The FinTech Report: Recent Episodes

Glen Frost

The FinTech Report Podcast, a deep dive into the people, platforms and businesses in the fintech sector; I’m your host Glen Frost, and each episode I’ll be talking with a leading expert in the fintech field – we’ll be discussing a broad range of topics and issues from Ai, Core Banking, Payments, Wealth, Lending and FinTech-Bank Partnerships.

Award winning Perpetual SaaS platform offers direct investment in domestic and global bonds

Perpetual Corporate Trust or PCT won “BEST INVESTMENT PLATFORM/APP” at the recent 10th Annual FinTech & Banking Awards 2025.

In this episode, we explore what makes their service so unique, and how they have used technology to deliver an end-to-end service from price discovery, trading, settlement and fund administration.

Perpetual Corporate Trust (PCT) is a leading fiduciary, custody and digital business operating in Australia and Singapore with five business divisions offering a unique range of products and services. PCT is part of the ASX-listed Perpetual Group (ASX:PPT).

Their platform is Australia’s first end-to-end SaaS platform designed specifically to simplify fixed income investing. They enable wealth managers to access global bonds via Euroclear (a market work over $100 Trillion) in parcels as low as $10,000. They integrate research, portfolio construction, execution, settlement, custody, and reporting in one platform – their service is now used by NAB Private Wealth and JBWere.

Since launching 2 years ago they have facilitated over $6 billion in transactions and onboarded 5,300+ investors.

Our podcast guests are: Emily Boden and Heather Gale. Emily is Head of Institutional Sales at Perpetual Digital. Heather is Head of Operations, Procurement & Cash Management.

Key Points:

The platform allows private wealth clients to directly invest in bonds – both domestic and global

Clients don’t have to invest in ETF’s or multi-asset funds to get fixed income exposure to their portfolios

It is a digital solution wrapping up all components needed to invest in fixed income;

· from price discovery on liquid bonds

· trade order and execution

· settlement

· custody

· registry

· all middle office administration

· Trades are executed and settled via Euroclear

Key benefits: allows for parcel sizes to be much smaller then traditional $500k clips. Clients can move into positions, and out of positions if they require in parcel sizes as small as $10k. Smaller parcel sizes allow clients can have a more divers & less risky portfolio. The entire workflow of the solution sits within the same organisation;

Customers: Institutional business who have high Net wealth clients that would like to invest in fixed income directly

Institutional Private Wealth divisions

· NAB private wealth and

· JBWere Shaw

· Advisories firms

· Shaw & Partners

· Boutique funds

· Gramacey

· Clime Investment

Please contact Glen Frost on glen "at" famfi.com.au for podcast queries

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 64: Josh Foreman, Founder & CEO, Indebted

As Founder and CEO, Josh has led InDebted from a startup to a high-growth industry disruptor. His strategic vision of merging cutting-edge technology with customer-first solutions has redefined industry standards, transforming InDebted into a global leader that's revolutionising how businesses manage collections.

InDebted is the global leader in human-centered debt resolution. Through its AI-powered platform, InDebted partners with forward-thinking organizations to deliver intelligent, compliant, and empathetic collections at scale. Its proprietary solutions — Collect and Receeve — help consumers navigate repayments in ways that are stress-free and aligned with their financial wellbeing. Founded in Australia and now operating across seven markets, InDebted is on a mission to change the world of consumer debt for good.

Discover more at www.indebted.co

In this episode:

How Josh stumbled into debt collection
How Josh wants to change the stigma of debt collecting, using technology
How josh started in B2B and then pivoted to B2C
Growth via technology AND acquisition
How do digital collections work versus the human touch?
The psychology and economics of ‘nudging’ people to pay
Expansion to USA – via Canada! How did that work?
Josh discusses the size and growth of the business: Indebted is now in 7 countries and have 500 employees, has 300-400 clients, 3-4m daily communications; 88% of payments now made via nudges from digital comms vs 12% via humans
Will “Ai Voice” change collections? Yes, it’s coming!
Josh looking for MD of the Australian business!
Josh discusses capital raising ($100m to date, latest Series C), investors who have been with him since the beginning: shout outs to Danny at Reinventure, and Dean from Carthona Capital; comments on Airtree coming on for the latest round (and why they passed on previous rounds!)

Making digital currencies available for everyone: from retail to Stablecoins to DeFi/Web3: a discussion with Coinbase

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 63: John O’Loghlen, MD Coinbase APAC

Founded in 2012, Coinbase is a digital currency wallet and platform where merchants and consumers can transact with digital currencies like bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Coinbase want to make digital currency accessible and approachable for everyone.

Coinbase is listed on the NASDAQ – ticker code is ‘COIN’ – so they are regulated by the SEC. Coinbase has just under 3800 employees, and US$320 Billion funds under management.

John O’Loghlen is MD for Coinbase APAC - Prior to Coinbase John spent a decade with Ant Group and Ali Baba, spent many years working in China and other Asian countries. He started his career with Goldman Sachs in London.

In this episode we cover:

Fundamentals of digital assets: are they an asset, a currency, a commodity?

Over the past decade we’ve seen crypto adoption increase. How many Australians are holding digital assets? In addition to crypto, what other types of digital assets are they holding?

Retail, institutional and ‘Base’ – the developer platform.

Coinbase’s developer platform, Base, has been growing both in user numbers and transaction volume.

What is Base and what are some of the innovative projects being built on it?

We recently saw Australian institutions like AMP and Future Fund take positions – albeit small ones - in Bitcoin. Are we starting to see a shift in adoption from retail to institutional investors?

Is growing your SMSF, institutional investor, private wealth client book a priority for exchanges? Institutional investors tend to have lower risk thresholds than retail investors. How can you get them over line with this asset class?

We know Coinbase has advocated to urgently establish a national regulatory framework for digital assets. Why is this so important?

The issue of de-banking is a major barrier in adoption of digital assets, whereby banks are closing accounts of individuals and businesses for activities that relate to digital assets.

Why is de-banking such a problem?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-o-loghlen-b25494b/

Dan Jowett, CEO, Openmarkets Group

“It’s been a stunning change” says Jowett, when discussing retail equity trading

Prior to OMG, Dan was COO of stockbrokers Shaw & Partners, and prior to that was with accounting and consultancy firms PWC and KPMG.
Openmarkets Group describe the business as a technology-driven stockbroker with a mission to provide innovative products on a global scale to advance wealth management.

The business comprises Openmarkets, one of Australia's largest retail brokers providing a white-labelled tech stack for intermediaries and connecting fintechs to markets via enterprise APIs, and TradeFloor, Australia's leading risk management solution used by over 60% of the addressable market.

In this podcast we discuss:

1.Openmarkets founded in 2013. How has the business evolved?
2.You’re one of Australia’s largest retail brokers, what’s the competitive landscape?
3.A recent game-changer in the trading and wealth industry has been the rise of many low-cost / ultra-low brokerage digital trading services. What opportunity does this pose for Openmarkets?
4.In the past decade, Australia’s traditional wealth and advice models have changed (especially since 2018 Royal Commission). Has this created an opportunity for technology platforms?
5.Does Openmarkets have a view on AI and how AI could shape wealth management, trading tools, insights, advice?
6.Finfluencers – what do you think of them? rise of online investment education content across YouTube and Tik Tok. Has this new wave of online trading education changed how you or your customers think about your business now and into the future?
7.M&A opportunities? and you’re considering a potential listing?
8.What sort of influence has the US volatility had on your business/clients, be it regulatory activity, tariffs, markets, listing plans?

FinTechs made Basiq a success, says Damir Cuca

Damir Cuca, Founder, Basiq (exit to Cuscal)

(Note: this is a long/extended episode at 1 hour; we cover the Cuscal period, financial education and what Damir is looking at doing post Basiq)

Damir has worked in the tech sector for 20 years, the past 10 have been as Founder and CEO of Basiq
Basiq is an Australian Open Banking platform that offers secure access to consumer financial data. We empower fintechs, banks, and developers to create next-generation financial solutions
Basiq was sold to Cuscal last year and Damir is now taking on new challenges and opportunities in the fintech industry. Under his leadership, Basiq has achieved significant milestones in advancing Open Banking in Australia, transforming the way financial data is accessed and utilized. His vision and expertise continue to drive innovation, making him a prominent figure in the tech sector.

In this episode we discuss:

· What makes CDR a huge opportunity?

· How did Damir grow the business?

· How he tried to sell to banks, but ended up selling to FinTechs; and it was fintechs that made Basiq a success – because it was fintechs that were doing ALL the innovation

· Why did Damir sell to Cuscal?

· What should Founders think about regarding selling/exiting the business, including the ‘earn out’ period?

· What is Damir working on now?

· How does Damir help his children learn about finance?

https://helloclever.co/

Caroline Tran, Co-Founder, hello clever

Key messages:

Payments as an engine for growth (for merchants) because they can add loyalty and instant cash back - this is the best use case for RTP (using NPP in Australia)

Caroline's fundraising journey was very hard, with lots of calls. But persistence paid off and she has received investment from US VCs - and is herself now part of the San Francisco Angel Network

Caroline’s background is accountancy and sales; she’s worked for well-known brands such as James Hardie, WPP, and IPG Media – in 2021, Caroline co-founded Hello Clever, which she describes as ‘The World’s Leading AI-powered payment solution that seamlessly integrates Loyalty, RTP (real time payments) and Intelligent Insights’.

Caroline is also an investor in other startups, including Open Ai.

In this episode we discuss:

What led you to create hello clever?
What problem are you solving?
How does the platform work? How is Ai used?
How should fintechs/banks think about ‘Ai in banking’?
Describe a user journey
Who are your customers?
What’s your business model? Where do you make money
High growth? How?
Team size? What funding have you received?
Future plans? New products, new markets?

Christie is looking to write 12 x US$120k cheques: apply now

Apply now: https://www.techstars.com/accelerators/tech-central-sydney-nsw

Christie Jenkins, Managing Director, Techstars Sydney

Christie has 25 years as a professional athlete; in Beach Volleyball, in Cross Fit, and Trampoline; she was #1 in Australia in all 3, and achieved a Gold Medal in 2010.
Over this period Christie has also been a coach, a consultant to brands such as BUPA, Commonwealth bank and ANZ. Christie is an investor, advisor, and has held roles at Blackbird, one of Australia’s top VC funds. Christie has also been a founder, creating sporting teams in Europe.
She’s now MD of TechStars in Sydney, and looking to make a number of seed or early sage investments, so an excellent guest for The FinTech Report Podcast.

In this episode we cover:

What is Techstars?
The program in Sydney/Australia – who should apply?
Sectors in fintech that are exciting
What makes a successful application?
How else TechStars helps – especially mentors
Valuations, investment amount, follow on rounds

Get in touch with Christie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christiejenkins/

This is not financial advice

This podcast has been generated by Ai

AMP's FY 24 results show a business that has largely completed its portfolio reshape and is now focusing on driving growth, particularly within its wealth businesses, while also developing a digital bank offering. Key Financial Highlights (FY 24 vs FY 23):

Underlying Net Profit After Tax (NPAT): Increased by 15.1% to $236 million (FY 23: $205 million). This is AMP's preferred measure of profitability, reflecting the underlying performance of the business units.

Statutory NPAT: Reduced by 43.4% to $150 million (FY 23: $265 million). This decline primarily reflects business simplification spend and the loss on sale of the Advice business in FY 24, compared to gains on sale of AMP Capital and SuperConcepts in FY 23.

Underlying Earnings Per Share (EPS): Increased by 25.0% to 9.0 cents per share (FY 23: 7.2 cents per share). This was boosted by improved earnings and a 22% reduction in shares outstanding due to the on-market share buyback program.

Top Trends and Analysis:
1. Strategic Shift to Wealth and Retirement Specialism: AMP is positioning itself as a pre-eminent retirement specialist in Australia, leveraging its heritage and innovative products. This strategy is visible in the performance of its wealth businesses:
◦
Platforms: Saw a significant increase in underlying NPAT, up 18.9% to $107 million. This was primarily driven by strong net cashflow momentum (excluding pension payments), up 96.7% to $2.8 billion (FY 23: $1.4 billion). Growth in Managed Portfolios to $19.1 billion was a key driver of higher inflows.
◦
Superannuation & Investments (S&I): Underlying NPAT increased by 26.4% to $67 million. Net cash outflows (excluding pension payments) significantly improved to -$1.0 billion from -$6.4 billion in FY 23, reflecting resilient inflows and a focus on retention.

AMP Bank's Performance and Digital Push: The Bank's underlying NPAT decreased by 22.6% to $72 million (FY 23: $93 million). This was a result of consciously managing the loan book with subdued volume growth due to prioritising Net Interest Margin (NIM). NIM for the year was 1.26% (FY 23: 1.42%), with compression moderating in 2H 24. Growth in the residential mortgage book returned in 2H 24, driven by selective pricing and focus on segments like self-employed.

Capital Management and Shareholder Returns: AMP completed its $1.1 billion capital return program since August 2022, including share buybacks and dividends. This program led to a 22% reduction in shares outstanding. The Board declared a final dividend of 1.0 cent per share, 20% franked, taking the full year dividend to 3.0 cents per share. The Board is targeting a dividend payout of 2.0 cents per share per half through 2025, subject to conditions. The Group CET1 surplus capital reduced to $139 million in FY 24 from $300 million in FY 23, influenced by dividends paid and share buybacks. Future capital management will balance growth, shareholder returns, and managing the balance sheet.

The Bank is undergoing a strategic shift with the digital bank launch, which is critical for its long-term competitiveness and funding mix, though current performance is impacted by margin focus.

Overall, AMP is moving from a period of portfolio simplification and capital return towards a growth phase, heavily focused on its strengths in wealth and retirement, while also evolving its banking proposition through digital channels. The ability to continue driving growth in wealth, successfully execute the digital bank strategy, and maintain cost discipline in a volatile market will be key factors for its future performance.

These notes and this podcast are all Ai generated - source documents were all AMP announcements on the ASX website.

This is not financial advice. This podcast was produced using Ai platforms, and the Ai generated voices have 'North American' (ie USA) accents.

This podcast was produced using only information from a publically available PDF document that CBA listed on the ASX website. The Ai generated 12 minute podcast provides an in-depth look at the financial performance of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) for the half-year ended 31 December 2024.

We used an Ai platform to review the CBA 2H 2024 report; the Ai reviewed the bank's income and expenses, including net interest income and operating costs, across its various business segments like Retail Banking, Business Banking, and Institutional Banking. The report also outlined key financial metrics such as capital adequacy, loan impairment, and funding sources, alongside a discussion of the prevailing economic conditions and the bank's approach to risk management.

The report does contain detailed financial data and metrics that an equities analyst would typically use as inputs to perform a valuation analysis. Some of the key information presented in the report that would be relevant for an analyst's valuation include:
•
Net Profit After Tax: The Group's statutory net profit after tax for the half year ended 31 December 2024 was $5,134 million, an increase of 8% on the prior comparative period. The cash net profit after tax was $5,133 million, a 6% increase on the half year ended 30 June 2024 and a 2% increase on the half year ended 31 December 2023. Management considers cash NPAT their preferred measure of financial performance.
•
Earnings Per Share (EPS): Basic cash EPS from continuing operations was 306.9 cents, and basic cash EPS including discontinued operations was 307.0 cents for the half year ended 31 December 2024. Statutory basic EPS from continuing operations was 307.5 cents, and statutory basic EPS including discontinued operations was 307.0 cents. EPS figures are crucial for valuation methods like the Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratio.
•
Dividends: An interim dividend of 225 cents per share, fully franked, was declared. The dividend cover on a cash basis was 1.4 times. The dividend payout ratio on a cash basis was 73%. The Board considers factors like business growth, capital needs, market expectations, and EPS growth when determining dividends. Dividend information is key for dividend discount models and assessing shareholder returns.
•
Return on Equity (ROE): The cash ROE for the half year ended 31 December 2024 was 13.7%. Statutory ROE was 13.8% for continuing operations and 13.7% including discontinued operations. ROE indicates how efficiently the bank is using shareholder funds to generate profit.
•
Capital Position: The Bank maintained a strong capital position with a Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) Capital ratio of 12.2% as at 31 December 2024, which is well above APRA's minimum regulatory requirement of 10.25%. Capital ratios are important for assessing the bank's stability and ability to absorb losses or fund growth.
•
Net Tangible Assets (NTA) per Share: NTA per share was $40.32 as at 31 December 2024. NTA provides a book value per share, which can be used in various valuation comparisons.
•
Economic and Operating Environment: The report mentions challenges for customers due to cost of living pressures and a slowed Australian economy, but notes moderating underlying inflation. These factors influence the bank's future earnings outlook and perceived risk.

To repeat. This is not financial advice. This podcast was produced using Ai tools.

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 58: Alan Shield, Founder of RFi Data Insights

Alan Shields, Founder, RFi Data Insights; the lessons for all fintech founders

Alan has recently authored and published a book on startups called “The Startup Handbook – the Founders Guide to Building a Business”

Alan’s book reaches into his experience of founding his own company, as well as mentoring others. Alan has 23 years of experience in data analytics, business intelligence, and market research, Alan is a passionate entrepreneur and business leader who helps financial institutions make data-driven decisions. Alan has successfully established and expanded businesses in London, Singapore, and Sydney. Alan was the Founder and Director of RFI Global, a data analytics and insights company, providing strategic guidance and technical data expertise to the world's leading financial services organisations.

Now at Trilogie Partners, Alan helps companies prepare for and execute fundraising efforts, review strategies to unlock growth potential, and offer practical advice to improve execution.

Special offer: email Alan for a copy of the book: Alan Shields al@trilogie.partners

Or, connect on LinkedIn and DM Alan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abjshields/

In this episode, Alan discusses:

RFi: Data insights business

Biggest challenges with fintech startups struggling with = TAM, SAM, SOM: do you really know these for your business?

Product market fit? Do you talk to your prospects and customers?

Focus of the book, why he wrote it and how he believes it can help founders.

Founder's perspective on lessons learned from growing a data business globally over nearly 2 decades - bootstrapping, international expansion, culture/ talent and funding etc

Opportunities in banking for both banks and fintechs (customer behaviour, innovation and competition)

Building the payments infrastructure for B2B clients, bringing payments lessons from Europe into Australia, and helping Australian fintechs scale globally

Piers Cracknell has 20+ years’ experience in banking, payments & fintech across senior roles at NAB, CBA and global fintechs in Australia & the UK.
Piers was recently hired by European bank – Banking Circle – to set up their Australian operation, which is known locally as BC Payments Australia,

In this podcast we discuss:

What does BC Payments do in Australia?
Difference between Banking Circle (EU) and BC Payments Australia?
Building the payments infrastructure for customers
In Australia: Typical clients (B2B, acquirers, issuers), access to NPP, access to cross border payment schemes
What’s driving growth for BC Payments? Time and cost of settlement
Need for KYC and AML frameworks, understanding all types of risks (eg onboarding process, ongoing monitoring and supervision of client)
Experience in Europe – how is it relevant for Australia?
View on future of payments – domestic & cross border

From online application to money in the customer’s account in 36 minutes

From customer service (call centres), fraud detection & prevention, credit scoring & risk assessment, personalised banking, routine task automation, loan approvals, trading, to regulatory compliance and much more, Ai is changing finance, and fast.

In this episode Glen Frost interviews Julian Fayad on how his business, LoanOptions.Ai is changing unsecured lending, including how decisioning and payment is getting faster and faster – with the record at LoanOptions.Ai being 36 minutes for a Nurse to apply online, be and approved and received the money in their account in 36 mintues.

Loan Options AI is an AI powered loan matching and application platform to find you the best offers for car loans, personal loans, business loans, equipment loans and all other types of asset finance. LoanOptions.ai uses a combination of AI and dynamic logic to provide predictive pre-approval and accurate lender rates for hundreds of financial products from over 90 different banks and lenders. You can apply in under 5 minutes with no impact to your credit score.

Julian originally started in technology and has spent his entire career in asset finance, and Loan Options.ai is the culmination of everything he knows & using technology to make lending a better, faster and more efficient experience for the customer and the lender.

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 55: Angelina Wu, CEO & Co-Founder, InvestmentMarkets

Investment Markets launches to sophisticated (self directed) investors with 500 products, plans for growth

Angelina Wu, CEO & Co-Founder, InvestmentMarkets

investmentmarkets.com.au is an independent, Australian investment platform. It is a two sided market place for self-directed high net worth investors and investment product issuers (from emerging companies to institutionally managed funds to fixed interest products) – essentially, anything that is ‘unitised’.

Their taglines are "Every kind of investment opportunity, all in one place " and "the Home of the Independent Investor"

Angelina’s background includes money markets, wealth advisory and media, including stints with Commonwealth Bank, UniSuper, Trustees Australian and Guangzhou TV in China, and the last 4.5 years with investment markets.

Angelina and her co-founder Chris Morton launched in March this year after years of testing and refining the service.

Learn more: www.investmentmarkets.com.au

Contact Angelina: angelina@investmentmarkets.com.au

Topics discussed include:

What led Angelina and her Co-Founder to create Investment Markets?
What problem they are solving? How does the platform work? What is the unique selling proposition?
Angelina describes a user journey
Who are the customers? Who are the product issuers?
What types of products/investments are available for investors?
How does matching work? There is no advice on financial products
What’s the business model? (product provider charged a flat fee)
Why Investment Markets have undertaken two years’ worth of research before launching
Future plans? New products, new markets?
What does success look like?

Why don’t people switch banks? ACCC Retail Deposits Inquiry shines light on banks approach to deposit accounts; insights in ACCC Report influences Upworth to create ‘Savings Account Scanner’

THE FINTECH REPORT PODCAST: EPISODE 54: Alexandre Chavotier, Co-Founder & CEO, Upworth

According to Alex, the ACCC Report key points are:

Limited competition, interest rates not shown
Entry is hard
Product complexity (active pricing strategy)
Segmentation, price discrimination (introductory rates, bonus rates; ACCC report found 70% of account holders did not achieve the bonus rate)
Household deposits matter
Comparison websites
People generally don’t switch banks – why? Can CDR help solve this?

About Alex:

· Started career in investment banking in Europe before working at McKinsey and Quantum Black in Sydney

· Was at the forefront of McKinsey´s work in AI, including the development of a trading solution that secured internal VC funding

· Consulted to all the large Australian banks on an array of strategic topics and projects

· Came back to Australia 2 years ago to start Upworth after a 3-year stint in Mexico as right-hand to the Founder and CEO of ZeBrands, a successful scale-up comparable to Koala here (mattresses sold online)

About Upworth:

· Upworth is the wealth superapp.

· A one-stop-shop for personal finances where you can connect all your accounts to track your net worth, access unique and personalized insights and apply for financial products in a few clicks

In this episode we discuss:

ACCC Report – top 3 issues/key chapters (and Upworth’s interpretation)

a. Deposit accounts: limited competition, interest rates not shown

b. Many banks offer retail deposit products, but the sector is concentrated with barriers to entry and expansion; There are 4 major banks and 6 mid-tier banks which supply 89% of retail deposits, and a long tail of smaller banks supplying the remainder

c. Open Banking slow – why?

d. Chapter 7: Strategic pricing strategies lead to greater complexity for consumers and, for some, poorer outcomes – why?

Opportunities for Upworth?
How does it work?
What do users / customers need to connect? Eg bank accounts. And how do they do this?
Tech behind the new product? Platform, APIs, open banking, who do you partner with?
Results so far?

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 53: Melanie Hayden, Truyu, x15

Melanie started her career as a lawyer, with tier 1 law firm Allens, specialising in banking M&A she then spent the next 6 years at the Commonwealth Bank, in various roles, most recently being in charge of partnerships and business development; the past year has seen Melanie take on a new challenge; as the Managing Director of a Truyu, a new Identity and fraud prevention business within x15 ventures, the commonwealth bank’s venture scaler division.

Outside of her role at Truyu, Melanie is a coach at Startmate, and a Board Member of the Liverpool Women’s Resource Centre, a charity helping women and their children access services they need to live stable lives and help their communities.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniehayden/

Details of CBA’s/x15 Ai competition https://www.linkedin.com/company/x15ventures/

Consumers are targeted with investment scams, dating scams and false billing scams, leaving them embarrassed and often financially compromised.

How can financial services firms combat scams and Identity Theft? From giving consumers an easy way to protect their credit reports to creating a secure digital identity, this podcast explores how technology is helping financial services.

Problem and solution

We know fraud and scams are a significant problem in Australia with estimates placing this at about $3 billion each year (ACCC Targeting Scams report, April 2023. Not adjusted for under-reporting). Drilling down further, identity fraud is a big and growing problem in Australia, with 25% year-on-year growth over the last year and 199,000 individual cases based on ABS data (FY22 / 23).

Truyu is a new app launched in early May, available on a free trial in the Apple and Google app stores. It is an Australian first solution, built inside x15, that alerts you in real time when your identity is used, either by you or by someone else. To bring this to life, if you sign up for a new phone plan at a telco, you will get an alert from Truyu. In this scenario there’s hopefully nothing to worry about – the alert simply provides reassurance the product is working. However, if you’re sat at home on the couch and get a Truyu alert that someone is using your identity to attempt to open a bank account at a major bank, you may be about to become a victim of identity fraud. And because Truyu alerts you in near real-time, it helps you to stop the fraud in the moment before an account or new service has even been opened.

Just a couple of months in market and Truyu has already prevented major cases of fraud, which have enabled customers to change their licence details and take other steps to prevent future identity fraud. Interestingly, some of these cases of attempted fraud are not yet resulting in an account being opened. Instead, it seems the fraudster could be using an identity check to test whether the stolen details work, with perhaps a view to on-sell them further. If this is what’s happening, Truyu is alerting customers to something that would’ve otherwise likely gone undetected, enabling customers to stop fraudsters in real-time.

Other comments

Truyu believe that fighting fraud and scams will require a whole of ecosystem approach, with the private and public sectors working closely together. One way Truyu think they can help industry and government is by moving fast and testing propositions. Truyu built the app in just over four months to ensure that they could get a solution quickly in the hands of customers, and Truyu are fully committed to sharing learnings from the pilot. Truyu know the Government is building a similar solution and expects to launch the first iteration later in the year, s

The FinTech Report Podcast: Pablo Seoane, Co-Founder, BIGGER

Delighted to welcome Pablo Seoane, Co-Founder, BIGGER to the podcast.

Contact Pablo here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/p-seoane/

Email Pablo Seoane: pablo@biggertech.co

Website: https://www.biggertech.co/

Pablo is the Co-founder of Bigger, their mission is to remove barriers for early-stage startups to help them achieve their full potential. they do this by providing tailored software engineering services for early-stage startups. Since launch, they’ve grown the team to over 70 professionals and have successfully assisted more than 26 startups.

Before Bigger, Pablo served as the General Manager of Byjus Australia, one of the world's largest EdTech companies. he established the local entity from the ground up, growing the team to over 70 individuals and taking annual recurring revenue from zero to $20 million.

Pablo is truly passionate about startups and always eager to connect with other entrepreneurs.

In this episode we discuss:

Why did Pablo start BIGGER? What do you do?
Who are your customers? sectors
What are the key issues? Eg tech co-founder may not have right skills
What tech do you use? Why?
How is BIGGER set up? (ie Australia, Argentina – plus BIGGER ACADEMY)
Case studies – client success
Your experience at Byjus – lessons? Learnings? Esp tech at scale, lockdowns ?
How else do you help? Eg help find clients a CTO
Message for early stage founders
Message for mid to later stage looking to rebuild tech stack?

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 51: Cathy Lyall, LIQUIDISE

Delighted to welcome Cathy Lyall, Co-Founder and a Director of Liquidise, to the podcast.

Cathy Lyall is passionate about developing and growing Australia's FinTech ecosystem and markets infrastructure. As a Founder, Investor, Adviser and Director of several startups and financial services enterprises both in the UK and Australia, Cathy has lived the founder and startup experience and journey for close on three decades.

Cathy co-founded Seismic Foundry in the UK in 2017, a firm that specialises in investing in capital markets fintech. Since moving back to Australia has become a partner in Seed Space Venture Capital and a Non-executive Director of listed fintech Wisr.

Cathy is also Executive Director of RedBelly Network, a blockchain network developed by the University of Sydney and CSIRO.

Cathy's experiences as a Founder, Manager and Investor were a big driver in creating Liquidise – she realises how important it is for staff in startups and growing private companies to actually have a way to realise their ESOPs. More on that in our conversation.

Liquidise allows private companies to trade their shares on an independent platform. Australian regulated, and featuring instant settlement and proof of ownership, Liquidise unlocks private companies equity for shareholders, promotes capital flow (liquidity, hence the name) and gives investors access to unlisted private companies.
Now platforms for private companies share sales aren’t new. However what Liquidise is doing is providing a guarantee of cash for vendors – in other words liquidity – for all transactions undertaken on their platforms. Its this guarantee of liquidity – or the pricing of private companies liquidity – that the Liquidise team are hoping will allow their platform to catch on, and their unique point of difference.

In this interview we cover:

1.What is the story behind Liquidise? Who needs Liquidise?
2.What is your vision?
3.Your point of difference. What do you do that is over and above others?
4.Who are your clients? Typical client or all different?
a.What private companies are using Liquidise … Pipeline?
b.Investors?
5.Liquidise: self funded or Money raised to date, various rounds, which VCs / angels?
6.Progress so far and next steps/goals? By year end?
7.Will you be global? What are the most likely offshore markets?
8.Will you be looking at tokenising assets and equities?
9.Regulation: who regulates you?
10.Team size, structure
11.Help from other partners?

https://liquidise.com/

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 50: Michael Titshall, CEO of APAC, R/GA

What are the key challenges for banks when they’re trying to reach GenZ + Gen Alpha?

Michael’s Bio

Michael leads R/GA APAC, overseeing six offices across Australia, Singapore, Japan and Indonesia. Driven by a passion for transforming brands and businesses with creative solutions, he has led agencies spanning brand, creative, experience, data, technology, and media services.

Prior to his APAC role, Michael led R/GA Australia overseeing a remarkable growth period in the last 18 months. Under his leadership, it doubled its headcount, acquired numerous new clients, and earned accolades at major global and regional award shows, including Cannes Lions, D&AD, the Effies, and Spikes Asia.

Before joining R/GA, Michael spent five years with CHE Proximity, where, in his role as Managing Director, the agency earned six accolades as Agency of the Year and was recognised as the fourth Most Innovative Company in Australia.

PODCAST OUTLINE

Gen Z is characterised by its digital savviness. However, banks should not assume that Gen Z’s digital-first lifestyle means they want only digital solutions. Are branches still seen as an extension of mobile banking?

Gen Zers have serious concerns about their financial future. Considering this perception of financial uncertainty, it is perhaps no surprise Gen Zers are highly motivated to save money and learn about banking and finance from a young age. This is an opportunity for banks. 73% of GenZ believe banks should provide more advice on spending habits, budgeting, paying off debt and loans

Michael discusses work done for Weyay, Bradesco and Mox Bank;

Kuwait

Weyay Bank
https://www.weyaybank.com/

Weyay: Creating the first digital bank for the next generation of KuwaitisVideo case study

Brazil

Next Bank for Bradesco

A new bank for the digital age goes from zero to 10 million customers in four years.

https://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2018/graphic-design/26947/banco-bradesco-next-bank/ Hong Kong

Mox Bank

Mox bank treating customers as people, not as data

https://mox.com/

For further information, contact:

Kate Neill

Director, Marketing and Communications (Australia)

t: +61 451 135 708

e: kate.neill@rga.com

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 49: Interview with Mac Duncan, Co-Founder, Constantinople

Mac Duncan, Co-Founder of Constantinople.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/macgregor-duncan-bb0381179/

Prior to his current role, Mac was Chief Development Officer at Westpac, a non executive director at 10X Technologies, and Associate Director at Goldman Sachs; he started his career as a lawyer working at the High Court.

Constantinople is the first of its kind: an all-in-one software and operational platform for banks. Constantinople hosts and manages your bank's customers directly on their cloud native infrastructure. they support a full range of banking products which are branded as the company name, together with all operational services needed to run a bank.

Constantinople's state-of-the-art platform frees banks from running expensive infrastructure and replaces manual operational and compliance processes with automation at scale. By removing the operational complexity of banking, Constantinople allows banks to focus on customers and the business of banking.

In this episode we discuss:

Mac’s background; influences in banking & fintech
The vision for Constantinople? What is the story behind Constantinople? Why did you and Di want to start it?
Do you call yourself a fintech? Bank tech? do definitions matter?
Money raised to date, various rounds, which VCs / angels etc
Will you be global? Can all fintechs plan to be global from Australia?
Foundation client? Is focus on SMEs and lending? What is the brief you have to deliver on?
Your point of difference. Point solutions vs end-to-end solutions; whats the story here? What is a core banking platform? What do you do that is over and above the core banking?
It’s a very competitive field. Who are the competitors?
How do you serve banks who want to be flexible? Flexible on products, pricing, reg, distribution – what other factors?

Interview with Jordan Lawrence, Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer, Volt.io

Jordan Lawrence; Co Founder & Chief Growth Officer, Volt.io | European Advisory Board Member Merchant Risk Council | Real-Time Payments Everywhere

Prior to Volt.io Jordan was founder of PCN: PCN Capital is a leader in recruitment, focusing on Payments, Fintech, Data Science & Cyber Security through it's brands. Jordan is also a kite surfing expert and started his career in sports and kite surfing instructing

Volt is building the next generation payment network that is global, instant and interoperable - connecting real-time payments everywhere.

In Volt’s words they are “driving the shift to an era where real-time is the only time.”

In this episode, we cover:

What is the vision for Volt.io
Progress to date – product, countries
Fundraising – from who? Best places & funds/people to raise from?
Building the team: in UK, Brazil, Asia, and then Australia
Plans for Australia? What will your service be? Target market?
What is unique or better about Volt.io in Australia?
Typical customer?
Partners in Australia?
Why partner, why not go direct?
Thoughts/comments on Open Banking
Message to the fintech market?

Learn more: https://www.volt.io/

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 47: Interview with Alexandre Chavotier, Co-Founder at Upworth

“Money works better when it’s all in one place; Upworth is a dashboard to rule them all,” says Alex

“For decades the greatest advantage for financial institutions was their monopolistic hold of your personal data … open banking changed that”

“You can refinance your mortgage within the Upworth App,”

About Alex:

● Co-founder and CEO of Upworth

● Started career in investment banking in Europe before working at McKinsey and Quantum Black in Sydney. Was at the forefront of McKinsey´s work in AI, including the development of a trading solution that secured internal VC funding. Consulted to all the large Australian banks on an array of strategic topics and projects

● Came back to Australia about 1 year ago to start Upworth after a 3-year stint in Mexico as right-hand to the Founder and CEO of ZeBrands, a successful scale-up comparable to Koala here

About Upworth: https://upworth.com.au/

● Upworth is the wealth superapp.

● A one-stop-shop for your personal finances where you can connect all your accounts to track your entire net worth, access unique and personalized insights and apply to the best financial products in a few clicks

What is your vision for Upworth - Why did you want to start Upworth?
What do you do? Progress to date
CDR and Open Banking – enables the magic
It’s not PFM. Its wealth management, it’s an enabler for other services – a dashboard to rule them all
Fundraising. Best places & funds/people to raise from?
Target market? Typical customer?
What is unique or better about Upworth? Typical customer?
Partners in Australia?
Thoughts/comments on Open Banking (and/or screen scraping)
Message to the fintech market? More CDR!

Systematic change requires collective action

Misha has worked at a number of exciting high growth companies in tech as well as some well known brands in finance and banking, including Boston Consulting Group, the Commonwealth Bank, Uber, startups Eucalyptus (healthcare) and Vow (cultured meat).

Misha is the co-founder of Grapevine. Grapevine empowers individuals in Australia's tech scene by spotlighting personal stories and insights. Grapevine provides advice based on lived experience and general legal know-how, to reshape power dynamics for a safer, more inclusive environment.

1.What is the story behind Grapevine?
2.Are you a media platform telling stories, self help, legal help; all of the above?
3.What is wrong with tech culture?
4.What can be done – and the role Grapevine plays – esp role of making stories public – what media works best? LinkedIn, mainstream media?
5.Examples of toxic culture
6.What to do if you’re in a toxic culture
7.How to ask questions
8.What could be done differently within startups ?
9.Australia vs International experience
10.Help from big and small companies – get in touch with Misha & Grapevine

For more information, please visit:

Ask The Grapevine: https://www.askthegrapevine.com/

Whispli: https://www.whispli.com/

“Plan your home loan and financial life to be portable,” says Gino Farina

“A large part of my job is financial coach, but we use plenty of technology to help us”

In this episode we cover:

There are 19,000 mortgage brokers in Australia; they run their own business, and are paid by the banks/others when they write loans and recommend other products.
What does a mortgage broker do? Explanation of how brokers help clients, especially educating people about finance
Who are your customers? Individuals, couples, businesses
What are the key issues? Evaluation, decision making time
What tech do brokers use? Equifax (credit reports), Connective (Mercury), Sales Tracker (CRM, Sales process), Monday (CRM), Cash Deck, My Prosperity and Yodlee (looking at clients cash flows, home loans, interest rates), Canstar, has reviewed Sherlok.
What is the bank loyalty tax? What could be done differently? Client engagement and financial advice is needed. There are 200 home loan providers in Australia, Commonwealth Bank has 25% market share.
Differences between business loan broking vs residential
What is churn and why do people move bank/provider every 7 years?
Message to fintechs

You can get in touch with Gino at The Bondi Broker:

https://bondibroker.com.au/

Expanding access to home ownership: how Own Home is creating homeowners for the next generation of Australians

James Bowe Co-Founder of Own Home. OwnHome’s mission is to turn renters into homeowners. James background includes over 7 years with Bain & Co in the USA, UK and Europe, and stints at UBS, Macquarie Bank, a Barrister’s assistant and a debating coach.

https://ownhome.com/

The essence of OwnHome is a loan for your deposit - just 2.2% and Stamp Duty to secure a loan up to 100% of the property value.

The example they give is Instead of saving $340K for a traditional 20% deposit on a median-priced home in Sydney, with a Deposit Boost Loan, aspiring Sydney homebuyers need roughly $60K, including stamp duty and typical upfront fees; customers can then access an 80% loan-to-value ratio loan from OwnHome’s list of lender partners.

OwnHome raised a $3.6m seed round in July 2021 (from angel investors plus German based Global Founders Capital, and Israeli based Entrée Capital), and their initial product was a ‘rent to buy’ scheme where ownHome bought the house you, the buyer wanted, rented it to you for 3-7 years while you paid them back at a pre-agreed price -

In 2022 they pivoted to the Deposit Boost Loan - raised a $31M series A from Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s venture arm, X15 Ventures, and as well as Square Peg Capital, Global Founders Capital, Entrée Capital, AfterWork Ventures, and Possible Ventures.

OwnHome say they plan to support $500 million in home purchases over the next 18 months.

In this episode, we discuss:

· Why did James start Own Home? (started with Rent-To-Own, then pivoted)

· What’s the key problem Own Home solves?

· Who are the customers?

· The fundraising journey; how hard is it?

· What’s the business model? Pricing?

· How do people repay the loan?

· What Partnerships are involved?

· Lending – why tier 2 lenders and not CBA?

· Team size?

· Long term vision?

Philippa Watson is CEO of ubank, an award-winning digital bank owned by National Australia Bank. Prior to ubank, Philippa held a range of senior executive roles spanning digital banking, technology, operations, customer service, sales, finance, risk management, compliance, and strategy. These roles have involved accountability for functions in Australia, USA, UK, China and South Africa.

Philippa is passionate about the role organisations can and should play in community wellbeing. She believes that banks should offer customers accessible, uncomplicated, and high-tech banking services to help them be more successful with money.

Philippa is a Director of Lifeline Australia and NAB Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of the bank, and a member of Chief Executive Women.

In this episode we discuss:

•Background to Philippa’s career in banking
•A brief history of ubank (started in 2008): savings accounts, home loans
•Describing the past two years; the purchase and integration of 86400
•Since the acquisition of 86400 in May 2021, what ubank has worked to do – work has been substantial. Summary: Retire the 86400 banking license and brand, and launch a new ubank brand; (existing 86400 customers were met with a new name (ubank), a refreshed and rebranded website, a new app to download in the app store, a new ubank card in their digital wallet and a new Online Banking Experience. Original ubank customers experienced a more gradual introduction to the new brand experience and have been upgraded to the new technology and refreshed brand). Matured the 86400 platform to support larger customer numbers. Built the technology, processes, capacity and skills to support the customer upgrade. Progressed the banking proposition to support future growth and improved service. Migrated all the original legacy ubank customers with Term Deposits and Self-Managed Super Funds to NAB.
•Why did NAB/ubank buy 86400?
•What was the decision behind keeping the ubank name but using the 86400 tech stack?
•What does the tech stack provide?
•Migrating customers to NAB and to the new ubank platform
•Decommissioning legacy technology assets
•Data and AI - how important are these things to ubank’s strategy? How do you leverage data from a customer and tailor products and services to help them?
•Designing and delivering an acquisition engine that will attract and onboard active customers at scale through a combination of modern marketing techniques (for the digital generation of customers) and product features that have the potential for virality; and most importantly
•Using data and technology to engage customers and help them succeed with money.
•Opportunity and challenges for ubank?
•Defining the culture at ubank
•What is ahead for ubank?
•Opportunities for future products?

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 42: Max Cunningham, CEO, FCX

FCX describes itself as “A new era for private markets. FCX helps companies better manage their investors and securities.”

FCX was conceived and built for the private investment sector with the simple goal to replicate the listed market ‘user experience’ for unlisted assets. As a result, we are Australia’s first universal equity management platform built specifically for private companies. FCX enables unlisted companies to manage their cap table, employee equity, capital raising process, shareholder liquidity and much more via a consolidated platform.

FCX utilises class-leading Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) infrastructure and couples our deep capital markets experience to automate and streamline the many arduous and time consuming administration tasks associated with managing a company's investors and securities.

Max Cunninghan is the CEO of FCX; his background includes Group Executive for Listings at the ASX, Head of Equity Capital Markets at Goldman Sachs, and over a decade at Macquarie Bank.

In this episode, we discuss:

Why FCX? What problem does it solve for?
What does the name ‘FCX’ mean – is it a play on ASX?
Why do secondary equity markets need to exist? Comment about secondary markets in other countries – eg OTC/USM in UK, others?
How does FCX work? Matched trades? (also legal angle, regulation, liquidity, disputes)
Traction; typical clients? (is it like NASDAQ vs NYSE?) – can you discuss case studies? Success stories? How much do people raise?
Benefits of FCX for equity owners and founders, staff etc
What resources do FCX listed companies need? Audited accounts, company secretary?
Growth of the FCX team, backing from Finclear
How does FCX earn money? Annual Fees. Listing fees etc
Do you de-list? How do you control the bad actors/bad players?
Is FCX an on ramp for ASX?
Future vision, plans etc

FinTechs interested in options for share registry, capital raisings etc: please contact Max on max@fcx.com.au

Contact: Mark Tibbles mtibbles@asl.com.au

Delighted to welcome Mark Tibbles, CEO of Australian Settlements Limited or ASL.

Mark is a Payments guy having spent most of the last 25 years in the payments sector, including stints at CBA, NAB, Westpac, Clydesdale & Yorkshire Bank, Verifone and Wirecard. Since 2019 Mark has been leading the ASL Team in the shift from aggregator to a next generation Payments Platform service provider.

ASL is an Authorised Deposit Taking Institution (ADI) regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and a provider of B2B ‘Payments-Platform-and-Settlement as a Service’ (PPaaSS) solutions to banks, Fintechs and Corporates.

ASL’s goal is to provide platform access to the domestic rails – connect simply and almost self-serve in a complicated world. ASL partner with organisations that are leaders in their field – FIS for NPP connectivity, Shaype for our Platform and API led services, ISW for the latest Fraud and transaction monitoring capability. In the near future ASL will add leading Card Management and Switching services along with Digital Identity and a single pane of glass view of our services.

ASL are Payment tech led and Customer focused. ASL connects banks, fintech’s, Corporates and a range of other businesses to the Payments world.

· ASL was originally formed by the Building Societies in NSW, VIC and QLD as a cooperative

· ASL were the first non-Bank to be granted an Exchange Settlement Account (ESA)

· ASL is now one of 12 Direct connectors to COIN and the NPP along with the big 4 - ANZ, Commonwealth, Westpac and NAB.

· ASL processes 100m+ transactions annually and in excess of $650m per day

ASL offer access to all the Domestic network requirements like:

· New Payments Platform (NPP)

· Direct Entry

· Cards – Visa and eftpos with the ability to settle Mastercard

· BPay

· Financial Crime/Fraud Services

· RTGS

· Plus some of the lesser known and specialist services like Australclear and Pexa.

ASL also represent customers and give them a voice in the Industry with organisations like AusPayNet and Australian Payments Plus (AP+).

Generally/historically, ASL supports banks, other financial institutions, fintech’s – however their suite of solutions are suitable for a range of organisations that have high payment/transaction flows. ASL see corporate users as a key future customer base along with other wholesale payment service providers who don’t have direct access to the domestic rails.

What do ASL customers (generally) need?

· Access to payment rails / the payment’s world

· Settlement solutions

· Financial crime management

· Payment’s consulting/advice/education – this is key – we help our customers navigate a very complicated industry

· Partnering with an organisation with an Australian banking license (ADI)

What are their biggest pain points you solve for?

· A partner that helps navigate the industry nuances

· Accessing all services from a single partner

· Getting

Can Parpera empower the business owner to run their company better?

Daniel discusses the three key things that all business owners want from a fintech or bank:

Help them receive money simply and easily
Help them understand and manage cash flow and tax obligations
Help them gain access to support services (not just banking products)

Daniel is the Founder and CEO of Parpera, an Australian fintech that aspires to empower people to improve the prosperity of the communities, and societies they’re a part of, through making it easier to do business.

Parpera provides everything you need to manage your business finances in one app - including business accounts, card, invoicing, and real-time spend and tax insights - and is available to Australian Sole Traders (with companies coming soon).

https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielcannizzaro/

https://www.parpera.com/

In this episode we cover:

Daniel’s background prior to Parpera

About Parpera: What problem does Parpera solve for?

Parpera’s customers: Sole Traders, larger service based businesses. 4 key segments:

Professionals: Consultants, Accountants, Bookkeepers
Creatives: Designers, Marketers, Web
Tradies: Painters, Plumbers, Electricians, Cleaners
Health & Wellbeing: Personal trainers, Yoga Instructors, Beauticians

Product offering now, and in the future

The highs and lows of fintech/bank partnerships

Traction to date; Team, fundraising

Thoughts on Open Banking/CDR?

What partners does Parpera work with?

Daniel's thoughts on the support fintechs get in NSW/Australia

Super Rewards can help bridge Australia's gender ‘Super Gap’

We’ve all heard of the gender pay gap, but what about the ‘Super Gap’ where women have significantly lower balances of Superannuation at retirement than men?

Super Rewards wants to help fix this – in this interview we discuss how Super Rewards links e-commerce (instant rewards) with Superannuation (long term rewards).

Super Rewards is an elegant solution to help fix a long standing and complex problem.

PLUS: listen to the end of the podcast with a special offer from Pascale and Super Rewards!

We are delighted to welcome Pascale Helyar-Moray to the podcast: Pascale has 25 years financial services marketing and brand-building experience. A seasoned entrepreneur, she is CEO & Founder of Super-Rewards, a platform where you earn cash back in your super from your everyday spend, both instore and online.

Previously Pascale held senior marketing roles for JPMorgan Asset Management, BT Financial Group and BNP Paribas. Her recent advisory experience includes ResMed Ventures, Investment NSW, and the Australian Gender Equality Council.

In this podcast, we discuss:

Pascale’s background?

What problem is Super Rewards solving for?

What are you trying to achieve short term? Versus long term?

Superannuation has an ‘image’ problem. What is one thing you would do to fix it?

How important are partners? (CAR/AFSL, technology partner)

What have been your key learnings as you’ve dealt with the super funds?

Government: surely they would love Super-Rewards? It’s helping Australians have more in their retirement pot and taking the load off them in future.

What metrics are important? How do you measure results/growth

Vision for the future and role of Government.

CDR opens the gate to the Super App for Australia, says Ashurst

Interview with Geoff McGrath, Partner, Ashurst

Geoff is a Partner in the digital economy transactions team at Ashurst, with a focus on data, privacy, as well as information technology and telecommunications. Keen supporter of startups, with an interest in the tech sector, energy transition, intellectual property, early stage investment and venture capital.

https://www.ashurst.com/en/people/geoff-mcgrath/

In this interview, we discuss:

What does Consumer data Right mean?

The history of CDR – 2017 Open Banking Review & Productivity Commission Review (looked at entire economy, from banking to telco to energy); the real benefits – data and information has value, and can be used by incumbent organisations, this is now changing with CDR/Open Banking

Product level data vs transaction data, in a standardised way

Explanation of terms; data holders, accredited data recipients,

What Government bodies are involved? ACCC (accreditor and enforcer)

CDR came out of concern around concentration of players, as well as data sovereignty; the concept that you own your data.

Are we now starting to see the benefit of CDR? Open banking, open energy, open telco etc – so the CDR opens up data between new sectors, new products.

CDR changes over time: from start to action initiation.

Who owns the customer? The bank? The accredited data recipient?

Geoff discusses how the CDR legislation opens the gate to the Super App

Why has the roll out of CDR slowed? What will this mean?

Opportunities for future products?

Use of Ai to enable consumers to set up goals and use big data plus Ai to deliver the possibly of tailored financial advice.

How will data aggregation (aka screen scrapping) evolve? Will they be phased out and when?

How does cyber security impact CDR and perception of data safety

The role of digital identity; role of public vs private sector

Where should CDR be in a year’s time? Why has progress been paused? Issue of data quality, scams etc. Super App maybe the ‘killer app’ but it may not be ready in 12 months.

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 35: Sofie de Vreese, GM APAC, Expensify

Expensify creates payments and expenses ‘Super app’ with Freemium pricing model

To use Expensify’s own words; “We make expense reports that don't suck - get the app and play around for yourself”

Expensify is a payments superapp that helps individuals and businesses around the world simplify the way they manage money. More than 10 million people use Expensify's free features, which include corporate cards, expense tracking, next-day reimbursement, invoicing, bill pay, and travel booking in one app. All free. Whether you own a small business, manage a team, or close the books for your clients, Expensify makes it easy so you have more time to focus on what really matters.

Helping to spread Expensify's innovations in Expense Management across the APAC region and beyond, Sofie is a highly motivated, energetic and driven individual, with a great track record in working with cross functional teams and large client groups. Her expertise in marketing, sales and customer management has helped her consistently meet and exceed the challenges of rolling out and growing Expensify in the Asia Pacific region. Sofie has a natural passion for travel, people, different cultures including languages and am fluent in English, Dutch and French.

Thank you to our sponsors and supporters:

https://www.yodlee.com/au

https://australianfintech.com.au/

https://www.terrapinn.com/exhibition/accounting-business-expo/index.stm

Downsizer is a digital home-buying experience unlike any other! With Downsizer, anyone with sufficient equity in their current home can purchase a new dwelling with zero cash deposit.

Downsizer has raised $3.75 million seed capital to accelerate the growth of its SaaS platform operating at the intersections of fintech, proptech and insurtech.

Downsizer is helping property developers, real estate agents, financial advisors, mortgage brokers and lenders, and insurance brokers and underwriters engage with Baby Boomers and Gen Xers over 50.

The platform provides digital content and market insights for lead generation. It also has a national property marketplace where developers can list off-the-plan properties and access a real-time sales dashboard.

For older owner-occupiers – who may not pass a traditional credit assessment – a Deposit Power Downsizer Bond simplifies the home moving process so that downsizers don’t have to raid their savings or superannuation, or sell their home, to exchange contracts. The bond is also available to investors, including Self-Managed Superannuation Funds.

Downsizer co-founder and managing director Mark Macduffie said the company aimed to help downsizers move so that they could “stop worrying and start living”.
In this podcast, Mark discusses the product, the partners they work with, the target market, fundraising, building the team, and international expansion plans.

About Downsizer: https://www.downsizer.com/

About Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/macduffie/

Thank you to our supporters:

Envestnet Yodlee: https://www.yodlee.com/au

Australian FinTech: https://australianfintech.com.au/

Terrapinn and the Accounting Business Expo, March 2023: https://www.terrapinn.com/exhibition/accounting-business-expo/index.stm

The FinTech Report Podcast: Joe Patrick at Astral Ventures

Joe Patrick is the co-founder of Astral Ventures – a technology focussed corporate advisory firm based in Sydney, Australia. Astral has worked with some of Australia’s most exciting technology companies including Hivery, FrankieOne, ImmutableX, Spaceship and VC fund Blackbird Ventures, among many more.

Astral Ventures is also the publisher of the ANZ VC Leaderboard which is a first of it’s kind initiative launched in February of this year. The VC Leaderboard enables founders to make more empowered decisions about whom to partner with - and for VCs to better understand how founders benchmark them against peers.

Prior to founding Astral, Joe was an investment banker at JPMorgan.

In this episode, we discuss:

Joe’s finance background at JP Morgan

Why the move to venture

Who are Astral Ventures? Track record, vision, mission

How Astral work with Founders and the early stage eco-system

Recent report – VC Leader board – grading the investors

Methodology: how do Founders ‘judge’ the investors?

How can investors do better?

Thoughts on the fintech funding eco-system: global macro trends, as well as local micro trends

About Astral Ventures VC Leaderboard.

700 submissions from founders on 150 funds.

With the data, Astral has created a founder NPS ranking tool - ranking the best VCs in the eyes of Australian and Kiwi founders. Astral decided to publish the top 25 funds, and have shown the remainder alphabetically. Astral’s intention is for founders to use this tool to make more empowered decisions about whom to partner with - and for VCs to better understand how founders benchmark them against peers.

View the Astral Leaderboard report here: https://thelist.astralventures.com.au/

Trent McLaren, Founder, The Journey

www.letsjourney.com.au

Trent’s just finished up a role with Weel (Previously DiviPay) as Head of Strategic Channels. Whilst Trent’s Officially hanging up the boots at Weel, his role there was an amazing roller coaster ride of growth and innovation and, like all startups, in a very short period of time.

Trent worked with the co-founders as the team scaled from 15 to 55. Trent’s role in building partnerships to drive growth was and is key for Weel, and it’s a lesson that all startups need to understand.

Trent was tasked with building and creating an accounting community that would help the business find new customers, increase brand awareness and create a team to help service the channel.

A few key highlights from his time at Weel

Onboarded over 600 accountants and bookkeepers into the Weel Partner Program (he had to build the program!)

Over 1000 new clients were introduced to Weel through by their trusted advisor, through the Weel partner program.

Trent Launched the new Weel brand at Xerocon as a platinum/event partner, where the team was described as everyone's new favourite app!

This is a journey of rapid growth; and not everyone can achieve this type of growth – so we’ll explore that in this episode.

In addition to being the Founder of Journey, a consultancy helping accounting tech platforms to grow and scale, Trent’s other new role is CEO of “From The Trenches” – which he describes as focused on "Real Life in Accounting", providing practical advice on things you need to know today in your role as an accountant or bookkeeper. From The Trenches is supported by a podcast, and online virtual accounting summits

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 31; Kallan Hogan, Head of Business Development, Mastercard Australia & NZ

Key Points raised:

Mastercard about connecting buyers and sellers

Mastercard is more than cards and payments; services also include: Digital ID, online fraud verification, biometrics technology, Ai that scores transactions for fraud, personalisation, loyalty etc

Mastercard is a challenger, always looking to partner and create solutions; has global tech hub in Sydney/Australia, can do tech dev here

Case study: MX51

Mastercard Global FinTech Accelerator program explained (Start Path, a 6 month intensive program)

Mastercard working on bridge between Web2 and Web3 for payments; will use stablecoins

Trends to watch: Kallan mentions ESG, 5G/embedded finance, lending/risk models, banks moving off legacy tech, cloud/partnering with fintech as trends to watch

Mastercard growing: 90+ open positions in Sydney

FinTechs can get in touch with Kalan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kallanhogan/

Kallan Hogan is the Head of Business Development for Mastercard Australia and NZ. In this role, he leads a team focused on making the connection between buyers and sellers more efficient in an ever-changing digital world. He is responsible for creating client-led solutions across Mastercard technology including tokenisation, loyalty solutions, cybersecurity, open banking, personalisation, marketing, data analytics and other services. Prior to joining Mastercard, Kallan held multiple leadership roles at American Express and has experience driving brands across diverse regions having worked in Sydney, London, Singapore and Chicago.

Mastercard has evolved from a payments company to an innovative technology and services provider focused on broader payment opportunities in the retail, technology, government and finance industries. In Australia, Mastercard is committed to enabling all stakeholders - issuers, acquirers, merchants and consumers - with the latest technology and services to connect and protect, safely and seamlessly. As one of the world’s leading payment network operators, Mastercard is widely known and trusted. Today, the company is enthusiastically harnessing the digital revolution as it seeks to accelerate innovations beyond payments using new technologies and capabilities.

FinTechs can get in touch with Kalan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kallanhogan/

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 30; Simon Burt, Head of Digital Customer Experience and Innovation, Newcastle Permanent Building Society

Key Points:

NPBS future is about Partnerships

NPBS not trying to be a digital only bank, but wants to partner with fintechs to stay competitive and serve customers better

Bank branches are now ‘digital classrooms’ for customers

Open Banking will change the bank-customer relationship for the better

Data first approach for decision making

Merger provides scale, which allows bank to invest more in technology

Simon Burt is Head of Digital Customer Experience and Innovation at Newcastle Permanent Building Society, a role he’s had for over 5 years. Simon has been with NPBS for over 15 and has worked across both branch banking as well as home loans. Prior to his 15 years with NPBS, he spent 10 years with American Express on the FX part of the business.

NPBS provide financial services, including accounts, home and personal loans, debit and credit cards, and insurance, but are not a bank. They are a mutual building society; NPBS is owned by the customers, not by shareholders.

Newcastle Permanent was established in 1903. They are regulated by the Banking Act 1959 (Cth), and supervised by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA). Their motto is: ‘Here for Good’.

In November 2022, Newcastle Permanent and Greater Bank agreed to a merger. The merged organisation will have more than $20 billion in total assets and 600,000 customers, and benefit from almost 200 years of combined operating history.

The new merged entity, will be called: Newcastle Greater Mutual Group Ltd

In this interview we cover:

Simon’s role at NGMG?

Why NGMG?

What is NGMG’s interest in fintech?

What pain point do you solve for fintechs?

Who are your potential customers? What is your ‘sweet spot’?

How do you asses risk when dealing with fintechs?

Expansion plans?

Open Banking – benefit to fintechs & banks?

Simon always keen to meet with fintechs looking to partner:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonburt2300/

The Fintech Report Podcast: Episode 29; Cameron Dart, CEO & Founder, Australian FinTech

Giving fintechs a voice is our key mission, says Dart
Vision is to cover all major fintech markets
Separate newsletters launched for PropTech and Blockchain
FinTech India to launch in 2023

Cameron explains his background and what led him to start Australian FinTech; finance career kicked off with a merchant bank in London; then moved to Morgan Stanley in Sydney; then property development in Australia/Gold Coast.

Started kids website (ebay for kids products); almost killed by arrival of GumTree and Facebook Marketplace – lots of lessons learnt on technology, disruption, timing etc – taught Cameron the risks involved in technology sector.

Started next project with business partner who started Australia’s first online life insurance business.

Huge interest in fintech, so started Australian FinTech – newsfeed, directory of companies; started with 60, now grown to over 1000 members. Cameron says there are 1400 fintechs in Australia.

Now seven years old; keeps growing as industry grows.

Daily newsletter covers all fintech; covers news on small startups to ASX/NASDAQ listed fintechs.

“Give a voice to fintech companies,” is the key mission says Cameron

Publish approx. 1200 articles per year – 40,000 social media followers (30k on LinkedIn). Tuesday and Thursday newsletter goes to 5000 subscribers.

Members get priority regarding news with links back to member websites. Audience has changed over time; also, Cameron also experienced how audience value news.

Most disappointing aspect of fintech: failure of Xinja and Volt.

Most promising aspect of fintechs; fintechs partnering to take on the big banks

Cameron discusses global expansion plans: tried ‘international fintech’ but it didn’t work – so Cameron built country specific websites for FinTech USA, UK and Ireland.

“People only care about what’s in their backyard”

Cameron just launched FinTech UAE: will add many more in the years ahead – especially India for 2023. Cameron surprised by how deep/big the Aussie fintech market is vs UK, USA etc (even given population numbers)

“Australian FinTech is the stage on which Aussie fintechs can ‘go global’” says Cameron

Going global also means Cameron can partner with various fintech events in markets like FinTech Week in UK.

Cameron says he’d like to see the neo-banks grow and prosper; big banks have had a monopoly for so long, it needs to change.

Cameron launched a Blockchain and Crypto site, as well as a PropTech news website

Our Guest today is Caleb Gibbins, Founder of Cache Invest –

Cache provide Investing as-a-Service so that any company can be a Fintech company.
You can integrate Cache’s fully digital investment products directly into your existing app, website or other platform through their APIs.

Caleb discusses the following on this episode of The FinTech Report Podcast

•Developments in micro-investing over the last 12 months
oHelping people start investing and invest regularly
oThere are now 2 million micro-investors in Australia
oMicro-investors don’t stop investing during a downturn – Cache data shows 19 investments for each withdrawal (95% of transactions are inflows)

•Developments at Cache over the last 12 months
oCache supports 77% of micro-investing portfolio products in the market (10 / 13)
oFintech Award – Innovation in Wealth Management. Received because Cache enables other companies to offer branded investment products to their customers

•Looking forward to the next 12 months
oGrowth in micro-investing
oThe entry of banks and other players into the market (to reflect the US and UK experience)

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 26: Santiago Burridge - CEO & Co-Founder at Lumiant

About Santiago

Santiago “Santi” Burridge founded Lumiant in 2020 to support financial Advisers in delivering on the promise of advice by creating a software-supported advice experience.

According to Santiago, Financial Advice needs to expand beyond investments and into every facet of a client’s financial life. With Advisers understanding what truly drives their clients.

About Lumiant

Lumiant is a cloud-based advice and client engagement platform, where clients and their advisors connect around their lives, values and finances.

Lumiant’s goal is to remove key person dependency by creating a memorable, measurable, and repeatable process that anyone can deliver. We’ll take a deep dive into what this means and how it’s delivered.

Please note that this discussion is not financial advice and you should seek professional advice that suits your individual investment needs.

Key points in this interview:

● Santi wants to support the industry in transitioning away from product led to advice led, which is largely driven through a values-based or life-centric advice process

● There was very little technology on the market to support advisors in this transition - there are platforms, CRMs and tools that help put clients in portfolios or products but nothing to cater for the wants and needs of clients throughout their entire lives.

● According to Santi, financial advisors have incredible conversations that essentially get butchered and turned into 80 page SOAs, risk profiles and performance reports which mean very little to clients - it’s like handing them an MRI scan and expecting them to understand what they are looking at with no professional training or experience.

● So Santi wanted to create a platform that would bring advisors’ superpowers to life - their ability to connect deeply with their clients and understand everything there is to know about their lives and their families. Santi wants to turn the qualitative, extraordinary unstructured conversations into structured, quantifiable and measurable dashboard that brings to life what’s important to a client and their family. With this information, Lumiant can better define a financial plan that will help clients to live their best life

● Lumiant is comprised of several modules to help with client discovery, trade-off conversations, keeping clients on track and accountable, and bring to life the intangible value of advice. Modules include:

○ Your Life - our short assessment that acts as a lead gen tool that gets clients to inform you what areas of their lives are most important to them - based on the 8 Dimensions of Wellbeing

○ Your Values - our deep discovery values-based advice process that gets to the heart of what clients truly care about

○ Your Goals - our SMART goal tracker that lets clients inform their advisor on what they want to achieve to live a life aligned to their values

○ Your Wealth - connects with investment and open banking providers to provide the overall net worth of a household in one place

○ Your Best Life - Lumiant’s multi-goal optimization engine, with Monte Carlo simulations, enables you and your clients to scenario plan and model their best life. Clients can immediately see if they’re on track, underfunded, or overfunded helping them to make better, more informed life decisions

● Since Lumiant launched in Australia in February 2021 and the US in May 2022, Lumiant have over 150 advisors from almost 50 practices

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 25: Interview with Raaj Rayat, Investor, Airtree Ventures

Raaj Rayat is an early stage venture investor with Airtree Ventures. Prior to Airtree, Raaj launched Lendable in Nariobi (Kenya), London and Sydney. Lendable is a FinTech that uses data science to expand fair access to financial services in emerging markets. Raaj Helped scale Lendable from $0 to $200m+ invested across 10+ countries in 4 years

AirTree is a venture capital firm with a mission to back the most ambitious Australian and Kiwi founders, building the iconic technology companies of tomorrow.

Airtree pride themselves on saying they are “right by a founder's side, right from the start, often investing pre-product and pre-revenue to support startups from the earliest stages of their journey”

Airtree has a portfolio of 80+ companies, and has been an early investor in many breakout tech companies, including: Canva, Go1, A Cloud Guru, Pet Circle, Immutable, Employment Hero, and Linktree, and a number of other exciting fintechs

In this episode, Raaj and Glen discuss:

What got Raaj into VC
Airtree’s fintech investments
Raaj’s thesis on fintech
What excites you in fintech? (eg lending, proptech, insuretech, defi, digital assets etc)
We are in a funding ‘winter’ – what impact is this having? (Valuations etc) what do you say to your founders?
What do you like/want to invest in? (stage, size, sector etc)
What do you look for? Founding team, idea, traction, customers, ability to scale etc
AirTree web3 investments
What’s your thesis on digital assets and digital currencies? (DeFi vs Trad Fi)
Future of fintech - Thoughts on DeFi and Blockchain (digital assets etc)

If you are an early stage FinTech (& web3, DeFi, wealth tech, PropTech etc) and want to contact Raaj, please use this email. Contact: Raaj Rayat: Email: raaj@airtree.vc

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 24: Interview with Jaco Veldsman, Co-Founder, Paytron

We started with payments and accounting, customers then asked us for corporate cards and FX, and Open Banking for Business will be a game changer, says Paytron

Paytron is a cloud-based payments platform built for SMEs and accountants. In 2020, Jaco Veldsman met co-founder Francois Henrion, where they lamented the disparity of finance tools available to SMEs and accountants versus bigger businesses. Together they focused on developing Paytron, an all-in-one payment platform that removed the manual work for SMEs and accountants covering accounts payable, accounts receivable, cashflow management, FX, and payroll and employee expenses.

In this episode we cover:

· Accounting packages haven’t innovated, Paytron saw the opportunity

· Focus is on SMEs, small business up to $100m turnover

· Paytron’s philosophy was to launch fast, and innovate fast

· Laser focus on what the customer wants; out of this came the request for corporate cards

· Partnership with JP Morgan is huge

· FinTech & Banks are a perfect partnership and each brings their own skills and advantages

· Next major problem is business banking, business financing needs, which can include corporate cards

· Business banking needs to change, and Paytron will be moving hard and fast in this sector

· Expansion plans to English speaking Commonwealth countries; NZ, Singapore, South Africa, Canada, UK. The JP Morgan partnership opens up other countries, eg USA

· Great benefits of being in the Commonwealth; same language and very similar regulations, taxes etc

· Paytron will expand into FX (foreign exchange)

· Jaco explains the role of corporate cards

· Jaco explains their amazing funding journey (US VCs as well as Australia), and building the team

· Open Banking is huge and will be big; banks need to ‘choose a side’ says Jaco

· FinTechs can access bank accounts (via Open Banking) and offer new services: when fintechs can have “read and write” access, then fintechs will offer services as well as payments

The Fintech Report Podcast: Interview with Paul Apolony, GM Australia, Mambu

Banks and the Race to High Velocity

In this podcast we discuss:

● How does a lifelong banker end up running Mambu Australia?

● Discuss wider industry experience that crosses over to Mambu

What does Mambu do?

● Mambu is the market leading cloud banking platform – launched in Berlin in 2011, Mambu now operates globally. Series E funding round in December 2021 raised an additional €235m, taking total valuation to €4.9 billion (‘double unicorn’ status)

● Mambu provides the technological foundation – a SaaS based cloud-native banking platform – for banks, financial service providers and other fintechs to launch innovative digital banking products and services

● Think of the Mambu platform like the engine in a car – it provides a powerful core for digital banks, and enables other providers and services to ‘plug in’ to the platform via open APIs, so customers can build the digital bank or digital product that their customers want

● hundreds of customers all over the world have launched some of the most innovative and forward-thinking banking products and brands ever seen – full digital banks banks, digital arms of conventional banks, payment providers, ewallets, lenders, BNPL – any financial product or service you can think of can be built on Mambu

● Mambu’s cloud core banking platform replaces expensive and monolithic legacy core banking technology stacks – cloud native and soon to be cloud agnostic across(Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure,)

● Many banks in Australia, and in fact the world, have legacy technology stacks coming to the end of their life cycle – this on-premises core banking technology is expensive and time-intensive to run, and very slow to update or make changes. This is especially evident in the Mutual/Customer owned banking space. A cloud native core like Mambu brings speed, agility and flexibility, meaning traditional, old-school banks can start to operate like nimble fintechs, launching new products in weeks rather than years, and responding to changing consumer expectations on the fly

● Companies can launch an entire digital bank on Mambu, OR launch specific digital products

● A popular and effective way of transitioning to digital is by incrementally replacing individual components within a bank’s existing tech stack – reduces risk of a rapid ‘rip and replace’ approach and allows the bank to bring customers along on the journey

What’s the status of Mambu in Australia?

● AU entity established in Jan 2022

● Actively recruiting – current team is 22 FTEs working from Syd, Mel, Bris and Per

● Leveraging Mambu’s experience in Europe, UK, APAC

● Current customers include fintechs like Shaype (formerly Hay), ADIs such as Tyro, lenders such as Lumi, Bluestone, Prospa and Nimble, and soon to be announced tier 1 bank in Australia.

What is ‘composable banking’ and why is it gaining traction?

● Mambu coined the phrase ‘composable banking’ more than 10 years ago, and it’s recently been picked up by competitors in cloud core banking space - a compliment

● Composable banking is the rapid and flexible assembly of independent, best-for-purpose systems

● Mambu are now speaking to our customers and prospects about the “Race to high velocity” – Mambu’s ability to enable them to scale in a quick, flexible and cost effective way and meet the growing demands they are encountering on a daily basis.

● &nbs

Paul Weingarth, Co-Founder of Slyp

Prior to co-founding Slyp, Paul worked for the Commonwealth Bank, Microsoft and PayPal. Paul’s now on a mission – he wants to end paper receipts and plastic loyalty cards; how is it that in 2022 we tap our phone or card or watch to make a payment in-store, then we are handed a chemically coated non-recyclable piece of paper to keep a record of the purchase. 20,000KM of paper receipts are printed every day in Australia. Imagine what the global total is?

About Slyp: https://www.slyp.com.au/home

With Slyp you can pay with your bank card and automatically receive an itemised tax receipt inside your mobile banking app or via SMS, at no cost – Slyp calls these ‘smart receipts’ – A Smart Receipt is a tax compliant, easily accessible proof of purchase that lives directly in the mobile banking app, or via SMS - Slyp is available in the NAB banking app and other banks will follow soon. Slyp has navigated unchartered territories by becoming Australia’s only independent fintech to gain the backing of all four major banks.

'Obsessive Customer Disorder' leads Slyp to digitise receipts and loyalty for Australia’s Big Four Banks

Key points in the conversation:

•Contactless payments is only half finished; Slyp wants to end paper receipts – the ‘last mile’ of the payment process
•Paul and the other Co-Founders are obsessed with the customer – Paul calls this ‘OCD – Obsessive Customer Disorder’
•Nothing good comes from paper receipts
•Paul’s PayPal experience helped him understand the payments process
•The Slyp Smart Receipt has been built on ‘pipes’ that haven’t been connected before
•Slyp integrates directly into the POS terminal (Point of Sale); merchant side
•Plus Slyp has built pipes into the banks, so connecting/matching transaction to receipt in a few seconds
•Everything is standardised – so Slyp is the one provider that offers a standard experience for all banks (Apps) and all Merchants
•Often standardisation & collaboration happens because of regulation (eg EFTPOS, NPP, Open Banking); but Slyp wasn’t driven by regulation – it’s driven by Slyp.
•Slyp receipt is inside the customer’s banking app; receipt is displayed inside the banking App. Completely frictionless for the customer.
•Fully tax compliant tax receipt.
•For Slyp, the receipt is just the start – the customers digital data is available to the Merchant; so the Merchant now has the possibility of starting an ongoing relationship with the customer; eg loyalty, tailoring offers.
•Who owns the data? – all parties to the process; Slyp, the Merchant, and the bank, all retain their component parts to the data, and Slyp wants to provide the insights for all parties – Paul uses the term “Data for Delight” – Paul says Slyp is the “Switzerland of the system”
•NAB now, the other three banks in the next 12-18 months
•Slyp Smart Receipts will always be free.
•Business model is a SaaS model for the banks, and Freemium service for the merchants; they can take up additional services if they want.
•Australia is a great place to start a fintech. Australian consumers who love using new technology, and adopt new technology very fast, especially mobile and payments.
•The fintech and banking eco-system is a leader in contactless payments.
•Concentration in banking of the four majors (NAB, CBA, Westpac, ANZ), plus two large / dominant merchants/supermarket chains (Coles, Woolworths), plus only two card providers (Mastercard, Visa) means it was easier for Slyp to create a standardised product. Paul says this set-up is ‘the perfect storm”
•Funding: Slyp has received investment from all four of Australia’s big banks: NAB, ANZ, CBA and Westpac – the first time ever in

Build your dream on Oracle Cloud - Interview with Pijush Mukherjee from Oracle and Karthik Srinivasan from Ziksu.

About our Guests:

Pijush Mukherjee from Oracle

https://www.linkedin.com/in/impijush/

Pijush is a Technology leader with 2 decades of experience in business development, partner management, consulting, solution and delivery management of digital transformation initiatives across industries. - Working as Head of Digital Natives, he and his team are helping Fintechs to grow their business in APAC, partnering with Oracle

Oracle Fintech Innovation

Next-generation cloud from Oracle, with industry-leading solutions such as open banking APIs, Pre-configured blockchain, autonomous database and many more , provides an ecosystem and platform to help drive innovation. Banks & fintechs can deploy the industry’s most comprehensive set of cloud solutions for financial domains to test out solution hypotheses, roll out MVPs and scale fast, reducing the deployment time and cost significantly. Fintechs around the world have joined Oracle for Start-ups or the Oracle Partner Network to help accelerate their growth leveraging Oracle’s world-class platforms and ecosystems.

Karthik Srinivasan from Ziksu

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthik-srinivasan-z25/

Karthik Srinivasan, Founder and CTIO of Ziksu, has responsibility for the strategic direction for Ziksu and its product portfolio. Karthik has over 17 years of professional experience working across Australia and APAC region. Karthik has had stints in varied capacities with banks and global technology organisations. His area of expertise lies in the convergence of financial services and technology.

Ziksu, is an Australian fintech that offers a suite of digital financial products for Retail and Business customers. Ziksu has developed a fully digital, 100% mobile only product, Scan n Pay, that delivers a third alternative for instore payments using QR codes with real-time settlements. A single, seamless, and easy to use app for merchants and personal consumers. Ziksu’s provisional goal of financial services for every Australian is to be convenient, accessible, and affordable.

Key Points discussed during this interview:

• Overview of Ziksu

• What problem does Ziksu solve for?

• Who are Ziksu’s customers?

• Team size, number of customers, growth

• How is Oracle helping Ziksu?

• What is Oracle’s interest in fintech?

• Thoughts on technology selection – especially ‘Scan & Pay’ vs ‘Tap & Pay’ – including features, scale up costs

• Why did Ziksu choose Oracle Cloud?

• Experience of Oracle to date

• Why is Oracle different? Oracle's Deep Roots in Financial Space

• Global Presence supporting India and APAC expansion Plans

Cake Equity offers free “1 click ESOP” to early stage fintechs to democratise the fundraising process

Founders want to quickly and easily understand how to issue options to their team. And when raising capital from Angels, investors and VCs, they want a good deal using industry standard terms that will protect them.

Cake solves the problems inherent in fundraising at the early stage; the cost and complexity of the whole process by offering very early stage fintechs the option of a free account for up to five founders/staff.

Cake Equity is part of the democratisation of the fundraising process, such as Seed Legals in the UK, who enable Founders to manage their ‘cap table’ from startup to IPO.

Typically this involves creating and managing all sorts of documents, from Shareholders Agreements, Term Sheets, ESOPs (Employee Share Option Plan) – Cake Equity has built a service that allows a “one click ESOP” – a huge benefit for Founders looking to streamline this process in their business.

For very early stage founders/startups, Cake offer this for free. After 6 people, Cake start charging – typically $30 PCM per person.

Cake integrates with ASIC and crucially, enables founders to showcase all the shareholder information to potential investors – enabling the ‘due diligence’ to be completed in days not weeks.

“Time to Yes” is FinTechs Key Issue says Experity Capital

Episode 18: Interview with Clint Howen, Founder at Hero Broker & Director/Head of Digital at Experity Capital

Key items discussed in this interview:

“Time to Yes” is the Number One Issue
Time to Yes is driven by FinTech ‘Super Apps’ because they offer greater insight into a customer’s financial/wealth position
Super App’s only possible because of data aggregators (such as Yodlee, IDS, Core Logic etc)
Large numbers of Mortgage Brokers to retire soon, creating opportunity for FinTech to offer technology at scale for home loans

Clint Howen from Experity Capital says he built Hero Broker to offer a fully digital home loan experience, but he realised that customers still want to speak with, or be guided by, another human when it comes to the home loan experience.

Whilst the number one driving force for the technology is how to reduce the complexity and time is takes to originate a home loan, human psychology is such that customers still require explanation on the process for applying for, and getting a home loan.

FinTech allows Brokers to ‘do more with less’ – Clint is planning to use technology to scale how many clients a broker can deal with at any one time. Additionally, a large percentage of the current home loan/mortgage brokers are over 55, and will retire soon; Experity will look to buy their ‘mortgage books’ and use their brokers plus their technology to service the clients.

FinTech allows Brokers a greater and deeper insight into each customers, whereby the technology pulls more data into the ‘one view’ of a customers income/wealth profile, allowing a Broker to help the customer, especially on the home loan journey. This issue is often referred to as the ‘benefit of the Super App’

Clint discusses how a large percentage of Mortgage Brokers will be retiring over the next decade, creating a huge opportunity for online/fintech if they can get the balance right between technology at scale and human-to-human interaction.

Yodlee and other data providers play a crucial role in enabling the ‘Super App’ by bringing the data together in one place

About Clint Howen, Hero Broker and Experity Capital

Clint is an experienced startup founder with a mission to connect the design, technical and business worlds to help build innovative, user-centric products. Clint is the founder of Hero Broker as well as Director and head of digital at Experity Capital

Experity Capital is a fintech and mortgage broker that offers customer the ability to Manage All their Money, Assets, Investments In The One Place. Experity customers can Manage & view all their bank accounts, property assets and investments in the one place.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/clint-howen-794a2b75/

https://experity.com.au/

Listen to all the episodes here:

https://fintechsummit.com.au/the-fintech-report-podcast/

Hay-as-a-Service leads Embedded Finance revolution

Interview with Mark Hansell, Chief Product Officer at Hay-as-a-Service

Hay-as-a-Service – or HaaS - is leading the embedded finance revolution via their platform that enables any company to ‘stand up’ financial products in as little as 10 days.

The team at HaaS believes that the future of finance does not start and end with digital transformation, rather the seamless integration of those services into any customer journey.

HaaS solves for the problem of launching financial products even if you are not a financial services company. Through a single API, clients can access HaaS’s full suite of microservices for payments, KYC/AML, and a range of accelerator tools. HaaS removes legacy constraints, prioritising speed, flexibility and control, to deliver value and innovation

Hay as a Service (HaaS) is an embedded finance platform that lets any company offer a financial product to their customers, without having to build it themselves. More importantly, they can do that with total control and flexibility over how they bring it all together, so they can build their brand and their customer experience the way they want it to be (and the end customer doesn’t see the Hay/HaaS brand).

Clients are financial and non-financial companies who in turn have consumers - and in some cases small businesses - as their customers. Clients pick and choose from the HaaS suite of microservices – and they access it all through a single API.

The platform is modular so clients can pick and choose the services they take. The majority of clients anchor their product around three core HaaS products;

Accounts
Cards
Funding rails

They then add additional services depending on their specific needs – such as onboarding.

In addition to the core offering, HaaS have a range of accelerator tools and support services, that are designed to get products to market better and faster.

HaaS has a multi-rail sandbox environment for both bank transfer and card payments testing – including via an app - and clients can use a staging environment to do controlled development without impacting production. HaaS enable rapid proof of concept so clients can get to market fast.

Thank you to our Partners; Australian FinTech and Envestnet Yodlee

All episodes available here: https://fintechsummit.com.au/the-fintech-report-podcast/

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 16: Interview with James Vaughan, CoreLogic

Creating the digital property DNAJames is the Head of Data Products at CoreLogic, and has extensive experience across the data, banking and financial services sectors. He holds a deep understanding of property data trends, digital customer engagement, and risk management from his years in leadership roles across sales, account management and customer solutions.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-vaughan-a3396616/

CoreLogic Asia Pacific is a leading, independent provider of property data and analytics. They help people build better lives by providing rich, up-to-the-minute property insights that inform the very best property decisions. With an extensive breadth and depth of knowledge gathered over the last 30 years, they provide services across a wide range of industries, including Banking & Finance, Real Estate, Government, Insurance and Construction.

https://www.corelogic.com.au/

Topics covered in this interview:

What does CoreLogic do? What problem do they solve?

Who are their customers?

What is their best work?

How do they measure results for your banking and lending clients?

How does house price information impact ‘responsible lending’?

What is the sweet spot for CoreLogic and banking clients right now? {Digital Mortgage}

· The value of real-time data at every touchpoint in the customer journey

· Helping to modernise the mortgage process and improve the customer experience

How will machine learning and Ai impact CoreLogic and their clients?

What role do you see data playing in helping connect the property ecosystem and the energy sector in the sustainability space?

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 15

Interview with: DAVE MAUNSELL, CEO, Haventec

Cyber Attacks are growing; what do you need to know to keep data secure and maintain a customer’s fast access to a service

Haventec provide decentralised platforms that transform security, accessibility and experience https://www.haventec.com/

Delighted to welcome DAVE MAUNSELL, CEO of Haventec to the podcast

o Prior to joining Haventec Dave spent ~20 years at Accenture where he occupied a number of leadership roles including Managing Director for Accenture Digital (AU and NZ).

o Haventec was founded in 2014 by Ric Richardson (inventor of Uniloc, "try and buy" software) and Tony Castagna (co-founder of Nuix) with the vision of enabling the open enterprise to engage digitally, without the risk of maintaining and operating large repositories of sensitive information.

o Haventec’s platform provides start-ups, scale-ups and enterprises with the means of protecting sensitive information (including usernames, passwords and data) in a way that when their network is breached there is nothing of value to steal - a very novel and innovative way of approaching the challenges of maintaining a secure environment and protecting privacy.

Note's from Dave:

1. ORIGINS OF HAVENTEC

o Current technologies are providing inadequate protection to data and other sensitive information.

o being prepared for when your enterprise gets breached is the best protection against the loss of critical digital assets – specifically digital identities and sensitive data.

o Haventec was founded in 2014 by Ric Richardson (inventor of Uniloc, "try and buy" software) and Tony Castagna (co-founder of Nuix, www.nuix.com) with the vision of enabling the open enterprise to engage digitally, without the risk of maintaining and operating large repositories of sensitive information.

o Haventec have developed a patented platform that provides enterprises with the means of safeguarding the privacy of the people they both serve and employ – if sensitive information (data and digital credentials) is protected by the platform, when the enterprise or its cloud is breached, there is nothing of value to steal.

o From late 2018, Haventec’s focus shifted from building the platform, to validating the platform. This included:

Engaging David Hook to complete an independent cryptographic assessment of the platform;
Performance benchmarking the platform;
Securing PCI DSS compliance;
Finalising the insurance offer; and
Deploying the platform to select clients.

o Haventec finalised its go-to-market strategy in late 2019, and focus has shifted to growth – both direct as well as channels. The enterprises we are engaging with are all seeking the means of enhancing the controls they have in place to protect sensitive information, on both sides of the firewall.

o In parallel to executing the go-to-market strategy, AustCyber are providing funding to fast-track an eConsent solution for personal health information, including genomics data.

o In simple terms, Haventec has built a platform that introduces a paradigm shift in how enterprises reduce their exposure to risk. They have solved the paradox of keeping sensitive data safe, while supporting increasing business demands, and consumer expectations, for openness, connectivity, performance and privacy.

o Consumers, enterprises and regulators are all seeking a solution to the inherent weaknesses of the current digital trust model. Haventec is

The FinTech Report Podcast: Interview with Kimberley Gaskin, Director, Six Black Pens

Fuel for growth: Foundational Strategy the key to scaling up successfully

Six Black Pens is an independent, strategy-led creative communications agency that’s all about smart, effective work. They are specialists in complex business and set out to understand, decode and define – to simplify without diluting. Clients have included NAB, MLC, Aware Super, Ignition Advice, PEXA and AGL. Their unique value proposition to clients is “We make the complex beautiful”.

In this episode of The FinTech Report Podcast, Kimberley discusses the importance of foundational strategy to FinTechs when starting out and scaling up, and how Six Black Pens approaches foundational and other communications strategies through the lens of Behavioural Economics. Among the topics covered, Kimberley explains:

· Why FinTechs, when they begin to scale up, need to change their communications strategy to effectively target a consumer and not an investor audience.

· That Six Black Pens considers its best work to be its most effective work – that is, work that delivers on a business goal for the client but at the same time delivers value to the client’s customers.

· Why Behavioural Economics should be the foundation for any marketing, advertising or communication with a customer.

· How System 1 (fast, automatic) and System 2 (slow, considered) thinking drive consumer behaviour and how understanding customers’ unconscious biases leads to more effective communications.

· How SBP expertise in Behavioural Economics – and a strategy based on 5 key behavioural nudges – helped Australians take charge of their superannuation.

· Why it’s vital to select the best channel for your audience’s level of digital comfort – and why that channel must be optimised for its specific audience.

· That every communications strategy must have hard metrics baked into it to measure success against.

· The importance to FinTechs of thinking about foundational strategy right from the beginning – that is, the building blocks of your identity, your message, your communication, your customer value proposition and your audience segmentation.

· Why FinTechs must get the customer onboarding experience right – and the building blocks needed to achieve this.

· What FinTechs and traditional banks can learn from one another and why this new ecosystem is better for customers and Australia.

If you’d like to be taken through a sector specific insights presentation focusing on the value of foundational strategy for FinTechs you can contact Helen via email: helen 'at' sixblackpens 'dot' com

Our thanks to Australian FinTech News and Envestnet Yodlee for their support of The FinTech Report Podcast.

The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 13: Caleb Gibbins, Founder, Cache Investment Management

Micro investing Apps have 1.3m customers over 8 providers, with growth at 120%+ last year, says Cache.

More people now own shares/ETFs via micro-investing apps than directly.

Cache predicts micro investment Apps will have 7m accounts in 5 years. Growth driven by new fintechs and banks who outsource Fund Management to Investing as a service providers like Cache.

Cache provide Investing as-a-Service so that any company can be a Fintech company.

You can integrate Cache’s fully digital investment products directly into your existing app, website or other platform through their APIs.

Clients include UpStreet and Spriggy Invest. Cache on a mission to help your customers invest

Launching investment products is hard; Cache is your end-to-end fund manager, and offers licencing and financial infrastructure: licencing, registry, fund administration, payments, trustee, custody, trading – broking, settlement, tax accounting; fund audit, PDS documents. Trustee, Custodian & Broker are third party suppliers and will be appointed by Cache.

Perfect for passive investing or micro wealth advice apps where service is not ‘stock picking’ rather buying ETFs or hugging the index style investment strategies.

Cache enables trading in Australian and US listed assets/equities.

Cache conducted a report into Micro Investing; available here: https://www.cacheinvest.com.au/investing-report

The FinTech Report podcast is brought to you in Partnership with Australian FinTech, a news and information website as well as a Directory of over 800 fintechs – and global data aggregator and Open Banking experts, Envestnet Yodlee. Envestnet | Yodlee’s data solutions are used by some of the region’s most exciting and innovative companies, including 86 400, Xero and Finder.

NFTs: From Crypto Punks to Taco Bell – How NFTs and Programmable Money (Smart Contracts) are revolutionising art markets

Interview with: Tim Lea, Founder, Walking Between Worlds

Tim Lea has been in the Blockchain space since 2015, he is the author of “Down the Rabbit Hole”, a book about Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies, and is about to launch his “Walking Between Worlds” project to enable Indigenous communities to capitalise on the NFT revolution.

This podcast is not financial advice. The information on this podcast & website is for general information only; it should not be taken as constituting professional advice from the website owner. Please seek expert financial advice before making an investment.

According to a recent article in The Economist, crypto currencies and other digital assets are worth over $2 trillion dollars. To put that into perspective, the global gold market is estimated to be worth $10tr. The value of transactions that one of the most popular crypto platforms, Ethereum, reached $2.5trn in Q2 this year, around the same sum as Visa Card processes.

And there is a new explosive trend that is adding even more to the value of the market – Non Fungible Tokens – or NFT’s –

An NFT is a digital asset that represents a real-world object like a piece of art or music. They are bought and sold online and stored on blockchain platforms. NFTs are like physical collector’s items, only digital. So instead of getting an actual oil painting to hang on the wall, the buyer gets a digital file instead. NFTs are gaining traction because they are a great way to buy and sell digital artwork.

For example, in March this year auction house Christie’s sold a jpg from digital artist Beeple for $69m – the third largest sum paid for a piece of art produced by a living artist. In June this year, another auction house, Sotherby’s sold a crypto punk for $11.7m. This is a pixelated image of a punk that was given away free of charge as part of an experiment on the Ethereum blockchain in 2017. This is an image you can locate on google images and right click on your mouse and save the same image to your computer

The largest NFT marketplace, Open Sea, has seen an explosion is sales with over $3.4bn in August 2021 (compared to $6.2m the previous August).

There are some amazing numbers on the value of digital assets, and the growth is exceptional. So what’s going on why are we seeing this massive growth and adoption?

Why NFTs matter (ownership can be easily identified; rights established, assets traded etc)

Why does the art world (& media) love NFTs? Recurring royalty structures for NFTs

Why will brands like Taco Bell use NFTs? (Loyalty schemes)

How will sectors like gaming be transformed by NFTs?

How do I buy and sell NFTs? (Tim’s suggestions; Opensea, Metamask)

Is DeFi a replacement of traditional banking?

So what are NFT’s – in plain English? and why are they so important?

in practical terms who will use NFT’s ? (publishers, influencers, sports clubs and brands already exploring them now )

Tim’s indigenous art project; Walking Between Worlds

FDATA and Yodlee are optimistic on Open Finance: “the right data, in the right hands, at the right time, can change the world!”

Interview with: Jamie Leach, FDATA and Tonia Berglund, Envestnet Yodlee

Key Points discussed include:

CDR is more than Open Banking – it’s open finance and open data – but what are the immediate opportunities, and what’s coming in the longer term? Listen to this podcast to learn more.

According to FDATA and Yodlee, there are three winners from Open Banking: consumers, fintechs and banks.

Banks forced to share data; but banks can embrace banking – they can use data too - also banks can develop new services.

Banks have legacy systems but getting ready for Open Banking means better quality data within the bank; this increases efficiencies for the bank.

Open Finance delivers some very basic outcomes – more transparency, more insights into pricing; is crucial for transferring someone from another bank (switching campaigns will boom)

Analytics and Apps are both crucial for fintechs as they drive innovation

Many Business cases still not proven – will take time to understand what works and what doesn’t.

Plus, some way to go in terms of all banks sharing data: “we are two miles into the Marathon,” says Jamie Leach of FDATA.

Jamie covers topic of cost and barriers to entry for fintechs - why is Australia 4 or 5 times the cost of UK to participate in the Open Data regime? (Note: UK doing 800 million API calls a month, and rate of growth is 100%+)

Is the worry about security and consumer protection in Australia leading to higher costs?

What are the issues for fintechs who want to switch from ‘screen scrapping’ to Open Banking Data?

Discussion of consent; how consumers give consent to FSIs to use their data; How important is Privacy by Design and what does it mean?

Discussion on Data Collaboration and Data Standards; this is a new area for tech and for the law; where are we at in Australia?

Discussion on how FSIs/fintech use the data they collect – especially using Ai to understand both individuals and trends; how does Ai blend with Open Banking?

Jamie Leach is the Regional Director in Australia and NZ for The Financial Data and Technology Association, a role that see’s Jamie work with government, regulatory authorities, and financial industry stakeholders to open up Australia’s and New Zealand's financial sector so all companies can benefit from the Consumer Data Right, also known as Open Banking.

Jamie is also the Founder of Open Data Australia, Board Chair of tech start-up GridQube, sits on the International Advisory Committee for the University of Melbourne Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration, and is an expert on e-KYC and Digital Identity for the UN and the World Bank.

Tonia Berglund is Director of Product at Envestnet Yodlee. Tonia is responsible for heading up Open Banking in Australia and New Zealand, bringing together the global open banking strategy for US based aggregator and Wealth Tech Company Fintech, Envestnet I Yodlee.

Tonia has spent the last 18 years driving digital change as a senior leader in the Technology and Finance sectors, working in large and small organisations including CBA, Westpac and the Federal Government. She holds Post Graduate Degrees in Business and Technology and has been at the forefront of heading up transformation programs moving systems and processes online across business, wealth and retail divisions.

Our guest on this episode is Bo Melin, Business Development Manager at DNX Solutions.

Bo has 20 years experience of IT leadership roles, working in Sweden, US, Germany, Australia, Norway, and Thailand. Top competencies are Program and Project Management, QA, business and process analysis; Bo Combines deep technical knowledge with extensive business experience. Bo is a Professional trainer at IBM, and a number of Universities. He has experience across a broad range of industries: Banking, insurance, government, public utilities, Retail, Telecom – all impacted by CDR and Open banking.

DNX Solutions is an Australian cloud-native focused company and an Amazon (AWS) Advanced Consulting Partner. DNX offer experienced cloud and data engineering consultants who can accelerate and transform a company’s cloud journey whether they are adopting, evolving, operating cloud solutions or modernising applications in a simple, reliable, and secure way.

In this episode we cover:

Bo's background and experience

Explaining the DNX Solutions value proposition - “Democratise cloud technology”

Who are DNX’s customers in fintech and financial services?

What key issues does DNX solve for customers? Why do fintechs & FSIs work with DNX?

Why “the cherry on the cake” is the open banking

Key issues around Open Banking, especially compliance – and why DNX has launched Citadel by DNX Solutions. It’s a turn-key solution for business’s compliance needs; Citadel is a platform, which is fully compliant and fine-tuned for CDR, PCI, HIPAA, and SOC 2 standards.

What’s the opportunity from CDR and Open Banking: what’s the opportunity for fintechs and banks?

CDR – what’s the opportunity in the long term?

Our Partners:

Australian FinTech, a news and information website covering everything you need to know in fintech in Australia and around the world, as well as a Directory of over 800 fintechs; https://australianfintech.com.au/

Global data aggregator and Open Banking experts, Envestnet Yodlee. Envestnet | Yodlee has held an office in Australia for over a decade, is actively engaged with the ACCC and Open Banking and is compliant with the highest level of local and international infosec standards. Envestnet | Yodlee’s data solutions are used by some of the region’s most exciting and innovative companies, including 86 400, Xero and Finder.

Envestnet | Yodlee are passionate about empowering financial service providers to use financial data and intelligence to better serve their customers, and the team have extensive knowledge on the topics of finance innovation, CDR, open banking, responsible lending, and data aggregation, account verification, and analytics.

https://www.yodlee.com/oceania

The FinTech Report Podcast: Interview with Ben Pfisterer, CEO & Co-Founder of Zeller

“Business banking in a Box”: Strategy behind Zeller’s $81m Cap raise

We welcome CEO and co-founder of Zeller, Ben Pfisterer, to the podcast

Just last year, ex-head of APAC at Square, Ben, founded Zeller, an Australian integrated payments and financial services solution. The company recently announced a $50M fundraise, led by US VC firm Spark Capital, following its initial Series A funding round in March 2021.

Zeller raised $81M in under 12 months, all before having a product on the market — making it Australia’s most valuable pre-launch startup ever.

Zeller’s product suite (Zeller Terminal, transaction account and MasterCard) launched in May, with early growth of 1,500 Australian businesses signing up in the first month and weekly payment volume growing 200% since launch.

In this episode we discuss:

Ben’s background, working at Jetstar, NAB, and recently, six years at Square…

Background to Zeller – what makes Zeller different. Australian business banking is dominated by “the Big 4” and there is no innovation and many restrictive contracts.

Three things companies all need; need to accept payments, they need to put the money somewhere, and then put the money to work – Zeller solves all three.

Zeller call it “Business Banking in a Box” (terminal, account, Mastercard) (not an ADI or RADI, but will be at some stage)

Zeller’s strategy is to take on the banks! With Australia’s fintech landscape booming, how are retailers benefiting from new competition against the big four banks?

Zeller believes in transparency and is priced to appeal. Zeller offers businesses a startup package at $299, with no ongoing terminal rental fees etc, and 1.4% fee for payments.

Zeller can sign up companies in minutes online (KYC, on boarding), tech built to be scalable and reliable. What makes Zeller different from the big four?

Migration away from cash. We’ve seen a shift towards online payments during the pandemic; has it had an impact on in-person payments? How does Zeller think in-person payments will change post-pandemic?

Zeller’s fundraising – some will go towards customer acquisition.

Ben talks through his fundraising journey, his vision for the company and how the founding team has created a culture that was born in a lockdown/pandemic, his views on regulation and competition. Ben says Regulators need to help fintech startups with an ‘unfair advantage’ until they ‘get up on their feet’

Our thanks to Australian FinTech News and Envestnet Yodlee for their support of The FinTech Report Podcast.

Srikanth Muthyala is the Founder and CEO of SHAVIK Ai – he is a CEO with a passion for Innovative & Futuristic solutions for FinTechs.

SHAVIK Ai’s human first approach has led Srikanth and his team to design and deliver software solutions that are adaptive for people, fun and accessible, with a focus on creating financial tools for individuals and businesses.

Srikanth is a Mentor and investor in FinTech start-up companies via the Melbourne Angels investor network.

Visit SHAVIK AI here: https://www.shavik.ai/

The episode discussed Regulation of Ai; listeners might be interested in reading how the European Union is looking at Ai regulation: EU Ai Regulation proposal: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory-framework-ai

Topics discussed in this episode:
What does SHAVIK AI do? (and What is AI to you?)
What do you mean by “Humanised Ai”?
What is the relevance of AI to Financial Services / FinTech industry?
How to get started with Ai journey as company and as an individual?
You are a Judge for Ai in FinTech category, what is your judging criteria?
Do you think startups should think about using Ai? If so at what stage?
What are the challenges to adopting Ai?
What are the risks of Ai?
What can we do encourage Ai in Finance industry?

The FinTech Report podcast is brought to you in Partnership with Australian FinTech, a news and information website covering everything you need to know in fintech in Australia and around the world, as well as a Directory of over 800 fintechs. Our thanks to the Australian FinTech team for supporting The FinTech Report – you can learn more at www.AustralianFinTech.com.au

This podcast is brought to you in Partnership with global data aggregator and Open Banking experts, Envestnet Yodlee.

Envestnet Yodlee has held an office in Australia for over a decade, is actively engaged with the ACCC and Open Banking and is compliant with the highest level of local and international infosec standards. Envestnet Yodlee’s data solutions are used by some of the region’s most exciting and innovative companies, including 86 400, Xero and Finder. Envestnet Yodlee are passionate about empowering financial service providers to use financial data and intelligence to better serve their customers, and the team have extensive knowledge on the topics of finance innovation, CDR, open banking, responsible lending, and data aggregation, account verification, and analytics.

Learn more at: https://www.yodlee.com/oceania

Our two guests for this episode are; Dan Jovevski, the Founder & CEO at WeMoney; and Lauren Applegate, Director Customer Success and Marketing ANZ at Envestnet Yodlee

WeMoney’s mission is to empower people to take control of their financial story so that they can get onto the ladder and improve their life and money.

WeMoney is a financial wellness platform that tracks all your money in one place. You can track your credit score, bills and recurring payments, understand your savings, debt and monitor your income through a complete toolset that can make your dollar and keep them in the black.

By leveraging frontier behavioural science and artificial intelligence, WeMoney nudges and guides you towards better, informed and insightful financial choices and address the root causes of pitfalls of money management. Connect with a passionate community that connects you other likeminded people going through a similar journey.

Lauren Applegate holds a Bachelor of Psychology and a Bachelor of Marketing and is a customer success and retention expert with deep experience in the financial industry. As Envestnet | Yodlee’s ANZ Director of Customer Success and Marketing, Lauren’s role is centred around ensuring that her customers can innovate, succeed, and grow through the use of Envestnet | Yodlee’s best-in-market Data Aggregation, Account Verification, Data Enrichment, Financial Wellness, and Credit Accelerator tools. With a background of executing marketing functions for online start-ups, as well as holding sales leadership roles within large Insurance providers, Lauren has a great mix of experience to assist everyone from small Fintech’s to large Financial Institutions with their growth strategies.

In this episode we discuss:

Why WeMoney? Dan shares his Founder story
What does WeMoney do?
What does Envestnet Yodlee do for WeMoney?
What is the benefit of having a data aggregator?
What are the key issues Envestnet Yodlee solves for WeMoney & other customers?
Explain Nudge Economics & Behavioural science
How do you measure results?
What do you think of the fintech eco-system?

Damir Cuca is the founder and CEO of Basiq, an API platform providing the building blocks of financial services. Damir is a member of Australia’s Consumer Data Right Open Banking advisory committee and actively champions the importance of fintechs in an innovative and inclusive Open Banking ecosystem.

Basiq is the one of the leading API platforms for businesses to build innovative financial solutions. Basiq’s developer-friendly platform provides secure access to customer financial data and the ability to uncover valuable insights. Backed by AP Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Reinventure, NAB Ventures and Plaid, over 200 fintechs and banks rely on the Basiq platform to deliver solutions across lending, payments, wealth, and digital banking.
Welcome Damir, thanks for being our guest on The FinTech Report Podcast

In this episode we discuss:
Damir's background, and what led him to founding Basiq
What does Basiq do?
Who are Basiq's customers?
The evolution of data – from data aggregation to Open Banking
What is Open Banking? How does it work?
What is the future for Open Banking? From open APIs for Info & big data, to payments
What is Basiq business model? Fees, charges for providing access
Views on the Australian fintech ecosystem

Welcome to Episode 5 of The FinTech Report podcast.

Tim Poskitt is Envestnet Yodlee’s Country Manager for Australia & New Zealand, and is responsible for the company’s local strategy and go-to-market efforts. Tim has worked in Europe, the United States, and APAC in the finance and FinTech sectors, and currently sits on three advisory boards as a fintech advisor: Archa, Credi.com and Repute Digital.

Tim is passionate about empowering financial service providers to use data and intelligence to better serve their customers, and has extensive knowledge on the topics of finance innovation, CDR, open banking, responsible lending, and data aggregation and analytics.

Yodlee has held an office in Australia for over a decade, is actively engaged with the ACCC and Open Banking and is compliant with the highest level of local and international infosec standards. Yodlee’s data solutions are used by some of the region’s most exciting and innovative companies, including 86 400, Xero and Moneysoft.

In this episode we discuss:
Tim's background and what led him to Yodlee
What does Yodlee do? What does data aggregator mean?
Who are Yodlee's customers?
The evolution of data – from Data Aggregator to Open Banking
What is Open Banking? How does it work?
What is the future for Open Banking?
What’s the business model?
Tim’s views on the Australian fintech ecosystem

Delighted to welcome Fred Schebesta, Co-founder and CEO of Finder, Finder Ventures and Schebesta Ventures

Fred's passionate about disruptive innovation and inspiring the startup community through sharing his success as a mentor, speaker, media commentator and author. Fred is a futurist, an expert in cryptocurrency, an advocate for Open Banking, and is leading the group's venture capital arm, Finder Ventures, which has built an innovative money app – the Finder app.

Fred's latest project, Schebesta Ventures, is a platform to help more startups develop their business ideas. Fred has a new book launching on 1st September 2021 called "Go Live! 10 Principles to Launch a Global Empire" and is proud to announce the Fred Schebesta Go Live! Initiative, where 30% of all profits from Schebesta Ventures will be invested in startups.

Paul Harapin, Revenue Growth Lead for Asia-Pacific at Stripe, one of Silicon Valley’s most successful startups, recently valued at $112B (AUD). Paul has a wealth of experience in the technology sector, having started and scaled various companies across the Asian region over almost 30 years, which include VMware and Tivoli Systems, two of the most successful software companies in history.

Now at Stripe, Paul works closely with customers including Atlassian, Canva and Culture Amp; so he knows a thing or two about scaling Australian businesses to reach a global audience.

Topic areas covered:

Paul's background; what led Paul to Stripe
What does Stripe do? Payments 101
The evolution of payments in Australia – rise of e-commerce
The role of payment platforms such as Stripe in the digital economy
Stripe business model
Why use Stripe rather than others like PayPal?
Big issues in payments: Fraud prevention, refunds, speed, rise of BNPL
Paul’s views on the Australian fintech/payments ecosystem

Welcome to Episode 2 of The FinTech Report

Andrew Boyd leads the AWS Digital Natives business across the ANZ region. Digital Natives are born in the cloud businesses. Andrew leads the AWS team focused on helping tech companies grow and scale, with access to new technology, global markets and more ways to deliver innovative ideas.

Our discussion covers these areas:

We start with Andrew's background and what led him to AWS
Andrew's current role at AWS and how his team helps fintechs
There’s a lot more to AWS than cloud
Opportunities & challenges for Australia’s leading fintechs
How has Open Banking (CDR) changed the game?
What is the role of AWS/cloud in driving fintech growth and innovation?
What advice would you give fintechs in this new banking era?

AWS case studies:

Hay: https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/hay/
Zip: https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/zipmoney/
Frollo: https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/frollo/
mx51: https://blog.aboutamazon.com.au/local-businesses-prepare-for-the-new-normal

In this episode of The FinTech Report podcast, I’m talking with Mark Bernhardi, the GM of nCino in Asia Pacific; a worldwide leader in cloud banking; nCino are transforming financial services through innovation, reputation and speed.

In this episode we discuss:

Mark’s background, and what brought him to nCino
nCino are "built by bankers for bankers", what does that mean?
Mark talks through a new customer onboarding journey for a bank or fintech using nCino
Why do banks – or neo-banks - buy nCino? Have you got a case study example?
Regulatory issues; how do you manage a global SaaS platform to be regulatory compliant in every country?
What trends are you seeing in fintech and banking?