Fintech5

There are several reasons I'm friends with Dion.  1) He's smart as hell;  2) he heads up fintech for CapGemni so we basically have the same job; 3) he has less hair than I do; and 4) he is a huge Arsenal football fan.  What more could you ask for in a friend?

At this point Fidor Bank is a fintech dinosaur, which is actually a compliment.  Matthias Kröner, the CEO of Fidor, founded the bank in Germany back in 2009.  Many of the current concepts and themes of "Neo" and "Challenger" banks have their roots in the Fidor ethos.  Matthias has, and continues to be a true revolutionary when it comes to banking and fintech solutions.  I loved interviewing him.

This one is simple.  If you have any interest in marketing and/or insurance, then you should be following Danielle Guzman.  Danielle the global solutions marketing leader for Mercer.   She has over 20 years of experience as an insurance marketer and is quickly  becoming one of the top voices in the space. She was recently ranked #2 in the InsTech Power 100 leader board and #5 in the Women in Finance 100.

Jennifer Tescher is the founder, president and CEO of the Center for Financial Services Innovation.  That's CFSI.  Not CSFI as I, in my perpetual ADHD state, consistently call it.  Call it whatever you want, what really matters is the influence the organization and Jennifer has had over the past fifteen years or so.  There are few organizations and CEOs as dedicated to improving the financial health of consumers as Jennifer and CFSI.

"We were fintech before there was fintech!"  I hear this claim all the time and it usually is BS.  Not so with Steve McLaughlin, the founder of FT Partners.  Steve left a successful career at Goldman Sachs, where he led what today would be called an internal fintech team, and started FT Partners back in 2002.  For the past decade and a half FT Partners, an investment banking firm focused exclusively on the financial technology sector, has been recognized as one of the top firms to partner with.

I'm not sure what's left for Gemma to accomplish in her career.  She is a successful company founder (her company Moola just launched as we were doing the interview), has a new show on "Eat, Shop, Save" on ITV, has been an advisor to Arnold Schwarzenegger on The New Celebrity Apprentice, has a degree in quantum physics, and the list goes on and on.

And she was a lot of fun to interview.  A true renaissance woman.

I first learned about Monese, the company founded by serial entrepreneur Norris Koppel in an article profiling the company and Norris in TechCrunch back in 2016.  I immediately reached out to Norris and invited him as a guest on the Breaking Banks podcast.  I love everything about the company, especially because I lived through the experience of attempting to setup my financial life when I was an expat in the UK back in 2006.  It ain't easy folks...

I first learned about Monese, the company founded by serial entrepreneur Norris Koppel in an article profiling the company and Norris in TechCrunch back in 2016.  I immediately reached out to Norris and invited him as a guest on the Breaking Banks p...

I love Dave. Seriously, I absolutely love this man.  Why, you may ask?  Because he is one of the funniest, brightest, sarcastic, dry-witted, and pleasant people I know.  Probably most important, Dave is able to hold my attention when he presents on topics as complicated as distributed ledgers by explaining the impact of sensors and distributed ledgers with respect to one's undergarments.  Seriously, he's done that.

Oh yeah, Dave's also the Director of Innovation for Consultant Hyperion.

Conny's been involved in payments, insurance, and marketing for over 25 years.   She has run startups such as Clear2Pay, which ultimately was acquired by FIS where she is currently VP Global Payments Marketing.  Conny has also organized multiple conferences and is an outspoken supporter of women in technology.