Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
00:00:55 · David M. Brear
[00:00:55] S1: Hey, folks. We have super duper exciting news. The shortlist for this year's ElevenFS Awards is officially live. We asked you, the incredible Fintech Insider community, to help us choose the deserving winners of the ElevenFS Awards, and your response was outstanding. You voted in record numbers, and it's now time to see if your favorite fintech companies made the shortlist. With a total of 10 different awards up for grabs on the big night, including categories like best experience design, fintech for good, best use of AI, and consumer game changer. There is a lot to look forward to. Don't wait. Explore that full shortlist now at eleven f s awards dot com. That is 11fsawards.com. And be sure to stay tuned to all of our channels to find out who will take home one of the coveted eleven f s award trophies on Wednesday, November 15. Looking to take your customer journeys to the next level and benchmark your products against the best in financial services? Well, look no further than 11fs Pulse. Home to over 5,700 user journeys covering everything from onboarding to crypto, it features analysis of global brands like NewBank, Revolut, and Robinhood. It's already tried and trusted by big names like Monzo, whose cofounder Jonas said their research phase took just a tenth of the time it normally would, thanks to 11FS Pulse. Join Monzo and hundreds of other brands taking their UX game to the next level by booking a demo today at eleven f s Pulse dot com forward slash demo. That's 11fspulse.com/demo.
00:02:53 · David Barton-Grimley, Pranav Sood
[00:02:53] S0: As always, I'm joined by some outstanding guests who can shed some light on this question. Our first guest is Pranav Sudh, executive GM EMEA at Airwallix. Great to have you on the show, Pranav. It's been a busy time for Airwallix. Do tell us what you've been up to. [00:03:09] S2: Firstly, thank you very much for having me. It's always great to be on the show. For anyone who doesn't know Airwallex, we are a payments platform for global businesses. So we help businesses of all sizes to collect, convert, send, and spend money around the world. It's been a really hectic year for us so far. We've actually just launched in Israel. We've also launched in Canada. We're in the process of expanding and extending our infrastructure around the world as well. And it's been great to be able to announce some big customer relationships, including one with Brex, which is helping them to power their international expansion as well. [00:03:41] S0: Amazing. You guys are growing so, so, so fast. And also joining us, it's a return to FinTech Insider for Sarah Kaczynski, FinTech consultant and adviser. For those of you who don't know, please tell us a little bit about what you do, Sarah.
00:03:41 · David Barton-Grimley, Sarah Kocianski
[00:03:41] S0: Amazing. You guys are growing so, so, so fast. And also joining us, it's a return to FinTech Insider for Sarah Kaczynski, FinTech consultant and adviser. For those of you who don't know, please tell us a little bit about what you do, Sarah. [00:03:54] S3: Thank you, David. It's always a pleasure to be back, like the olden days. So what I do these days is I'm independent. I work for myself, but I work with a range of organizations of all sizes, basically helping them understand the global fintech industry and what it means for them and their customers. At the moment, I'm working on something really exciting, which is an organization called WVCE. We are aiming to increase diversity in the world of venture capital. We had a big event earlier this week, think second and third of October. You know, we'll... It's one of the things that I really, really love doing. So it's kind of my my current passion project, if you like. [00:04:29] S0: Awesome. That's great to hear. And finally, we're delighted to be joined by Valentina Christensen, director growth and communications at Oak North. Welcome, Valentina, and do share a little bit about what's going on at Oak North.
00:04:29 · David Barton-Grimley, Valentina Kristensen
[00:04:29] S0: Awesome. That's great to hear. And finally, we're delighted to be joined by Valentina Christensen, director growth and communications at Oak North. Welcome, Valentina, and do share a little bit about what's going on at Oak North. [00:04:41] S4: Hi. Thanks very much for having me on. Yafen Rui, who's not familiar with Oak North, we launched in 2015 as a neobank focused on supporting entrepreneurs. To date, we've lent about £10,000,000,000 to what we would sort of call the M of the SME or commercial customers. And actually, published a report earlier this week with the Social Market Foundation looking at the barriers to enabling growth businesses on scale ups in The UK and how we can... Some recommendations about how we can overcome those those barriers.
00:04:41 · Valentina Kristensen, David Barton-Grimley
[00:04:41] S4: Hi. Thanks very much for having me on. Yafen Rui, who's not familiar with Oak North, we launched in 2015 as a neobank focused on supporting entrepreneurs. To date, we've lent about £10,000,000,000 to what we would sort of call the M of the SME or commercial customers. And actually, published a report earlier this week with the Social Market Foundation looking at the barriers to enabling growth businesses on scale ups in The UK and how we can... Some recommendations about how we can overcome those those barriers. [00:05:14] S0: Brilliant. It's definitely a topic that everybody's talking about, the future of commercial banking, which is why we're here to... Today. So thanks everybody for joining. Let's let's dive in. So let's start with a broad look at the commercial banking landscape. So as I said in the introduction, you know, technology is playing an increasingly central role in the way that banks are doing business, and we're hearing this both from incumbent banks, new fintechs, big commercial businesses themselves. So it'd be good to talk a little bit about this. Valentina, I'm gonna go to you first because I I feel like your experience in with Open North as well has got a good broad view of commercial banking customers. What what do you think are the primary digital needs for commercial banking services? What are you hearing from your customers?
00:05:58 · Valentina Kristensen
[00:05:58] S4: Yeah. So I think if you look at the the market as it is today, you've obviously got the incumbents, you know, and still about 83% of businesses bank with one of the big five banks. So there's still a lot of work to be done for near banks like Oak North. And, you know, the pain points are all the things you normally hear. It's very slow to open an account. You know, there's often a very disjointed experience. You're not speaking to the same relationship manager. It's very hard to see, you know, which payments are going where. It's very hard to sort of put controls in place so that, for example, if you want, you know, you've got a business credit card, you don't want, you know, everybody in the team to have access to it. You want to put certain controls in place. All of those things are pretty painful with the incumbents. And then if you look at the neobanks and most of the neobanks, they started with retail propositions. And then they, you know, and maybe with the exception of Tide. But then they've sort of done retail plus, or very much the sort of small micro business. So their propositions are built on apps and automation, which are fine for individuals like you and me, and fine for small and micro businesses where the needs aren't necessarily that complex. But once you get to that $12,000,000, up to 100,000,000 revenue business, suddenly you might have much more complex corporate structures, you might have entities in different locations, you might have multiple ultimate business owners. And that's where there's this gap where the businesses aren't being well served by either the incumbents or by, you know, most of the neobanks. And this is really where I think, you know, not only digital, but it's sort of also hybrid because I think the... There's a need for certain, you know, certain products and services that those customers need. There's also a need for a relationship. Even if that's, you know, digital, it's still a human plays a very important role as well. So I think it's about looking at the business and then saying, what's the need? And then deciding on the best approach for that need.