been very hard to see it.

But the way we pay these days, the way we have access to our administration, to connected governments, digital identities, it’s all gone pretty fast, actually. If you go in hindsight and try to look at all the different steps we took. And I think that’s also what I would expect for the future to go.

It’ll probably be more boring than it was over the past 10 years. But there’s a lot of stuff going on. Do you think that if we have to capture a single world, a roller coaster would be a good one? Yeah, I think that’s probably even a nicer way to capture it.

Because we’ve had a couple of really highs and we had a couple of deep falls at the same time. So I don’t want you to spotlight a particular person, but maybe there is either a conversation or a format that you like the most, you know, during the course of the past couple of months. You mean a format for meetings? Yeah, or like, you know, the idea is that over this 250 episodes, you know, each and every one of us catches either a conversation or like a dialogue that you or she particularly sort of liked or sort of remain impressed in your mind.

So I think I wouldn’t necessarily have one format because I think some of them have a lot in common as well. And I think what I would like to capture then is the fact that all the fintech experts and founders that I’ve spoken to also on Breaking Banks, they all have this clear mission to make an impact on the world. And so even though they would probably never call themselves impact entrepreneurs, they have this clear vision on what’s wrong with the financial system in their eyes and how they would want to improve it.

And I think there where we saw from time to time the magic between two people also sort of sharpening their own vision by the discussion that we were having. I think those are, I think, really valuable moments where you actually see new ideas being born. You know, Don, I like a lot the fact that we started this thing, I mean, the fintech ecosystem building, I want to say, like together, like almost 15 years ago.

And I like the fact that we have another opportunity or another platform, you know, to keep telling our stories. So, you know, to the next 250 episodes, my friend. Exactly.

Looking forward to that a lot, Matteo. Okay. And now over to Francesco.

After Don, finally, I’m with my dearest business partner and also amazing breaking bank host Francesca. Ciao, Francesca. Welcome back to your own house.

Ciao, Matteo. Thank you so much. So, okay.

One word for you as well. We have been like together with Renata. Actually, I want to say the spine of these breaking banks since the beginning.

You at the beginning, a bit in the back, Renata always in the back, then, you know, sort of brought back to the light as a host. So what’s your word? All right. So the word I’ve picked is the word inclusion.

And the reason why I’ve picked this word, even though it might sound a little bit, you know, fluffy, too abstract, is because sometimes I feel the urgency to remind the people in our industry that the main component in today’s old fancy fintech revolution that has started 15 years ago is actually the ability of fintech to be a sort of game changer in addressing the exclusion challenge. So I think fintech has made quite a big job in the past 10 years. We still have the 1.2 billions of people around the world completely excluded or excluded on a certain extent from the traditional financial system.

And the capability of the fintech sector to tackle the inclusion topic, especially in some geographies that are actually very close both to me and you, Matteo, I think is one of the most, the biggest achievement that has been done in the past years. So in my perspective, we should really look at inclusion not only as, you know, this not enough concrete word, but really as one of the most nice achievement and outcome that fintech has done. It’s interesting because I feel both guilty and proud to have dragged you, you know, to work into this side, this specific side of financial services.

And actually, I believe one of the projects that is in the drawer and eventually soon will come out is that we are going to use Breaking Bans Europe a little bit also to promote some of the work that we’re doing in Africa, right? Yeah, exactly. So we are doing, I was saying before, it is very close to our heart, mainly because we are doing, of course, Time Pledge, but we are doing a lot of work also with our friends from Singapore in Elevandi. We are collaborating with a lot of central banks across Africa.

And as you were mentioning, very soon we’re going to go out with our own Breaking Bans Africa, specifically focusing on the continent and the challenges of the emerging markets. So a quick shout out to us. What is the next big appointment? I believe next February, right? Yes.

So the next big appointment in Africa is definitely the Inclusive Fintech Forum in Kigali, in Rwanda, end of February. We had to postpone that because of quite some challenges over there, but now we are very happy to be back and we’re going to come back bigger, nicer, with more speakers, more people and so on. So register for the event because it’s going to be amazing.

So Francesca, let’s end this, our very own conversation by congratulating ourselves, because I don’t think that the milestone of 250 episodes has to be treated lightly. So Francesca, thank you and congratulations. Thank you so much, Matteo.

Congrats to you. OK, guys, thanks, everybody, for this amazing contribution, remembering this first 250 episode of Breaking Bans Europe. It’s my turn.

And of course, very predictably, I would talk about the word talent, not only because we assembled an amazing array of talents to take care of the show, but also because you know how strong my passion is about nurturing talent, especially in emerging markets. You know, we created Time Pledge to coach African entrepreneurs on soft skills for free, reaching over 2,000 souls across 11 countries in Africa. And we are now launching the V2 of the same project, which consists in upskilling tech talents across Africa, giving them better salaries and better opportunities by connecting them to the startup and fintech world.

This is going to be one of the missions that I count to devote a lot of energy into. But hey, we are here to talk about breaking banks. You know why I choose specifically this word? And now it’s time to say thank you.

I want to thank, besides Renata, which I already did during the show, but I think she deserves again a special mention. And also Kevin and Sylvie from the production team doing an amazing, sometimes very rushy work, because it’s not always easy to coordinate everything. And also acknowledging the past hosts of the show that are not with us anymore.

They are pursuing other adventures, simply because this is like a big family that we put together. They might actually come back at a certain point, but always with the heart at the right place. Having said that, it is the mythical time of the show where I pronounce the two words that are ending it.

It is a wrap. Thank you very much. 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 US-based production team, including producer Lisbeth Severins, audio engineer Kevin Hirsham, with social media support from Carlo Navarra and Sylvie Johnson. If you like this episode, don’t forget to tweet it out or post it on your favorite social media, or 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.