London Fintech Podcast

In this episode we have an awesome deep-dive by Gert into what Network-based Finance is – a super-cool topic even Google doesn’t know about (within an hour of this LFP release it became the only example :-O). We cover how, in a sense, it inverts the whole “Open Banking” paradigm putting the opening of transactions […]

I can think of very few UK Fintechs that dominate their sector as successfully as CapitalRise who have something of a monopoly of being the only independent prime real estate property finance provider. Not only that but to date they have an unbeatable 0% loss-rate on loans that have returned ~9%pa to investors. The Credit markets […]

How one engages with a Bank and how Banks engage have always been essential aspects of FS which is a complex ecosystem of specialists. This is – like much – all-changing right now. ClearBank have recently published a report entitled “How well are Fintechs served by banks?” which provides some depth to this topic. Simon […]

What kind of value-add most helps founders and their companies? Or if you prefer what sun, what rain and what compost makes founders trees fruit better and faster? It’s a vital topic for the economy. QED Investors is a leading VC firm focused on investing in early stage – hence their knowledge of growing seedlings […]

Richard has an astonishing 50yrs experience in investing in young companies and helping to grow them, starting with 3i in the 1970s when they were next to the only institutional provider of development capital through to being a former chair of the BVCA and this year having released a thoroughly updated version of his book […]

Fintech is increasingly getting well beyond providing the simplest of transactions and deep into the complex end of FS. Supply@Me Capital are listed on the UK Stock Exchange and recently acquired Singaporean firm Tradeflow Capital.  They provide inventory financing by securitising manufacturers’ and trading firms’ inventory in a very interesting fashion leading to a new […]

Two topics this week… What are the major trends in Insurtech in the US, UK, Europe and China? Secondly Small Business insurance, general liability professional liability insurance and so forth can be hard to acquire at commercially sensible terms and thus many contractors or home repair folk end up giving up on potential work as […]

Way back in the day LFP002 was with matchi.biz who were creating a marketplace to connect innovative firms with incumbents who needed that innovation so the idea of a connection function or market has been around for some time. As matchi.biz were acquired by KPMG in 2017 they were clearly not only successful at creating […]

The recent report by Ron Kalifa, for the UK Govt to identify priority areas to support the UK’s Fintech sector and maintain the UK’s global reputation in re, gives us an excellent opportunity to zoom out from that to discuss The Past: why Fintech so successfully started in the UK; The Present: how well the […]

Behavioral Signals aims to “turn your conversational data into actionable insights for your business” via the automated cross-cultural detection of emotions in the audio of conversations. This is a super-new front in machine language recognition and usage one which has to date been rather simplistically approached but one which as we all know every day […]

Back in the day when business was more monocultural in many dimensions, and indeed today in more monocultural societies, “culture” was implicit and did not need explicitly defining. However in the modern, ever-more globalised, ever-more multicultural world binding together a group of people, possibly in different countries into one coherent entity is an ever-increasing challenge. […]

Stocard are perhaps Europe’s most successful Fintech measured by numbers of users – they have over 60 million users of their App (which gets 4.7* on Google Play) and process an amazing 2 billion transactions per annum – a phenomenal achievement. Their users save some 2-5% on average on their shopping and in some countries […]

nChain are part of a small consortium are working on a project with the Tuvalu govt to put all of its records on a digital ledger – aka Blockchain, thus becoming the first country to do so. Tuvalu, comprises 9 islands, has a domestic revenue of $60m (a chunk of which comes from its ownership […]

Little more than a couple of decades ago IT was a very back office function in large FS organisations. Now it has completely inverted to become centre-stage in roughly every dimension of being in business, FS included. Tony Clark, serial entrepreneur, founder and CEO of NextWave Consulting has over thirty years experience of large City  […]

2020 has been crazy and 2021 doesn’t seem to be breaking the trend. The LFP New Year Special is traditionally an occasion to looks back to the prior year and forward to the next. However given the seismic changes in Governments Governance of the people and the ongoing cultural revolution I thought we should take […]

Venture Capital is nigh-on essential for many ambitious, big-build, fast-scaling Fintechs and Techs in general. Fund raising is essential. Thus how the VC market is evolving is of the utmost importance to ambitious firms and founders. In this episode Josh Bell one of the founding partners of leading London-based European-wide VCs Dawn Capital who have […]

Andy Rear was until recently head of the innovative Digital Partners, MunichRe’s London subsidiary which pretty much invented Reinsurance (/Insurance) As A Service (which he covered way back in LFP074). In this episode he rejoins us to present evidence that Insurtech is actually changing an industry. Andy himself is off to do Non-exec-ing and a […]

Capital-raising is an absolutely core-skill for entrepreneurs and their growing businesses – and every tech business de facto needs to grow (margins low and intense competition). Peter Keenan, CEO and co-founder of merchants-payments provider Apexx Global, has raised capital in a total of five companies and thus talks to us from a position of considerable […]

Open Banking started a far greater wave, The ability for people to share ever-more of their financial data – not just current account but *everything* from mortgages to investments to pensions data promises to revolutionise the world of FS and people’s financial lives. In this excellent conversation Keith gives us a tour d’horizon and a […]

The alignment of economic interests between buyer and seller is much spoken about but little done. Over two and half years ago when Tobi was first on the show he spoke about the idea of aligning Laka’s interests with their clients. Now we hear this narrative all the time but rarely is it deeply true. […]