1000. Insights: Fintech highlights from the past 10 years

23:35Laura Watkins:It doesn't need to be compared with an incumbent anymore. And I think that that shows how far we've come, that the companies can just be measured in their own right without needing to have the epithet of like, Revolute is X number of NatWest or commerce banks or anything. But yeah, it sort of shows that, like you said, like you needed a kind of yardstick to measure against in the beginning, but now they're just measured against themselves, which really shows how far we've come. Do you reckon the people in commerce bank were like, guys? Why us? You're a different bank. Giving away our value. Yeah, when it was like half of one, they were like, yeah, we got this.

24:08And then, yeah, now it's 10 off or whatever it is getting on. It's like, just leave us alone, you know, like, why are you picking on us? All right, guys, next two clips are pretty closely related, but we couldn't pick between them. So we're going to be showing you both of them. The first is from our most returning contributor on FinTech Insider, Valentina Christensen, who is the Corporate Affairs Director at Oak North, followed by Richard Davies, who is the CEO of one of the UK's most promising FinTech companies, rumored to be on the verge of achieving the golden unicorn status, Alicabank.

24:43Laura Watkins:It's such an amazing achievement for the entire 11FS and Fintech Insider team to have reached a thousand episodes. So few podcasts will actually reach that milestone and it just gets better and better with every passing year. I remember meeting David several years ago and having an opportunity to go on the podcast for the first time and being incredibly nervous. And David and the team just made me feel so at ease. And it was an incredibly enjoyable experience rather than a nerve-wracking one. And yeah, several years later, I'm very grateful and humbled to have had the opportunity to be on a few dozen episodes since.

25:21Laura Watkins:And it's just been such an incredible platform that's opened so many doors for me and created so many more opportunities for me. So I can't thank the team enough and I wish them the best of luck in recording the next thousand episodes. What's been my biggest moment in fintech since July 2016? That was actually the month and year that I joined Oak North full-time after being consultancy side and doing a second with the business for a year prior to that. So that was a pretty big fintech moment for me personally. But more broadly in the industry, I think the biggest moment was in the immediate aftermath of the COVID lockdowns.

25:59Laura Watkins:Numerous fintechs stepped up to the plate to help. They built new solutions to support customers. And they gained unprecedented legitimacy through distributing government-backed loans through bounce-back lending scheme, the COVID business interruption loan scheme, and captured an estimated 20 % of the SME lending market share in the process. So not only boosted their customer bases, but it also positioned them as credible alternatives to high street banks in SME finance. And that's something that's stuck ever since. This is Richard Davies from Alaka. So everyone that knows me knows that I love all things S &E.

26:38So my undoubted highlight from the last 90 years that FinTech Insight has been running has to be the massive rise in FinTech and challenger S &E lending. Just a huge, huge step change. You've now got well over 100 different lenders, banks and non-banks, playing in that space. and well over 60 % of that market is now done by that sort of diverse range of lenders rather than the traditional high street banks. And I think it's pretty much the only finance market I can think of that's seen that sort of market share shift to the challenges. And I think that's just such a great thing for the UK businesses and all the sort of jobs that they provide in society that we've got that really rich and diverse ecosystem.

27:25So that definitely is my highlight. Very, very cool. Good to hear from both of those people. Kate did say, trying to make me cry, and Val got very close then, I'm not going to lie. She's been one of the absolute best guests we have on. Not just because she's very well-spoken, but she's very well-read. She always comes insanely well-prepared. A bit intimidating sometimes, I'm not going to lie. But yeah, I didn't realize that actually the same month that we started the podcast was the same month she started full-time at Oak North. So congratulations on your 10-year anniversary as well, Val. Yeah, the changes, I guess, that we saw through the COVID side of things, that was kind of crazy, right?

28:09Like the world, I think we were, I don't know where I was, but it was like two or three days before lockdown, there was an afterdark, wasn't there?

28:19Laura Watkins:So we locked down on March the 23rd, and we had an afterdark on the 11th, I think. Right, a super spreading event, guys. Yeah, I'm bad, sorry. guys um it was in the rules at the time but nobody really knew what was gonna happen you know so it's i remember you standing up and saying we're going to shut down the office and it'll probably be about a month and then we never came back together about 18 months yeah it was mad very weird but um but yeah the that whole period feels like such a strange sort of nightmare now as well in terms of all of the fallout and the changes and and actually some things have never really got back to the way they were in terms of just walk around London now and well, I mean, cheap strike today, but the, you know, normal London is still pretty damn quiet in comparison to what it was, you know, back in 2019, 2018, isn't it?

29:07So it's kind of weird. But it's also, I mean, obviously it was such a hugely difficult, upsetting time, but it is amazing that despite that, we can still, as Richard was saying, that there are still huge positives that have come from that. It was such, you know, when we do our research and we speak to customers to try and understand kind of what new digital services need to provide. Like the thing that we see time and time again is how difficult it is to prompt behavioural change in this space. Like customers, whether that's retail customers or SMEs or even up to corporate level, like changing from one financial service to another requires such a huge push or such a huge pull.

29:44And that's what COVID was like. COVID was this unpredicted but insanely huge trigger moment for change. And I completely agree that actually the change is the shakeup we've seen in the SME space. I think it has been for the better. You know, businesses needed that cash in their accounts and the incumbents just could not deliver it in time. And it was fintechs that stepped up and actually stopped a lot of these businesses from going under, got the cash into those businesses that enabled them to meet payroll, keep money going into their employees' accounts. It was fundamental. And obviously, we've focused in on the SME space here, but this obviously applied globally and it also applied to your retail payments payments to retail customers in the us you know we saw the likes of you know cash app and stuff really benefiting from helping to get money into people's pockets picks i'm gonna cover pics later with brazil again a huge cover catalyst so um yeah out of out of darkness can come a little bit of light well and cash being driven out of the system more broadly as well and that that's not ever really gone back to the same levels as before as well.

30:44So that, yeah, I mean, almost, you know, you can give all of the pull things as in great features, great capability, whatever, but necessity often wins everything, doesn't it? Yeah, I think when the ball really dropped for me was visiting Cornwall at some point during the gap, you know, when we were allowed to actually go, I remember going to this tiny little shop in the middle of nowhere, classic shop that would only, you know, accept cash. And I'm like, oh God, I don't have any cash in my pocket. Here we go again. And the lady running the store was like, no, we didn't accept, we don't accept any cash at all.

31:12It's only card. And, and that is the point to your point, Kate, where things really began to change. And I can't remember what she was using. I think it was square or something. And it was the fintechs that, that really came in. And, and I think the link into SME banking is one of the big stories that Val does talk a lot about on the podcast. We talk about, um, with her a lot is the SME lending, not just in the UK, but also globally. Like it's only just beginning. I mean, we're seeing some these um payment services providers like adjun for example become banks themselves and start to go into lending and so it's not just the the challenger banks themselves it's the distribution models that have now changed and will continue to change so yeah i think everyone's right it comes from that kind of covid beginning that's really where it where it began so cool i mean it changed quite a lot for us as well in the podcast right it was like uh uh yeah let's make a podcast that people listen to on their commute oh shit nobody's commuting like what do we do so we had this weird

32:09Laura Watkins:idea of doing a live show laura didn't we yes so yeah i mean firstly the podcast kept on going and actually in a way the um the pandemic allowed us to kind of very easily pivot to remote recording which actually allowed us to have a much more global um kind of participation on the podcast because uh if we don't have to get everyone to a studio in shoreditch where they can join from wherever they happen to be. You know, we could open the podcast up to contributors from Singapore, from California, from Africa, from everywhere. So it really allowed us to have a wider range of guests giving their expertise on their own stories.

32:43Laura Watkins:So that was a huge change. Bit weird though. We went from sort of drinking together to drinking on our own in our bedroom, which is, it was a weird feeling. Changes the vibe. The whole world did that. We almost have never done that since until this very moment. So we're kind of recreating the pre-pandemic vibe here today. But yes, and then equally on top of that, because of the remote capabilities, we were able to kind of put this live breakfast show out that was sort of keeping the conversation going with people wherever they happened to be. Because, yeah, like, you know, our data showed at the time people were listening to this podcast on their commute, but what do you do if they don't have one?

33:17Laura Watkins:So kind of pivoting kind of to where the audience were and where they wanted to have those conversations with us and kind of continuing that until today. It felt like trying to give somebody something fun to go and do before they went and did work. So it was like, was it 8.30 to 9 every morning? Yeah, something like that. And then equally, we did it with Sam for a little while in the US as well. So for you, I guess it was the afternoon, but repeat for the kind of breakfast time in the US as well. So yeah, just kind of really opening up new conversations with new contributors that we didn't have before.

33:49Laura Watkins:But then, you know, some of them have become good friends of the show and returning podcast guests. So yeah. I remember we had some crazy guests for that as well, if I'm honest with you. Like, actually, like, for anybody listening, like recording a podcast and relying on the production team to make you sound reasonably intelligent for, you know, a thousand episodes. Great. Doing it live was like a whole different type of ballgame. So like, but we had Damien Hughes on from the High Performance podcast. We had Deputy Mayor of London. We had Anne Bowden. We had Ashraf Swami. We had like just crazy guests, didn't we?

34:22So, but it was nice because you were sort of seeing into people's

34:26Laura Watkins:Yeah, it was kind of a leveler when everyone had to figure out their own internet connection and their own headphones set up and so on. Well, then all of like Ashok is usually like the, you know, sharpest dressed, suited booted, just seeing him at home in his house. Like it was kind of weird. Do we have Mark Carney on at one point? Sure. Did Sam do that one? Because I was like, I saw Mark Carney's house. Like that was weird. Like, so it's just, yeah, it's just an amazing thing to be able to connect to people. But I think the COVID bit, and I remember Alison Rose saying this actually when she was at the bank, is like everybody's the same when you're on Zoom.

35:04Like actually there's no podium on a Zoom call or a hangout or whatever. And actually, you know, the ability for anybody to ask anything is always an interesting sort of point to take on that. But actually from a communication perspective, it kind of leveled out pretty much every organization on the planet. And that's kind of a good thing as well yeah absolutely and the people who were more human were the people who were actually present in there i mean i remember there was this whole tension between like do we have our cameras on do we have our cameras off like what do you do there was a real human appreciation that people were going through stuff yeah and i think that was kind of wonderful and we've taken some of those behaviors forward into the future of work shall we say i'm surprised um i'll be honest richard's like my favorite moment was richard on not on the podcast but about the podcast was basically the first time I ever met Richard Davies was he called us into when he was working at HSBC, me and Jason.

36:01We were like, no idea what he wants to talk about. And the first sentence that came out of his mouth was, are you guys full of shit? Do you actually know what you're talking about? And we've been friends since then. I love that. But yeah, thankfully, turns out me and Jason, not full of shit, or at least according to Richard. And I think Richard's a pretty good judge of character. So let's go with that. All right, folks, we're going to take a quick breather. Don't go anywhere. Boo will be back with you in just a second. And trust me, Laura's got something super duper special lined up for halftime.

36:31You're going to want to stick around for this one.

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37:35Laura Watkins:Welcome back to episode 1000. It's an unbelievable privilege to be able to say that. Now, I want to put you guys and potentially the listeners to the test. How much do you know about this wonderful show? Worryingly off microphone, both me and DBG have said we don't remember anything we ever say. So this is probably going to be quite a problematic thing. A second that comes out of my mouth. Let's see. You can probably make an educated guess, perhaps. Question one. What was our first ever episode about? Fintech. Cheating, Kate. A bit surprised, Kate. Bizarrely, I think it was very low on fintech.

38:15Like actually, it was Brexit, right?

38:17Laura Watkins:It was Brexit. Yeah. Because basically, it was like the we sat around and went this thing's been like, basically, what's in the news? Like I remember we had, I still have these now. I have like 50 old Google alerts, like of like, what's the keywords and the things that they all appear in my mailbox every morning. And that's the first thing that I do is drink a cup of coffee and do that wherever I am in the world, basically. But Brexit was just everything in there. So it kind of felt like it was... I feel like we redeemed ourselves on episode two, though, where we mostly talked about Pokemon. But Brexit was very much the...

38:52Yeah, 100%. I mean, if you're going to record an episode

38:54Laura Watkins:at the end of June to go out in July 2016, there was only one topic you could talk about, really, unfortunately. Sadly, in the UK. And it was... I feel like if we had like a, you know, a count up of the amount of times that we said Brexit, like we don't, we'd only be equaled by the amount of times that we said, open banking and COVID. You know what I mean? Like, I think those are the three things aren't they? That was just AI is coming. That's the current buzzword bingo. So I think we should have a drinking game rule for the shows, you know. I try and never say AI now. Like actually, and all with all the stuff that we've been doing recently, journalists are really trying to be like, Oh, what about the AI?

39:32And I'm like, the AI? You know, like, and just trying to stay away from it as much as possible.

39:39Laura Watkins:Our next question. When was our first ever After Dark? Don't need the exact date, but if you can give me the month or the year, David. I mean, was it 2016? Was it October? No? I wasn't here in 2016. Oh, okay. 2017 then? Correct. Right, okay. Was it Halloween? No, that was the second one. Was it? Oh, okay. Valentine's Day? No. I don't know, I'll give up. You're very close. It was the 25th of September 2017. So we did one in September and then we did another, the second one was Halloween. Can we do a serious one and then we were like, fuck it, let's wear costumes. Is that what happened? I think so, yeah.

40:19Laura Watkins:I remember Val was on our panel, the wonderful Val, and she had like, fully like devil horns. Like, I remember sort of helping her fix them onto her head and everyone was really leaning into the theme it was yeah it was good fun but yeah first ever one 25th of september 2017 we just sort of it was a complete experiment right we were like let's see if people would be interested in this kind of borrowed a space in a we work invited our friends who invited their friends and the whole thing was much much bigger than we ever thought it was gonna be how many people came have a look back oh gosh i don't know we didn't do tickets at that point it's probably like 50 but that was more than we expected oh well it was it was way more than we work wanted us to have because we got in quite a lot of trouble but we just said can we borrow a room and then far exceeded the capacity of the room.

41:02Like, you know, insight is like, I always hate After Darks, not because I hate After Dark. I love it. I just never think anybody's going to turn up. But that's been the weirdest thing across all of these things is like, you know, listeners, when they're a number, are kind of like, meh, you know, like, okay, fine. But when they're like real people that turn up and then you realize that the people in the audience are as smart as the people on the mic, then you're like actually this is a community that's sort of got real momentum behind it so that's been amazing but equally i still think nobody's ever going to turn up when we do after

41:38Laura Watkins:darks and they keep doing so thank you if you yes yeah absolutely um okay next question to the nearest round number how many different guests have we had on the show to date i'm trying to think through like you know the average like when when i host a show like how many of the guests on average like return guests versus new guests and i tend to say it's like a 50 50 balance i don't know so i'm going to say 500 oh punchy nah way more i like yeah if you kind of think like some like we went crazy at one point we were pumping out like three episodes a week weren't we well we've done a thousand episodes that's the whole point of the show so yeah yeah no no but they have three guests on each show they had different formats didn't they so some of them were like three or four people some of them when we did like insight shows would have like seven or That's true.

42:26Laura Watkins:I forgot about the insert shoes. Kate's gone for, what did you say? 500? I said 500, yeah. I reckon 4 ,000. I'm going for 4 ,000. Do you? 2 ,000. I don't know. Damn it. Okay, well now you're disappointed. The answer is 940. Oh, that's the answer. Lots of repeats. It's like almost, you know, a new guest per episode, which is where some of them are like just us. Like that's pretty good as well. A phenomenal amount of people. Yeah. I want to know the list of people who came once and we were like, that's not going to work out. Do you want to know that? Just slip that in the podcast notes for everybody.

43:02Laura Watkins:According to data from Statista, how many new fintechs have launched globally since we began this podcast in 2016? It's got to be thousands. Yeah, yeah, nearest thousand wins. So, yeah. I guessed first last time, so everyone else can guess. Globally, in the last 10 years or so. Yeah, since 2016. 60 ,000? I'm going to go with 155 ,000. Oh, wow. Okay, okay. 400 ,000. Oh, my goodness. Okay, right. Calm yourself down, guys. The answer is 31 ,000. I went crazy on the first one, more conservative on the next one. So how many are still alive? That's another question. Well, quite. The Prosecco is talking now.

43:50Laura Watkins:All right. how many unicorns have we had on FinTech Insider oh my goodness real ones no unfortunately I would love that but yes how many companies have we had that have been palliative for a billion I went through a very long list of all the existing unicorns and counted all the ones that have been on the podcast so wow Laura and just so we know how many is in the existing list I don't know many I don't know 200 no 75 Are we counting banks? No Like just ones that have been Like you know Kind of gone from zero And valued over 30 I'm getting all this wrong anyway So we've got What did you say? 75 75 30 David 50 I think I said Ooh Very close 57 unicorns Which roughly Based on that 940 Guess size roughly One in 15 of all companies Featured Has either been Or gone on to become A fintech uniform Wow That was very interesting.

44:49I feel like we've somehow contributed to that fiscal status. Yeah, we just clearly claim credit. If you'd like to contribute to the GoFundMe.

44:59Laura Watkins:A little bonus question for you and potentially the listeners. Stephen Bartlett of Diary of the CEO fame and others has been on an episode of FinTech Insider. True or false? True. I have no idea. Yeah, it's true. So you're saying... That's got to be true. It's true. I was looking at David's face, I'm not going to lie. I did that one. Like, I remember it. Weirdly, I mean, they approached us, didn't they? And was like, Stephen's doing some stuff in sort of influencer marketing-y type things. Like, do you want to come in? Social chain, it was his start. And actually, he's a pretty good dude, to be honest with you.

45:34I mean, he told some weird stories about kind of like selling chocolate bars and stuff at his school and kind of that being the spark of his entrepreneurial start and whatnot. But yeah, he's a pretty good dude. Doing some fun stuff. I saw it yeah the listing of the episode is like Steve Bartlett and I'm like this feels wrong like he's rebranded he's Steven what's what but maybe you're Steve back then I get sent a book every so often and going like what do you think of this and he's yeah doing a bit more in the fintech space so watch this space if we get him back

45:59Laura Watkins:yeah he could make a reappearance but there you go that is your very brief finting anxiety quiz very very good alright welcome back folks we had a bit of a quick break a few drinks and now we are diving straight into the second half of our thousandth episode celebrations. We've got more clips lined up showcasing some of the biggest and best moments in fintech from the last nine years. So let's get into it. Our next clip comes from a real fintech OG, Nick Ogden, founder of WorldPay, Clearbank, RTGS, Global, and so many more things that I don't have air in my lungs to continue that sentence. Let's hear from Nick now.

46:42Well, hello, David and the FinTech Insider team. When I first got the email about this, I thought David Breer can't be a thousand years old, but apparently it's the thousandth episode. So congratulations for that one. Looking back to 2016, I think the most memorable moment for me and for a lot of other people was the approval of ClearBank as the UK's first new clearing bank in December 2016. and the surprise look on the face of the Wall Street journalists at the press conference in early 2017 when they realised that Clearbank was a clearing bank and not just another challenger bank. Looking at the market since then, it's been quite interesting.

47:23There have been ups and downs, a few scandals here and there, but that's normal. Anyway, as we move forward and we look forward to another 20-odd years' time when we'll have David still around and the 3 ,000th episode, of this program. It'll be interesting to see what's happened. So we'll see. It's interesting times. Just stay innovating. Keep at it. Most importantly, have fun. And good luck with the party, David. Cheers, everybody. Thanks very much, Nick. I think we're gonna have to change what the G in OG stands for given he was having a go at me there. But yeah, I mean, amazing stuff that those guys did.

48:03I always like to tell everybody that the idea for Clearbank happened in Roxham, a tiny little village in Norfolk, not very far away from where I live as well. And, you know, most, I think that's just me trying to do stuff for FinTech East, basically, but we'll see where we can go. But it is amazing. I do love the very literal naming of Clearbank as well. The fact that nobody picked up that it was a clearing bank all the way through to announcing Clearbank was an interesting one but um but yeah what do you guys think i mean i was watching the england-serbia game last night and you know clearbank is popping up on the advertising boards going around going around this shows how boring i am right i'm watching the football we're playing really well and i'm still like oh look which fintechs are advertising um that's a fair point though there was a period where we were like oh my god like they've got a tube ad and now like you know clearbank and pension b and the England football team yeah it's just crazy like fintech's gone

49:06I love the caveat that it's for your kids. I watch cartoons. I'm a black sheep. I mean, I'm a bit, you know, but it starts with an advert for Monzo and then goes immediately into Revolut. I find that quite funny in every scene. It does that. I think ClearBank is so interesting obviously they've been so hugely successful if you look at their website just like the list of their clients their partners is just like a who's who list of people that have shaken up the fintech space so Tide, Alico, Wallach, Chip Kraken, Raisin, Atoro, Wealthify the list goes on so it kind of really shows I think again how again the initial vibe around fintech was like oh look it's just a fancy interface or they've got like an interesting headline promotional thing, but it's not.

49:56It's about that kind of truly digital stack that goes all the way down the stack. And I think ClearBank have been so instrumental to that. Like actually, if you had the fancy stuff at the top, but you weren't really kind of continuing that all the way down to kind of the clearing side of things, you're not going to be able to create the kind of digital experiences that customers now expect. So I think, yeah, it's so great that they've had the success that they've had. And I think, yeah, it just really reflects that fintech is about the whole stack and not just a wallet or a payment card. It's the whole thing.

50:29It's interesting as well, like the non-business bit, but the people bit. I mean, again, Nick's introduction is sort of at least three inhales of oxygen. You know, like the people who start great businesses have the potential to go and start other great businesses. you know, I think it's like say, well paid clear bank, RTGS global, but actually like, you know, founders of Monzo are now moving into other things and doing other things or Revolut or PayPal, whatever, maybe not PayPal, because that's Musk, isn't it? Went a bit off lately, didn't he? But first 10 swings were pretty effective. Isn't one of the Monzo founders doing something about alpacas or something?

51:07Oh, did I miss that? Yes, he is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of money in that, I'll be honest with you. Alpaca farming. Yeah. So it's interesting those people who are kind of a bit of a nexus for making interesting things happen like Nick. There's three gigantic organizations there that have all been the idea out of one person's brain. And that's a pretty good thing. Back to your point earlier on, David, about the cycle and having an industry or an environment that is fruitful for, hey, this is a good idea and, you know, pulling together people or resources or whatever to make it happen, then that's, it's good to see that those things are still happening.

51:49Yeah. And there's something in there about the cycle of BAS. We're not talking about the fish here, right? The banking service. And... Very important clarification. Very, every time I talk about BAS, I have to make the clarification. But actually, I mean, this is kind of the point, like, it's been a while since I've spoken about BAS. So it's been a while since we've had BAS as a topic come up on the podcast. And I think there's, it's been very rocky, I think, as he said in that message, like it's, you know, ClearBank are definitely a success story, but as anything, the industry is nowhere near as bigger as everybody was thinking was 2016.

52:17I mean, everything was going to be a bass, right? Everything would be as a service, the whole banking stack. And there are some success stories, but there've also been some slow grinding gears. And I don't think that's just in the UK. I think that's pretty much everywhere in the world. There's lots of regions that bass still isn't really a thing. um so there's something interesting and that's and that's the cycle right because all these things come in cycles i wonder what the next iteration of bass is going to be what's that next fish yeah every every sort of slice of financial services has a thing now isn't it to a certain degree whereas before it was the gigantic structures of you know the temenosses and fises of the world in that sense but um i can't say bass without thinking of uh marco from Solaris Bank.

53:02Like, you know, as far as moments from the podcast go, that was definitely one highlight from me was them inviting us to go do a live show in Berlin. And Jason trying to explain Spinal Tap references to a bunch of German bankers in Berlin. Hilarious. I'll be honest with you. Like, very, very not up on Spinal Tap references. Very, very, very good at Fussball. So there was at least a good balance there. And Spinal Tap are coming back. I know. Talk about cycles, there you go. Yeah. Spinal Tap 2 coming out on Friday, apparently. Is this a product placement? Are we being sponsored by this? No, I don't know.

53:40We'll move on.

53:40Laura Watkins:That would be great, but sadly not. All right. Our next clip is from somebody who is at the absolute forefront of driving innovation here in the UK, head of innovation at the FCA, Colin Payne. However, he has chosen something a little further from home as his standout. One of the boldest fintech innovations since 2016 didn't come from a startup, didn't come from Silicon Valley, it actually came from a central bank. In 2020, Brazil's central bank launched PIX. It was an instant payment platform that let anyone send money, anytime, anywhere, for free. All you needed was a phone number or a QR code.

54:19No fees, no delays. And within two years, it was a wild success with over 140 million people using it. That's almost the whole adult population of Brazil. Pix didn't just compete with the private sector, it outperformed it. It crushed card fees. It made peer-to-peer transfers effortless. And it gave millions of unbanked Brazilians their first real digital payments tool. Even WhatsApp pay couldn't keep up. And here's the real innovation. Pix was built by a regulator. It wasn't just about rules. It was about building public infrastructure for financial innovation. It showed the world again that regulators can drive growth.

54:56competition, and inclusion. Very cool. Thanks very much, Colin. And it's interesting, back to that point we were making earlier on around necessity. Actually, you know, if you've got lots of, you know, fake currency knocking around a system, then, or you've got no way for people to actually be involved in a financial system in any way, shape, or form, then providing basic infrastructure is an amazing thing to do. I mean, you know, parallels to the UK of like the, you know, payments sort of central body between all of the banks didn't work, did it? But in Brazil, it scaled in an amazing way. And now I think in the UK, we've got something called the NPA, the New Payments Architecture or something, which has been bubbling on for a very long time.

55:40But I think he's absolutely right to call that out. And it kind of makes sense to work as a regulator. And also full disclosure, Colin used to be my boss. And he's an amazing boss for all those listeners out there. Oh, I was hoping for some dirt there. Yeah, well, you know, that's all fine. Another beer, David? Another beer. But I think the next iteration of that is the stablecoin. I think what we're picking up on a lot is that it really is those payment rails in countries like Brazil and Latin America writ large. Now in the UK, well, in the EU, I should say, because Brexit, you've got MICA, you've got Genius coming in the US.

56:14So I think he's right to say that with the right regulatory environment, you can have a lot of innovation coming through. I just, I hope that we can do this again with AI in the UK. I know Colin is really, really pushing for it. But I don't know.

56:31Laura Watkins:I think it's just, it's really hard to get your head around the sheer scale of the numbers and the impact of PIX. Like 140 million people and almost the entire adult population of Brazil. It's like, there are very few kind of products that have that kind of cut through. I think like even those numbers, I think are out of date, like the last ones I checked for the show, I think it's more like 160 million people. It just goes up and up and up and up. Yeah, I don't know, maybe some more. I don't know. But yeah, just like a kind of only sort of impassor is sort of having a similar impact. But other than that, like, you know, this is this is mad.

57:07Laura Watkins:And the fact that it kind of comes from a regulator, like obviously that makes sense that Colin would pick this as a as a standout. But like that in and of itself coming from a regulator, not a private company is what's kind of really impressive about it as well. I wonder, I mean, we've seen it, you talk about Mbessa, but actually like geographies, there's the sort of leapfrogging as well, right? You know, actually the absence of something that, you know, sort of works actually allows you to create something that does. And often you can, you know, jump a bunch of generations of iterations because you can look at what somebody else has done in another part of the world and, you know, copy, right?

57:43It does make me wonder sometimes whether, you know, the Western world and our faster payments bubble and, you know, whether the speed of innovation is fast enough to stay ahead of where everybody else is, or whether we end up being leaped by somewhere that actually just because they can, or just because they need to means that they do, you know, like Africa is a really good example, like leaped a whole generation of, you know, digital banking on gigantic screens because, you know, who's going to carry a laptop up the, you know, top of the jungle type thing, I always found that weird actually. Again, random.

58:20I know I'm going off on a tangent like a drunken relative in the corner here often. But again, one of my highlights was going and doing FinTech Insider on stage in Rwanda, bizarrely, with Chris Skinner, non-executive director of past for 11FS. And exactly that. It was like I had like the best mobile signal halfway up a jungle going to visit the gorillas in Rwanda than I did in Norfolk, which is just weird, you know. Well, I think that's understandable, David. If you've been to Norfolk, it's understandable. It's those thick flint walls. Now, I mean, I'm so glad that we've spotlighted PICS. I think we're at such an interesting juncture, I think, in these huge markets, huge potential.

59:07Everyone talks about the US, Brazil, China, India, and they've all taken such different approaches to kind of how they're trying to push these innovations. So I think anything where Donald Trump is getting quite cross at PIX, and I think that gives you a sign that they're doing something pretty interesting. So the fact that this government-led initiative is forcing out something even as big as WhatsApp, like even WhatsApp couldn't compete with PIX, I think that tells you kind of the scale of it. And now they are looking at how they, to David's point, how they introduce a digital currency, I think they call it Drex, which I don't know, was that a Bond villain?

59:42Was that Drexler? I can't remember. Yeah, I need to think that's about. Like a WWE wrestler. Yeah, it's an interesting name choice, but maybe it means something in the local languages in Brazil. I don't know. I'm a resident Bond expert. Oh, okay. Drax from New Vegas. Drax. Drax, that's it. Of course. There we go. Anyway. We have fact checkers in the corner these days. It's quite impressive. But I think that will be, to me, that's the super exciting thing that I'm looking to see is they've got that phenomenal uptake of the Pix platform. if they could then translate that through into a digital currency, like, again, like they could leapfrog so many other countries in the world that are still just like getting their knickers in a twist about like, ooh, stablecoins.

1:00:23They could just move past it. So, yeah, I'm glad we focused on it. And how much of that is just, like you say, relentless focus on solving a problem versus, to your point of the stablecoins thing, it's like, what do we do with this technology? you know, like it's, you know, the AI bit or the stable coin bit or the, you know, blockchain bit or the, you know, like we've had the very sort of fashionista version every year of like what is hot, you know, almost like we should highlight that for the last 10 years, because it was kind of like, I don't know if you guys have all sort of witnessed this as well, but it's just the influx of people who are expert DMing you on LinkedIn about those individual things, do you know what I mean?

1:01:03So, So, you know, I feel like AI is probably like the most sort of relentlessly abused buzzword right now. But sorry. So I think there's something interesting here about why open banking has not worked in the UK, right? So it's a constant question that comes up in panels all the time. Why is banking not worked in the UK? This goes back to PIX. The difference is, it's not just the regulations. Well, very well, you can write rules and, you know, make it all of that. But if you look at Brazil, if you look at India, UPI, they put money behind it. That is what we didn't do. We didn't put money, we didn't fund it, right?

1:01:38So India and UPI subsidized by the government. And I think this is kind of the point about what happens next. If we are going to embark on trying to harness those buzzwords like AI or what's the future of open banking, the government does really need to think about how it actually funds these things. Yeah, putting standards out there and hoping the market works out, you know, sometimes works out, sometimes doesn't. But I guess there's been sort of, there has been some success to it. I think there is transactions, there is change happening. This whole business is built on it. Yes, exactly. And at least we didn't do what America is and let JP Morgan cock it all up with, you know, charging everybody out the ass for it.

1:02:20It'll be so interesting to see what happens. I was speaking about the future for the next 1000. Like, where does, yeah, where does that go? But it would be interesting because now everyone looks at PICS and thinks like, wow, amazing, how do we replicate that in our markets? But again, to go back to our previous conversation on COVID, like PICS launched in the midst of COVID. And so it had this huge driver of people using it to receive support payments from the government. So again, like you can look at, can you just lift and shift something that has been successful in one market in one moment in time?

1:02:49Really, really hard to know. so yeah yeah it's like going to the galapagos islands and going we should have really big tortoises in norfolk and it's like they've evolved specifically for there you know i would go to norfolk if there were large tortoises same i just had a big dome in the center of london though i mean you can just go see them i'll work on it guys like if uh the zoo the zoo case the literal zoo if uh if the monzo guy can get alpacas then i think i should have tortoises like uh let's see what happens. All right, next up, we have the absolute legend, Sam Moore, former 11 and host of this show as well, ex-Google and now over at Move.

1:03:28And still very much are Uncle Sam to many of us. Let's have a listen to him now.

1:03:36Hey, it's Uncle Sam. I'm recording this from San Diego at a conference I'm at back in the US. a thousand episodes. Un-freaking-believable. Congrats to all the OGs that are there. So David, Ross, Kate, Laura, Michael, just the whole crew. Honestly, this is just... Never saw it coming. Congrats, guys. Just putting out a continuously top-notch product. Biggest stories in FinTech since 2016. I'm going to go from a U.S. perspective. all the merger and acquisitions. So, T-Sys, where I used to work, First Data, you know, global payments, FIS, Fiserv. It's bonkers. It's Game of Thrones. Everybody's marrying each other and building up.

1:04:27It's just, and FinTech did it. FinTech pushed them to do that. So, there you go. U.S., FinTech. We're still behind Europe.

1:04:41Always good to hear from Sam. And yeah, cutting class and recording something at the back of the class, as always, in a random conference in San Diego. Has anybody been to San Diego? No. I hear it has a good zoo, speaking of zoos. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my entire life. Yeah, like it's like visiting America in like the 1960s. Do you know what I mean? It's like at the peak Americana, like California surfing lifestyle. That's it. Like I felt, I've never felt more British. than when visiting San Diego. And yeah, they really don't appreciate and command jokes either.

1:05:18What do you guys think? I mean, the sort of big organizations eating each other, we sort of touched a little bit on the acquisition thing earlier on, but that's definitely happening. I mean, just today, like Lloyd's and Curve, right? So, you know, FinTech being acquired or even big banks being acquired by other big banks with Credit Suisse and UBS. Like this is kind of a trend as old as financial services, right? do well, buy off the other person. There's also a huge amount of private equity activity as well all across Europe. Yeah, I think he's right to point that out, that the M &A market is on fire, particularly that mid-cap, small-cap kind of area.

1:05:56I don't know, what's the big story there? What does that mean, to your point? Do well, get acquired? Is it the story that the idea is very good, but maybe the distribution isn't there, so it needs to scale? So it needs to get a wall. See, I think the I think the model is very different in the US. Yeah. And actually, we touched on this in a show recently about kind of what's not really working with the UK or what hasn't been working with the UK system, which is that sort of recycling of entrepreneurs in the US market is like really well trodden. Like your, you know, your dream is to be bought, not your dream is to run the business for the next 50 years, you know, so actually, the quicker you can scale and sell, that's the outcome that people are kind of looking for um i think it's different here you know and actually is that a good thing is it a bad thing like i'm on the fence of you know what is a good and a bad thing it's just a different ecosystem working in a different way back to my tortoise's metaphor again oh it's tricky though isn't it because you know i was trying to think back to moments that i remember on the show and i remember i can't remember which episode it was but when simple got acquired and it just felt like this moment of like mourning well you know you had this great fintech that had built some really interesting services for customers was really starting to explore kind of some again from my advice perspective some really interesting customer problems how could solve them and then it gets acquired and you know squashed if we're honest like so yes it's interesting if you talk about you what the future trajectory is for the us as a whole market does that model actually serve it to kind of from a customer perspective like our customers are the best customer platforms going to survive or are they just going to get acquired by these enormously wealthy banks that just squash them and keep trotting out substandard journeys.

1:07:40Thank goodness for Wi-Fi on the show, but Simple was bought in 2014. So like two years before our first podcast, it was the shutting down in 2021. That's it, okay. But even then though, it touches to what you were saying earlier on around like the banks learning and developing and like actually was that a bad thing? Like because actually the amount of people who were working on simple that went into doing really big things within bbva and transforming kind of actually how that organization's culture kind of functions you know um it's it's not always the outcome that that organization would want when you put your sweat and blood and tears into a a logo or a name but um but they definitely had the the impact on the system still

1:08:29Laura Watkins:It is interesting. On this show, we kind of have these stories that come around and generally just as a kind of observer of listening in to a lot of these shows is when a big institution buys another big institution, people are like, oh, yeah, I guess it makes sense. They're doing this to merge or whatever. But to Kate's point, there seems to be a lot more of an emotive response when it's a fintech that gets acquired. Somehow they didn't succeed. And I wonder if that is a... a cultural thing of like, to your point, like in the US, the idea is to sell, but here perhaps it isn't. And then you kind of end up with that, like, oh, what did they do wrong?

1:09:08Laura Watkins:You know, which isn't necessarily the case. It's just sort of a kind of cultural thing of like, oh, if you've sold out, you didn't quite hit your goals in some way, which is kind of interesting. Well, it depends on why the person who's buying the company is doing it. Yeah, why they want you, I guess. Yeah. yeah and weirdly you know through the years you end up with different and like say sort of being in the ecosystem you sort of hear different things about people trying to buy people just to stop them versus um you know to really advance their own agenda but um but yeah naming your names um but yeah but it is interesting like how that this kind of m &a train is kind of every week our inboxes fill up with like press releases about this kind of thing and just like from every stage.

1:09:57Laura Watkins:So in talks to, rumor has it that this is happening all the way up until it actually does. And that's kind of interesting as well. So like just the sheer idea that someone might be looking to buy someone else is newsworthy. It's kind of an interesting kind of, you know, view of where we are in the industry as well. Yeah, and I guess the other angle on that as well is like your brain gets a bit warped to numbers. You know, like actually, the stuff coming out with, Lloyd's and Curve now where theoretically rumors are all to be believed that it's going to cost them somewhere about$110 million to acquire all of that capability.

1:10:32In your head you're like, well$110 million is a fucking lot of money. So that team have created a business that actually one of the biggest banks in the UK thinks will transform them. That's an amazing achievement but you kind of almost need to remember some of the lineage of what's gone into, you know, what has simple changed in BBVA or, you know, five years from now, how much different will Lloyds be because of the acquisition of Curve, you know? But...

1:11:04Laura Watkins:We need to start measuring in commerce banks again. Yes. Or a different ruler. We need to pick one. Feel free to send suggestions in. Podcasts at 11fs.com. All right. Our next clip is from somebody who was on the very first episode of Fintech Insider. So we've had to invite her back to give her thoughts. Sophie Gibbord, strategic sparring partner and building alpha. 1 ,000 episodes. Congratulations, guys. I vividly remember this very first episode that we did in 2016 with Ana Herrera, David and Jezan on Brexit. So much has happened since then. My key points would be Crypto, of course, that changed the way financial services and markets operate forever by challenging the way they were operating in the past.

1:12:00There is, of course, open banking that put people back in power with their financial data and payments and roll out from Europe through the world. But neobanks that were back then a gimmick or mentioned as being potentially a gimmick. And now Monzo, Revolut, Nubank have proven the contrary. And finally, Embedded Finance enabling any organizations to offer financial services to their users, whether they are a bank or not, and becoming a big part of the revenues of those organizations. So I would cheer you guys and here come the next 1000. Thank you. Very, very cool. Super, super Miss Sophie and Anna, actually, both of them.

1:12:55Like both like fountains of knowledge in fintech, but so non-fussed by all of it. You know, I mean, it's like Sophie was running Fidor and just like the most chill person in the entire world. It was kind of crazy. But yeah, so nice to have both of them right from the beginning. I think Anna actually broke that we were starting a business right at the beginning. I can't remember which one. Maybe Bloomberg or somewhere that she was?

1:13:23Laura Watkins:Bloomberg, no, I think she was at Writers. Okay, there we go. But yeah, scooping since the beginning. So yeah, definitely the sort of crypto side of things we touched on a little bit earlier on. It's kind of been a constant drumbeat of like, you know, gaining momentum, hemorrhaging value, gaining value, hemorrhaging credibility, bringing credibility. You know, there's a sort of an interesting cycle with the crypto thing. I feel like a lot of like the really crazy crypto people are now AI experts. So like the people who are remaining are actually doing interesting things, aren't they? Yeah, there's been a clear out, right?

1:13:55I'm happy she raised crypto actually, because we haven't discussed it yet. And it just is this thing that just refuses to die. And it's, I mean, I made a decision very early on my career that like, I was involved in crypto startup many many many years ago and i was like you know what i don't get this this is too complicated i i don't i don't understand what all this programmatic algorithmic stuff is so i'm going to back out but it is it is incredible right it just and now it's so it's so political right i mean my crypto portfolio is doing great all four grand of it doing really really good but you're seeing institutions now really take this seriously and you know launch their own funds off the back of it launch their own treasury solutions off the back of it um But I don't know where it goes in the future.

1:14:38It's just still so volatile, right, as a thing. I think, I mean, I have very little expertise on crypto, but I think one of the projects that I'm most grateful to have had the opportunity to work on in my, you know, when we're not doing the podcast, we do cool things on the sort of ventures consultancy side as well. Wait, what? We need what? And I had the opportunity to work with a fairly substantial stablecoin provider at one point and speaking to people that were using, their product and their services and meeting people in LATAM, in Africa that were using this platform. And I think we sometimes are a bit guilty of having a very sort of Western-led attitude towards some of these things.

1:15:16In those markets, we have grown up expecting our currency to remain very stable. We've grown up in very stable currency environments. Whereas if you speak to someone in Argentina, actually their history with money is completely different and And their understanding of how you can expect a currency to behave is completely different. So I think obviously there's still a long way for crypto to go. But I think the impact it has had for customers in some parts of the world has been game changing. You can actually put money into a currency, into a stable coin and have confidence that it will keep its value.

1:15:48Which for some people is genuinely life changing in markets where the main national currency can fluctuate hugely from week to week. So yes, I'm not really sure what the kind of concluding point of that is. sorry prosecco it's important but crypto is important and it's not going away we've not quite cracked it but it's already changed lives from people around the world and i think it's it's going to have more more impact but what was one of the things that come up is we what's going to happen in the next thousand episodes and i'm sure crypto will be a big part of that yeah those fluctuations are like a thing that we don't really understand you know i've got a i've got a 500 billion note from Zimbabwe on my desk at home.

1:16:26And it's like, I sort of use that as a reminder of like, we think we know stuff, but we don't, you know what I mean? As in like, imagine you wake up one morning, your savings have just gone. You've not done anything wrong. You've not messed anything up. You've not gone on a big McDonald's splurge or whatever. Your money's just gone. Yeah. It's not, it's not, it's not physically gone. The number is still there it's just that number is now worth nothing yeah just like so like i'm used to the zero balance thing after whatever you know like but but actually um you know the reality of like things being not worth what you thought they were anymore like that's kind of a weird thing but actually to your point you know i have actually experienced that in the crypto space like you know i've kind of gone, I think it was 2018, 2017, XRP.

1:17:16When all in. Like when, like not, not quite all in because we could afford to have kids like, you know, but, but pretty in like pretty in. Fuck. Like that went, that went bad for a really long time to a point where, you know, I'd written off. I'm not going to say how much money, but I'd written off all of that Did you contemplate selling the children? Yeah, at least they can survive on one kidney. So, you know, all the vital organs had gone already, you know, but, but, fuck, it's worth a lot of money now. Like, and actually, so there's something in the old mentality to, you know, older markets, like the, you know, the most successful investment is the one you forget about, right?

1:17:58That's the mentality for that. I don't think that's true if you put it in some shit coin, though, you know, like, I I think there's still staples of crypto that make this make certain sense because there's got to be longevity and legitimacy behind the businesses that are there. But also it helps if they win a really big case against the SEC. You're right. Bitcoin has logic, even if it is just an algorithm. It does have logic. There's scarcity, minor, you know, the difficulty increases. All of that gamification makes sense. but some random like, I don't know, doge or like whatever Trump's latest shell is like, stay away.

1:18:34Yeah. But it would be interesting to think of if we hadn't bothered doing the podcast and spent the money that we spent on that zoom on Bitcoin, like what would have that netted by the end of now? I was mining this stuff. I mean, I was like, I was burning through, you know, video cards and desperately trying to get as much of it as I possibly could. And then, And yeah, I sort of sold it when it was like 50 bucks, you know. Yeah. I think the best thing is to give up all hope on it and then be surprised 10 years later. So, you know, I am going to have a ceremonial, I told you so, Sarah, like my wife, who was like, yeah, you fucked up there, didn't you?

1:19:09And I was like, long game. Let's see what happens. HODL. Look at me now. Look at me now. Anyway. All right. We are never short of a big hitting CEO here at Fintech Insider. And our final clip is from Romy Savona, who is the founder and CEO over at PensionBee and 11FS Hall of Famer as well. And we wanted to end with her as she makes such an impactful point that really sums up everything that we've discussed here today.

1:19:36Laura Watkins:The most impactful moment since July 2016 has been the realization that fintech is finance. Companies that were challenging traditional financial services have now gone public, scaled to billions in assets, and weathered multiple market cycles, all in under a decade. We've seen this shift play out dramatically in the retirement services industry, where we are proud to have set the standard for digital-first experiences, transparent fees, and actually putting the customer in control. And we've seen this across the fintech space broadly. Innovative ideas have staying power because they work for consumers.

1:20:18Laura Watkins:So I don't think the most impactful moment has been a single breakthrough as much as a track record. In the last 10 years, we've proved that when you build something people actually need and you do it well, the market reshapes around you. A hundred percent, right? I mean, it's very similar to what we had from Stripe, you know, the conversation earlier on. it's like, do things people want and it all works out, doesn't it? And then the terminology changes around it. Like, you know, you know, I mentioned earlier, we no longer really hear about bass so much. I mean, you hear these things like embedded finance, like bass, open banking to an extent as well coming up as themes, almost almost because people don't really kind of understand them.

1:20:59And maybe FinTech is a little bit like that. But eventually, it sort of melts away as I go, this is just finance, this is finance. There is technology behind it. But of course, we have technology, technology needs to power finance. So maybe there is a day when fintech as a term just sort of dies because it's no longer necessary. Do you know what? It's weird actually. So I'm off to Money 2020 in, we are actually, in the Middle East next week. Oh, you've not mentioned that at all in the last week. Yeah. Look, it's raining in London. It's sunny there. I'm happy. But it's funny, I've started putting on my slides now.

1:21:31It's like, we've been talking about this for a decade, but these messages have still not landed with everybody, which is that view that many people have just re-orchestrated the way that they did something rather than leaning into the opportunities that are ahead of them. And I think often that is what separates the fintech players versus the incumbents, which is kind of first principle thinking and building up from the ground up and the potential that actually is there with technology or with regulation or with whatever that, you know, opportunities are in front of you versus this is how we've done it.

1:22:07And this is how we've been successful in the past. And I kind of feel like the message is sort of, I remember Jason saying about three years in is like, board is saying the same thing now, like board is saying the same thing. And it's like, yeah, but by the time you're bored about saying it, it's probably settling in with the first row. And like five years in, it's the second row and seven years in, it's the fifth row. when, you know, I kind of feel like those messages are landing now. So I do feel slightly like my standard keynote is turning into a sing-along at this stage. But yeah, the messages are still resonating, which is good.

1:22:44All right, guys. Finally, we're going to try and wrap up things because, I mean, how do you summarize 10 years of amazing contributors and all of the things that we've covered, all of the stories, all of the acquisitions, all of the raises, all of the hires, all of those things. but what do you think is missing from your perspective what stands out as the the fintech moment that still deserves a a quick shout out um you've got to kind of chuck that in if you want if you've got a moment as a listener that you think we've missed feel free to deal with me and tell me we've fucked up but um anything from everybody in the room i mean we've not talked at all about like super apps um buzzword bingo i suppose but yeah just the emergency we've talked a bit about latin a bit about africa we've not really touched on asia so much but you know some of the platforms that have emerged in China, in Alipay, Grab.

1:23:35We spoke to an amazing company in the Philippines. There's just some phenomenal platforms that have been built in those markets that have not started maybe with an initial hook in financial services, but have used that to build out this phenomenal experience for customers that encompasses so many other parts of their lives. And so now what we're seeing is other markets looking at that and sort of thinking like, oh, we want a piece of that pie. um so yeah we've not really talked about that but before i don't have time to say there's there's weird sort of like moments as well like you remember when australia tried to resist apple pay that was weird like they were like yeah no we're not doing it and then they are so you know just shows apple they're gonna power through everything aren't they in that way but and even apple pay i remember i think it was um sharon on the podcast sharon odea being like the biggest advocate for Apple pay on everything and actually feeling like trepidation about using it the first few times because we're really British and we're scared about being rejected by anything aren't we so but yeah it's weird all of those moments over the last 10 years that have kind of led us to here really yeah I mean I just want to pick up on what you were saying about us going to Riyadh next week for example so for me Kate's gonna swing for you in a minute carefully I mean stuck at home in dreary britain whilst you guys are sunning yourselves in riyadh i'm not better at all to your point kate about like you know latin america and emerging markets i have been i mean we've had great privilege of working within a lot of incredible countries in the middle east here we've done for example we wrapped up a project recently in georgia and i've been out to jordan um once to to run a series of workshops constantly impressed by the pace of innovation development and the kind of drive in that region to to do some cool stuff comes back to the point about like leapfrogging the regulators are also doing some really really interesting things so it's an incredibly dynamic region um that's sort of middle classing i don't know if that's a thing very fast so gentrifying i think might be the posher word i don't know lots of sort of hipster cafes coming in like all over riyadh i don't know but yeah the middle east that's my thing yeah i

1:25:38Laura Watkins:mean it's interesting when i when i sort of was thinking about the show and starting to ask people for their their moment they're obviously a lot cleverer than me and they haven't come up with a moment and they have come up with a general theme and a sort of trajectory of what the industry is kind of been leading towards sort of as Romy was saying like actually changing people's perceptions that fintech is just finance like it's it's you know it's maybe done in a slightly different way but it is it is this kind of relationship we have with money but yeah so because of that I was kind of surprised that some like key individual moments uh weren't chosen just things that from working on the show like just ran the headlines for absolutely ages some of which uh would be like wire card scandal.

1:26:16Laura Watkins:That was enormous. The amount of players kind of, you know, impacted by that, but also dragged into that whole mess like that went on for ages and ages. That was enormous. The whole SVB collapse on both sides of the Atlantic and how that was kind of... You know what, Laura, we didn't talk about SVB. I mean, you're right. I was genuinely expecting these to come up when I put the call out for input and we did not get these. I'm surprised. But we did talk about M &A more broadly, which obviously that touches on. This is the point, right? Exactly. Like this industry does not stand still. That is why we're on a thousand episodes, because there is so much for us to talk about all of the time.

1:26:53Laura Watkins:Even if it feels like we're saying the same things, we're usually saying them with a different lens of here we are in 2025 or 24 or wherever, and things have changed. This is the new take on it. Even if, you know, as you're saying, it sounds like we've been kind of banging the same drum for a while, but different people are responding to it in different ways, which always gives us something new and something exciting to talk about on this show. It's mad. Every time, as you said at the beginning, there's a phenomenal team behind the scenes who do so much to make the podcast run. And every time the next edition of the show notes drops, I kind of open up thinking like, oh, surely there won't be that much this week.

1:27:31I've not heard that much. I'm like, oh my gosh, so much has happened. So yeah, as you say, it never sleeps. It never sleeps. And on that note, it's probably a good place to sort of wrap. But I guess looking a little bit ahead, like, you know, a thousand episodes in, so much covered, so many news stories, so many different people to sort of hold the candle for fintech in the various different parts of the world that we've covered it. Where do you think we're going to get in the next thousand? Where do we get to? DBG, this is a hospital pass of throwing the first question to you here, my friend.

1:28:06But where are we going to get to? What do you mean? As in, like, where does the industry get to? Yeah. Yes. I've had two beers for this. Two beers is a lot for me now with all the children I have at home. I would like to see, I think, David, you made the point that there is still a gulf between a lot of incumbent banks and fintech. And I would like to see somehow the big crazy question of what do we do with infrastructure? Because that's always been the block. If you work in any one of these big banks, you know what needs to happen. It's the how. And it is a multi-billion dollar question that no one has really solved.

1:28:54There is maybe a sense that agentic AI can come in and start automating some of these workflows, taking costs out, and they can solve that problem. So I think there's a story there about infrastructure and costs with agentic AI in there somewhere. But I think that's the gap, which I think you quite rightly flagged. Cool. Lots of huge amounts of opportunity in that. At least 10 years of development, for sure. Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, very selfishly what the question is about the next thousand episodes of Fentac Insider. So, personally, I'm just going to float. I think we should continue focusing globally.

1:29:28I think we should focus on lots of exciting tropical markets that we need to go and record episodes in. personally very interested in you know latam africa asia so i think you know if we could go do some shows in those markets i think that'd be great so kate wants to travel laura i want to escape the children yeah laura yeah no i think it's an interesting point i think what's interesting

1:29:52Laura Watkins:is like how many more markets we're talking about now and i think like kind of to your point around like you know when you first start the front row are listening and you gradually take it through the auditorium. I think it'll be interesting in the next thousand episodes of like which new markets start becoming leaders. Who are we speaking to? Who are the like the standout guests we want to get on from new companies that don't even exist yet? And where are they in the world? I think like there's been such an opening up even, you know, since the years that we've been doing this thing. It'll be really, really interesting to see where the next kind of hubs are, the kind of type of company that is the new stripe or whoever, like the new sort of standout leaders.

1:30:34Laura Watkins:And yeah, if it's taken nine years to get this far, like in nine years time, I literally don't know what that can be. But that's the exciting bit, I think. There's like just so much more still to come. What about you, David? I don't really know. I'll be honest. Like, I wouldn't have known a thousand episodes ago where we were today, really. You know, like the industry has changed so much. Like the people doing things where organizations are, the scale of valuations, the impact people expect, like, kind of all of these things have changed so dramatically that actually, any guests that I could have 1000 episodes from now would probably be completely and utterly wrong.

1:31:13That's probably the most exciting thing about this, you know, we not wanting to kind of say it, but it's like, we talk about digital banking being 1 % finished, I still think we are like, actually, I still think as an industry, given the pace of change and all the things that are happening and all of the amazing opportunities that befit all of the startups that will start up from here to then, like that's a amazing thing to kind of look at. So it's, yeah, it's fun. It's and it lovely to work in an industry that hasn't stopped. Like that's an amazing thing to experience because it's kind of like a gigantic, fast-flowing water rapids.

1:31:52Like, you know, you either get on board and figure out how to paddle or you're fucked, right? And that's probably the biggest advice we can give to anybody out there in plainest terms. It's figure out where you're fucked. Keep paddling. Indeed. As always, if you want to join this conversation or share your top moment from what has shaped your fintech journey since 2016, you can find us on social media at 11FS or Fintech Insider or email us on podcasts at 11fs.com. Right, what we're going to be doing here is marking the end of the show. Let's do what any good birthday demands, cut a very special Fintech Insider cake and pop open a bottle of fizz to toast another thousand episodes of leading fintech conversations, innovation and disruption.

1:32:37Cheers to the journey ahead. Cheers.

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