#123: Rupy Malizia, Chief Operating and Transformation Officer at HSBC Innovation Banking

26:56I think we're nearly... They're here. Yeah, they're here. Do you know they're here? And the reason I can say that was such excitement is because when we talk about robots, they did feel robotic. And what I'm now seeing and hearing, and clients of ours are definitely in this space, it's so human-like, Gareth. You cannot tell the difference. It's crazy. And that's quite incredible. And there's a danger side of that. So I think there's a, in a way that it's controlled and it's in the right environment, I think that's the right thing to do. But equally, I can see instances whereby you have people hacking things, you have forces, etc.

27:31They can mirror that and actually for people to be very clear about all the protocols that go around utilising those sorts of agentic AI solutions. But people are going to have to get very educated themselves around what's true and safe and what isn't true and safe. Yeah, yeah. Are you having conversations in the bank now and generally in the industry in terms of AI safety then? Because there are quite a few things that can go wrong with these bots and with other manifestations of AI in the organization. What controls can you put in place, Ruby? I think it's still early stages. For me, I'm not personally involved in those specific questions, but that is something very much that the bank is discussing and thinking about on a broader perspective.

28:12And that's a global scale within HSBC. And obviously, from a cyber perspective, we've got specialists in that space that would be versing on those matters. Yeah, sure. So let's move on over to the customer side then. I want to get your take on what's going on in terms of the startup and scale-up world in the UK right now and what you're seeing. How optimistic are you in terms of the UK from an entrepreneurial standpoint? Are you the UK being a world leader in this AI innovation wave we're going through right now? Are you seeing lots of startups, lots of exciting things happening? Is it a bit stagnant?

28:46What's going on? Yeah, I've been in this space for three years. and I'm still in this space for a reason because we're absolutely, especially for the Europe and the UK, we're at the heart of what's going on. We're number one in Europe. I think that's got to be said. There's something to be said about that. We have number one for VC investment in Europe. It's also, it's not just London. There's 40 % of VC rounds are outside of London now. So that's a significant shift in the last couple of years. We're seeing that it's blending out into the broader UK, which is great to see. And part of that is because we have a lot of universities we have great universities and we have university spin-outs now us is going to be number one along with china and though it's probably one or two whichever way around it is they're going to they're going to be dominating my personal view is that we have a lot of untapped talent within europe and within the uk and we need to have the trust and the ability to create the environment for our VC companies to obviously invest correctly, our companies, our innovation startups to have the support that they need to be able to get that investment.

29:53And also when they decide to IPO, they do that in the UK. So it's creating that environment. And I'm not close enough to the government policies on that, but creating that environment for that ecosystem, it's very much, I think we have a huge part to play on the world stage and we are number one in Europe and we can't take that away from the UK at the moment. Yeah but there are still entrepreneurs who go to America because they see that as the place where they're going to get capital where they're going to get investment where they're going to get given a chance. Are you seeing it sort of the gap close the UK is it or America still like miles ahead in terms of being the best place in the world to pursue an entrepreneurial endeavor related to technology of course.

30:36I think the gap is still big and that's my personal perspective not statistically driven It'd be difficult to say otherwise wouldn't it? Yeah it would but I give you an example Jensen and NVIDIA are investing what was it around 2 billion or something into the UK he's actually investing in one of our clients that is related to customer services behavioural science solution and so I feel optimistic that bridge with US and UK is going to help with that encouragement of investment of big names investing in our UK companies. Now, seeing that this year, for me, gives me a lot of excitement that we are going to expand further in the UK.

31:21Do I think that we could be number two to US? Yeah, I do. I do. It's going to take time. We need investors. We need our companies, collective innovation companies, to have the trust of the UK and actually be happy to do what they need to do. to get listed, to do their IPOs. And we need our VC companies and PE companies and angel investors investing in those companies that are UK-based. Yeah, yeah. And UK companies buying the services of those innovation clients because that will create that circular flywheel effect, which is super important for the UK. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What advice do you give to your sort of ecosystem then in terms of selling the B2B product in terms of penetrating big companies?

32:03Because I know from personal experience, as an SME trying to work with big companies is not easy. Do you offer any advice or anything to support them to try and acquire enterprise customers? So the brilliant thing about innovation banking in HSBC, and I'm going to be biased here, so I'm going to be quite enthusiastic about this, is we're not only a banking partner for our clients for growth through the different life stages, from early stage to venture growth, IPO to corporate, and not only have we got that international footprint so we can connect through bank, seamless banking through the world.

32:38Yeah. The third and most, I think the biggest thing for us is we are a connector within the innovation ecosystem. So we enable networking. So we create the environment. This is really something that came from SVB and they're brilliant at doing that. We've maintained that. We connect clients with VCs, with PEs, with angel investors, with government policymakers, because we're also our experts in domains within HSBC. It could be cyber, it could be data, it could be operations, whatever that is, we do make that connection. Now, that doesn't mean HSBC is going to buy the services of all our clients.

33:16That's not the case. The time and the place for everything. But to create that feedback loop, to create the insights, to share that knowledge enables our clients to understand what the challenges are of a big bank. Big banks, I feel, are now changing their approach to innovation clients and innovators and fintechs because they know that they need to probably partner with them to get to where they need to far faster. That's definitely expediating more than it has done before. And certainly I can see that in the last three years. Yeah, for sure. Can you give us an idea of what type of startups you're seeing emerge over the last couple of years?

33:55AI agent, agentic AI products seem to be popping up in a lot of places, aside from that then. But is it mostly AI stuff you're seeing, Rupi, or are you seeing anything else emerge, like green tech or anything like that? Yeah, green tech, climate tech, defense tech is obviously a big one. That's a really interesting space. I think we'll see more from the government on that as well from a defense tech perspective. If you think about it, AI, it was slow to start probably five years ago. it's paid staff, the majority of investment does go into fintechs and AI. The next one is healthcare, but it's underpinned by AI.

34:31So you can create diagnostics far, far quicker on clinical trials with AI. So that, from a human perspective, is incredibly important to speed up those trials. They can take years and years in the making, whereas AI is going to enable that to happen even faster, then you overlay quantum, that processing power of that is going to speed up everything incredibly well. So I think that healthcare is hugely benefiting from AI, and we do see that that's number two. We've got around, I think, in the UK, about 3.2 billion investment going into healthcare startups, which I think is quite phenomenal. And we've got climate tech, as I've said, defence tech, green tech.

35:13But I think for me, it's definitely the fintech, AI, health care and also defense tech in the space of conversations that are really emerging now i've got to say that the health tech use case for ai is probably the most exciting one isn't it in terms of saving people's lives and stuff i know a company who i've got an ai product which is able to see irregular sort of data points on scans like mri scans and things that the human eye just would never pick up and it's just brought forward diagnosis of certain conditions by years but it's things like that which are just really exciting isn't it it's going to lead to preventative medicine versus which is cost government so much money and individuals so much money so i think that's where i see that's where we'll move to which is much more preventative medicine yeah oh absolutely i think and bespoke treatment so in terms of having your dna data plus your lifestyle data or whatever from a wearable for your heart rate and all that so you put them together and and if you've got a condition obviously the cure will be bespoke to your circumstances your genotype etc that's the really exciting part about healthcare isn't it because we're all in certain little nuanced ways i think that's really exciting and that is the next stage of that uh you you've obviously got an interest in life sciences where does that come from ruby I have no idea.

36:36I think my husband always says to me, you're a wannabe doctor. I don't know, I just think I just have this interest because I just think it's, I think what it boils down to is how do you progress the world from a humanity perspective? And it could be anything. And I do find all of these things that are helping us move forward in life very interesting. And I think that medicine is one of the things that really does need to benefit from this. Just imagine having a top surgeon somewhere in the world that can't fly to the UK, needs to do a life-saving operation for a child or whoever it is using a robot.

37:09Yeah. Hundreds of thousands of miles away. I think that's just incredible. Yeah. No, I agree. I agree. I bet you got a wearable. Have you got one of them? I did. And an aura ring. I breathe denial about myself. So I haven't immersed myself too much personally, but I should do it. Yeah. You can get a bit obsessed with it to be fair. So we actually shout out to an ex-guest. We had Lara Lewington on, who has released a brilliant book recently called Hacking Humanity, which talks about this exact point of wearables and stuff like that. But yeah, so I definitely recommend that book. You've mentioned the Q word earlier on, so I couldn't let you off for that one.

37:46Quantum. Is it a fallacy? Is it overly ambitious? Are you seeing a manifestation of quantum computing in the banking industry? Is it being utilized? Where are we at in terms of the quantum journey in your opinion? I think it's where AI was five years ago so I think the prediction is quantum will take hold in within the next 10 years so for me on a day-to-day basis no I haven't seen that kind of really manifest itself I think it is within the next five to ten years we'll probably see quantum being utilized or being spoken about much more is not active now. It's not active now. And I do liken it to AI.

38:25It's the same space AI was in five years ago. So I think it will speed up, but I'm not seeing it from a day-to-day perspective. Yeah, of course. I think it is one of those things that we will see more and more of over the next couple of years. But this sort of confluence of AI and quantum, that is the singularity, I think. You know what I mean? That was when everything will change. But another thing I wanted to ask you about, Rupi, is I know you're a strong advocate for inclusivity and certainly within leadership. So I wanted to ask you about female entrepreneurs. Are you seeing a healthy balance in terms of the amount of new entrepreneurs?

38:55Is it still heavily weighted towards one or the other? What is your forecast and how optimistic are you about the amount of female entrepreneurs that are emerging in the UK at the moment? They're definitely there. They find it incredibly challenging to get the right level of investments. Really? I've heard many horror stories and I don't want to particularly give the specific stat because it could have changed, but it's in a very, very single digit percentile of women getting investments. And I think that we've got to be very active in that space to help support women and create the networks for them.

39:31But I think there's a perception aspect and there is also a, the products are incredible. When they get the opportunity and they do incredibly well, it's fantastic. And we should be really be applauding them, but it's not as easy as it is to their counterparts. So that's evidence-wise statistics. Yeah. That's unbelievable though, isn't it? Even now, we're still seeing that. I've always found it crazy. There was significantly less women who worked in the IT world in technology. The balance is still, it's getting better, but it's still about 70-30. And I don't know if it's something that we as a society need to improve in terms of the school, like the education system maybe or something, or maybe it's a cultural thing.

40:13from an entrepreneurial standpoint? What can we do to ensure that female entrepreneurs fulfill their potential? I think we need to give the women that have done really well the platform to have a voice at the table which influences the environment and realizing it's not an overnight fix. It's going to take some time, but not to give up. You've just got to keep pushing it forward. We're very active in that space from an innovation banking perspective. From our perspective, we don't differentiate between our clients. We're very inclusive on that side, but we're also very inclusive in making the connections there.

40:45The hard fact is we've got to encourage people to invest in those products and help nurture that. And I think that it's a really hard one to crack, Gareth. We just have to keep elevating the statistics. I'm a very big believer in publish the data, understand the statistics, recognize we have an issue. We need to start pushing forward on that. And I'm just going to go slightly adjacent onto technology. One of the things I've seen in the last couple of years where there's been change of leadership in the technology space, we are, I'm blown away by the number of senior female technology leaders I'm now engaged with within the banking organization.

41:27Oh, that's good. And that's a huge step change. That takes one leader to make a decision to bring in talent versus perhaps what the norm was before. And I'm seeing that. I'm really hopeful that we're going to see that ripple effect out to technology, technology companies, but also within the investment space for our, call it, underrepresented founders. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's fantastic. That's really, that's reassuring. So there is some light at the end of the tunnel then. But I've got two daughters and I'm always trying to get them, I want to bring them up in a way where they believe in themselves so that they fulfill their potential.

42:00Do you see what I mean? I don't care what they want to do, but as long as they push themselves to become the best version of whatever it is that they want to do. I have two boys. So my job, they see their mum go out and do what she does. It's important for them to understand that the respect for women and women can do brilliantly well. It's the same thing, female, male. There's just a different way of making sure the messages land. Yeah, of course. Can you give us, so in terms of obviously, you know, mum, very successful career. I'm assuming you're very busy. How do you stay balanced and organized in your life, Roopie, with all these things going on?

42:36I think it's just prioritization. So what I have to do is I have to figure out what are the five big decisions for that week, both personally and professionally. That's what I'm focused on ahead of the game. So I do prep prior to starting the week. And then I reflect at the end of the week to say, did I do what I needed to do and switching off when I need to switch off? So I think that I haven't got it perfectly right yet. And I'm learning as I go and figuring things out. And I'm hoping that AI is actually going to speed up my life. for example, booking a family holiday, I used AI. And it took me a couple of hours.

43:11And it was just because I was asking lots of questions. Yeah. But this is amazing. It's done it all for me. I don't have to do the research now. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. ChatGVT especially is brilliant for purchasing decisions, for weighing things up. If anyone hasn't used it for that, I would highly recommend them. I'm sure Gemini and Claude are pretty good as well. But yeah, that's brilliant. But looking ahead, what trends or technologies do you believe will have the biggest impact on the banking and fintech sectors over the next five years? What is really changing for you? It will be premised around AI.

43:43I know we keep talking about AI, and I wish I had another buzzword to throw in there, but I think it is a maturity of AI. So if you think about the infancy of where AI was to where it is now, utilising large language models, it'll be using far bigger large language models to underpin, and also the agentic AI. I think this is where quantum does play in. And that will be the ability to process things even quicker. So things take seconds, but I'm intrigued to see how this is all going to work together from a processing capacity perspective. And what that really means from a decision making capability perspective, when I do think that wasted energy will be resolved by the AI solutions.

44:24Yeah, no, I agree. Events, I think, is going to be super, super interesting. So I think the medical side of things is going to progress and we're going to get some great solutions coming out. The defense tech is going to be interesting because there's also a right and wrong way of doing things as well. And I think that's going to be an area of heightened focus over the next five years. So with that in mind then, because I thought you were going to say that, it was a good T for where I was going with it, which is in terms of think about as digital innovation accelerates, okay? I'm talking about skills and things like that.

44:58So what skills and mindsets will define the next generation? of banking leaders, do you think? Do you know what I mean? Because I think having these incredible tools at our disposal, our ability to use the tool as an overlay to achieve our goals, do you know what I mean? Interacting with the technology is now such a critical part of delivering good outcomes because the bar's been raised by AI powering a lot of what we do. Do you know what I mean? So have you thought about that in terms of the skills that we love with jobs are now shifting? Have you seen that manifest in any way? Someone's ability to use AI is so important now, isn't it?

45:34We interview people. And I think for me, it's what's the passion for the client, the product. Yeah. Is it just, I'm just interested in this little piece of the pie that I'm interested in, or are you interested in a holistic position? Yeah. The second thing is, how versed are you in tech? How much of tech do you understand? Also, how do you perceive tech? Is tech a supplier? Is tech a partner? Is tech a solution-oriented way of working? and I think what happens with that is you start to understand the kind of dynamics and the way people think about things so that when you can teach this but for some leaders you do need to have that in in position for when they come on board I personally believe very strongly that business leaders do need to immerse themselves in tech and I'm going to be biased I did that myself and down to the in-depth of what engineering is about and infrastructure and cyber and data etc I think it's been the best thing I've ever done.

46:29As we move forward, you know, 10 years time, we're going to have leaders coming through that have been well-versed on digital ways of living. And so it will become normal. I think that's when we're going to see the kind of the step change jump. And it will just be normal for them. There won't be any, well, we did this before. We can't possibly do this. They will just have a different way of thinking. And I certainly think, I'm sure with your daughters, certainly with my sons, I see they are in the digital age. I think for us now, it's the case of safeguarding, protection, cyber, etc. And I think that's the role we're also going to have to play, which is how we ensure the next set of leaders understand the risks around it and that we have enough things in place to protect as we utilize AI much more.

47:17Because I think that's the biggest risk. So look, you've got a long way to go in your career, quite clearly. but looking back now to the sort of beginning of your career your 21 year old self okay what advice would you give that person knowing what you know now i think it's purely down to believe in yourself yeah and don't worry what other people think it takes you a long time to realize that that's a big one isn't it do not worry what other people think because that crushes some people doesn't it it really does it does and also you waste so much time and i have to say to people and i say this to myself am i going to know them in five years time yeah if it's a yes interesting if it's a no i've got the answer yeah yeah absolutely that's really good advice actually because that that that does paralyze some people and it really suppresses their ambition so do you know in terms of entrepreneurs you obviously speak to entrepreneurs quite a bit i'm assuming yeah yeah a typical theme that always comes up and what type of advice do you typically give entrepreneurs.

48:19But I think, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs I meet, and they're super, super confident. Yeah. Like super confident. They're quite young. They can be quite young. And actually, what I'm impressed about is, wow, if I had only been like that when I was in my 20s. But you can be too confident though, can't you? Do you know what I mean? It could be bordered on delusion then. Yeah, you can be too confident. And often when I speak to them, I did a demo day because I was really interested in some of the AI solutions out and to see what we could bring in to help us. Yeah. And I had five mix of clients and others that came in and showcased their solutions.

48:51And the first thing I said to them is don't sales pitch, show me the product. From the product, I can understand whether it's viable. And there was one particular one, great idea, but really in quite an immature state of the innovator and founder. And actually we gave proactive feedback to them. And, you know, they were so grateful. And they said, thank you so much for that information. I think that if they want to have the feedback, give that feedback to them. I do feel that the self-belief is incredible. And I think to be a not successful entrepreneur, you have to believe in yourself. There is no point in doing it if you're not believing in yourself and believing in the product.

49:30Yeah, absolutely. I think that having that belief in yourself, it really helps you when you hit the inevitable downtime, like the bad times, because you're going to get, being an entrepreneur is just up and down, isn't it? So I think don't get too excited with the highs and too down with the lows, is there? Yeah. And also they will get lots and lots of notes and then they will luck out. But equally, when you luck out and you get to the right investment levels, remember when you're invested in, those investors expect a return. So they're not given an easy ride when they do receive that investment.

50:05They are having to constantly perform. And that's one of the things I think businesses should compare themselves to is that these innovators have to keep on top of their toes all the time to make sure they're performing. That's exactly what businesses should be doing and not drop into the complacency. Absolutely. 100%. Let's finish on this one then, Rupi. Okay. So we always ask our guests for a book recommendation. and if you're not much of a reader you can basically use a documentary or piece of content or a blog or anything whatever content you're into but yeah have you got a recommendation for our listeners i listen to a lot of the master classes they're quite there's so many of them i listen to so many different ones i couldn't pick a particular one but they're always inspiring there are famous people that are on there or they're inspiring leaders so i do listen to a lot of the master classes and i chop and change depending on whatever that is yeah but i think I'm going to be, the book that I am reading, which I'll really own up to, is it's actually Let Them.

51:03And part of that links back to what I just talked about, which is don't let other people get in the way of what you believe in yourself. And if people actually don't value what you're doing, you've got to let them, you can't control them, but you actually have to understand how you're going to do things differently. Yeah, sure. So I think there's a bit of a philosophy, psychology aspect to that. But I think Masterclasses, I would recommend that to people to dip in and out of whatever they have on offer. Yeah, I was going to say in terms of Let Them, I've not read that book, but I know the author really well.

51:41Not personally, but you know what I mean. I know Mel Robbins. She is fantastic. She is so good at self-confidence, that sort of genre. I would highly recommend her appearance on the High Performance podcast. She was brilliant. But she's such an uplifting personality. But yeah, let them. So we'll put that on the show notes. But thank you for that recommendation and also Masterclass as well. Rupi, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, so many brilliant topics and points that we've covered. So we really appreciate your time. We know you're very busy. So thank you so much for sharing your story with us and being so candid.

52:19Brilliant, lovely, lovely to be on the podcast. Thank you.

52:27A huge thank you to Rupi for being so open and insightful there. I just really enjoyed that conversation, especially, well, there was many things that I could draw attention to here. But I really enjoyed hearing about the discussion around her remarkable role in navigating the acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank's UK assets. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, Silicon Valley Bank, they went under basically, and HSBC Innovation Bank bought their UK assets. But obviously, Rupi had worked for HSBC previously and then recently joined Silicon Valley Bank. And be known to her, all this turmoil was going on in the background.

53:07So she was uniquely positioned to assist in this acquisition, which is an incredible twist of fate. Having worked on both sides of the equation, she was uniquely positioned to support one of the most significant moments in recent UK banking history. And her reflections on that period were just fascinating. To hear her experience there was amazing. But what really stayed with me, I think, was Rupi's honesty about the barriers that still face female entrepreneurs in the UK, probably beyond as well. Rupi shared some shocking examples of investors hesitating to back female-led businesses and sort of highlighted how these challenges continue to show up clearly in the data.

53:49Yet, despite that, I heard optimism was infectious. Rupi spoke passionately about how the landscape is shifting and how HSBC innovation banking is working to buck the trend and why publishing these statistics openly is crucial, is a crucial step towards real accountability and better funding outcomes for female entrepreneurs. We've got to get the message out there. This changes, you know. But yeah, look, I mean, that was a really important thing that I wanted to draw attention to. But thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, subscribe, share. Share with someone who you think would benefit from Rupee's insights.

54:25It makes a real difference in helping the show reach more people. But we really appreciate you listening. Hope to see you on the next one.

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