Blog Archives
THE WORLD BANK’S HARISH NATARAJAN
My guest today is the World Bank’s Harish Natarajan, a leader of one of the most visionary and ambitious efforts underway in the financial world — to achieve complete financial inclusion.
KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER: ALLOY CRO LAURA SPIEKERMAN
One of the biggest challenges in fighting money laundering is satisfying the KYC, or Know Your Customer, rules. These regulatory requirements make sense in concept — they require financial companies to verify customers’ identities before letting them connect to the system, in order to screen out high-risk people and entities and as a foundation for meeting the legal mandate to monitor financial activity for potential crime. However, the traditional verification process has always been expensive and time-consuming. In recent years it’s also been creating new problems. My guest today has a company that is setting out to fix those. She is Laura Spiekerman, the Chief Revenue Officer of Alloy.
TALKING THROUGH THE STORM WITH JAN LYNN OWEN
I am especially thrilled about today’s guest — California DBO Commissioner Jan Owen — because this episode has been years in the making. I’ve known Jan for a long time, and as anyone who knows her will attest, she’s a breath of fresh air in the regulatory world. She’s candid, she’s outspoken, she’s thought provoking, and she’s fearless in tackling thorny issues. We’ve been looking for a good chance to sit down and talk, and we finally found one this summer.
MACHINE-READABLE REGULATION: COMPLIANCE.AI CEO KAYVAN ALIKHANI
A lot of people are working on this concept, both at regulatory agencies and at regtech firms. One leader in that effort is my guest today, Kayvan Alikhani, Co-founder and CEO of Compliance.ai. We both were speakers this year at the Comply 2018 conference in New York, and while we were there we found a chance to sit down and talk.
TRANSFORMING IDENTITY: GLOBALID CEO GREG KIDD
It’s always extra fun when we have a show where the guest talks about the days when Jack Dorsey hacked him and lived in his backyard. For today’s conversation, I’m joined by my friend Greg Kidd, Co-founder and CEO of globaliD. I’m predicting right now that this one is going to be a Barefoot Innovation fan-favorite.
CONGRESSMAN GREGORY MEEKS ON WIN-WIN FINTECH
We have such a special guest on today’s show. Gregory Meeks is the United States Congressman representing the Fifth District of New York. He is also a leading member of the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services. I was able to sit down with him, in his Capitol Hill office on one recent, hot summer day, to talk about how technology is changing consumer finance and, especially, how it can expand financial inclusion.
INNOVATION AT A SMALL BANK: RADIUS CEO MIKE BUTLER
Today’s guest is Michael Butler, CEO of Radius Bank in Boston. As with our recent show with Bob Rivers of Eastern Bank (which is also based in Boston), Mike belongs to a small, but growing, group of CEOs who are truly transforming their community banks through technology. When conversation turns to the tech future for community institutions, these two banks’ names always come up.
DATA THAT DEEPENS FINANCIAL ACCESS: EXPERIAN AND LENDUP
Today’s show brings us two fascinating guests. Alex Lintner is President of Consumer Information Services for Experian, and Sasha Orloff — who is a previous guest on Barefoot Innovation — is founder and CEO of LendUp. They recently joined forces to explore using new kinds of data to widen financial inclusion. We all sat down to discuss it at the LendIt conference this spring in San Francisco.
REGULATORY CHALLENGER: LABCFTC AND DANIEL GORFINE
In that spirit, they recruited the perfect person to lead the LabCFTC innovation project — today’s guest, Daniel Gorfine. Luckily for us, the CFTC was able to attract Dan into government from the fintech sector – I first met him when he was at OnDeck – and he’s been bringing an innovator’s mindset and working models to this venerable government agency.
REGULATION REVOLUTION: THE FINANCIAL CONDUCT AUTHORITY AND DIGITALLY-NATIVE REGULATORY DESIGN
My guests are Chris Woolard and Nick Cook of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. We sat down to record it on the last night of their enormous, ambitious, mold-breaking tech sprint held in London a few weeks ago. This regtech sprint, the fifth one they’ve done, focused on how to use new technology to combat financial crime. The sprints — which are hackathons — play a dual role, both sparking new ideas on specific regulatory challenges and also innovating in regulatory process, itself.
INNOVATION AND COMMUNITY BANKS: EASTERN BANK CEO BOB RIVERS
One of my goals for Barefoot Innovation is to amplify the voice of America’s community banks about the future of financial innovation and regulation. Today’s guest is perfect for this. He is Bob Rivers, CEO of Eastern Bank in Boston. At age 200, Eastern is the oldest and largest mutually-owned bank in the United States. At the same time, it is one of the most “young” and nimble community banks in adopting new technology.
THE COURAGE TO CHANGE: FORMER WELLS FARGO BSA OFFICER JIM RICHARDS
Executing this transformation will take imagination, vision, wisdom and even courage, which is why I invited today’s guest to join us. He is Jim Richards, founder of the new firm, RegTech Consulting, and I think he used the word “courage” six times, in our talk. We sat down together at this year’s LendIt conference in San Francisco, just a few days after Jim had retired from his position as the Bank Secrecy Act Officer and Global Head of Financial Crimes Risk management at Wells Fargo, a job he held for more than twelve years. He’s also an attorney and a deep expert in financial crime.
HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD: THE GATES FOUNDATION’S MICHAEL WIEGAND
My guest this week is Michael Wiegand, Director of the Financial Services for the Poor strategy at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
AFFORDABLE FINANCIAL ADVICE: NERDWALLET CEO TIM CHEN
Tim Chen is the founder and CEO of NerdWallet, and he’s a classic American story. In today’s episode, he describes the remarkable journey he’s taken so far in his still-young life, which has had dramatic ups and downs — (as he says, when one door closes, a bigger gate may open). NerdWallet, which he founded at age 26, now helps more than 100 million people every year shop for and choose financial products that meet their needs.
SPONSOR BANK: CROSS RIVER BANK’S CEO GILLES GADE
My guest today is pioneering a crucial innovation within the innovation landscape in finance — by providing banking services to fintechs through a platform-based financial services model known as the sponsor bank, or partner bank. In today’s episode, Gilles Gade tells the story of founding and building one of the leading sponsor banks, Cross River.
DIGITALLY NATIVE FINANCE: STARLING BANK CEO ANNE BODEN
Today’s episode is like a crystal ball glimpse into the future of banking, narrated by my guest, Anne Boden, the thoughtful and charismatic Founder and CEO of Starling Bank in the UK.
COLLABORATION INNOVATION: CHARLOTTE CROSSWELL AND DAN MORGAN OF INNOVATE FINANCE
I always love it when we find innovation in unexpected places, not just in the financial products and channels and regulatory issues we discuss, but also in people inventing new ways to get things done. Today’s guests talk about taking a very old kind of entity — the industry trade association — and updating it for the 21st century financial world. As often happens with innovation, the thing that’s new is actually very simple, maybe even obvious, and yet when you set it in motion, things change.
FINANCE AND THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: TIM PAWLENTY, CEO OF FINANCIAL SERVICES ROUNDTABLE
Today’s guest is a familiar name and face for everyone who follows U.S. politics. He is Tim Pawlenty, CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable. Tim was previously Governor of Minnesota and became well-known to most of us when he ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He’s been a prominent voice on public policy for many years.
THE DATA ECONOMY: A LIVELY LONDON DEBATE ON FINTECH IN EUROPE AND AFRICA
This is the most fun show we’ve done in ages, or maybe ever. My friend Jean-Stephane Gourevitch offered to gather some really interesting people in London to talk about the data economy. We finally sat down last fall, during London’s Regtech Rising conference, and wow, did we talk.
THE FUTURE OF REGULATION: THE FCA’S REG-TECH LEADER, NICK COOK
Nick Cook is the head of Regtech and Advanced Analytics for the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority. The FCA’s innovation leadership is world-renowned, especially for their Project Innovate and its “regulatory sandbox,” which allows careful testing of new financial technology that could benefit consumers. Less well-known, though, is a newer initiative, launched about 16 months ago, to explore regtech.
INNOVATING IN PAYMENTS: WELLS FARGO HEAD OF PARTNERSHIPS AND INDUSTRY RELATIONS – BRADEN MORE
I could tell I was walking into an innovation lab even before I saw the space, because I could hear the ping pong game underway as I stepped off the elevator. It was great fun to be in San Francisco, on a sunny day in early fall, to talk with Braden More, Wells Fargo’s head of partnerships and industry relations — and to see their fascinating innovation facility, which includes what they call their R&D Garage.
REGULATION INNOVATION: THE FCA’S CHRISTOPHER WOOLARD
Today’s guest is Christopher Woolard, the FCA’s head of Strategy and Competition. In this episode, he tells the story of how they first realized they had to change, how they did it, and, importantly, what they’ve been learning so far. We sat down together last month during the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas, where we also did a fireside chat on the regulatory stage and where, for the first time, Chris shared their new report on lessons drawn from their first several cohorts of sandbox companies.
REAL LIVES: RACHEL SCHNEIDER AND THE FINANCIAL DIARIES
If you spend a lot of time in Washington, as I do, you see a lot of issues framed around statistics about people, especially medians, and averages. For instance, policies aimed at helping lower-income people typically stratify Americans into categories, in bands above and below median income, or median incomes in their census tracts. I’ve worked with programs like this for decades — HUD housing and mortgage programs, the Community Reinvestment Act, and many others.
BIG BANKS AND BIG IDEAS: CITI FINTECH’S ANDRES WOLBERG-STOK
My guest today is Andres Wolberg Stok, Global Head of Policy at Citi Fin Tech. We got to know each other this year on a panel at FinXTech in New York, and something I immediately noticed is that he has a special way of talking about innovation — a very fresh way with words. It might be because he’s lived all over the world, or because he was once a journalist — see his biography below for a sampling of his journalism adventures, which sound like plots of action/adventure movies.
THE VC PERSPECTIVE: MILES REIDY OF QED INVESTORS
This episode is a special treat because it’s both fascinating and fun. My guest is Miles Reidy, partner at QED Investors in Alexandria, Virginia. Many people know that QED was founded by former leaders of Capital One, including Cap One co-founder Nigel Morris. They have a terrific track record of investing, focused mainly especially on fintech.
A HEALTHY CREDIT CARD: JASON GROSS, CEO OF PETAL
I love having guests on the show who look at something that everyone takes for granted and said, why do we do it that way? That’s what today’s guest, Jason Gross, has done with credit cards. Jason is the CEO of Petal. He and his co-founders have designed a card that has a different business model and aims at a different market.
THE ABA’S REGULATORY COMPLIANCE CONFERENCE (PART 2)
This is a very special show because we recorded it directly from the bustling floor of the American Bankers Association’s […]
THE ABA’S REGULATORY COMPLIANCE CONFERENCE (PART 1)
This is a very special show because we recorded it directly from the bustling floor of the American Bankers Association’s […]
ACCESS FOR ALL: CIIE’S SANJAY JAIN AND THE INDIA STACK
My guest today is Sanjay Jain, Chief Innovation Officer at the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE). Among many high-impact achievements, Sanjay helped lead creation of one of the most ambitious government infrastructure initiatives ever undertaken — the so-called India Stack that is connecting everyone in India to the financial system and mainstream commerce, by providing a biometric ID.
WE HAVE LESS TIME THAN WE THINK: SINGAPORE’S SOPNENDU MOHANTY
I met today’s guest, Sopnendu Mohanty, about 18 months ago. I moderated a panel on blockchain for last year’s MIT Fintech Conference, and Sop, who is the Chief Fintech Officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, was a panelist — explaining how MAS was building a regional innovation hub that included blockchain strategies. Since then I’ve seen him three more times — once at Harvard, which he visited with the visionary head of MAS, Ravi Menon; once when I spoke at MAS’s enormous conference last fall in Singapore; and last at a regulator gathering in Jakarta this year, where we recorded this short conversation.
BANKS AND COMMUNITY: CSBS PRESIDENT JOHN RYAN
My favorite episodes of Barefoot Innovation are the ones that take a philosophical turn. That happened with John Ryan, the thoughtful president of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, which is the organization that coordinates America’s state-level financial regulators.
BREAKFAST WITH THE BEST – BRETT KING
Brett King and I see each other often, partly because we often speak at the same conferences and partly because we’re both on the board of the Center for Financial Services Innovation. For some reason, though, we went for over a year trying unsuccessfully to find time to record a podcast.
FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL REGULATION – CFTC ACTING CHAIRMAN CHRISTOPHER GIANCARLO
Today’s program is a very special one — a conversation about regulatory innovation, with the very innovative acting Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, Christopher Giancarlo.
REGULATORS & SANDBOXES: WAI-LUM KWOK ON ABU DHABI’S REGLAB
“Sandboxes.” “Greenhouses.” “Pilot tests.” “Labs.” These are not words we normally associate with financial regulation. Yet suddenly, all over the world, regulatory agencies are giving these novel names to a new, unconventional kind of initiative. The break from tradition is being driven by a realization: they are going to need to find new ways to do their jobs well, in the face of fast-moving technology change and fintech innovation. My guest today oversees one of these fascinating programs — Abu Dhabi’s Reglab. He is Wai-Lum Kwok, Executive Director for Capital Markets at the country’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority.
COLLEEN BRIGGS : FINANCIAL INNOVATION POWERED BY JP MORGAN CHASE
Today’s guest is Colleen Briggs, Executive Director for Community Innovation and Corporate Responsibilityleads a visionary effort that is part of JPM’s commitment to building “more inclusive growth,” globally, by finding innovative models that build financial access and economic expansion.at JPMorgan Chase. Colleen
MAKING IT EASY : INTUIT’S AL KO
Today’s episode is a far-ranging conversation with Al Ko, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of the Consumer Ecosystem at Intuit. Among other things, he heads up Mint, which is deeply innovating about healthier ways for us to live our financial lives. Al reminds us that Intuit founder Scott Cook pioneered PFM — personal financial management that leverages technology to simplify financial tasks (That story is recounted memorably in Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup.)
OUTSPOKEN: BILL HARRIS, FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN OF PERSONAL CAPITAL AND FORMER CEO OF INTUIT AND PAYPAL
It’s a good thing we have that policy, because otherwise, I would have quite the project figuring out what to do with my very lively conversation with Bill Harris, the former CEO of Paypal and Intuit, and Founder and Chairman of Personal Capital. Bill and I got together, in a little office I was using at Harvard, and had a very far-ranging conversation. By the time we finished, I told him I’ll probably have to offer equal time to all the people he — shall we say, critiqued — during our talk.
HEROIC COMPLIANCE : TRELIANT’S LYN FARRELL
Lyn Farrell is not only my former colleague, but one of my very best friends. We had such fun recording this at my apartment in Boston one weekend late last year. In many ways, it’s just a slice of a long conversation we’ve been having more or less continuously for years, including over countless meals on the road together, in the consulting life we used to share
FIAT CURRENCY CAN BE VIRTUAL TOO: JONATHAN DHARMAPALAN, CEO OF ECURRENCY
My guest for today’s show brings yet another angle — a unique one — to rethinking money. He is Jonathan Dharmapalan, Founder and CEO at eCurrency Mint, Ltd. Jonathan spent 25 years in telecommunications field, including becoming Head of Enst & Young’s Global Telecommunications Center in 2011. His insight, at eCurrency, is that the best way to capture the power of digital currency is to have governments, themselves, issue it.
AFI EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ALFRED HANNIG
I’m excited to share today’s conversation with Alfred Hannig, Executive Director of AFI. When you hear of an organization with a name like The Alliance for Financial Inclusion, you might picture a nonprofit advocating for credit opportunity or community reinvestment. AFI, though, is unique. Its members are governments — central banks and financial regulators — representing over 90 countries in the developing world. They all work at the cutting edge of financial transformation, because the mobile phone is suddenly bringing real financial inclusion.
A MILLENNIAL BUILDING FOR MILLENNIALS – OLLIE PERDUE OF LOOT
A year later, I had a chance to do a podcast with Ollie. Sitting amidst their whiteboards marked up with problem-solving sketches and waiting list queues, he filled me in on their progress. Loot is an app paired with a prepaid debit card, offering tremendously useful tools for easy budgeting, payments, and simple ways to set financial goals and get coached about how best to meet them. They also analyze the customer’s spending patterns and benchmark against peers — helping the huge numbers of people who simply have no idea where they stand compared to where they should be, in financial health.
FINTECH FOR SMALL BUSINESS: FORMER SBA ADMINISTRATOR & HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL SENIOR FELLOW KAREN MILLS
Today we’re expanding beyond our usual Barefoot Innovation focus on consumer financial innovation, to explore the parallel issues arising for small businesses. We’ve touched on this before, but are so fortunate, today, to have a guest who deeply understands the whole range of these issues. She is Karen Mills, former head of the Small Business Administration and now senior fellow at the Harvard Business School, where she has just released a comprehensive paper on fintech and small business.
GETTING PEOPLE ON TO THE CREDIT LADDER: LENDUP CEO SASHA ORLOFF
Today’s episode is about new ideas about a very old problem in consumer finance — high-cost lending to high-risk borrowers. My guest is LendUp CEO Sasha Orloff, who is one of a new generation of fintech founders building alternatives to traditional payday lending.
THE ONE DOLLAR SMART PHONE — THEO COSMORA, CEO OF SOCIALECO
My guest for this episode is Theo Cosmora, co-founder and CEO of Social Eco and the man behind the OneDollarSmartPhone. Theo notes that four billion people can’t afford smartphones; that this is potentially the world’s most valuable market in the world, worth $5 trillion; and that people spend an average of three hours a day using phones if they have them. That means that connecting everyone to smart phones will connect them, both horizontally and vertically, into every dimension of the larger economy and culture.
REMAKING THE FINANCIAL RAILS: RIPPLE CEO CHRIS LARSEN
One night last summer I attended a small dinner in New York hosted by the editors of a global financial publication, on financial innovation. We had some of fintech’s brightest stars seated around the table, but I remember offering the view that the person there who was most likely to actually revolutionize the financial system was Chris Larsen, the CEO of Ripple. Most fintech innovators are building new things on the system’s old footings. Ripple is trying to reshape the foundation itself.
COLIN WALSH OF VARO
I’ve been looking for a chance to do a podcast with today’s guest for months. Colin Walsh is the founder and CEO of Varo, an online tool that aims to make it easy and affordable for consumers to manage their financial lives. Colin and I first met at last year’s fintech conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and I’ve enjoyed, ever since, watching the rapid growth of his startup.
HARVARD’S BRIGITTE MADRIAN ON SAVING FOR RETIREMENT: “WE ARE NOT MAKING IT EASY”
Today’s program is really special, because my guest is Brigitte Madrian. Brigitte is the Aetna Professor of Public Policy and Corporate Management at the Harvard Kennedy School, and also co-director of the Household Finance working group at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is a leading expert in behavioral economics and consumer decision-making regarding both health and finance, and in finance,especially savings and retirement. Importantly to me, she is also my faculty advisor for the book I’m writing.
INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESS LENDING: SAM HODGES OF FUNDING CIRCLE
Welcome to our first conversation with an innovator in small business lending – my guest is Sam Hodges, Co-founder and U.S. Managing Director of Funding Circle.
INSURE-TECH : QED FOUNDING PARTNER CARIBOU HONIG
Today we have our first-ever episode on Insure-tech. Happily, it also turned out to be one of the most fun, funny and thought-provoking shows we’ve ever done. I’m pretty sure it’s the first one where we’ve talked about the internet of things, and CRISPR gene research, transportation as a service, and drones. My fascinating guest is Caribou Honig, founding partner of QED Investors.
INNOVATION AND CONSUMER PROTECTION – LAUREN SAUNDERS, NATIONAL CONSUMER LAW CENTER
Today’s show explores financial innovation through the eyes of one of America’s most respected consumer advocates. My guest is Lauren Saunders, Associate Director of the National Consumer Law Center.