Rebank: Banking The Future

Oliver Prill is the CEO of Tide, a leading business banking provider for UK SMEs. Charles McManus is the CEO of ClearBank, the first new clearing bank in the UK in nearly 200 years.  Tide and ClearBank recently won a £60 million grant as part of the RBS remedies program, which we’ve discussed before on the podcast and which Charles describes to start us off. With the funding, Tide, backed by ClearBank, aims to achieve high single-digit market share in the UK SME banking market with its digital proposition.  In this conversation, we discuss Tide’s plans as well as the UK SME market in general. The first voice you’ll hear in the conversation after mine is Charles’s, followed by Oliver’s. You’ll hear us refer to the BCR, or Banking Competition Remedies, the body responsible for administering the remedies program. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fi

Seth Rosenberg focuses on fintech at Greylock, one of Silicon Valley’s most storied venture firms, with noteworthy investments including LinkedIn, Facebook, Airbnb and many more. In this conversation, we talk through Greylock’s fintech thesis, Seth’s view of where the industry is going and the way the firm looks at investments in general. We reference a deck Greylock published, accessible here. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Seth Rosenberg.

Mike Massaro is the CEO of Flywire, a Boston-based payments company. Flywire specializes in large-value payments for education, healthcare and travel. Flywire has raised over $140 million from leading investors including Spark Capital, Fidelity’s F-Prime, Bain Capital, Temasek, Accel Partners and QED Investors. In this conversation, Mike and I discuss the drivers and implications of recent consolidation in the payments industry, existential threats to payments incumbents and the trend of payments integration into vertical software platforms. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our servic

Ryan Gilbert is a General Partner at Propel, a San Francisco-based venture firm with investments in companies including Coinbase, Personal Capital, Trussle, Prosper and many more. Prior to joining Propel, Ryan founded and ran SmartBiz loans, a leading SBA loan originator. In this conversation, we explore a few interesting fintech verticals, including mixed commerce, insurtech and payroll benefits, by way of recent investments Ryan has made. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Ry

Sankaet Pathak is the Founder and CEO of Synapse, a platform banking provider.  Fresh off a Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, Synapse is operating at the leading edge of the potentially massive platform banking trend. In this conversation, we discuss the issues with existing sponsor banking infrastructure, examples of new propositions that can be created using a platform like Synapse and the implications of big tech and non-banks increasingly surfacing banking and financial services products within their offerings. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.ban

Donna Parisi is a Derivatives Partner and Global Head of Financial Services and Fintech for Shearman & Sterling, a leading global law firm. In addition to her work on a range of derivatives, structured products, securitization, capital markets and commodities matters, Donna has built specific expertise in crypto, tokens and digital assets, which are the subject of our conversation today. Donna and I discuss regulatory frameworks and institutional infrastructure for digital assets, where the space is going and why. You’ll note that we intentionally don’t dig into Facebook’s Libra project, which I may pick up in a standalone episode in the future. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech

Jon Stein is the Founder and CEO of Betterment, one of the world’s leading digital investments companies. We first connected with Jon in January 2018 in a great episode that’s still very relevant today. Since then, Betterment has added $4 billion in assets under management to its platform, and today, they’re launching checking and savings accounts as they extend their offering into banking. This move is a compelling one at a time when consumer fintechs are increasingly extending early product sets in pursuit of comprehensive financial services offerings. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information abo

The subject of today’s conversation is design in financial services. We talk all the time about the new customer experiences shaping the evolution of finance, generally focusing on the implications of those forces and others on the trajectory of the industry. Today, we take a closer look at those experiences themselves, through the eyes of the people designing them. The first voice you’ll hear after Will's is that of Yenny Otero, Head of Design at TSB. The following speaker is Nick Haley, Product Design Principal at Idean, a design agency. The fourth and last voice that enters the conversation is that of Noel Lyons, Experience Design Director at Barclays. Design is an increasingly important function in financial services, with organizations around the world embedding it in product development and leveraging it for better traction, engagement and ultimately, monetization. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates

The investments space is changing as fast as any other financial services vertical, with roboadvisors, free stock trading apps, contextual behavioral experiences, software automation, AI, new pricing structures and crypto all shaping the future direction of the industry. Today, we discuss the current state and likely future of the space with two of the leading firms in the industry. Chris Worle is the Chief Digital Officer at Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s leading retail investments platform. Joe Parkin leads the UK iShares business and digital wealth for Northern Europe at BlackRock, one of the world’s leading investment firms. This conversation is a great complement to past episodes with Nutmeg, Betterment and Scalable Capital exploring the evolution of investment management. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast netwo

Paul Taylor is the founder and CEO of Thought Machine, a cloud native core banking platform. We first connected with Paul in November 2017, where we walked through his background as a Google AI engineer and the origins of Thought Machine. Today, we zoom out and update, digging deeper into what drives banks’ decisions to modernize core infrastructure and how, what approaches are best for what organizations and who is furthest along in the journey. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welco

Michael Rolph is the co-founder and CEO of Yoyo, a payments, loyalty and receipt app enriching commerce for customers and merchants. The payments space has been actively lately, as incumbents consolidate and startups seek new attack vectors leveraging open banking, native device components, tokens and other emerging technologies. Michael brings a value perspective to recent developments in the space and talks through where payments might be headed. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please wel

Nick Hungerford is the founder of Nutmeg, the UK’s leading roboadvisor.   Nick founded Nutmeg in 2011 and ran it for five years. Currently, Nick is a partner at Portag3 Ventures and serves on the boards of Nutmeg, multiply.ai and Hong Kong based digital bank Neat.   In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates.   Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy.   For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com.   Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Nick Hungerford.  

Ron Suber is the former head of Prosper, one of the original peer-to-peer lenders.   Prior to getting involved in Prosper, Ron built and sold Merlin, a tech-first prime broker for the long-tail of hedge funds, acquired by Wells Fargo in 2012.   Ron invests in and advises a number of fintech companies and has developed views on the space and where it’s headed, all of which we get into today.   In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates.   Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy.   For more information about our services, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com.   Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Ron Suber.

David Green is the Chief Product Officer at Earnest, a digital student lender and refinancing provider.   The student debt market in the US is unique in the world. College is exceedingly expensive, and students fund their educations by borrowing from the government and private lenders. Despite the size of the market and its decades-long history, student lending doesn’t necessarily operate with the same sophistication you would find in other credit markets.   David and I talk through some of these points and explore some of the more innovative approaches being taken to address student debt levels and align the interests of students and schools.   In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to startups, investors and corporates.   Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we support startups in proposition

Matt Harris is a partner at Bain Capital Ventures focused on fintech and financial services. Matt is a fintech legend in New York. Everyone I talked to about this conversation knew Matt and sang his praises effusively.  Matt has been an early stage investor since 1997, which is basically forever in fintech years. His portfolio includes Acorns, IEX, Roofstock, SigFig and many more.  Matt has highly developed views about the future of payments, lending, banking and investing, which we work through in our discussion. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please visit www.banking

Samvit Ramadurgam is the Co-Founder & President and Kelly Rodriques is the CEO of Forge, a secondary market for private shares. Forge provides access to shares of virtually all of the top 50 privately held tech startups, including Slack and many more, and offered trading in the likes of Spotify, Dropbox, Snap and DocuSign before they IPOed. According to Crunchbase, Forge has raised $88.5m from investors including Peter Thiel, Tim Draper, FT Partners and others. Unlike earlier players in the space, Forge has focused on building out a robust technology platform, including institutional grade clearing and custody infrastructure to support global counterparties. Forge’s proposition is particularly relevant as companies stay private for longer. More investor value is captured pre-IPO, so access to private shares is important. Additionally, because IPOs happen later, early employees are often unable to access liquidity for years, making it difficult to buy homes or diversify risk. We dig into all of these issu

Dee Choubey is the Founder and CEO of MoneyLion, a digital bank combining a comprehensive financial offering with AI-driven personalized guidance. With four million users and counting, MoneyLion aspires to build a private bank for the middle class, initially by providing financial access, education and advice to Americans underserved by the financial system. I find MoneyLion’s vision highly compelling. As we’ve said before on the podcast, it feels like many B2C fintechs are converging to the same place. MoneyLion, on the other hand, has sought to be there from day one. Dee and I connected at MoneyLion’s beautiful downtown San Francisco office, which meant sirens, honking horns and general urban background noise. We hope you’ll bear with us, as the conversation itself was excellent. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast

Ryan King is the Co-Founder and CTO of Chime, one of the leading digital banks in the US. Chime offers free banking to over three million customers, helping them save hundreds a year on banking and gain control of their financial lives. This episode was recorded at LendIt in San Francisco. A huge thanks to Peter Renton and his team for inviting us to participate. As listeners know, digital banking is a space we follow closely. The US is a fascinating market to watch, given the importance of spending, borrowing and investing, prevailing incumbent pricing structures, digital penetration and customer expectations. And with the number of well-funded fintechs converging on comprehensive digital financial offerings, including Robinhood, Acorns, Betterment, MoneyLion, Chime, Varo and others, not to mention European digital banks like Monzo, N26 and Revolut, the space will get competitive fast. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, bank

Erin Collard is Co-Founder of Blend, a digital mortgage origination platform. Blend sits atop incumbent systems and digitizes the mortgage process, massively reducing costs for lenders and expediting origination. Blend’s software is compelling. So compelling, in fact, that 25% of the market now uses Blend’s technology to originate $1 billion of US mortgages every day. Blend has raised $160 million from leading investors including Greylock and Founders Fund. Erin has a fascinating background, which he runs through to kick us off. In addition to the insights we deliver through our podcast and newsletter, Rebank offers advisory services to fintechs, banks and corporates. Drawing on our experience starting, running and advising fintech businesses and our vast network of the most impactful fintech entrepreneurs, investors and innovators around the world, we help companies make sense of fintech, work through specific questions and optimize proposition and strategy. For more information about our services, please vi

Michael Sidgmore is a Partner at Broadhaven, a market leading fintech investment bank and venture firm, with clients including ICE and the CBOE and investments including MoneyLion and ScaleFactor. Prior to joining Broadhaven, Michael built the sales team at iCapital, now a multi-billion dollar platform giving investors access to leading alternative investment funds at low minimums. Michael is close to the ground when it comes to US fintech, with an interest in Latin American as well. In this conversation, Michael shares his views on SMB plays, opportunities in Latin America, platform trends, solutions for the gig economy and more. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Michael Sidgmore.