Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
00:47:33 · Ross Gallagher, Pranav Sood, Valentina Kristensen, Sarah Kocianski
[00:47:33] S0: Yeah. It's the largest... Yeah. The largest state owned. Well, in a in a in a country where I think most of the banks used to be state owned. [00:47:39] S2: Yeah. And and in fact, the laws on foreign direct investment are quite strict. So it's hard for people to kind of come in and do that from the outside. I think they made the investment today. The Feet was talking about it being 1,300,000,000 US a few days ago. I think the ticket size was about a quarter of that, if I've read the story right. So I'm sure as Val said, there are going be a ton of questions being asked about corporate governance. And I'm sure there's going be some kind of a lock in period as well to make sure that things turn around in the next three to five years. But as you say, Sarah, the main thing is let's hope that it doesn't drag a whole bunch of other things down with it. And there are I mean, look, there are lots of things going on in India right now in general with the geopolitical situation, with what's going on in Kashmir and all the rest of it. I think it would be a hopeful and optimistic interpretation to think that fixing this particular thing is is top of the list of things that Narendra Modi is waking up in the morning and [00:48:33] S0: and wanting [00:48:33] S3: to do. [00:48:33] S1: Very fair point. He probably has an an awful lot else on his plate right now.
00:48:33 · Sarah Kocianski, Ross Gallagher, Pranav Sood
[00:48:33] S1: Very fair point. He probably has an an awful lot else on his plate right now. [00:48:37] S0: And and and I think a lot of the the questions that these guys are gonna have to answer moving forward do speak to governance and ops and all of that sort of stuff. It seems they also just have some systemic issues around, like, credit decisioning. It seems the proportion of bad loans in their loan book was disproportionately high. That was then underreported. So I think this was an accident waiting to happen. I think Sarah you summed up quite nicely the impact on the other fintechs. The one thing that I'm keen that we don't understate obviously then is the impact on the consumer. And I think we actually talked a little bit about the impact on consumer confidence in these types of providers moving forward. The fact that their online and mobile banking just went down, the fact that there was no information forthcoming from the banks themselves to the actual customers. Customers talked about turning up at 8AM to withdraw money even within the limit that have been set at $630 getting there at 8AM and not having any sort of communication or anything like that until 3PM and still just being kind of in in a queue just waiting to that's that's gonna affect consumer confidence. This [00:49:38] S2: is also a country where there was a huge demonetization exercise not that long ago and also where the government has turned off the internet in large parts of the country in response to civil unrest. So again, not a lot of this stuff surprises me.
00:49:38 · Pranav Sood, Sarah Kocianski
[00:49:38] S2: is also a country where there was a huge demonetization exercise not that long ago and also where the government has turned off the internet in large parts of the country in response to civil unrest. So again, not a lot of this stuff surprises me. [00:49:52] S1: It's just to your point as well, just I believe I'm right in saying that a lot of the population of India, the first sort of access to banking systems they've got is through digital services, know, it's one of those countries where the digital revolution has had a huge impact on giving people access to financial services. And I really, really hope, and maybe this is naive of me because I don't understand the bigger picture at all, but this will not prevent that continued growth and that continued attempts by by companies to actually continue extending the accessibility to people who who previously have no other access, particularly, as say, in the wake of demonetization. If you haven't got cash and you haven't got, you know, a digital bank, what have you got?
00:49:52 · Sarah Kocianski, Ross Gallagher
[00:49:52] S1: It's just to your point as well, just I believe I'm right in saying that a lot of the population of India, the first sort of access to banking systems they've got is through digital services, know, it's one of those countries where the digital revolution has had a huge impact on giving people access to financial services. And I really, really hope, and maybe this is naive of me because I don't understand the bigger picture at all, but this will not prevent that continued growth and that continued attempts by by companies to actually continue extending the accessibility to people who who previously have no other access, particularly, as say, in the wake of demonetization. If you haven't got cash and you haven't got, you know, a digital bank, what have you got? [00:50:30] S0: Yeah. And that that human impact, think, is is is is where we should sort of move us on. So our and finally story this week comes from Sky News and concerns Starling becoming the official bank sponsor to Team GB for the the Tokyo Olympics. So the challenger will serve as the British Olympic Association's official banking partner. Starling already employs a former Team GB archer as an executive, which is just kinda cool, and plans to provide each competitor with an account and a £100 credit. So Bowdoin said we feel extremely privileged to be the official bank of Team GB and we'll be sharing our excitement with our customers in a number of creative ways over the next few months. So what do you guys think? Is this something that's sort of mutually beneficial? Does this make sense?
00:50:30 · Ross Gallagher, Pranav Sood, Sarah Kocianski
[00:50:30] S0: Yeah. And that that human impact, think, is is is is where we should sort of move us on. So our and finally story this week comes from Sky News and concerns Starling becoming the official bank sponsor to Team GB for the the Tokyo Olympics. So the challenger will serve as the British Olympic Association's official banking partner. Starling already employs a former Team GB archer as an executive, which is just kinda cool, and plans to provide each competitor with an account and a £100 credit. So Bowdoin said we feel extremely privileged to be the official bank of Team GB and we'll be sharing our excitement with our customers in a number of creative ways over the next few months. So what do you guys think? Is this something that's sort of mutually beneficial? Does this make sense? [00:51:21] S2: Are we still having an Olympics? [00:51:22] S1: Exactly my question was that, well, I I have no aversion to it, but my biggest question is [00:51:26] S0: really hoping we weren't gonna have to talk about coronavirus again. I thought we could just take this story at So face
00:51:26 · Ross Gallagher, Valentina Kristensen
[00:51:26] S0: really hoping we weren't gonna have to talk about coronavirus again. I thought we could just take this story at So face [00:51:31] S3: I think, you know, look, this is... If if it does go ahead, this will be, I think, the first time that we'll have more women on Team GB than men. So... And that's quite exciting. So I think it's gonna be 54% of the team will be women. So, you know, probably quite fitting that a bank like... That's like Starling, which is, obviously very much been at the forefront of this, and it's obviously run by, a female founder. So there's a kind of good synergy and alignment there. And, I mean, look. They they... How much money did they get from the RBS and release package? A 100,000,000, was it? So they have to use that money to incentivize switching and improve their products and services. So I don't know about what they're doing about, you know, improvements on products and services. I'm sure there's lots going on on the back end. But in terms of what we can see, tube ads, TV ads, this, you know, incentivized switching. We're putting a £100 credit in everyone's everyone's account. So, that's clearly a way that they can deploy some of this capital. I mean, we said, at Oak North, you know, if we were fortunate to win any of the any of the the grants, you know, what would we even do with, like, £10,000,000? I mean, we've we've never had a budget that's even, you know, 10% of that. So to suddenly, you know, to suddenly have 10,000,000 to play with, you know, you can you can do quite a lot.