Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

N26 was the first foreign challenger bank to launch in the U.S. When you speak with CEO Nic Kopp, you know it was no simple feat. Now, five months in the market, Kopp joins us on the podcast to discuss the launch process and what it takes to bring a challenger online. We discuss who’s using N26 in the US and what they’re using it for. We talk about user acquisition and how the company was able to get its first 250,000 users.

Nic Kopp is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

DataDay is the first-of-its-kind conference on financial data. Consumer data, data ecosystems, and data aggregation is changing the face of modern financial services. Join top speakers from Plaid, Wells Fargo, Fiserv, MX, Stash, and more. Secure your spot at https://tearsheet.co/dataday-conference-2020

On this episode of The Challengers Podcast, Zack Miller and Josh Liggett talk about the extension financing round some of the larger challenger banks are announcing. N26, Revolut and Judo all added to their war chests as they, and their investors, prepare to be going into what Zack called "a nuclear winter". Josh said some of the challenger banks looking to raise mid-2020 are suffering. So, those firms who can raise, should raise. Josh said that Microsoft has had 2 to 3 years of sales happen in the past few months as firms move further into digital.

Green Dot is a company in transition. In some sense, it was one of the first challengers and has seen the rest of the market kind of pass it by. New leadership wants to focus more on its banking as a service platform and spend less on marketing its own products. Josh relates the firm's evolution to a lot of what's going on in technology about focusing on the base and jettisoning the side projects.

Josh related that New Jersey has a shortage of ventilators, surgical masks, and COBOL developers. He's frustrated on how long it's taking for banks to fully embrace digital. Zack believes that the pandemic is accelerating a process that was already underway. There's still a long way to go.

Josh talked about the rise of niche challengers, exemplified by two new European digital private banks looking for their footing, Alpian and 220.

Flybits' Hossein Rahnama is one of our speakers at DataDay, the first-of-its-kind conference on financial data. Consumer data, data ecosystems, and data aggregation is changing the face of modern financial services. Join Adam and speakers from Plaid, Wells Fargo, Fiserv, MX, Stash, and more. Secure your spot at https://ti.to/tearsheet/tearsheets-dataday-conference-2020

The foundation for Flybits came from a research lab and Hossein's PhD research, which was about understanding context in large data sets. "I spun that off about six years ago and now, Flybits is a venture backed company headquartered in Toronto with offices in New York, San Francisco, London and Dubai," he said.

AI requires domain knowledge and the understanding of the context in which the technology finds itself. For example, it’s very hard for an AI engine to understand the needs of a parent when she’s at home versus that parent’s needs traveling across borders.

"You can train AI algorithms to understand and predict patterns but understanding that context and domain knowledge has always been an impediment," he said.

Hossein's research brought context and the world of ontologies into the AI world and then applies them to digital channels. "Your context basically determines the behavior of the experience that you’ll see on a digital channel."

Consumers have access to concierge services like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa. But Rahnama believes the real question for banks is how to create concierge capabilities on their own channels. "Most of them want to keep their data but come up with predictive services on their own digital channels, personalizing services while keeping their customers’ data secure," he said.

"They want to be a lifestyle concierge engine for their customers."

Welcome to Tearsheet’s Outlier Podcast. This subscriber-only podcast is exclusive for our Outlier members. We go deeper with subject matter experts, to take actionable steps that can impact your business and practice. I’m Zack Miller, editor in chief at Tearsheet To get access to the full audio and transcripts, head on over to Tearsheet and apply to become an Outlier member(tearsheet.co/outlier).

Today’s guest is Dan Faggella, a global expert on artificial intelligence and its use cases for financial services. Dan’s the founder and head of research at Emerj, a research and advisory company on AI. Dan takes a practical approach when it comes to discussing AI’s potential in financial services. The adoption challenge for banks taking up AI are real — he’s polled them and has built a framework around them and how to overcome hurdles. We talk about concrete use cases for AI in the front office and where we’re headed when it comes to cross-selling or customer acquisition.

Dan Faggella is my guest today on the Outlier Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

Consumers increasingly expect higher levels of personalization from their financial services providers. Whether it’s from a challenger bank or Bank of America, people are used to Netflix-level of recommendations. An entire industry is cropping up to help provide a consumer’s data from all her accounts so that a service provider can provide actionable advice when she needs it most.

Envestnet I Yodlee’s senior vice president of products and strategy Brandon Rembe joins me on the podcast to talk about what leading financial services organizations are doing about best practices in personalization for their customers. Hyper-personalization, he says, presents an opportunity for FIs to provide insights that take into account and anticipate consumer behavior based on their savings, investing, and spending habits.

Especially in crazy times like we’re experiencing today, aggregating financial data and creating insights with these tools ultimately enables consumers to have a more complete understanding of their financial health and empowers people to improve their long-term financial wellness and reach their goals.

Brandon Rembe is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

But before we jump into the show, I wanted to tell you about Tearsheet’s newest online conference, DataDay 2020. Entire financial ecosystems are emerging around financial institutions and large fintech companies with data at its core. We’re spending three days hearing from top executives at firms like Fiserv, MX, Wells Fargo, Envestnet I Yodlee, Plaid and more about they are best leveraging customer data to help deliver better products and services. DataDay 2020 is all about data sharing, data aggregation, and personalization. For more information, click on the DataDay Conference button at the top of our website, www.tearsheet.co

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

If you’re a retailer or a new challenger bank, it just doesn’t make sense anymore to build out payments infrastructure when you have firms like Rapyd out there.

Eric Rosenthal, Rapyd’s managing director of the Americas, joins us on the podcast to talk about the hot fintech as a service firm that has gone global from its very start. The company just launched into Brazil and Eric describes the company’s global strategy and how Brazil plays into that. We talk about who’s integrating payments and where the market is headed.

Eric Rosenthal is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

But before we jump into the show, I wanted to tell you about Tearsheet’s newest online conference, DataDay 2020. Entire financial ecosystems are emerging around financial institutions and large fintech companies with data at its core. We’re spending three days hearing from top executives at firms like Fiserv, MX, Wells Fargo, Envestnet I Yodlee, Plaid and more about they are best leveraging customer data to help deliver better products and services. DataDay 2020 is all about data sharing, data aggregation, and personalization. For more information, click on the DataDay Conference button at the top of our website, www.tearsheet.co

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

The current COVID-19 crisis presents a massive challenge to the financial industry. And like every crisis, it also presents an amazing opportunity to service customers in an entirely new way. In the US, the CARES Act and its Paycheck Protection Program means banks will need to process approximately 50 times their normal annual loan volume in the next 30 to 60 days.

On today’s podcast, we talk to UK lending platform OakNorth’s CIO Sean Hunter. Sean and his team have designed an end-to-end solution —from application and document collection to pre-screening and forgiveness — to help regional and community banks process this insane volume.

Sean takes us through the requirements of the various government assistance programs, how banks are dealing with the strain, and how OakNorth built its new capabilities through a process of running its own loan book for its UK challenger bank.

Sean Hunter is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to Tearsheet’s Outlier Podcast. This subscriber-only podcast i exclusive for our Outlier members. We go deeper with subject matter experts, to take actionable steps that can impact your businesses and practice. To get access to the full audio and transcripts, head on over to Tearsheet and apply to become an Outlier member(tearsheet.co/outlier).

Today’s guest is David Donovan, executive vice president at Publicis Sapient. He leads the firm’s North American financial services practice. Publicis Sapient is a domain-lead digital consultancy. It works with all the major investment banks and that gives David a good view into what’s going on strategically and operationally on the ground in banking.

David doesn’t mince words when it comes to digital transformation. For him, it’s really a matter of life or death, and that’s before we were hit with the COVID-19 crisis. He takes us behind the scenes to show how some of the top banks are transitioning to a work from home environment and how it’s impacting his own as well as his clients’ businesses and product development. We drill down on AI and how companies are really beginning to derive value from advances made there.

Here’s our Outlier briefing on branding with David Donovan.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

From Skype to Thomson Reuters, David Gurlé has sat on the cutting edge of enterprise communications for two decades, in 2014, David founded Symphony, a communication and collaboration platform for financial services.

David joins us on the podcast to talk about how communications technology has evolved in the financial sector and looks out ahead to what’s in store. More than just a platform to connect, Symphony has APIs so that its users can share and automate workflows. The company recently released the second generation of its platform with simplified interactions and a customizable UI and smart notifications.

David Gurlé is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

Dwolla’s new CEO Brady Harris joins me on the podcast. He’s been in the payments industry long enough to see the real opportunity for B2B payment players and how the space has evolved over time. We talk about ACH, the role it plays in payments ecosystem, and where it might be headed. Use cases are expanding and Harris describes how different firms and industries are using it to advance their payments experiences. We talk about Dwolla and where the company can continue to find growth.

Brady Harris is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.