eXponential Finance

Darren Goff is the Head of Investments - Japan at the Department for International Trade in Tokyo, leading a team in a pivotal position, helping UK companies entering the Japanese market, and securing UK foreign direct investment. 

We discuss the difficulties for UK and other foreign companies breaking into the Japanese market, why there is increasing cause for optimism and how the new Free Trade Agreement negotiated between the UK and Japan will bring new benefits for UK companies.

The Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, or CEPA as it is known, is the first agreement that the UK has secured that goes beyond the existing EU deal, with enhancements in areas such as digital and data, financial services, food and drink, and creative industries.

The event schedule for the UK in Japan Year mentioned in the podcast is accessible here: https://www.events.great.gov.uk/ehome/ukinjapan/home/ 

In case you wish to enter into further discussion with the DIT team, please feel free to contact Darrent at [email protected]

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Michael Wodzicki is a Partner at Deloitte Consulting, based in Poland, and the lead for this year's "Digital Banking Maturity" report. Over the last 2+ years, Michael has extensively worked across Asia. In addition to covering the report, we learn a little about the financial services industry in Poland and also ask Michael about his views on China, which has not been included in the report.  

This is the fourth edition of the largest global benchmarking of digital retail banking channels, answering what leaders are doing to win in the digitalization race. It is providing a comprehensive outside-in ‘mystery shopper’ assessment of retail banks’ digital channels and furthering discussion about future developments. The Deloitte team looked at a total of 318 banks from 39 countries to arrive at an assessment of digital functionalities, customer needs research, and a user experience evaluation. The summary report is available here: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ce/Documents/financial-services/ce-digital-banking-maturity-2020.pdf

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Pawel Kuskowski is one of the Co-Founders and the Chief Executive Officer of Confirm, a well-recognized global leader in blockchain and cryptocurrency analytics. Their mission is to provide technology for regulatory compliance, bringing new levels of transparency and trust to the world of digital assets. Coinfirm aims to serve as a foundation for the safe adoption of blockchain by all actors in the economy, including traditional financial institutions, governments, regulators as well as ordinary citizens. They do that by applying regulatory technology for blockchain that solves a variety of compliance challenges. They provide anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) services for virtual asset service providers and blockchain actors. Our conversation focuses particularly on the application of these to the decentralized finance (DeFi) space.

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Michael Schiltz is Associate Professor for the Modern Japanese Studies Program at the University of Hokkaido. In his 2012 monograph “The Money Doctors from Japan”, Michael explores how money and finance have been among the most potent tools of colonial power. His study investigates the Japanese experiment with financial imperialism—or “yen diplomacy”—at several key moments between the acquisition of Taiwan in 1895 and the outbreak of the Sino–Japanese War in 1937. Through authoritarian monetary reforms and lending schemes, government officials and financial middlemen served as “money doctors” who steered capital and expertise to Japanese official and semi-official colonies in Taiwan, Korea, China, and Manchuria. 

From the opening up of Japan after two and a half centuries of self-imposed isolation, and the implications for the monetary system (hint: domestically, silver was overvalued, and hence the arbitrage through foreign traders drained Japan of its gold), through wrestling back control of its currency, and aiming to expand the sphere of influence alongside territorial conquest, our conversation is firmly anchored at the intersection of Japanese and financial history. 

This - Michael's first - book is available from Harvard University Press: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674062498

Michael's second, forthcoming book (available already internationally, and in Japan before Christimas), "Accounting for the Fall of Silver" explains that the 1870s and 1880s witnessed furious experiments with new financial products and, equally important, strategies for hedging exchange rate risk. Drawing on archives that have never been used before, the book throws new light on an important episode of nineteenth century world history. At the same time, it illuminates lesser known aspects of the first gold standard period. It draws attention to the existence of ‘carry trades’ between European money markets and the lesser liquid Asian periphery; and describes the creation of financial contracts with the sole aim of enabling commodity finance among Asian mercantile centers.

Our podcast listeners receive a 30% discount when ordering with the code ASFLYQ6 at Oxford University Press: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/accounting-for-the-fall-of-silver-9780198865025?cc=jp&lang=en&

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Anton Golub is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of flovtec, an award-winning leader in the field of liquidity provision for digital assets. As a key player in the Blockchain ecosystem, flovtec fosters price stability and reduces transaction costs, for the benefit of all market participants. The firm is built on three pillars: a highly experienced and visionary team, tested investment strategies and a professional operational structure. The team is comprised of Blockchain pioneers with detailed insights into the ecosystem of digital assets and its future, experienced asset management professionals with proven track records, and quants that can deploy investment strategies in a quick and efficient manner.

Previously, Anton co-founded Lykke, one of the earlier digital asset exchanges, and the first to actually issue their own equity as a security token and trade it on their platform. In his earlier days, Anton was a Math Olympian, and a securities market structure researcher, as well as a high frequency trader in FX markets. Needless to say, we were not challenged filling this podcast episode with insightful content. 

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Kamil Shafiq is one of the co-founders of POKET, a startup creating a crowdsourced, consensus-driven registry of undocumented places in the emerging world. Using technology suited to the lower specification mobile phones and data constraints witnessed in frontier markets, POKET drives new, previously undiscoverable insights into unmapped and undocumented areas. By incentivizing users to propose and verify points of interest around them, POKET creates a curated map/registry of new places and points of interest for industries like financial services, government institutions, consumer-packaged goods companies and more!

This is the first podcast episode produced in co-operation with the Mohammed Bin Rashid Initiative for Global Prosperity's Global Maker Challenge, a startup competition seeking out the best young companies supporting inclusive and sustainable development across four categories: (1) Innovation for Peace & Justice, (2) Sustainable & Healthy Food for All, (3) Innovation for Inclusive Trade, and (4) Climate Change. POKET won the competition in the category Inclusive Trade. 

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Rohit Taneja is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Decentro, an Indian Open Banking platform and a Y-Combinator 2020 alumni. 

Decentro was born both from a personal pain point that Rohit faced while running his previous venture, as well as addressing a major impediment that can be seen across the FinTech industry.  When his first company tried to integrate banking APIs for simple money transfer, it took them more than five months just to get to a stable production setup. Turns out this is a common challenge for all neobanks, FinTechs and InsurTechs who need to interact with the core banking system or any third party APIs like KYC / AML and more.

Decentro solves this problem by providing a single, standardized interface and hiding the complexity of the individual banks' implementations. 

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Harumi Urata-Thompson is the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Investment Officer for Celsius Network. Having started her career as the first woman on the Fixed Income desk at Morgan Stanley in Tokyo, Harumi has had a long and successful career in traditional finance, both in capital markets/investment banking and with financial industry information providers (e.g., Thomson Reuters). 

Celsius addresses the financial needs of today’s consumers worldwide through an earning and lending platform accessible via a mobile app. Built on the belief that financial services should only do what is in the best interests of the community, Celsius is a modern platform where membership provides access to curated financial services that are not available through traditional financial institutions. Crypto holders can earn rewards by transferring their coins to their Celsius Wallet and borrow USD against their crypto collateral at interest rates as low as 1% APR.

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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>> This is the German edition on the topic of Japanese management, you can find a related English language podcast in Season 1, Episode 34 of this programme (Anchor link follows): https://anchor.fm/exponentialfinance/episodes/Episode-34---Parissa-Haghirian--Sophia-University-ee4kpt

Japanische Unternehmen und japanische Arbeitsmoral scheinen auf den ersten Blick den deutschen sehr ähnlich. Dennoch unterscheiden sich deutsche und japanische Organisationen sehr stark, was sich auch sehr stark auf die Arbeitsprozesse auswirkt. Das Webinar gibt einen Überblick über die Unterschiede der deutschen und japanischen Organisation und bespricht, welche unterschiedlichen Managementpraktiken daraus resultieren und welche Herausforderungen sich dadurch für die interkulturelle Zusammenarbeit zwischen deutschen und japanischen Mitarbeitern ergeben.

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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As the Head of Trade and Supply Chain at R3, Alisa DiCaprio is responsible for trade strategy, standards and governance design, with a current focus on mobility, logistics, and finance. Alisa's previous role at ADB involved leading institutional initiatives on trade finance, digital economy, regional integration, and innovation. She has experience in both public and private sectors on trade, export promotion, labor issues, and designing and implementing development projects. She has worked in Cambodia, Chile, Finland, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and the US. Her work on global digital economy issues include chairing committees at the ICC, BAFT, Trade Finance Advisory Council, and formerly the American Chamber of Commerce of Japan.

We hosted a webinar that covered the technology foundations & business applications of Corda, the blockchain developed by R3, and SBI R3 Japan. This podcast episode is an edited version of the "business application" part of the discussion. If you are interested in the technical presentations, please let us guide you to the Tokyo FinTech YouTube channel:

Technical Overview of Corda with David Lee: https://youtu.be/l7XoF2th7JM

New Corda Features (Version 4.6) with Alessandro Baffa: https://youtu.be/AgNb_R6cXRc

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

You can also find us on....