When you think about it, most, if not all, fintech innovation comes via the analysis and application of data. And financial services is more data-dependent now than at any time in its history. But this creates a challenge for brand new startups. How do you get access to data when all you have is an idea? Enter Fintech Sandbox.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Sarah Biller, the co-founder of Fintech Sandbox. This industry non-profit provides free access to financial services data that can be critical for startups as they develop their initial products. As the need for large datasets accelerates an organization like Fintech Sandbox provides ever more critical for the growth of the startup ecosystem.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The driving force in starting Fintech Sandbox.
• How they persuaded their first data providers to provide free access to data.
• Some of the companies providing data for them today.
• How they go about finding new data sources.
• What their Data Access Residency program is and who it is for.
• How the types of companies they see have evolved over the last decade.
• The impact of AI on the demand for data from their new cohorts.
• Some of the companies that have been through their program.
• How open banking is going to impact fintech once the new rules are implemented.
• What is happening at Boston Fintech Week (Oct 14-18) this year.
• Why it is important for Fintech Sandbox to be a non-profit.
• How they are funded.
• How Sarah is thinking about the next 10 years of Fintech Sandbox.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
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• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

Today, the back office for many lenders and originators is still very manual and human-intensive. We are talking lots of emails, reading contracts and processing Excel files. In some cases these processes have been in place, pretty much unchanged since the 1990s. That is because there has never been a comprehensive solution available to automate the capital markets process for originators and lenders.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Stu Wall, the CEO and Co-Founder of Setpoint. They call themselves "the operating system for capital markets" because their system can replace the manual processes that have been in place with state of the art technology that takes advantage of automation and standardization. While they started in the real estate space they are now making real inroads into other lending verticals.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The founding story of SetPoint.
• The mission and vision of the company.
• What they mean when they talk about the "operating system for asset-backed lending".
• How they replace the existing processes based on Excel and email.
• How SetPoint has earned the trust of the market.
• Their response to the build-buy-partner conversation.
• The biggest challenges in capital markets for asset-backed lenders and originators today.
• Why they started in the real estate space.
• The different lending verticals where they operate.
• Some of the originators they are working with today.
• Why this will likely be a winner take most market.
• How they were able to get Citi and Wells Fargo to back their company.
• Their biggest challenge in getting deeper market penetration.
• Some of the features that are on their product road map.
• What is involved in onboarding a new lender or originator.
• Stu's vision for the future of SetPoint and the automation of capital markets.

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• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

"AI is probably the most talked about and least understood topic within financial services today," said John Sun, the CEO and Co-Founder of Spring Labs (previously, I had another co-founder of Spring Labs, Adam Jiwan, on the show back in 2020). The company is at the cutting edge of AI innovation in financial services with several interesting use cases in production today.

The Spring Labs team decided that what the industry needed was a new event focused on AI applications beyond just the use of chatbots. So, they created the AI-Native Banking and Fintech Conference, happening in Utah on October 7. Tickets will be available here right up until the show kicks off.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How Spring Labs has evolved since its founding in 2018.
• Where they are focused today.
• What Gen AI applications they have in market today.
• The key markets they are focused on.
• The first use cases they deployed for their Gen AI product.
• How they are inserting AI tools into existing workflows.
• The outputs that come from these tools.
• Why they decided to start an AI-focused fintech conference.
• Why they chose Salt Lake City as the location for this first event.
• Who is attending the event.
• The AI topics they will be covering.
• What John is personally looking forward to on the agenda.
• How people can get tickets to the event.
• John's vision for Spring Labs.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
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• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

There is no faster-moving space in finance right now than the anti-fraud space. With all the advances in Generative AI, the fraudsters are more difficult to catch than ever. But there is one place where fintechs and banks can focus that has real promise: authenticating the mobile phone. 

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Rodger Desai, the CEO and Founder of Prove. They have developed sophisticated tools to verify identity through a mobile phone that can help banks and fintechs across a variety of touchpoints. We explain why the phone may hold the key (literally) to the future of ID verification and authentication.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What led to the founding of Prove.
• Why they decided to focus on financial services.
• The different types of services Prove offers today.
• ID verification best practices and why you need to add authentication.
• Rodger's thoughts on the ready availability of PII due to data breaches.
• What data they are returning back to their clients around authentication.
• How they work with transactions that happen on a desktop rather than a phone.
• How we should be thinking about sophisticated fraud rings today.
• How to combat Gen-AI deep fakes.
• Why key management is the answer to how you authenticate.
• The role of visual cues when it comes to verification.
• What the popular attack vectors are for criminals.
• Who is winning in the arms race between the criminals and the good guys.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
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Today's show is our special 500th episode of the Fintech One-on-One podcast. Rather than do a retrospective or a look back at some highlights from the last 11 years of interviews what I decided was to do my regular interview but with a fintech pioneer. I wanted a big name so I was delighted when the CEO and Founder of Cross River Bank, Gilles Gade, decided to join me.

I first interviewed Gilles (along with Adam Goller) on the show way back in Episode 32 in March 2015. A lot has changed since then as Cross River Bank has become a market leader in Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) and they have expanded way beyond their initial focus on marketplace lending.

A lot has happened in the BaaS space over the last year and we discuss this in depth as Gilles shares his thoughts on the past, present and future of bank-fintech partnerships. And much more.

Enjoy episode 500!

In this podcast you will learn:

• The origin story of Cross River Bank.
• How Cross River has been able to stay as a leader in the fintech lending space for over a decade.
• The staggering numbers of loans that have flowed through Cross River.
• How they expanded beyond the lending space.
• How they developed their payments capabilities.
• Why they moved away from the core providers to develop their own banking core.
• The points he was making in his recent American Banker op-ed.
• The lessons learned from the recent challenges in the BaaS space.
• Gilles' thoughts on the higher bar now required to work with a BaaS bank.
• What was behind their decision to start an investment bank earlier this year.
• The scale that Cross River Bank is at today.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
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An e-commerce merchant is a unique type of business. They are built on top of a platform like Amazon, eBay or Shopify and as such there is a great deal of empirical data about their business. Which means that there is rich data available for lenders to feed into their underwriting models.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Ricardo Pero, the CEO and Founder of SellersFi. He saw the opportunity for a lender focused on e-commerce when a friend of his with an Amazon store was looking for a reliable source of working capital. He realized that lenders were not serving this market segment well.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How Ricardo got the idea to start SellersFi.
• Why he started with Amazon and how they have evolved since then.
• The number of e-commerce platforms they work with today.
• The suite of working capital solutions they offer.
• Why they created a digital wallet for multiple currencies.
• How they gather the data to make an underwriting decision.
• When they use accounting data.
• The reasons they decline loan applications.
• The impact of Amazon closing down its own lending program.
• The different sizes of merchants that are connecting to their platform.
• The scale that SellersFi is at today.
• How demand is trending from e-commerce merchants.
• Ricardo's vision for SellersFi.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
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People often say that technology in insurance is just five years behind other areas of finance. But the reality is the technology rails that have been built for payments, lending and deposits have taken decades of evolution. Insurance is different. There is no Plaid, Stripe or even ACH for insurance, and so we have a product that still relies on a human for the vast majority of transactions. But that is going to change.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One Podcast is Wayne Slavin, the CEO and Founder of Sure. His company is building the infrastructure needed to bring insurance fully into the digital age where people can buy insurance and make a claim all without needing to speak to a human. Today, their insurance products are being embedded into the offerings of fintech companies but Sure's goals go way beyond embedded insurance. 

In this podcast you will learn:

• The interesting a-ha moment that led to the founding of Sure.
• What was missing in the insurance industry before Sure.
• Why the digitization of insurance has lagged other areas of finance.
• How Sure's embedded insurance product works.
• The really big difference between fintech and insurtech.
• The different types of insurance products they can offer today.
• What is involved for a fintech working with Sure to offer insurance.
• How they work with the insurance carriers.
• Some of the fintech companies they are working with today.
• How claims work with Sure.
• Why it has been important to connect the insurance and payment transaction.
• Why they launched Anywhere Insurance to speed up new insurance programs.
• What the future holds for embedded insurance.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
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The humble credit score has come a long way. Consumers, particularly younger consumers, are more aware of their credit score today than ever before. Historically, banks and credit unions have been the gatekeepers of our financial lives so it makes sense that they would want to provide information and context around credit scores. At the same time drive their customers to relevant products based on this information. Enter SavvyMoney.

My guest today on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is JB Orecchia, the CEO and Founder of SavvyMoney. His team has created a sophisticated platform for banks and credit unions to provide credit score information as well as personalized education and product recommendations. So, a bank's customer doesn't have to go to Credit Karma to learn about their credit score, they can do it right within the banking app.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How his background in lending informed the creation of SavvyMoney.
• Why consumers are more aware of their credit score today.
• The types of financial institutions that use SavvyMoney.
• The ROI for the typical bank or credit union.
• Why this is most powerful as a retention product.
• The integrations they have with the major digital banking platforms.
• What is involved for a new financial institution to onboard SavvyMoney.
• The tiny fraction of consumers who opt out.
• The primary product categories their FIs are focused on.
• How banks can compete with fintechs in customer acquisition.
• Why their Get My Rate product is such a big deal for FIs.
• How they are thinking about Generative AI for SavvyMoney.
• JB's vision for the future of SavvyMoney.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
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• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

The financial system has become so much more complex over the last couple of decades that it is difficult to know what current trends will have staying power. How will the future financial system organize itself and will it look that much different to what we have today? I put these questions to one of the global thought leaders in fintech.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Emmanuel Daniel, the founder of The Asian Banker (now part of TAB Global) and one of the most interesting people in fintech today. He talks about the Great Transition, the title of his recent book, and details what is going to be important for the success of the financial institution of the future.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How starting The Asian Banker launched a global platform.
• A short history on the rise of fintech in China.
• Why the Chinese regulators found the rise of fintech so challenging.
• Why China will struggle to be leaders in the AI revolution.
• Why Emmanuel decided to write a book on the personalization of finance.
• What the U.S. needs to do to ensure the dollar remains the reserve currency of the world.
• What is to become of platforms and the whole of idea of intermediation.
• Emmanuel's advice to innovators when it comes to regulation.
• How the next banking crisis will unfold.
• What could precipitate a change away from the dominance of the large banks.
• What is needed for the safety and soundness of the financial system of the future.
• Why the most important thing in the future is to be networked rather than large.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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The core of the card payments system as we know it today has been around for many decades. This system has a number of major shortcomings, not least of which is the 45-character limited established by the ISO 8583 standard. That may have been enough characters back in the 1980s but it is severely limiting in today's complex world. But problems like these create opportunities for creative minds.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Oban MacTavish, the CEO and Co-Founder of Spade. They have built a system for real-time intelligence of card merchants which is impressive in and of itself. But what I found most fascinating is they have built one of the richest data sets in country on credit card merchants. With coverage that is second to none.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The realization about archaic card payments that led to the founding of Spade.
• How the card payments value chain works today.
• The main thing that really needs to improve with card payments.
• How Spade is able to add more context to card payments.
• The disparate data sources they use to feed their system.
• How they update their merchant data.
• Who buys their data.
• The enriched data they send back to their clients.
• The main use cases for their data.
• Why they are not working with personal financial management tools.
• How they are working with Corpay, the corporate payments company.
• How they can help merchant acquirers.
• Oban's vision for Spade.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

• Tweet me @PeterRenton
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes