Provoke.fm Media

In last month’s segment of #BBE, Elizabeth Kleinveld invited Lars Markull, founder of Embedded Finance Review, and Philipp Buschmann, CEO of AAZZUR. Celebrating the podcast’s sixth anniversary, the episode explores major trends across funding, regulation, partnerships, and the rapid rise of embedded finance. Key topics include the deep fintech–bank partnership between Allegro and PKO Bank Polski, Italy’s CDP blocking the sale of Nexi for strategic infrastructure reasons, and BaFin’s €45m fine against JP Morgan ahead of its 2026 Chase launch. Revolut expands with Booking.com via Revolut Pay, signaling its broader ecosystem ambitions. Funding trends show U.S. fintech investment slowing except for megadeals like Ramp, while Europe sees growth. The thematic deep dive highlights embedded lending’s breakout year, expanding across marketplaces, SaaS platforms, and traditional enterprises, with Germany’s embedded finance market projected to surge through 2030.

Shelly Palmer returns to the Futurists to share fresh insight about how AI agents will rearrange the way entertainment and news are published, distributed and monetized. Today, many of the biggest media companies are still reeling from the previous two rounds of digital disruption (web and mobile). This leaves Big Media unprepared for the biggest disruption of them all, because AI agents will soon  reconfigure their core asset: video distribution channels. This interview provides a preview of how autonomous agents will work in unison to handle tasks that previously were managed by networks of human professionals, such as media buyers, advertising managers, retail marketers, and TV programming executives.  Likely impact: a further round of unbundling as agents personalize video distribution and advertising. Timeline: this transformation begins in 2026 and will iterate rapidly during the next five years. 20th century mass media is about to go through the Big Tech blender. 

Today, we turn the show over to our friends at Breaking Banks Europe, as we celebrate their 6th anniversary.

What began as a podcast experiment has grown to over 280 episodes, more than 570 guests, thousands of listeners from every corner of the world, and countless debates.

Over the past 6 years, the show has:

Today we’re celebrating with a special throwback episode. Host Matteo Rizzi welcomes back Serena Torielli, CEO and founder of WealthHype, who first joined the show back in Episode 3.
In this new conversation, Matteo and Serena dive into Revolut’s explosive growth in Italy, the future of private banking, and how AI, Bitcoin, and gold are reshaping investing. They also explore regulation, stablecoins, and global market shifts, with Serena sharing her optimistic view on innovation in AI, energy, and biotech as drivers of the next financial revolution.

Rapid growth as a community bank – Five Star’s strategies for using fintech to expand their customer.

Detailed Summary:

This episode of the Finovate Podcast features DJ Kurtze, Executive Vice President and Bay Area President of Five Star Bank, discussing the community bank’s impressive growth trajectory and unique positioning in the competitive San Francisco market. Five Star Bank is a $4.6 billion community bank headquartered in Rancho Cordova with nine branches and two administrative offices, serving real estate communities, small to medium-sized businesses, nonprofits, agriculture, and governmental entities. Founded 25 years ago by real estate developers Buzz Oates and Frank Ramos, the bank has maintained a remarkable 20% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years through organic growth strategies rather than acquisitions. Kurtze joined Five Star after the collapse of Signature Bank in March 2023, bringing his team over to capitalize on opportunities created by the banking sector disruptions involving SVB, First Republic, and Signature Bank.

The conversation explores Five Star’s competitive advantages, which center on hiring exceptional senior bankers who understand their clients’ businesses and providing direct access to decision-makers with speed and certainty of execution. The bank positions itself as “technology first,” implementing advanced systems both for customer-facing services and internal operations. This technological focus, combined with their flat organizational structure and lack of legacy systems from acquisitions, allows them to operate at a 40% efficiency ratio and quickly implement customer feedback and new product offerings. The bank’s approach to fintech partnerships emphasizes working with vendors who have proven track records with financial institutions and can provide plug-and-play solutions compatible with existing core banking systems.

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on Five Star’s specialized approach to nonprofit banking, which requires understanding unique cash flows, funding structures, and the sophisticated needs of experienced C-suite executives and board members who often come from successful business backgrounds. The bank provides advanced fraud prevention tools, insured cash sweep products for higher FDIC insurance limits, and creative lending solutions including tax-exempt financing. Kurtze closes by highlighting how community banks have advantages in fraud prevention through personal relationships and direct banker-client communication, allowing them to identify unusual transactions and protect clients more effectively than larger institutions despite having smaller technology budgets.

More info:

Five Star Bank: https://www.fivestarbank.com/; https://www.linkedin.com/company/five-star-bank-california/

DJ Kurtze: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dj-kurtze-449b3934/

Greg Palmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbpalmer/

Finovate: https://www.finovate.com; https://www.linkedin.com/company/finovate-conference-series/

#Finovate #FiveStarBank #communitybank #nonprofitbanking #digitalbanking #podcast #fintechpodcast #financialservices #bank #banks #security #digitraltransformation #fintech #finserv #modernization #innovation #startup #banking

Mike Pell is an author, an artist and the director of the Microsoft Garage, the worldwide innovation program where he applies “fast design” principles to bring ideas to prototypes quickly. Mike’s hackathons scale to include 10,000 participants.  Mike tells the Futurists how artificial intelligence systems accelerate ideation during the innovation process.  The challenge: managing a team of AI agents will require human workers to adapt to entirely new processes and discard some outdated practices. Visualization is one of the key elements in Mike’s approach to this process, as conveyed in his recent book, “Visualizing Business”.  

Today on Breaking Banks we feature the newest addition to the Provoke.fm family, Breaking Banks Africa.

In this episode Breaking Banks Africa Host and Executive Producer Matteo Rizzi sits down with Sandra Yao, Ecobank‘s Group Head: Cross Border Remittance, Payments & BaaS (Fintech). With 20 years of experience driving fintech and payment innovation across Africa, Sandra brings a unique “builder’s mindset” into one of the continent’s largest financial institutions, operating in 39 markets.

From pioneering mobile money to tackling fragmented infrastructure and regulatory environments, Sandra shares how interoperability, accessibility, and digital transformation are reshaping the future of payments in emerging economies. Additionally, Sandra reveals how Ecobank is empowering young African talent, forming major tech partnerships (including Google), and creating API-first solutions to help fintech founders scale across borders.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about Africa’s digital growth story, inclusive innovation, and hearing about those turning vision into execution—from Nairobi to the world.

Finovate Awards Winner InvestiFi on the changing investment landscape, consumer education, and bringing investment assets back to banks and CUs.

Detailed Summary:

In this episode of the Finovate Podcast, host Greg Palmer interviews Kian Sarrestheh, co-founder and CEO of InvestiFi the 2025 Finovate Awards winner in the Best Alternative Investment Solution category. InvestiFi provides a digital investment platform specifically designed for banks and credit unions, allowing their customers to invest in stocks, ETFs, crypto, and roboadvisory portfolios directly from their checking or savings accounts without transferring money to third-party platforms. This innovative approach keeps deposits on the financial institution’s balance sheet while providing a seamless user experience that eliminates the friction of moving money between accounts.

The conversation explores how consumer investment behavior is rapidly shifting toward third-party apps like Robinhood, Coinbase, and SoFi, with financial institutions losing between 5-10% of their deposits to these platforms. Kian explains that these fintech companies are expanding beyond investing into traditional banking services, including mortgages, checking accounts, and savings products, creating a significant competitive threat to community banks and credit unions. InvestiFi addresses this challenge by enabling financial institutions to offer comparable digital investment experiences while maintaining the customer relationship and deposit base within their own ecosystem.

Looking toward the future, Sarrestheh predicts that banks and credit unions will ultimately prevail over third-party investment apps due to their physical presence, established community trust, and ability to provide in-person customer service when issues arise. He believes that financial institutions offering similar digital investment capabilities through platforms like InvestiFi will leverage their 150-year track record of resilience and local relationships to win back customers who have migrated to fintech alternatives. The discussion emphasizes the importance of consumer education and the value of maintaining that crucial primary financial institution relationship in an increasingly digital investment landscape.

More info:

Tenerity PrivacyGuard: https://investifi.co/; https://www.linkedin.com/company/investifi-cuso/

Kian Sarreshteh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/technologykian/

Greg Palmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbpalmer/

Finovate: https://www.finovate.com; https://www.linkedin.com/company/finovate-conference-series/

#Finovate #InvestiFi #FinovateAwards #investing #wealthmanagement #podcast #fintechpodcast #financialservices #creditunions #banks #cryptocurrency #digitraltransformation #fintech #finserv #modernization #innovation #startup #banking

Markets are whipsawing, rate paths are murky, and headlines keep revising “the facts”, but no matter where we are in the economic cycle, the future presses on regardless. Our resident futurist Brett King and our resident “recovering banker” JP Nicols debate what that means for incumbent financial institutions and insurgent fintechs.

We unpack how AI is shifting from pilots to profit (and where it’s still hype), why deposit mobility and funding stability will be the quiet kingmakers of 2026, and how the inevitable continued rise of agentic AI and its insatiable need for energy collide with real world Monday morning priorities.

If you’re ready to retire the 2006 playbook and win in 2026, you’ll want to give this one a listen.

The real threat of AI-enabled fraud might not be what you think – hear from an expert on what you need to be focusing on right now.

Detailed Summary:

In this episode of the Finovate podcast, host Greg Palmer interviews Christopher D’Aprile, Director of Business Development at PrivacyGuard, following his keynote presentation at FinovateFall. D’Aprile brings over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, having worked at major institutions including MBNA Bank, NASCAR, Allstate, and Kobe Marketing before joining PrivacyGuard. The conversation centers on the growing threat of identity theft and how financial institutions can better protect their customers in an increasingly digital landscape.

The discussion reveals alarming trends in identity theft rates, which typically hover around 9-10% but spiked to 12-13% during the pandemic due to increased digital banking adoption and government money transfers. Chris explains that while deepfakes capture public attention, the real AI-driven threat lies in fraudsters becoming more efficient at targeting victims through sophisticated data analysis and demographic profiling. Rather than focusing on complex deepfake technology, criminals are using AI to identify vulnerable populations and optimize their scam operations, treating fraud as a business with the same analytical approaches legitimate companies use for marketing.

The conversation goes on to highlight critical gaps in how financial institutions approach identity theft protection. While many banks provide educational resources on their websites, D’Aprile emphasizes that identity theft restoration is too complex for a DIY approach and requires professional assistance. He advocates for banks to partner with specialized third-party providers like PrivacyGuard to offer comprehensive, white-labeled solutions that can generate revenue while providing customers protection at reduced costs. Looking forward, Chris discusses emerging features including scam protection, data scrubbing services, reimbursement for stolen funds, and offensive capabilities that allow consumers to report fraudulent websites for takedown, giving victims the ability to “punch back” against criminals.

More info:

Tenerity PrivacyGuard: https://www.tenerity.com/privacyguard/ ; https://www.linkedin.com/company/tenerity/

Christopher D’Aprile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-d-aprile-0928aa3/

Greg Palmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbpalmer/

Finovate: https://www.finovate.com; https://www.linkedin.com/company/finovate-conference-series/

#Finovate #PrivacyGuard #FinovateFall #security #AI #podcast #fintechpodcast #financialservices #antifraud #banks #financialsecurity #digitraltransformation #fintech #finserv #modernization #innovation #startup #banking

This week Brett is joined by guest host Kevin J. Anderson as the futurists have a conversation with science fiction documentary filmmaker Jeffrey Morris on his new documentary reviewing world of Space 1999. We also discuss coming Mars and Moon plans.