Bonus: Shaping the future of finance: Derek White on big banks, bold moves and building at Galileo

25:02Derek White:Indeed. If only every business was a single person business, but where would be the fun in that? All right, guys, we're going to take a real quick break and we'll be back to you very shortly.

25:14Derek White:Hey, folks, David Breer here, CEO of 11FS. Here's something you might not know about me. I get a lot of people trying to impersonate me online. Fake profiles, scam emails, the lot. And a big part of that comes from data brokers, hundreds of them, quietly collecting and selling your personal information. Your phone number, email, home address, job title, all out there and all fueling identity theft, scam calls, and spam. If you've ever searched your own name online, hands up, who hasn't? You'll know how exposed you really are. That's why we've partnered with Incogni. They contact 230 plus data brokers and tell them to delete your information properly and legally under GDPR and CCPA.

25:57Derek White:Doing it yourself would take hundreds of hours. Incogni automates the whole thing and keeps working with repeat removal requests if your data reappears. I tried it and within days saw brokers deleting my data. You can even protect your family members too. Fintech Insider listeners get 60 % off an annual plan. Just head to incogni.com slash fintechinsider and use code fintechinsider. And yes, it's risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee. You'll find the link in the description.

26:45Derek White:pro Bewerbung und sind jederzeit flexibel. Jetzt Termin vereinbaren auf StepsDown.de slash alljobs. StepsDown. Einfach die richtigen Talente finden für alle Jobs.

27:15Derek White:intertwined in terms of actually what you guys are doing sort of shape what the industry are doing in that regard so i i guess what what sort of emerging trends are you seeing at the moment um you know we we feel like there's a there's a million things happening but what really sort of stands out as the the changes that you're seeing that actually you guys as is galileo are kind of

27:37David M. Brear:leading the charge on yeah obviously the biggest uh impact megatrends super cycles that are uh impacting right now are AI, stablecoin, and crypto mainstreaming in the United States is huge. Huge. And then quantum and security and fraud around these new advances in technology are all three major areas where we're designing the future to be able to enable our clients to build businesses for their customers.

28:21Derek White:It's interesting, isn't it, when you start talking about, you know, everybody talks about quantum in an isolated sense, but the combination of quantum computing and artificial intelligence, it's just a, and with everything being, you know, truly cloud, not in a, you know, we've migrated some data sets here and there, but fundamentally everything is working in that way. I mean, we're operating in a completely different world, aren't we? I think the artificial intelligence one is fascinating. There's so much happening in that space. I mean, I know we've talked about this before, but when things start to hit normal consumers and everybody's, I think everybody's auntie at this stage knows what ChatGPT is, then it feels like actually, you know financial services has a an even deeper place to play in in the advancements around that do you think that sort of touches a little bit on your point earlier on where um we're talking about trust of engagement with consumers you know that's trust from a experiential level but that's trust at a security level as well isn't there so there's there's lots of opportunities to

29:22David M. Brear:change the fabric of financial services there absolutely is you know the the impact on every AI impact on every human interaction. And what used to take 3, 7, 10, 30 interactions can now happen in one. That collapse of interactions into a singular interaction is phenomenal. It's absolutely phenomenal. And it's really exciting to see the light bulbs and the light up of people as they see the impact of how powerful AI can be to help them in their lives and a powerful tool to guide them and to help them and to be at their service, if you will. And those that are harnessing it at the fastest pace are really seeing the benefit of it, both within companies as well as individually, individual the antis as you said um it's it's um it's that's exciting to see but then yeah how how that then collapses if you just look at that interaction collapse if you will from 30 to 1 as an example trust is built through interactions and the way trust has been built historically is changing and will continue to dramatically change as we evolve in this adoption of AI as just one example.

30:59David M. Brear:And then how we protect that and how, you know, voice print and authentication, how do we ensure that customers' money is protected, that it's safe and secure? that's really important as we move forward as as ai is is it creates the ability to do deep fakes in ways that have not been done before so ensuring that we have the right security around our interactions to build trust yeah that's right at the very heart of it yeah it's worrying for

31:31Derek White:anybody who's got i don't know maybe a thousand podcasts out there of his voice every like that's It's a daily worry of being replicated or, you know, the nefarious reasons that people can use that content for. It's quite terrifying, really. But I guess, you know, embedded finance has been a trend that's been around for a little while. But as you say, you know, it's really getting to a scale now when you talk about the scale of customers. I mean, you guys are powering up people like Dave and Monzo. And what do you think is sort of people are still not quite getting about embedded finance? Because when you see organizations that previously would have built their own capability or done things, going to organizations that they trust to use their infrastructure to get to market quicker, that feels like a big change in the industry in terms of where we're at.

32:23Yeah, the big change in, and it depends on the geography that you're in, what's absolutely essential for any embedded finance and not to get boring,

32:39David M. Brear:but it's the license to operate. so I operated a business in China at one point in time and in China during the kind of thousand flowers bloom internet cycle or internet company cycle that they were in 020 offline to online businesses there was a huge demand that the companies were allowed to create this kind of P2P world but there were only 27 companies that actually had licenses and there were about 1100 companies that were enabling the money movement well overnight that was shut down and so having the appropriate licenses to be able to operate regardless of where where you operate in the world whether it's in asia europe africa or the united states having that license is important built on top of the licenses then the technology then built on top of that is the end user experience and how does that end user experience come together and how is it enabled through these technologies in a safe and secure way that can be regulated and protected is really, really important.

33:52Yeah.

33:53Derek White:I mean, you touch on those sort of layers, and I guess I'm always a big believer, and you touched on this earlier on with your point around how long does it take to ship, but your infrastructure and the sort of infrastructure around financial services is often the thing that inhibits. But actually in a technologically enabled world and using players like yourself, then actually the ability to ship things quickly, that infrastructure looks and feels and produces very different outcomes, doesn't it? It's not a, you know, no longer is it the nine months to have the meeting, it's how many months to get the product into the hands of consumers, you should say.

34:31Derek White:So, I mean, how does that feel different? Is it a, it's less, you know, tech people doing tech stuff. It's more operating model impacting, isn't it?

34:42David M. Brear:It's operating model impact, but then the builders, the builders are able to build faster. And it's not just engineers anymore. It's the builders are able to build. And business leaders understanding and being able to direct AI are able to actually create and build and ship at a pace that has not existed before. Yeah, it used to be that I'll never forget in one of the financial institutions, I think we've shared this before, but one financial institution I worked at once upon a time would sit down and say, these are our top three priorities. They'd pick one priority. Okay, here's our top priority.

35:17David M. Brear:And I remember going into a meeting and they said, can you help us with this? I said, sure. Where are you in the process? Well, we've spent the last three, six months giving birth to a PowerPoint, like you said, nine months to do a presentation. Well, if it's any level of priority, we use this methodology that I've used it in various companies called the 369, which is if it's a priority, you should have the equivalent of three days to identify or three minutes to identify who's the team that needs to be involved in it. Six minutes, six days, six weeks, depending on the cycle of your company, to ship your MVP or your proof of concept.

36:01David M. Brear:Or your prototype. And nine minutes, nine weeks, nine days, nine months at most to ship. But it's all changed. AI's changed who can build, who can create, who can ship. It's changed the pace at which we can create, ship. and it's opening up entirely new opportunities and experience levels of integrating, not just browsing, then clicking, then finding, then buying. It's verbal, all-in-one collapse of interactions into one experience. Yeah.

36:46Derek White:It feels like with that and that customer experience changing, you know, actually you get into a world where, you know banks are to your point around the financial instrument banks are defined and designated through their regulatory capability you know and the monolithic technologies that are underpinned by those things and you know those things get exposed to consumers but but often what we're seeing is the the the fintechs that are having the the biggest impact around the world are the ones that are kind of breaking down those silos and actually it was something that you guys did earlier on this year, you did a launching of the co-branded debit card program, which actually then started to expose things that were usually reserved for credit card users, but for debit users, because actually people want those benefits, but they don't always want to use these things.

37:37Derek White:So breaking down those barriers feels like it's a big part of this next generation of financial services, doesn't it? It's no longer the big monoliths. It's giving people the capabilities that actually lets almost the consumer consume them in the way that they want to.

37:54David M. Brear:Yeah, it's the breaking down and then the reassembly in the new way that the fintechs are doing. They're rebuilding and recreating the financial experience, the financial infrastructure, as you highlighted, to be able to provide end users their customers' value. And yeah, what we've seen is that as major brands in every company around the world is looking at the value of their customer and how technology is impacting the loyalty and the trust of their customer, we found that many of these huge brands that everybody knows, that have hundreds of millions of loyal customers and immense data troves on their customers to understand the true unit economics of the loyalty of their customers, they're searching for ways to deepen that loyalty.

38:53David M. Brear:And as they start to look at deepening that loyalty, you start to get some real nuggets of information that are incredibly powerful. And the most powerful of all, David, for me, one data point is that 30 % of people what we refer to as the point of decision not the point of purchase the point of decision because a consumer walks up and they have to decide instantaneously what instrument they're going to use to to to buy when they're on these huge travel and entertainment companies with hundreds of millions of customers at that point of decision 30 percent of them are buying airline tickets. 30 % of them are checking into hotels.

39:42David M. Brear:30 % of them at point of retail are using debit cards. And in the United States, we're a rewards economy. And 30 % of those people aren't getting rewards for what they're using at their point of decision for point of purchase. So simply addressing that and identifying that as an area of opportunity where you got mega brands with hundreds of millions of customers, customers using their, at the point of decision, 30 % of them are not getting the rewards associated with the brands that they love. You just simply bring it together and unit economics that work and you create solutions that are pretty exciting for the end user.

40:20Derek White:Yeah. And doing something that brings loyalty to be a holistic thing, not just a mono product piece, then it feels like that again, the customer really benefits. I mean, the response to that must have been significant.

40:32David M. Brear:It's been remarkable. Yeah. And more to come. More to come. Let's put it that way.

40:40Derek White:Sounds good. Well, I feel like there's some foreshadowing of product development that's going to come there. We'll get you back on to talk about that more as that develops.

40:47David M. Brear:Yeah, I think it's just fair to say the big brands are seeing what Apple and others have done. You know, Google tried Google Pay four times. Apple has done well with building loyalty by extending into financial services and from a product company into services. And so as you move into services, what is one of the services that people start to explore? Financial services. And if you've got a big brand with hundreds of millions of customers, there's opportunities to monetize and build loyalty through additional services that are embedded and or connected to your brand.

41:19Derek White:One thing sort of strikes me, Derek, with your career is, and I was, whenever we chat, I always do ask you, I'm like, where in the world are you now? Because you know, you're always, you've always been moving around. I know you're like, say you're at home now, which is great. And, you know, being able to do this in your, in your hometown is a different feel to it. But, but you've been, I mean, you've been a tech ambassador for London, you've worked in all over the world for different, like, is the sort of culture of those environments different because often you know the the regulatory capability the investor climate the uh the the smart people to do things you know there's there's often different variables in different geographies have you have you seen any sort of noticeable difference across it or is uh people just people and you know it's about uh how you get the best out of them yeah um ultimately people

42:13David M. Brear:love to be connected. They love to be connected to something, to someone, and each one of us likes varying levels of connectivity. Understanding that at a very human level, each one of us is very, very, very different. David and Derek may share a similar hairline. I can't pull off the beard like you can, brother. But we're different. We're different and we embrace that and we We recognize that. One of the institutions that I happened to work for, that was a$70 billion market cap institution, happened to have a couple of CEOs that were incredibly different. One was an extreme extrovert. One was an extreme introvert.

42:57David M. Brear:And what's wonderful to see, regardless of where you are in the world, and yes, there's wonderful, incredible cultural differences across Latin America versus Africa versus Europe and Asia and the United States. And those are, for me, I love to see those wonderful differences. But the one thing that's common is that everybody loves to be connected and understanding that we're all different and unique is really important. And if we all like to be connected to some kind of purpose, to some at a very human level. That comes from outside of work in connecting in some way to something or some purpose.

43:49David M. Brear:And then having a connection to purpose at work is really important. But then once there's that connection and the greater that connection and belief, then it comes down to creating. And creating value, creating shipping product, creating capabilities and that is common that if there's one thing that the human spirit is constantly seeking is the next thing and what is that next opportunity and how do we connect people to be able to capture and create that next opportunity but boy you struck a memory by simply mentioning the tech ambassador days with Boris and some of the and Boris and Eileen and Saul and Russ and a whole bunch of the people in London.

44:40David M. Brear:London's a thriving and such an amazing geographical, concise, brilliant connection of people, unlike almost any other place on the planet, with the government, with the tech hubs, with the financial hub and the educational hubs, all within the geography that's located there. It's a pretty special place. And I love my seven years and two different stints on the island there.

45:16Derek White:Well, I'd hate to take you away from your home, but I hope we get to lure you back to London at some point just to see what you think now. But I mean, before we wrap up, we get a lot of listeners, big banks around the world. It's a pretty tough gig, You know, like making things happen, you know, staying resilient, making those big transformations happen in banks. I mean, what would be the advice you would give to somebody in one of those roles? You know, how do you stay focused? How do you make a significant impact on a big legacy infrastructure organization?

45:52David M. Brear:Number one is understand that it's a publicly listed company and that they have targets and metrics, which they will all know are measured on a regular basis. But one of the most powerful things is to look at what are the financial metrics and the non-financial metrics and identify the real metrics that can drive transformation outside of the financials, the non-financials, the strategic metrics. And what are the underlying triggers or the signals that can influence those non-financial metrics that are then multi-layered that will ultimately impact the financial results. And identify what is it, number one, what the customer wants.

46:44David M. Brear:The customer and end human user. What is it that they want? What is it that they need? And how can you ship something to them that's going to influence and change the way that they operate? and that can be either the client, the customer or the end employee. Depending on where you sit in transformation in the big bank, if you're looking to transform risk, look at it and say, what processes are there that are being done today that could be done by AI? And how can we as a risk and compliance team use AI to transform the way we're driving and managing and controlling the business? and look at not just the team, but look through to the end financials, end to end.

47:32David M. Brear:Look at the end user, look at the technology like AI that can be brought in to help them. Look end to end at what the financial impacts can be.

47:41Derek White:Yeah. I've said, I've been talking, I always kind of find talking out loud is how I work most effectively with people and having conversations and learning by speaking. You know, like it sounds, I think it says more about my ability to type and write than it does about my speaking ability, quite frankly. But I find I've been drawn quite recently to the differences between sort of motivation and discipline. Because actually, I think many big organizations seek continual motivation, when actually, what they need is more discipline. And the things that actually you've referred to, you know, the 369, like that setting, like a metronome sets the cadence for an organization what is expected to be achieved by when that for me is like the the discipline to achieve the outcome whereas the motivation is just the the next hot thing it's the next exciting thing it's the next you know keynote speech or whatever but the real the real magic as you say is from shipping it's from making things happen it's from impacting the consumer isn't it and it's it's interesting how that that shift has happened from you know we don't need any more TED Talks.

48:53Derek White:We need the sort of celebrations for the people who make things happen.

48:59David M. Brear:Yeah, I totally agree with you. Looking at how to best, and my mind's racing with three or four different thoughts at once here, so I'm in a similar boat with you, David, that the impact of how to best help organizations and people and discipline. What was it? Discipline versus motivation, you said. I think a lot of large institutions want to create an amazing culture and they want to have the right discipline, but sometimes they'll get, especially publicly listed companies, will be crippled with the challenge of meeting their quarterly targets, that sometimes they'll install discipline that doesn't necessarily drive the motivation.

50:02David M. Brear:And it's the wrong disciplines. And it's the disciplines that create the controls and protect the existing business. but institutionalizing. I was talking with the CEO just this morning, actually. And they're a great company, multi-billion dollar publicly listed company. And they are great at acquiring companies. They're good at integrating companies. But they're horrible at building product and shipping capability. So to your point of wanting, there's a desire, there's a motivation, There's a desire to create that motivation. But the discipline, finding that magic of the discipline of shipping product organically within institutions and companies to be able to do that, it's a real challenge because you have to bring together so many factors.

50:57David M. Brear:But when it happens and you get that machine humming and it is moving from country to country and compounding and you've got thousands of people creating synchronously and operating in discipline and the discipline is educating. The educating is motivating because the people feel like they're learning and then they feel that they're shipping. And then the shipping is turning into adoption and adoption is turning into financials. And then the financials gives them more money to be able to do more things. Oh, that's magic.

51:28Derek White:Well, I mean, that's motivating in itself right there. But I guess for me, it's that cycle, like you say, it's so intoxicated. I mean, what comes next for Galileo then? I mean, with that and with this machine sort of tinkering of moving these things forwards and listening, like what comes next for you guys? Because I mean, this growth trajectory has been huge. You know, where do you want to get to next?

51:53David M. Brear:Well, a big part of what we do, Galileo, number one, we power SoFi, our parent company. And the wave of new product innovation that's coming through SoFi is pretty exciting in a number of different ways. Two is we're a platform where we serve, as I mentioned, hundreds of millions of end users and clients. and we're looking at capturing ways for them to evolve and build that into our platform. The keys for us are making sure that we're creating a platform that is secure, that is connected, and that is high speed because that's the future of infrastructure. We are the platform that we want builders to build on and to be able to ship product and ship capabilities that can be monetized and create value for end customers.

52:48Derek White:Very cool. Very cool. it's going to be amazing to see as it grows more and more. And yeah, you've achieved so much in the first four and a bit, well, nearly four years. Like, it's going to be amazing to see what you do in the next four. So I'm afraid we're gonna have to wrap up the conversation though, Derek, because I feel like we could go for another three hours on one of these topics. But you'll have to come back and talk to us when you've got the next big announcement to come and shout about. But Derek White, where can people learn a little bit more about you? Where can people get in touch?

53:14David M. Brear:LinkedIn is probably the best place to hit me up. Derek White.

53:17Derek White:Yeah, as for me, LinkedIn is where I'm lurking most of these days. So if you want to find us, you can do. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. If you like what you've heard, want to share the episode with a friend, a colleague, whoever you want to really at this stage. As always, if you want to join the conversation, you can find us on pretty much every social media channel at this stage. Just search for 11FS or Fintech Insider, or if you really want to, email us on podcasts at 11fs.com. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. Goodbye.

53:47Thank you.