Maaike Steinebach is founder of Femtech Futures, a Hong Kong-based venture investment firm supporting startups in the tech space dedicated to women’s health and wellbeing.

Steinebach tells Jame DiBiasio about her journey from fintech to femtech, and how they are similar. She discusses the opportunity set, including backing B2B and B2C startups, and where she sees the space headed.

She puts femtech into the context of Web3, data sovereignty, and digital identity – particularly in the context of Asia’s many societies.

• Timecodes:
• 0:00 – Maaike Steinebach, Femtech Futures
• 2:15 – From fintech to femtech: Maaike’s journey
• 3:56 – Democratization and equal access to healthcare
• 5:49 – Leading venture investment into femtech
• 9:14 – The corporate landscape: employers, big pharma
• 9:56 – B2B business models versus B2C in femtech
• 13:34 – Driving market awareness and creating B2B opportunities
• 15:42 – Femtech’s place within the fintech universe
• 17:42 – Data sharing and open finance
• 18:20 – Web3, data sovereignty and digital identity
• 22:14 – Gamification and Web3 experiences for women
• 23:12 – Femtech in Asia and women’s health as software

Paul Harapin is APAC leader at payments fintech Stripe.

He discusses two topics: how Stripe is leveraging artificial intelligence, and its roadmap in Asia Pacific.

Harapin tells DigFin‘s Jame DiBiasio that Stripe is incorporating ChatGPT and other language-learning models. This is partly to support clients such as ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, but also to help derive better outcomes in Stripe’s business.

Following layoffs at the company in the wake of the tech crash, Harapin outlines Stripe’s priorities in Asia and where the company sees innovation from the region making its way to other parts of the world.

• Timecodes:
• 0:00 – Paul Harapin, Stripe
• 1:16 – Stripe’s strategy for artificial intelligence
• 4:38 – What AI companies are doing in the payments space
• 6:11 – Managing risks of ChatGPT
• 7:33 – The impact AI may have on payments processing
• 9:39 – The risks as AI gets more powerful
• 11:20 – Stripe’s valuation rollercoaster, where it’s cutting, where it’s investing
• 17:03 – Cross-border expansion in Asia
• 17:44 – Asia’s importance to the Stripe business
• 19:18 – Asia’s different competitive landscape for Stripe
• 22:36 – Innovations from Asia that can go global

Gourab Mukherjee is co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based insurtech Aktivo Labs. Aktivo provides wellness apps to insurance companies and reinsurers that are meant to help change people’s behavior.

As Mukherjee explains to Jame DiBiasio, about 30% of longevity is within people’s control. Smoking, substance abuse and poor diet, versus good diets, exercise, and getting a decent night’s sleep all impact our health. And digital technology is getting better at turning that into scores that insurers use to price policies.

But are these apps really changing behavior? Are they personalized enough to be effective? As the reward the virtuous, are they making inequality worse, particularly in emerging markets? Mukherjee fields these and other questions about wellness and insurtech.

• Timecodes:
• 0:00 – Gourab Mukherjee, Aktivo
• 1:37 – Longevity and the challenges of “healthspans”
• 3:17 – Demographics of health and at-risk populations in emerging markets
• 5:19 – Impact of Covid-19 on the wellness industry
• 6:13 – Do health apps change user behavior – at scale?
• 9:49 – Personalization and creating scores for individuals
• 14:51 – How insurance companies and reinsurers use these apps
• 17:51 – The challenges of socio-economic inequality and insurance premiums
• 20:43 – Integrity of data and gaming the system
• 22:30 – Aktivo’s funding, and moving from startup to sustainable business

Naveen Mallela of JP Morgan explains how tokenized deposits will enable commercial banking on blockchain.

Emmanuel Daniel is author of "The Great Transition: The Personalization of Finance is Here".

He discusses the themes of his book (reviewed here) detailing how technology renders financial intermediaries unprofitable, and the need for both banks and fintechs to reassess what value they deliver to customers.

"ED" is founder of The Asian Banker, a Singapore-based business magazine for consumer and corporate banks. He has been delivering forward-looking speeches at his events for years and has now encapsulated his thinking into "The Great Transition".

He speaks with Jame DiBiasio about why personalization and data are finally dragging financial services into the Information Age and what that means for products, starting with the most basic of all, the bank deposit account.

• Timecodes:
• 0:00 - Emmanuel Daniel and writing his book
• 2:05 - How the Information Age is empowering individuals
• 4:43 - Personalization and its data, and how fintechs become disrupted themselves
• 9:52 - Innovating financial products and the financialization of just about everything
• 14:14 - Disintermediating bank deposit accounts away from banks
• 19:27 - Turning digital wallets into tokens and the utilization of deposits
• 22:41 - The corruption of B2B fintech
• 25:18 - The speed and direction of change, problems platforms, and reimagining value propositions
• 28:10 - M&A, marketing, and creating an enduring business in financial services

Alice Chen and Julian Kwan are co-founders of InvestaX, a Singapore-based fintech focused on digital-asset tokenization.

Chen and Kwan discuss the evolution of tokenization, as a concept and a real-world activity, and how that is different from crypto markets. They discuss the future of financial intermediaries and the role of smart contracts.

They also talk about Asia’s return to the spotlight in wake of regulatory battles over crypto in the US, and what should happen next to help tokenization become a mainstream reality.

• Timecodes:
• 0:00 – Julian Kwan and Alice Chen
• 1:45 – Founding InvestaX and bridging TradFi and DeFi
• 4:15 – Selecting a domicile for a tokenization startup
• 7:53 – What is tokenization?
• 9:03 – Tokenized assets versus derivatives
• 11:33 – A brief history of tokenization
• 16:37 – Eliminating intermediaries in the post-FTX world
• 20:24 – Are smart contracts “ready for prime time?”
• 23:32 – Opportunities in Asia Pacific
• 27:09 – Importance of CBDCs and stablecoins
• 29:56 – Working together

Dušan Stojanović and his colleagues at True Global Ventures invest in blockchain and artificial-intelligence companies, backing many businesses in Web3 and metaverse-themed businesses.

He spoke with Jame DiBiasio about the convergence of generative AI models (such as ChatGPT) and Web3 businesses as a medium-term play. In the short term he is investing in AI businesses that sell to non-tech companies.

Stojanović talks about how startups are faring against giant corporations, data uses, and how the tools of AI are transforming the business of venture capital.

• Timecodes
• 0:00 – Dušan Stojanović, True Global Ventures
• 2:40 – Framing a medium-term focus on investment themes
• 4:18 – Why did the AI+ blockchain theme not work in recent years?
• 6:41 – How can VC and startups compete in AI versus corporate giants?
• 8:50 – Real-world applications for various industries
• 11:55 – Finance industry issues around data, security, sovereignty
• 14:31 – Decentralized data in Web3 versus controlling big data sets
• 18:25 – Inserting generative AI into Web3 business models
• 23:11 – Governance in Web3 and metaverse spaces
• 26:39 – The impact of generative AI on Web3 and traditional businesses
• 28:52 – And its impact on the VC industry and investment decisions

Bertrand Billon is founder of Singapore-based fintech iLex, which is pioneering a digital platform for syndicated loans and other forms of private debt.

Loans, unlike bonds, are designed to be bespoke, and traditionally have been difficult to trade. iLex is trying to foster a digital marketplace among private capital players and banks, to create new sources of liquidity in loans.

Billon speaks with Jame DiBiasio about the challenges of creating such a platform from scratch and the possibilities for transforming this large but opaque segment of capital markets.

• Timecodes:
• 0:00 – Bertrand Billon, iLex
• 02:09 – Why haven’t loans been digitized before?
• 03:32 – How to accommodate the idiosyncratic nature of loans
• 05:49 – Creating liquidity
• 7:24 – Changing conditions: the rise of private capital, rising interest rates
• 9:43 – Securitization and its risks
• 11:28 – Developing the ecosystem for trading loans
• 14:36 – Asia versus Europe versus US
• 16:44 – Chicken and egg: jumpstarting a marketplace
• 20:01 – Size of digital loans market versus traditional syndication business
• 22:40 – Developed versus emerging markets
• 23:45 – VC funding conditions for fintechs, iLex’s valuation
• 27:02 – Future exit goals

Ambre Soubiran is founder of Kaiko, which provides market data on crypto to institutional investors.

She talks about the impact on the digital-assets industry from the closure of crypto-friendly banks in the US, why banks are still building infrastructure for digital assets, and the promise of smart contracts for traditional structured products and derivatives.

Soubiran looks at challenges such as public versus private blockchains, how to source data from blockchains, standards, and interoperability.

• Timecodes:
• 0:00 – Ambre Soubiran, Kaiko
• 2:00 – Data for smart contracts and founding Kaiko
• 5:18 – Pace of banks adopting blockchain infrastructure
• 8:12 – Public versus private, permissioned chains
• 11:16 – Is Ethereum now a security?
• 14:06 – New sources of demand for crypto data, Asia’s promise
• 18:38 – Standards and teaming up with Bloomberg
• 22:20 – Engaging with risk teams on trading floors
• 24:25 – How to source data in a blockchain world
• 26:25 – Kaiko’s business risks post bank closures in the US
• 29:56 – Fundraising

Monica Jasuja is an engineer and product manager who has led payments teams at PayPal, Mastercard, GoTo and elsewhere. She is one of the most knowledgeable people in the region when it comes to fintech.

Jasuja speaks with Jame DiBiasio about the key trends in the post-Covid era. Her analysis is balanced, noting the failure by many fintechs, banks, and governments to change consumer habits away from cash. On the other hand she discusses where she sees great potential for uptake.

As she goes through changing business models, Jasuja also touches on the implications for valuing fintech startups, lessons from China, and the foundational importance in Southeast and South Asia of government initiatives for financial inclusion. 

• Timecodes:
• 0:00 – Monica Jasuja and her career
• 2:58 – Challenges in Southeast Asia for super-app models
• 4:53 – The enduring use of cash, the limits of financial inclusion, how to change habits, and how to get users to pay for services
• 7:51 – Creating sustainable fintech businesses, the changing business playbook, reassessing a product’s value post-Covid
• 11:07 – What makes a product successful, Asia’s peculiar needs, neobanking in Asia, identifying the right problems to solve
• 14:24 – The essential role of government in Southeast Asia fintech, digital literacy, how to grow consumer spending
• 18:01 – Financial literacy, gamification, knowing customers, why UPI hasn’t grown faster, reaching beyond top-tier cities
• 21:52 – Lessons from China, what works and what doesn’t, why Southeast Asia is different
• 25:02 – How to value tech companies, rethinking how we fund startups
• 27:48 – Are CBDCs relevant? Finding use cases, integrating the region’s domestic payment systems, benefits for business users