FinTech Magazine - March 2021

March 2021 | fintechmagazine.com

Women In FinTech FIND OUT

StashAway: Investing and Wealth Management in the New Normal LEARN MORE

Marsh: The Pursuit of Operation Excellence READ NOW

STERLING BANK:

Nigeria’s Digital Banking Heart Accelerating digital innovation and driving Nigeria’s economic growth FIND OUT MORE

READ NOW

FinTech Magazine is proud to launch a celebration of women in Global FinTech.

Brought to you in association with:

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Creating Digital Communities in FinTech

EDITOR'S LETTER

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

WILL GIRLING DEPUTY EDITOR

JOANNA ENGLAND EDITORAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

RICHARD TURNER SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN OSCAR HATHAWAY CHIEF OPERATIONS SOPHIA FORTE OFFICER SOPHIE-ANN STACY NORMAN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE PRESIDENT & CEO GLEN WHITE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH CREATIVE TEAM

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

OWEN MARTIN PHILLINE VICENTE JENNIFER SMITH PRODUCTION EDITOR

JENNIFER SMITH VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

KIERAN WAITE DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

SAM KEMP EVELYN HUANG MATTHEW EVANS TYLER LIVINGSTONE DIGITAL MARKETING EXECUTIVE

EVELYN HOWAT

PROJECT DIRECTORS

JAKE MEGEARY MICHAEL BANYARD JOE PALLISTER

FINTECH MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

THIS MARCH SHOULD BE A CALL FOR EQUALITY IN FINANCE As we celebrate the Top 100 women in fintech this issue, now seems like an opportune moment to consider the state of gender equality in the modern sector. Advances have been made but there’s still a long way to go.

Perhaps the most stark statistic of all is that 7% of Fortune 500 CEOs today are women despite accounting for 50% of qualified graduates. The market is full of female talent ready to elevate fintech to the next level, yet women continue to be overlooked; 33% of STEM graduates are women, but an equivalence in the global workforce is still lacking.

Yet things can and do change: after 12 months of difficulty, uncertainty, and unprecedented disruption caused by COVID-19, fintech has only gotten stronger.

Most important of all, the sector is providing ordinary people with a voice and the ability to take control of their lives through digital payments, open banking, personal finance mobile apps, and more.

New solutions require new thought leaders, and female leadership, found to quantifiably make a difference in crucial areas of business, is becoming essential. Society is changing and fintech promises to be an important instrument in its evolution.

WILL GIRLING

will.girling@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

fintechmagazine.com

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CONTENTS

7

Big Picture

8

The Brief

10

Global News

12

People Moves

14

Timeline

16

Legend

18

Five Mins With...

Betting against Wall Street

Headline text or standfirst of the profile article

Looking at all things FinTech over the globe in the past month

Who's being moving around the InsurTech world

70

The GameStop ‘short squeeze’

George Soros

Laurén Robbins

18 4

80

March 2021

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CONTENTS

40

94

56

40

Rapid7

48

Banking

56

StashAway

70

Payment Solutions

Securing every layer: How Rapid7 manages vulnerabilites

Rebooting banking post-COVID-19

Investing and wealth management in the new normal

Smart cities: How finance can transform urban living

20

Sterling Bank Plc

80

Marsh France

30

Fintech

94

Special Report

At the heart of digital banking in Nigeria

What makes a fintech startup a success?

Accelerating new technologies for clients

Finance’s new normal must include more female leadership

fintechmagazine.com

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Pack the essentials for your business trip: Laptop Charger Business insights Payment solutions

From T&E expertise to business insights to payment solutions, the American Express Corporate Program gives you all the tools and services you need, so you’re fully prepared for business wherever you are.

To learn more about the American Express Corporate Program, visit www.americanexpress.com.

BIG PICTURE

Betting against Wall Street New York, USA

Amateur investors using Reddit and the Robinhood app have caused a stir by causing their Wall Street counterparts to lose billions of dollars in a failed bid to short GameStop’s stock. Is this a temporary blip or the shape of things to come? Either way, the capability of fintech to democratise financial power is now undeniable.

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THE BRIEF “It's a great time to be focused on diversity as the conversation morphs from a compliance and social issue to a strategic consideration”

BY THE NUMBERS FinTech community poll from Linkedin

13%

Collaboration with incumbents

What is the best reason to invest in fintech this year?

5%

To fight COVID-19

I. Javette Hines

Director and Head of Supply Chain Development, Inclusion and Sustainability, Citi  READ MORE

“Banks must remain aware of the reputational risk they face if customers feel they don’t get the support they need” Falk Rieker

Global Head of the Banking Industry Business unit, SAP  READ MORE

“I would argue that collaboration is the new competition” Andra Sonea

Head of Solution Architecture, FintechOS  READ MORE

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March 2021

46%

It provides new opportunities

$10trn 46%

36%

It's bringing a fresh approach

#1

projected of Customers San Francisco digital wallet use at least the gateway spend by 2025 three fintechs city for fintech

Did you know Although 50% of university graduates are women only seven per cent of Fortune 500 CEOs are female

 TRUSTLY Reportedly planning to launch a $11bn IPO in Q2 of 2021.

BITCOIN

Why should I care?

It could make you rich!

Awesome. Let me just get my bank details...

Woah there! You might want to wait a while.

But I heard your value was through the roof!

What was your peak valuation? $48,003.

Very nice. And now? Less than that…

How long did it take to fall? Three days.

I’m starting to think you might not be the most stable investment.

Those who dare win! Go ask Barry Silbert, Blythe Masters, or Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss if I’m worth the trouble. Remember those guys?

Yes, I remember The Social Network.

Makes me nostalgic for 2010.

Back then I was worth practically nothing.

By the sounds of it that could happen again.

Hey!

 UK FINTECH A report found that the UK is #2 to the US in terms of sector development and growth.

GOOD TIMES BAD TIMES

 NUBANK Secured a value of $25bn, making it one of the most valuable digital banks in history.

MAR21

 MONZO Founder and President Tom Blomfield exited the company on the grounds of mental health.

 ROBINHOOD CEO Vladimir Tenev was confronted by Elon Musk to “tell the truth” regarding the GameStop investment incident.

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GLOBAL NEWS 2

USA

US banks to become climate compliant A new US administration means US banks will submit to climate change and climate risk regulations, a new report suggests. Data shows exposure to the associated risks could lead to destabilisation.

1

LATIN AMERICA

Nubank valued at $25bn A recent US$400m Series G funding round means Nubank has become one of the most valuable digital banks ever, valued at $25bn. The startup was a small venture when it launched in 2013 small startup in São Paulo, 2013, offering a credit card with no annual fee and completely controlled by the app.

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March 2021

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INDONESIA

SME ecommerce Startup Ula assists small business owners in Indonesia Ula is a Jakarta-based fintech that provides services that enable small businesses to thrive in the Indonesian marketplace. So far it has raised $35m in funding rounds to empower independent business owners and streamline their services.

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EASTERN EUROPE

Latvian Nordigen launches free API services The Latvian startup is the first fintech to offer free API services, to overcome one of the major obstacles in the potential of open banking, namely the expense of harnessing raw data.

The move could enable millions of new customers to access credit services

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UNITED KINGDOM

Challenges for Monzo Is the UK’s leading challenger bank suffering from business model failings? New evidence from Global Data seems to suggest it could be. Experts seem to think that states that Monzo’s has a lack of focus on revenue-generating activities – which could cause problems for the future.

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CHINA

Amnesty International to halt India operations China’s regulations for fintechs tighten following Ant Group’s attempted public offering and subsequent removal of the corporation’s IPO. The new regulations would force fintechs to adhere to the same lending regulations as banks.

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PEOPLE MOVES LANGLEY EIDE FROM: KESPRY TO: MAMBU WAS: COO NOW: CFO

Eide is bringing two decades of experience to her new role at Mambu, earned at leading companies such as Morgan Stanley and ServiceNow. Now part of one of fintech’s most dynamic banking solution providers, she will help drive its strategic growth and operational scaling.

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March 2021

"I am looking forward to maturing Mambu’s finance and corporate functions as the company pursues its compelling market opportunity"

HANA AL ROSTAMANI FROM: FIRST ABU DHABI BANK TO: FIRST ABU DHABI BANK WAS: DEPUTY CEO NOW: CEO

Al Rostamani has made history by becoming the first female CEO of FAB, the UAE’s largest lender and a digital trailblazer. Although she will be taking the helm at a reportedly “challenging time” for the country’s economy amid COVID-19, Al Rostamani’s prior experience as Deputy Group CEO will doubtlessly enable her to steer the $44bn organisation through.

STEVEN WIRTH FROM: UDOR PARK LTD TO: HSBC WAS: MANAGING DIRECTOR NOW: MANAGING DIRECTOR (GLOBAL HEAD OF REAL ASSET FUND COVERAGE)

Wirth has distinguished himself with executive roles at UBS, Tudor Park, and now HSBC. He is a graduate of Loughborough University (1987 to 1990) with a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science.

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TIMELINE THE GAMESTOP

‘SHORT SQUEEZE’ 31.12.20

22.01.21

26.01.21

A combination of COVID-19 and competition from digital distribution mean that GameStop’s stock (GME) nets a peak value of only $22 on the NYSE.

140% of GameStop’s public float has been sold short

by Wall Street.

This activity is noticed by Reddit forum r/ WallStreetBets.

GME reaches a high of $150 when Reddit users utilise Robinhood and other retail brokers to buy stock en masse.

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March 2021

© BY DUNCAN.HULL

27.01.21

28.01.21

29.01.21

01.02.21

Elon Musk’s tweet “Gamestonk!!” coincides with a massive rise in investment; GME reaches a high of $483 and closes at $347.51.

Robinhood restricts trading and there are claims that some users’ assets have been sold without authorisation; GME closes at $194.

Analyses from experts theorise that Wall Street shorting positions could have resulted in losses of roughly $8bn.

Vladimir Tenev states that restrictions have been lifted.

Musk confronts Tenev on Blink and requests a public explanation for the events of 28 January; GME closes at $225.

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LEGEND

George Soros KNOWN AS “THE MAN WHO BROKE THE BANK OF ENGLAND"

W

hen he successfully short sold US$10bn of GBP and netted a profit of $1bn in 1992, George Soros’ life and long career place him in the top echelons of modern finance history.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930, Soros and his family endured Nazi Germany’s occupation of his homeland and survived the city’s deadly siege in 1945. Two years later, he became a student at the London School of Economics and eventually graduated with a BSc (1951) and MSc (1954), both in Philosophy, and later received a DPhil from the University of London.

Writing to every merchant bank managing director in London and getting only “one or two replies”, Soros began his financial career at Singer & Friedlander in 1954. This was soon followed by F. M. Mayer in New York (1956) and many others. By 1969 he had founded Double Eagle, a hedge fund, and then in 1970 he used the profits to create his own investment management firm, Soros Fund Management.

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March 2021

Double Eagle was later renamed Quantum Fund in 1973. At the time of its creation, the fund managed assets valued at $12m. In 2013 it generated $5.5bn, bringing its overall fund generation to $40bn and securing its position as the most successful hedge fund ever.

Not just a hugely successful businessman, Soros is also a notable philanthropist whose Open Society Foundation has donated more than $12bn to numerous causes. In particular, he favours initiatives aimed at reducing poverty, increasing transparency, and funding university education through scholarships.

Interestingly, his diverse range of public interests doesn’t stop there: in the late 80s to early 90s, Soros made it a personal mission to hasten the fall of communism in the Eastern Bloc. He did this by encouraging the flow of ideas and scientific research between Soviet countries and the rest of the world. Following the Soviet Union’s formal dismantling in 1991, Soros’ continued funding has been a bedrock for those rebuilding their societies ever since.

It is the sheer breadth and depth of Soros’ contribution to modern finance that we celebrate him in this issue as our first ‘Legend’. Though the mechanics of his success can be found in the careers of other leading figures, few command such thorough industry expertise, prescient market insight and sociopolitical influence.

© MERCURYNEWS fintechmagazine.com

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

LAURÉN ROBBINS VP AND GENERAL MANAGER, FINANCIAL SERVICES, SERVICENOW

Q. WHO WAS YOUR CHILDHOOD HERO AND WHY?

» My parents were my big heroes.

My mother, a nurse, taught me how important it is to care for others with compassion and empathy – both in business and in life. My dad, an entrepreneur, inspired me not only to dream big in my career, but also to never lose sight of cherishing family.

Even while starting his business, he never missed my softball games, piano concerts or family dinners.

Q. WHAT'S THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE YOU EVER RECEIVED?

» People don’t care how much

you know, until they know that you care. Tom Mendoza, an executive while I was at NetApp and who I’m grateful to call my mentor, taught me this important lesson in servant leadership. I greatly admire one of the ways he lived it — finding 10 people to personally call each day and thank them for going above and beyond.

Q. WHICH ACTIVITY ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO DOING WHEN THE PANDEMIC IS OVER?

» I was supposed to run the New

York City Marathon in 2020, so I can't wait to jump into my next half or full marathon. I’m also excited to spend time with half of the new hires on my team at ServiceNow who I haven’t yet met in person.

Perhaps I’ll convince them to join me running!

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March 2021

“ TECHNOLOGY HAS SUCH POWER TO HAVE A HUMAN AND SOCIAL IMPACT IN FINANCIAL SERVICES” Q. IS THERE A PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENT FROM 2020 OF WHICH YOU ARE PARTICULARLY PROUD?

» I’m incredibly proud of how my

team responded to meet our Financial Services customers where they needed us most in 2020. We rallied to deliver innovative solutions quickly in response to the pandemic. In a matter of days, customers were able to implement

ServiceNow’s solutions to deliver critical funds to small businesses via the Paycheck Protection Program, scale their customer service functions and ensure a safe workplace for employees.

Q. WHAT INSPIRES YOU IN FINTECH TODAY?

» Technology has such power to

have a human and social impact in financial services. It’s made the sector more accessible and understandable, helping to bridge the gap in areas like financial literacy. I’m especially inspired by the strides made by fintechs like Daylight and Greenwood to create equality in banking practices. fintechmagazine.com

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STERLING BANK PLC

At the HEART of Digital Banking in Nigeria Sterling Bank is accelerating its digital innovations to further strengthen its links across key sectors to drive Nigeria’s economic growth WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

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March 2021

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ith the majority of its arrows pointing refreshingly upwards, Nigeria’s Sterling Bank had a strong 2020 with key metrics showing deposits up 17.4 percent, and both EPS and Profit After Tax recording 15 percent growth.

After talking online to Olayinka Oni, who doubles up as Chief Information Officer and Chief Digital Officer, it’s not hard to see why the figures are heading in the right direction. He barely pauses with my questions, demonstrating a clear knowledge not only of every facet of the business but perhaps more crucially in these uncertain times, where the fully mobile, cloud-based bank is heading. Previously he was CTO at Microsoft Nigeria, who is now one of Sterling’s key partners.

Underpinning Sterling’s commercial foundations is a simple acronym, HEART, enabling all managers and employees to keep a firm eye on its five key sectors – Healthcare; Education; Agriculture; Renewables and Transportation – and beneath these are eight pivotal secondary

STERLING BANK PLC

fintechagazine.com

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Work Smart, Achieve More!

Based in Lagos Nigeria, Wragby with its indigenous team of professionals provide innovative solutions for customers in various industries by leveraging its expertise in Cloud Platform & Application Infrastructure, Data & Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering & Application Development, Enterprise Workplace Security and Productivity, Business Solutions, and Advisory Services.

In addition to its Pedigree of firsts, Wragby recently attained the Microsoft Azure Expert MSP Status as the first partner in Nigeria and West East Central and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Wragby Solutions and Sterling Bank: an evolving partnership Oluyomi Alarape, Managing Director of Wragby Business Solutions & Technologies Ltd, outlines the Cloud services which are taking Sterling Bank’s business to a new level and major plans to boost Nigeria’s SME sector Our partnership with Sterling Bank started five years ago.

It’s a classic case of digital transformation – I don’t mean that from the perspective of technology, but from the view of strategy, business process and leadership, and the way Sterling leverages data for decision making, and creates innovative products and delivers value.

We created various cloud solutions that cuts across Business service monitoring, Disaster recovery Enterprise mobility & Security, Centralized communication & Collaboration and took Sterling from a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement to a Cloud Service Provider. With this, the bank has enhanced its operations and can now better manage costs, drive efficiency, empower their employees, optimize productively, and deliver superior returns to shareholders.

We are proud to be the premier Microsoft partner in Nigeria and been selected as worldwide finalists across a range of areas – Enterprise, Mobility and Security, and Application Innovation – in recent years.

Now we are looking at how we can maximise data, make faster services and raise revenues for the bank.

We have introduced a solution called Business

LEARN MORE

Service Monitoring (BSM) for Sterling, which talks to all the services across the chain, and gives the bank a competitive edge.

We build our own intellectual properties. We have built an ERP for SMEs (wBizmanager) – which plugs a major gap in Nigeria. It will be a core platform and major focus in the next 12-18 months.

We will continue to drive insightful decision making through data and provide more context-based products and solutions – developing new projects such as ‘Alt Mall’.

In the Enterprise space, we will be building application programming interface – a monetisation platform.

My leadership style ties into our mission, vision, and core values, combining responsibility and sensitivity. We have an open-door policy. We encourage ‘bottom up’ and create a fluid culture, which drives innovation.

Like the game of rugby, Wragby combines ruggedness and beauty, to make the world a better place through technology. We do this through our products, consulting services and transformation projects with our partners.

STERLING BANK PLC

“ One of our first objectives was to build a mobile and cloud first in strategy, and we are proudly the most advanced user of cloud in the country”

OLAYINKA ONI TITLE: CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER COMPANY: STERLING BANK PLC INDUSTRY: BANKING LOCATION: LAGOS, NIGERIA

OLAYINKA ONI

markets (Manufacturing, Real Estate, Wholesale & Trading, Power, Public Sector, Mining, Oil and gas, and telecoms).

Nigeria is one of those markets that demands constant focus, with its bustling 200-million population, and 22 million living in the business heartbeat, Lagos, alone; as a consumer-focused bank, Sterling is central to Nigerians’ business and leisure activities.

“When I joined in 2016, it was clear that we needed to find a different way to compete, so we pivoted our strategy to three areas – digital, agility and specialisation. We decided to concentrate on five core growth sectors, that also have a social impact from an outlook standpoint. We always seek to enrich lives.”

We skip through each of the five.

He proudly says the bank has made “significant progress” with all of them.

While he highlights achievements – such as with blockchain technology that allows commodities trading and tap-and-ride

EXECUTIVE BIO

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, STERLING BANK PLC

Yinka, as he is fondly called by colleagues and associates, is an experienced IT professional with over two decades in designing and implementing digital transformation solutions in Nigeria.

A published professional with a background spanning Accenture, Microsoft and some of the largest financial services providers in Nigeria, Yinka has successfully helmed some of the largest and most complex digitization projects in the recent history of financial services in Nigeria.

A fellow of the British Computer Society (now the Chartered Institute for Information Technology), Yinka has also served on the board of the National Broadband Council and on the consultative committee for partner ecosystems on the National Information Technology Development Agency, both in Nigeria.

STERLING BANK PLC

“ There is increasingly a lot of desire to adopt blockchain – we’ve used it for commodities and finding an appetite for remittances, as Nigerians are spread all over the world and there is an active diaspora” OLAYINKA ONI

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, STERLING BANK PLC

contactless cards – he doesn’t gloss over the challenges, be it COVID, fake drugs or inadequacies in power supplies.

Without diminishing the pandemic’s impact, Sterling appears to have weathered it better than some of its rivals – as its 24

March 2021

results would indicate. One fortuitous element was last year’s March lockdown which coincided with the launch of the Onebank app, providing consumers with convenient services while living and working from home.

The crisis also prompted changes in employment contracts, with more flexible-work arrangements, as well as significant investment in fraud detection

STERLING BANK PLC

solutions (AI based and “Another trend we’re finding built internally) – which in is embedded banking – that’s many respects, was simply an area where we’re more a continuation of trends that advanced than competitors. were already underway. “When There’s no open banking Year founded COVID happened, it was a lot standard in Nigeria yet, but more seamless for us,” he said. we are taking API and open Moving forward, it is looking banking seriously,” he said. at the UI experience and “Before anyone in the market thinking about business more embraced data, we appointed a from a contactless and digital Chief Data Officer and aid a lot perspective. “The digital play more attention to analytics and Number of is open to anyone. On the recommendation services.” employees flip side, internet penetration This leads to deeper still has a way to go, so there relationships with third party is a place for the physical. But we’re finding a players – whether providing a wallet or rapid growth in agency networks – even if lending as a service. “There is increasingly physical branches are not growing, and ATM a lot of desire to adopt blockchain. We’ve networks are shrinking. used it for commodities but finding an

1960

1,0015,000

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STERLING BANK PLC

OWN TOMORROW Solving technological challenges often requires a simple approach; talking to those who think without limits. As Africa’s leading Information Technology solutions provider, we help business grow boundlessly.

CLICK TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS BOUNDLESSLY TODAY

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March 2021

STERLING BANK PLC

“ Specta has been a runaway success for us and helped differentiate us in the market”

200million Population of Nigeria

22million Living in Lagos

appetite for remittances, as Nigerians are spread all over the world, and there is an active diaspora.”

In recent times, another positive development was the launch of the Specta lending platform, which cut time for approving loans from 48 hours to five minutes. Other eye-catching tools include Doubble by Sterling, an automated investment platform which accepts Naira or US dollars, either in lump sum or scheduled contributions.

“Specta has been a runaway success for us, and helped differentiate us in the market,” he said. “One of our first objectives was to build a mobile and cloud first in strategy, and we are proudly the most advanced user

OneBank by Sterling

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STERLING BANK PLC

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March 2021

STERLING BANK PLC

The Rising Sun (Reveal)

“ Almost every company will become a fintech and if you’re not taking that seriously, you’ll be left behind”

of cloud in the country. Almost every company will become a fintech and if you’re not taking that seriously, you’ll be left behind.”

The four key objectives for Nigeria’s banks, identified by Sterling Bank, are efficient liquidity management; cost efficiency; excellent service delivery and asset protection in order to sustain optimal returns on capital. With his eyes on emerging technologies, Oni is ensuring that all four will flourish in the months and years ahead.

OLAYINKA ONI

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, STERLING BANK PLC

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March 2021

FINTECH

WHAT MAKES A FINTECH STARTUP A SUCCESS? The fintech industry is swiftly becoming the new financial services normal. We talk to six industry experts about launching a successful startup in 2021 WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND

T

he sheer number of fintech companies mushrooming globally is astonishing.

For example, according to Statistica, in February 2020 in the US, 8,775 fintech startups were registered. In the same period, there were 7,385 similar startups in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, followed by 4,765 in the Asia Pacific region.

These emerging enterprises cross several sectors, including education, insurance, retail banking, fundraising and non-profit, investment management, security and the development of cryptocurrencies. And according to reports, the global fintech market in 2022, will be worth US$309.98bn.

“ I would argue that collaboration is the new competition” ANDRA SONEA

HEAD OF SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE, FINTECHOS

Fintech startup challenges It’s easy to assume that starting a fintech is simple. In theory, all one needs is a good idea, a savvy developer and some investors.

But that’s only a very small part of the equation, according to Michael Donald, the CEO of ImageNPay - the world's first imagebased payment system, it takes much more than inspiration and technical knowhow to even arrive at the funding stage. Donald believes the biggest mistake startups make is assuming that everyone will either love their idea or understand it on the first pass.

He says, “In my experience from both big corporates and multiple ventures that is rarely the case. Secondly, having great presentations which promise the world but when the bonnet is lifted fall far short of something that will be road worthy.”

Fintech startups face a perilous period of knife-edge uncertainty when it comes to success. A report by Medici shows a staggering nine out of 10 fintech startups fail to get beyond the seed stage, as riskaverse investors prefer to wave their wallets at later-stage companies.

“Trying to scale too quickly before really understanding your customer values is one mistake startups can make in the early stages,” says Colin Munro, Managing Director of Miconex, a reward programme development company.

“Pushing ahead before you’re ready can mean you spread available resources too fintechmagazine.com

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FinTech Podcast Listen Now Listen Now

FINTECH

Top six fintech startup tips Be regulation savvy Identify a niche Go shopping for tech stacks Be regulation savvy Hire an expert team Get funded

thinly, over promising and under delivering, which will impact negatively on customer experience. Another mistake is going off track and veering into a market you know little about. It’s easy to have your head turned, but keep laser-focused and be a specialist.”

Luc Gueriane, Chief Commercial Officer at Moorwand, a payment solutions provider, agrees that focus is critical to success. “My advice is to focus on one or two solutions that you know you’ve nailed and that will gain a lot of attention. By doubling down on specialisms, fintechs have a clearer path to success,” he says.

While the digitisation of businesses has accelerated over the past 12 months, conversely, it has made life more difficult for fintech startups, points out Gueriane.

“Launching a fintech has never been easy but the market has certainly gone through a dramatic shift that makes it harder,” he says.

“The pandemic has taken a lot of companies to new heights – especially those in digital payments. But it is now more challenging to access funding unless you’re an established brand who has already proved itself or you have a very specific solution that addresses a small but important problem in the market.”

However, despite the logistical issues that are plaguing all businesses, some experts believe fintech startups have had an easier time than other companies in adjusting to the 'new normal' due to the nature of their size and structure. "Smaller businesses and startups are more nimble and have the ability to adapt quickly. I see that as fintechmagazine.com

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FINTECH

Top Fintech Startups to Watch in 2020 / 2021

an opportunity, combined with the fact that people are adopting new technology at a faster rate than I can remember,” Munro says.

Meanwhile, Andra Sonea, Head of Solution Architecture at FintechOS, an app development, services and solutions enterprise, believes poor budgeting is responsible for the vast majority of fintech startup failures. “A lot of start-ups burn through money quickly, and don’t make that money back as fast as they should because they choose the wrong business model,” she says. “This is especially true of fintech startups pursuing a B2C business model, who will often overestimate the extent to which consumers will change their behaviour, or pay for a new product or service in addition to all the things they already pay for.”

New technology As 5G becomes mainstream and more IoT devices hook up to fintech services, the data 36

March 2021

collected by fintech services will become more detailed and valuable. The technology accelerates payment speed and security processes, allows payment providers to leverage the power of tech such as AI, blockchain and API integrations in a faster way. Some industry experts believe that better connectivity will see the industry truly come into its own, becoming increasingly mainstream.

Marwan Forzley, CEO of Veem, a San Francisco-based online global payments platform founded in 2014, explains, “Financial technology is built to be done anywhere. Fintech innovators who adopt 5G technology can expect to engage in more partnerships, M&A, etc. as legacy financial institutions and banks look to modernise their service offering. We can also expect quicker transactions on a global scale as the uptake in 5G bolsters networks and reduces over-air network latency issues.”

FINTECH

Donald believes technological opportunities will also create a more even playing field.

He says, “Certainly, I see this being a huge opportunity in the future to enable device to device data connectivity to advance the peer-to-peer payments space, this in turn will create greater opportunities for smaller companies and start-ups.”

He adds, “Open banking when effectively leveraged will be a vehicle for an optimised, personalised digital banking experience. It could also lead to the development of new payments networks outside of the big three, Visa, Mastercard and Amex.”

M&A opportunities To truly run with the big boys and become an established entity, up-and-coming fintech startups must turn to M&A when the opportunity presents itself. The investment potential and pooled resources that such collaborations provide, enable enterprises to move from being entry-level players to serious market contenders.

Oliver Holle, the managing partner at Speedinvest – a pan-European earlystage VC with $486m in assets under management, believes collaborations can be critical. “Partnerships can be the key enabler for fintech growth,” he points out. “For example, Stripe partnering with Shopify really put Stripe on the map. I’ve seen single-line API infrastructure (which makes collaboration much simpler and easier) becoming a core feature of many fintech platforms to accelerate distribution, especially in B2B.” Holle continues, “This is further underlined as Business-to-Developer is becoming a thing, which has seen the quality of documentation and developer friendliness increase dramatically over the past few years.”

Enter

5G advantages The rollout of 5G will provide better opportunities, says Kash Amini, CEO of MasLife “Consumers want new innovative, mobile services on the go. 5G can create a more dependable and reactive network enabling fintech businesses to provide their customers with effortlessly quick transactions, personalised payment technology and a new age of connected devices. With the low latency, high data capacity and reliability of forthcoming 5G networks bringing digitally-savvy customers new and improved services, 5G will offer fintech grand new possibilities...

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FINTECH

Startup mistakes Oliver Holle, managing partner at Speedinvest, says, “One mistake made by startups looking to commercialise is being too driven by the product requirements of their very first customer, rather than building a product that caters to the broader market needs. However, by far the three biggest

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mistakes that I have seen during my career so far are: 1. Lacking execution capabilities 2. Not being able to attract and retain talent 3. Not being able to adapt to changing market dynamics

FINTECH

“I would argue that collaboration is the new competition,” says Sonea. “Before fintech you had a handful of providers— mainly banks—and a handful of technology companies serving those companies.

Fintech now has resulted in massive disruption that has spawned thousands of providers, often specialists in payments,

lending, credit etc, who are themselves served by specialists. BaaS also means that fintechs can get tech from some firms, and then ‘rent’ the licenses from BaaS providers.”

She concludes, “With such a diverse pool of potential partners, it will be the fintech that collaborates best that will succeed.” fintechmagazine.com

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RAPID7

SECURING EVERY LAYER: HOW RAPID7 MANAGES VULNERABILITIES

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Rapid7’s Victoria Sitcawich and Bria Grangard discuss the importance of visibility and effective prioritisation to modern cyber threat remediation WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE & CAITLYN COLE

T

he evolution of technology has always run parallel with larger socio-economic trends, and the nature of cyber threat is no different. The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, has uprooted operating paradigms and shifted workers away from the relative safety of siloed corporate networks and towards the security minefield of remote working. Solid vulnerability management requires an ability to navigate the unexpected and know the best course of action to remain protected using cutting-edge tools guided by industry expertise. We spoke to Victoria Sitcawich, Product Marketing Manager, and Bria Grangard, Product Marketing Manager, to find out how security specialist Rapid7 can offer both.

Rapid7’s approach is characterised by its broad scope of coverage, which isn’t restricted simply to traditional network environments but extends to an organisation’s entire infrastructure, including web applications, virtual environments and remote assets. “We view vulnerability management as being a holistic process of identifying the assets in your environment, evaluating them for risk, prioritising that risk, and treating the identified vulnerabilities through remediation or mitigation,” explains Sitcawich. The company enables customers to do this with a suite of dedicated, cloudbased products, including InsightVM and InsightAppSec. fintechagazine.com

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Victoria Sitcawich and Bria Gangard from Rapid7 talk about vulnerability management

InsightVM allows the user to understand business risk in the context of their entire digital environment, prioritise their focus, and report on findings to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. “Not every asset is created equal; your payroll systems should probably be considered more critical than an individual laptop,” continues Sitcawich.

“InsightVM translates that security risk into business risk and helps our customers look at key metrics to track success.” InsightAppSec, Grangard explains, is similar: the highestrated DAST (dynamic application security

“ One of the key takeaways is the importance of securing every layer of your modern attack surface” VICTORIA SITCAWICH

PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER, RAPID7

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March 2021

testing) solution according to Gartner for three consecutive years, InsightAppSec automatically assesses web applications to identify common vulnerabilities. “When developing the product we thought, ‘How can we help test, monitor and ultimately prevent the exploitation of vulnerabilities or weaknesses at the application layer?’ A lot of components from our InsightAppSec and tCell products come into play here: InsightAppSec brings testing and monitoring together so that clients can understand how their apps are being attacked in real-time.”

When it comes to designing and implementing a quality vulnerability risk management strategy, time is one of the most important factors to consider, not just in ‘speed of response’ terms but also overall focus. Rapid7’s five-point process (identification, assessment, prioritisation, remediation, and measuring progress) aims to reduce risk through greater environmental visibility and prioritisation acuity, “Everyone

RAPID7

“ Not every asset is created equal; your payroll systems should probably be considered more critical than an individual laptop” VICTORIA SITCAWICH

PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER, RAPID7

BRIA GRANGARD TITLE: SENIOR PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER An award-winning Product Marketer and technology subject matter expert at Rapid7 with experiences in leading GTM strategies, owning and participating in a podcast, and speaking opportunities across Europe, Australia and the U.S.

VICTORIA SITCAWICH

MEET THE TEAM

has the same 24 hours in a day; we want to help you focus on what's most important,” states Grangard. Part of Rapid7’s mission, says Sitcawich, is to establish reasonable expectations with its customers amid a highly complex threat landscape: “It's unrealistic to think that you're going to be able to fix every vulnerability as soon as it appears in your environment. You're going to have to make tough decisions, but, at the end of the day, a vulnerability management programme is meant to reduce risk, and you're not achieving that until you start remediating.” Essentially, customers should define a vision of successful cybersecurity and pursue core goals in attaining it, without being paralysed into inaction by an overwhelming number of possibilities.

Developing strong partnerships with key vendors who are able to troubleshoot any problems can support this even further.

While Rapid7’s products and services are able to secure every layer of an enterprise’s digital environment, it is also worth reflecting on root causes of vulnerabilities in the first instance. Neglecting to follow the aforementioned five-point process and other imposed limitations conspire to make addressing security issues more difficult in real-world situations. “Broken authentication (when authentication credentials are compromised) and misconfiguration are two common examples, particularly as companies make the shift to the cloud,” says Sitcawich. “SQL injections and cross-site scripting are also frequent,” adds Grangard.

“These are where attackers will try to gain personal information by injecting code into either the website or the application itself.”

There are many circumstances that can precipitate these attacks: a lack of resources and expertise are significant factors, but, once again, nothing is so deleterious as a

TITLE: PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER Product Marketing Manager for Vulnerability Management at Rapid7, responsible for executing on go-to-market strategy for InsightVM.

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ADVERT PAGE GOLD lack of time. “If customers tell us, ‘I don't have the time or the energy’, or ‘this isn't where I want to focus my time’, we inform them that Rapid7 has a group of security experts and a dedicated customer advisor to manage vulnerabilities day-to-day.”

Also, it should be remembered that some forms of attack cannot be predicted. This is why keeping informed should go hand-inhand with testing and monitoring to identify vulnerabilities early, “We encourage all of our customers to look at the OWASP Top 10 if they want to stay educated on the most common application security risks.”

When considering the technologies that are changing how vulnerabilities are managed and resolved, Sitcawich has an emphatic 44

March 2021

“ Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day; we want to help you focus on what's most important” BRIA GRANGARD

SENIOR PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER, RAPID7

answer: automation. “Our InsightConnect solution is specifically dedicated to it.

Automation is truly key to helping keep processes efficient.” A no-code platform

RAPID7

containing over 290 plugins to connect tools and enable workflow customisation, InsightConnect is envisioned as a tool for liberating teams from routine or mundane tasks and enabling them to be redeployed in more valuable areas; retaining the human element in the remediation process is still vitally important. “Similarly, on the application security side, we’re always exploring which tasks can be automated to make your life easier,” explains Grangard. “We're not losing the human element; we're trying to amplify what humans can do via automation.”

Despite offering comprehensive products, services and insights, Grangard states that Rapid7 does not want to foster customer dependency. On the contrary, it encourages

clients to gain confidence using its tools and independently grow their respective vulnerability risk management programmes, “if they feel they have the expertise and can handle it on their own, we absolutely support that.” In instances where a customer’s in-house security creates tension by redirecting other teams towards non-priority goals, Sitcawich adds that Rapid7 can act as a mediating force by establishing a “common language” and creating understanding around critical business objectives. This is particularly important for organisations that are now adopting cloud for the first time because of COVID-19, which has had the dual effect of introducing cloud network vulnerabilities and increasing the surface area for attack on enterprise IT. “There's been a push for businesses to change the emphasis on how they work: ‘mom and pop’ restaurants who relied on in-store patronage fintechagazine.com

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have had to adopt a greater online presence.

Rapid7 has always talked about the power of digital transformation, and COVID-19 has accelerated that faster than any of us could have predicted,” says Grangard.

Summarising the qualities of a strong vulnerability management strategy, both Sitcawich and Grangard highlight the importance of regarding security as a collection of individual activities that merge into one holistic solution. “One of the key takeaways is the importance of securing every layer of your modern attack surface,” says Sitcawich.

“Not just network infrastructure, but also the cloud and web applications. There needs to be visibility over all of it so that you can prioritise effectively and remediate efficiently, especially as new technologies come into play.” Therefore, Rapid7’s vulnerability risk management tools empower companies to achieve the requisite level of understanding, confidence and agility to thrive in an

“We're not losing the human element; we're trying to amplify what humans can do via automation” BRIA GRANGARD

PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER, RAPID7

increasingly complex cyber threat landscape.

“We all need to think about scaling security simultaneously with some of these newly adopted technologies,” concludes Grangard.

“It's not just traditional devices anymore; there's so many different layers that must be considered now.”

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BANKING

REBOOTING BANKING POST-COVID-19 Could this moment of COVID-induced crisis represent an opportunity for banking’s digital renewal? Commentators from SAP, SAS and Tink help us find out

WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING

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How COVID changed everything It already seems like a foregone conclusion that the socio-economic changes ushered in by the COVID-19 pandemic will rewrite previously enshrined industry rules in banking.

More to the point, it has fundamentally changed how banks, their customers and employees interact on a daily basis, and therefore altered that most vital element of financial strategy: risk management.

However, to say that this aspect of banking was not already undergoing significant challenges prior to the global crisis would be insincere: unfavourable interest rates, political unrest, and fintech driven market disruption were already conspiring to make old industry paradigms progressively less viable. “The pandemic has only exacerbated these difficulties and placed additional importance on the means of resolution,” states Anthony Mancuso, Head of Risk Modeling at SAS’ Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions division. He believes that two key areas of impact have been:

BANKING

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BANKING

1. “Fundamental assumptions about [banks’] customer base and behaviour will have to be reconsidered. In many ways the challenge is akin to starting a new firm from scratch.”

2. “The pandemic exposed that existing models lack a connection to shocks originating outside the system (exogenous events), such as supply chain disruptions or trade friction. Without a way to incorporate exogenous events, significant risks can and have gone unnoticed and unchecked.”

The ability to seamlessly connect at an individual and business level has never been more urgent. It is in recognition of this that banks with a previously hesitant attitude to digital transformation have accelerated their efforts; in late October 2020, Quadient warned that the window for incumbent

organisations to improve their digital offerings was shrinking fast. Rafa Plantier, Country Manager (UK and Ireland) at open banking platform fintech Tink, is critical of banking’s tardy efforts prior to the pandemic, believing that greater foresight could have mitigated the initial frontline pressure: “Banks have been challenged operationally because of a rise in the volume of credit requests. The automation of information gathering and streamlined onboarding processes could have helped banks manage requests more effectively.”

The overwhelming influx of online requests was primarily caused by the closure of bank branches, making the prioritisation of digital channels essential. Achieving operational efficiencies has also become paramount at a time when employees are working remotely and customers expect online experiences on par with digital leaders (Google, Amazon, etc) across the board. According to Falk Rieker, Global Head of the Banking Industry Business at SAP, this extra weight of expectation adds yet another pressure to modern banking: “Banks are on the front lines, supporting and guiding their

“ The pandemic has only exacerbated [...] difficulties and placed additional importance on the means of resolution” ANTHONY MANCUSO

HEAD OF RISK MODELING, SAS

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BANKING

Make Better, Faster, More Trusted Decisions with SAS Viya

customers through the crisis in a variety of ways, including transmitting government stimulus measures, offering forbearance and emergency funding to clients, and donating to relief efforts. Banks must remain aware of the reputational risk they face if customers feel they don’t get the support they need.”

These factors will only be exacerbated by customers in older demographics, many of whom could be engaging with digital channels for the first time.

Clearly, the customer-bank relationship needs redefining for a new era.

Preparing for the future Plantier is adamant that improving banking’s current state of risk will be contingent on open banking, “Tink's acquisition of Instantor, a credit-decisioning fintech, shows that we believe open banking can help organisations improve risk analysis with holistic and realtime financial data.” Collaboration and tech 52

March 2021

innovation, then, are to be carefully invested in; the problems of digital finance can seldom be addressed by banks in a siloed manner. But, in such a complex and critical industry, where should they start?

Fortunately, although reimagining a centuries-old institution like banking could be an immense logistical challenge, products and solutions to address new forms of risk already exist. “SAS didn’t engage in significant solution development, our current portfolio of industry-leading risk solutions is wellequipped to help our customers to traverse the pandemic’s turbulence,” explains Mancuso. Instead, the company adapted and retooled so that customers can take proactive steps against further disruption, recover equilibrium through the use of low/ no-code digital environments (SAS Viya), and prepare for future risk scenarios using exogenous model Stress Testing.

SAP has chosen to bridge the ‘bankcustomer-employee’ experience gap by

BANKING

“ Banks must remain aware of the reputational risk they face if customers feel they don’t get the support they need” FALK RIEKER

GLOBAL HEAD OF THE BANKING INDUSTRY BUSINESS UNIT, SAP

offering everything from predictive product offerings to online and mobile channel solutions, which aim to improve a bank’s existing customer experience without necessarily replacing existing legacy bank architecture. “With SAP’s Experience Management, banks can identify and close experience gaps across the customer and employee journeys. Financial performance will take a hit across all types of P&L and risk dimensions – fees, interest, loan losses, expenses, credit exposures, liquidity, etc. To understand the financial impacts of these drivers, SAP software supports stress testing and scenario analysis together with realtime, dynamic monitoring of financial risk metrics,” says Rieker.

Levelling-up the playing field: challenger vs incumbent Although they operate along the same basic principles, there is some disparity between challenger and incumbent banks’ positions in the debate. For one thing, according to a survey

by Ipsos MORI, digital-only banks appear to have a distinct advantage in terms of online user experience and service quality. Mancuso equates this to challenger banks being “fresher, with business models that often place significant emphasis on digital engagement.

This makes them nimbler in terms of

MEET OUR COMMENTATORS

Anthony Mancuso HEAD OF RISK MODELING, SAS “I have ultimate responsibility for market strategy, product requirements, project implementation, and advisory consulting for all risk solutions relating to model development, deployment and governance.

My team works closely with internal and external colleagues to develop product pipelines, support pre sales activities, and provide training and knowledge transfer.”

Falk Rieker GLOBAL HEAD OF THE BANKING INDUSTRY BUSINESS UNIT, SAP “I have global responsibility to advise and recommend SAP and Partner products and services for new and existing customers. My role is to guide our banking clients through a successful digital transformation and intelligent enterprise journey.”

Rafa Plantier COUNTRY MANAGER (UK AND IRELAND), TINK Plantier is a Brazil-native and was Stripe's former head of EMEA banking. He now leads Tink’s ambition to equip financial institutions and fintechs with best-in-class technology solutions that will allow the UK and Ireland to continue to lead the way as pioneers of open banking.

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BANKING

Future-Proofing the Customer Experience in Banking

“ Challenger banks naturally have a better starting position, but even they are still short of where they want to be” RAFA PLANTIER

COUNTRY MANAGER (UK AND IRELAND), TINK

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technology and, perhaps more importantly, process.” Plantier is in agreement: the level of digitalisation is uneven between the two factions due to different starting positions on the path of digital transformation. This is not to say incumbents don’t also have a natural advantage, “Challenger banks naturally have a better starting position, but even they are still short of where they want to be. Conversely, incumbent banks have a better starting position on deposits and net interest margin generation.”

This has given rise to a ‘battle of the banks’, a competitive race where one strives to achieve greater customer engagement through digital channels (incumbents), and the other (challengers) seeks to gain credibility and financial security. Neither party can afford the existential risk of neglecting to improve. “We

BANKING

have seen several digital challenger banks cease operations, citing difficulties with raising capital in this current economic environment,” Rieker states, echoing Plantier. “Incumbent banks have a cost issue and need to take a page from challenger banks’ playbook by moving operations to the cloud to reduce cost, reducing data silos and re-examining the holistic customer experience.”

An opportunity to reboot banking Opinions on banking’s medium-term recovery prospects run from cautious optimism to just plain caution: Mancuso: “Remember, the pre-COVID banking environment was not benign. Wiser banks recognise the pandemic as a strategic opportunity to recreate themselves for the future and are seizing it.”

Rieker: “Banks have had to adapt quickly to function during COVID-19. The industry is still too reliant on manual processes to operate efficiently and effectively in a virtual environment. COVID-19 should be an opportunity to reset and reposition our institutions for the future.”

Plantier: “I believe recovery will depend on the effectiveness of vaccination operations.

Tink is optimistic and believes that we will see a significant recovery in 2021 and that open banking will play a key role in this new world of finance.”

Therefore, the onus rests squarely on banking leaders to engage with digital transformation and arm themselves with the tools and expertise that will help them negotiate the risks of today, and perhaps even tomorrow. fintechmagazine.com

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INVESTING AND WEALTH MANAGEMENT IN THE NEW NORMAL Nino Ulsamer, Co-Founder and CTO, expounds StashAway’s new approach to investment based on customer-centricity, data and automation

WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

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D

igital technology has the capability to democratise the instruments of financial services in previously inconceivable ways; what used to be tools reserved for professionals are now being made available to the general public on intuitively designed, tech-enhanced platforms. Headquartered in Singapore, StashAway was founded in 2016 upon the principles of providing bespoke, affordable and high-quality digital solutions for wealth management, and it’s a mission that continues to this day. Nino Ulsamer, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, spoke with us about how the company started and its goals in the APAC (AsiaPacific) market.

“It was more than five years ago that I met Michele (Ferrario, CEO and Co-Founder), who, at the time, was looking for a business partner to start a new company,” recounts Ulsamer. Ferrario, a successful and experienced entrepreneur with established businesses in North America, Europe and Asia, was dissatisfied with investment

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NINO ULSAMER TITLE: C O-FOUNDER AND CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER INDUSTRY: FINANCIAL SERVICES LOCATION: SINGAPORE

EXECUTIVE BIO

Nino Ulsamer is the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of StashAway, Southeast Asia’s largest and fastest-growing digital wealth manager for both retail and accredited investors.

Previously, Nino founded Personio, a successful web-based HR management platform, and before that focused his career on e-commerce, founding two Rocket Internet-backed companies in Russia. Nino holds a Diploma in Computer Science from the University of Munich and was Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley. He also holds a Degree in Technology Management from the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM).

products offered to him by banks in the latter and wanted to develop something comparable to those in other regions. He immediately went to Ulsamer as his first port of call.

A seasoned veteran of the European roboadvisory market, he too shared an interest in a different investment model because of his own experiences. “I didn't know much about investing at the time, but the idea of having a digital wealth manager that acts as a guide for your investing journey and isn’t incentivised by commissions or trying to sell you random products was very attractive.” Bringing on board Freddy Lim, Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer, provided the final piece of the puzzle, and StashAway was created.

The company calls its platform “wealth management, like it should be” and offers customers a superior investing experience via five key factors: • One low, variable and transparent management fee (calculated by the size of investment) • Knowledgeable customer service agents • Decision-making guided by data insights • Unlimited and free money transfers and withdrawals • An intuitively designed mobile app (currently rated 4.5+ stars) Having founded several tech companies prior to StashAway, Ulsamer states that his primary concern was to achieve “simplicity” in the overall user experience, “Ultimately, what our product does is not actually that simple, but, for the customer, it’s extremely intuitive.” Next, he introduced automated processes to boost cost-efficiencies and keep expenditures low, savings which subsequently benefit users in the form of very low fees. These highly customer-

STASHAWAY

StashAway's Founding Story

centric priorities demonstrate the StashAway executives’ decades of experience in the tech sector investment; they know what matters most to the end user, and this is what gives the company its edge. “Our team is now around 150 people strong and that depth of experience translates into our results,” states Ulsamer.

Firstly, StashAway now holds a CMS license for retail fund management from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which recognises its compliance with the “highest regulatory compliance standards” regarding audits, capital requirements and more. “Secondly, we’ve built a proprietary investment strategy called ERAA.” Economic regime-based asset allocation (ERAA) is a sophisticated investment strategy that Ulsamer claims was previously only available to high-net-worth individuals.

StashAway’s innovation has been to introduce this previously unattainable system to retail customers. “ERAA is

our proprietary investments strategy that powers all portfolios,” he explains.

“It's based on the observation that the economy moves through different cycles, and asset classes don’t behave consistently across different economic

“ The idea of having a digital wealth manager that acts as a guide for your investing journey and isn’t incentivised by commissions or trying to sell you random products was very attractive” NINO ULSAMER

CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, STASHAWAY

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Invest in client relationships

Whether you’re in the world of banking, insurance, or wealth management, providing seamless support matters.

With Zendesk, it’s easy to anticipate needs before they arise—resulting in quicker responses and happier clients.

Find out more

Zendesk + StashAway: Scaling support in a conversational era

Wendy Johnstone, SVP & COO APAC, discusses trends in APAC finance, new customer expectations, and why messaging is the future of customer experience “The Asian finance industry is currently seeing unprecedented changes: digital disruption, shifting customer expectations, and obviously the very challenging economic environment presented by the pandemic,” says Wendy Johnstone, SVP & COO APAC, Zendesk, in reference to the company’s recently released Customer Experience (CX) Trends Report 2021. “Customers have stepped back, re-examined what their priorities are, and adopted new behaviours.

They want to connect in a more convenient, conversational, and personal way with brands, and that's really been driven by messaging.”

A leading provider of customer service software, Zendesk’s mission has always been to democratise customer service software to help foster better customer relationships. It’s an important mission, particularly at such a turbulent time of change in the finance industry and socio-economic upheaval, and that’s exactly what Zendesk has been helping StashAway to do. “We started working with StashAway back in 2017, when it was looking to improve both its customer engagement and its customer service agent efficiency,” Johnstone explains.

“We’ve helped StashAway deliver the world-class omnichannel customer experience it’s known for,”

continues Johnstone. “Customers can use a variety of channels and with a completely unified view, StashAway’s agents don't need to waste precious time manually synching customer data across disconnected systems.”

Furthermore, Johnstone noted that “messaging has very quickly become the preferred channel for customers to engage with businesses,” drawn by its convenient, fast and personal nature. StashAway was among the first to deploy Zendesk’s WhatsApp integration when it was launched, and doing so enabled the company to dramatically reduce their first response time to just 30 minutes - significantly lower than the industry benchmark of 24 hours. Shortly following its introduction, she relates that it has quickly become a strong customer favourite.

StashAway’s focus on its customers and view of CX as a strategic differentiator has placed it in good standing to address the changing needs of its customers. “It’s a fantastic partner of ours and the relationship has really grown and deepened over the years. A big reason for this has to do with the team,” Johnstone concludes.

“StashAway is a digital native, and these are the organisations who we see disrupting the norm and driving the transformation in financial services. It’s taking a very open minded approach to trying lots of new initiatives; Zendesk is very honored to be StashAway’s partner and support its growth.” zendesk.com

STASHAWAY

ADVERT PAGE GOLD

DID YOU KNOW...

ONE OF STASHAWAY’S CLOSEST PARTNERSHIPS HAS BEEN WITH SOFTWARE COMPANY ZENDESK

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Zendesk was founded in Copenhagen in 2007, although it has since moved its headquarters to San Francisco, California. Specialising in support, sales and customer engagement software to fit a variety of needs, StashAway forged an early and enduring collaboration with it.

“It’s our support platform; we've used Zendesk from the very beginning and have established a strong relationship with it over time,” Ulsamer explains.

StashAway was actually one of the first financial institutions in Asia to use their WhatsApp/Zendesk API. In a case study, we were able to optimise agent performance by 50%.

“We're very happy with Zendesk and look forward to continuing our partnership in the future.”

March 2021

Left to right: Nino Ulsamer, Michele Ferrario & Freddy Lim

STASHAWAY

regions.” Gold, for example, will behave differently during periods of growth than when the economy is in recession.

StashAway will monitor the performance of every asset class and then consider value adjustments, comparing the ‘fair value’ of a certain asset and its current price and looking for any harnessable differences. “Out of all this information, we create an optimised portfolio that attempts to maximise medium-term

returns while minimising risk. Our customers are extremely satisfied with the returns that they've achieved so far.”

Maintaining the company’s individual vision requires specialised technology, therefore StashAway develops the majority of its technology in-house. “It also means that we can provide a very coherent experience for our customers as they go through the various stages of the onboarding process,” says Ulsamer. fintechagazine.com

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Available online, the process for signing up can be done easily from a smartphone in less than 15 minutes. The user is asked a series of questions in order for StashAway to understand them and their “risk appetite”. Following standard KYC (know your customer) practices, new customers can expect to be fully onboarded within 24 to 48 working hours. “Using CRM (customer relationship management), we leverage data to understand customer behavior and present the most ideal experience or content to them at any given point in time.” The objective, he continues, is not simply to convert the customer but actually to educate them on their investment journey.

“We've always tried to stay at the forefront of technological innovation in general, and that’s helped us build a very strong engineering team. By keeping our

“Our customers are extremely satisfied with the returns that they've achieved so far” NINO ULSAMER

CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, STASHAWAY

processes very agile and fast, we’re able to react to customer feedback quickly and therefore able to continuously innovate.”

Despite this, however, Ulsamer is clear that there are still challenges to operating in the APAC region. With myriad local regulatory requirements to consider in each area it operates in, the company has to maintain a close working relationship with regulators in fintechagazine.com

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each territory. “Also, if you look at a customer in Singapore and compare them to a customer elsewhere, they're going to be very different and have separate expectations about the product,” he adds. Therefore, StashAway is careful to conduct market research and interviews with potential customers from the very beginning. Doing so allows it to adjust its product and messaging to cater for those variances. In a clear display of transparency and customer focused innovation, StashAway even helps its customers comprehend complicated clauses in its terms and conditions by adding a ‘translator’ for legal jargon.

Despite the difficulties of 2020, success has followed swiftly in StashAway’s wake and 2021 is off to a remarkable start. The company recently announced that it is now managing over US$1bn (SG$1.35bn) in assets, achieved through StashAway’s

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Number of Employees

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Year Founded

Nino Ulsamer talks about the benifits of Stash Away

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“ Ultimately, what our product does is not actually that simple, but, for the customer, it’s extremely intuitive” NINO ULSAMER

CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, STASHAWAY fintechagazine.com

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ability to generate strong returns in a volatile market. In total, its portfolios have generated annualised USD returns ranging from 17.1% (for its highest risk portfolio) to 5.3% (for its lowest risk portfolio) since its launch in July 2017. In 2020 alone, the USD portfolio 68

March 2021

STASHAWAY

How is StashAway different from other robo-advisors?

“ First and foremost, our goal is to continue to help customers navigate the ups and downs of the market” NINO ULSAMER

CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, STASHAWAY

returns ranged from 24.1% to 5.2% respectively, and consistently outperformed their samerisk benchmarks.

2021 will see StashAway exploring opportunities for further expansion within Asia, with the same careful scrutinisation of

market potential and regulatory restrictions that are hallmarks of its general approach.

“Typically, when we go into a new market, we try to educate clients and offer a product that previously wasn’t available to them,” Ulsamer says. “But, first and foremost, our goal is to continue to help customers navigate the ups and downs of the market.” His vision for StashAway’s development is the continued refinement of its overall wealth management experience. The world has been irreparably changed by the events of 2020, and how people invest must change with it. Focusing on data, technology and customer-centricity, StashAway will continue to leverage its approach to produce new and exciting results. “We all live in a new reality now, right?

Firms need to adapt to the new normal.”

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SMART CITIES: HOW FINANCE CAN TRANSFORM URBAN LIVING

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We take a tour through the financial implications of smart cities, the more inclusive, streamlined, and cashless living spaces of tomorrow WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING

T

oday, approximately 50% of the world’s population lives in an urban setting. This figure is set to increase to 70% in 2050. As a monument to modern living and community, it’s clear that cities infused with digital technology (smart cities) will come to be shaped by the economic infrastructure that underpins every facet of it.

With tools and system architecture that have proven their value in the private sector now available for public sector roll-out, cities stand to gain significant boosts in efficiency, cost saving and overall service. Passing these savings and benefits to citizens across potentially every financial aspect of daily life, digital payment solutions in smart cities could represent an important evolution in human living spaces.

In a whistle-stop tour through an imaginary smart city of the future, we explore the topic’s transformative potential, guided by commentators from Fiserv and Rapyd, as well as resources from PwC and Mastercard.

A more inclusive city One of the oft-cited benefits of a more thoroughly interconnected consumermerchant dynamic is inclusivity. Mastercard estimates in its brochure ‘Smart cities are connected cities’ that two billion adults are ‘unbanked’ worldwide and rely exclusively on cash for most financial transactions.

Although the shift away from cash was fintechmagazine.com

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PAYMENT SOLUTIONS

“ Addressing unserved markets is dependent on facilitating preferred local payment methods for specific communities. Historically, only a small percentage of a population uses card payments” SAREL TAL VP EMEA, RAPYD

already underway prior to the 2020 COVID19 pandemic, the events which followed have supercharged interest in and the development of digital payments. What started as a practical measure to avoid contact contamination for many consumers has become preference, as the simplicity, transparency and convenience of exemplary digital financial services was made apparent.

But how does this serve to foster financial inclusivity in cities? For Sarel Tal, VP EMEA at Rapyd, the answer lies in empowering

‘alternative payments’.

“Addressing unserved markets is dependent on facilitating preferred local payment methods for specific communities,” he explains. ”Historically, only a small percentage of a population uses card payments.” As more merchants move online and target customers outside their region, the need to add local payment methods will increase and the number of channels in which people can financially participate will subsequently increase. This will be particularly important for cities in APAC, adds Tal, where the multiplicity of local payment methods is greater.

For its part, Mastercard has pledged to connect one billion people to the digital economy by 2025. Its plan will entail enabling contactless payments across cityscapes, with a particular emphasis on connecting small businesses to be able to accept payments from consumers’ smart devices and mobile wallets. fintechmagazine.com

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Streamlining the admin of city life When considering the most fundamental change to city infrastructure that digital payments could bring, Peter O'Halloran, Vice President and General Manager of Global Digital Commerce at Fiserv, believes city transportation could become a wholly different experience. “We're seeing a huge move towards integrated payment solutions across multiple transport networks. A big driver for that is the need to consolidate data, make it easy to manage, and ultimately make it easier for citizens to pay,” he states.

“So, instead of having to apply and register for specific cards for each transport network, it's now possible to pay through entirely 74

March 2021

“ Instead of having to apply and register for specific cards for each transport network, it's now possible to pay through entirely contactless methods in a number of cities, such as London” PETER O'HALLORAN

VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER OF GLOBAL DIGITAL COMMERCE, FISERV

PAYMENT SOLUTIONS

branches. Reportedly, use of the card would also be used to transfer benefits directly to citizens.

Concluding his thoughts on transport in a smart city, O’Halloran adds that the conversion of non-digital municipal systems like parking could be significant for consumers. “There's a huge body of work when it comes to managing traditional meters and infrastructure. Replacing it with app-based solutions that aren’t owned by urban councils could provide more choice and ease of use for citizens. Fiserv

QUOTE MAKERS Sarel Tal VP EMEA, RAPYD Tal joined Rapyd in October 2019. Prior to his appointment, he was involved in the payment industry for over 15 years, including payment processing and card acquisition.

contactless methods in a number of cities, such as London.”

O'Halloran also highlights the emergence of government-issued ID cards for citizens, which can subsequently be used for essential functions around a city, including social payments and access to grants and initiatives.

PwC outlines a similar concept in ‘Creating smarter cities through digital payments’: based on a corporate case study in India, it describes “an open loop prepaid card which can be used for payments across multiple services such as transport, municipal taxes, government owned activities, etc.” In this example, citizens were able to ‘top-up’ this card at designated offices and bank

Peter O'Halloran VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER OF GLOBAL DIGITAL COMMERCE, FISERV Joining Fiserv in 2013, O’Halloran has distinguished himself with a number of executive roles at leading companies in the payments space. He holds a BA and MSc from Dublin City University in International Business & Languages (1996 to 2000) and Electronic Commerce (2000 to 2001) respectively. fintechmagazine.com

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operates in a number of countries around the world in this regard and has enjoyed significant success.”

Payment structures The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) ranks the following as the leading global smart cities: 1. Singapore 2. Dubai 3. Oslo 4. Copenhagen 5. Boston 6. Amsterdam 7. New York 8. London 9. Barcelona 10. Hong Kong With several of these locations also ranking high on Findexable’s index of 2020’s leading fintech hubs, it is logical to conclude that their digital payment architecture is similarly advanced. For cities that have recently chosen to embark on a citywide digital transformation, PwC recommends the following:

• Create a unified payment instrument that can be used for transport, medical needs and the easy transference of benefits within city welfare schemes.

• Design mobile and web-based portals to increase financial inclusion and ease transactions.

• Take into consideration value-added services to generate revenue while addressing infrastructure limitations.

Importantly, PwC also stresses the responsibility of regulatory bodies to incentivise key community players to adopt digital payments (i.e. the Post Office). “Providing clear guidelines and process standards for an interoperable and secure payment system that takes into account different form factors, products and channels is a crucial step towards the development of a digital payments ecosystem.”

Living in a cashless society Keeping up with modern consumer expectations arguably forms the crux of why smart cities must integrate digital payments in the post-COVID-19 new

PwC’s checklist for a city’s receptivity to digital payments Can citizens in your city…

• Make payments using phone-based and online channels?

• Use digital technology to pay for public transport?

• Pay using digital means without incurring additional surcharges for doing so?

• Schedule payments remotely or via an agent?

• Use bank branches and other ‘touch points’ for assisted payments services?

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“ Voice-activated commerce has applications that go beyond the petrosphere and into retail, groceries, and so many other verticals” PETER O'HALLORAN

VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER OF GLOBAL DIGITAL COMMERCE, FISERV

normal. In the digital age convenience is a difficult thing to give up as a consumer, and often one form of it can ultimately inform expectations across every aspect of life. “People have come to expect next day delivery services, click and collect, and access to a wide geography of markets,” says O’Halloran. “A lot of these things existed before COVID, but now they’ve been pushed into the limelight.” Fiserv is taking this trend into exciting new directions; its partnership with Amazon and ExxonMobil in 2020 is allowing Alexa-enabled vehicles to pay for fuel with a simple voice-activated command, ‘Alexa, pay for gas.’ The device will then confirm the station’s location, identify the nearest pump number, and then activate the pump for use. Afterwards, all the customer needs to do is select their fuel type, fill up and drive away.

Although this single example is impressive in itself, the possibilities that it opens up are even more exciting. “Voice-activated commerce has applications that go beyond the petrosphere and into retail, groceries, and so many other verticals,” continues O’Halloran. This will only become more true as IoT (internet of things) devices continue to proliferate and 5G makes connecting between them faster. The

possibility of a truly cashless society driven by the rising popularity of cryptocurrencies and digital wallets would seem almost inevitable in such an interlinked society. Digital wallet spend itself is estimated to reach $10trn by 2025, an 83% rise on 2020’s figure. Further consumer integration with platforms like Google Pay and Apple Pay could see digital payments transcend their current position of relative ‘novelty’ as the same ease and convenience is brought to household essentials, such as bill payments.

Fundamentally, companies like Mastercard regard this shift away from physical cash as fundamentally a good thing, not just in terms of inclusivity but also societal wellbeing. “In cities with a high circulation of cash, residents and visitors are more vulnerable to crime or simply losing their hard-earned money. In countries like Sweden, lower crime rates have been linked to the reduction of cash.”

While not dismissing the utility of physical cash at this time, O’Halloran believes that cybersecurity will be an important topic for increasingly digital cities, and highlights EU initiatives that are making sense of this new world. “In 2015, the European Union set out PSD2 (payment services directive) to create strong customer authentication regulations and promote more cross-border ecommerce in Europe.

We know that there has been an uptick in cyber attacks since COVID happened; if it was adopted worldwide, PSD2 could help reduce that fraud, encourage more customers to do business, and make our cities more seamless and secure.” fintechmagazine.com

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MARSH FRANCE

ACCELERATING NEW TECHNOLOGIES

FOR CLIENTS Julien Alzouniès, Chief Operating Officer, describes Marsh France’s pursuit of operational excellence and simplified, digitalised insurance processes WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY: JAKE MEGEARY

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ith a rich and far-reaching history that extends to more than 130 countries over the course of almost 150 years, Marsh’s reputation as an insurance innovator has been crystallised by several notable achievements: inventor of the ‘self insurance’ concept, the first broker to use on-site risk experts, creator of ‘space’ life insurance for astronauts, and much more. When we spoke to Julien Alzouniès, COO of Marsh France & BeLux, he made it clear that the company’s innovative, adaptive and thoroughly modern approach to the industry is helping it optimise digital processes and achieve a perennial goal: operational excellence.

Coming from a long career as a consultant, Alzouniès joined Marsh France in 2018 at a time when the team consisted of only 20 people. Recognising that, as COO, he could make a direct impact on the company’s growth and portfolio retention in an era when client servicing activities are recognised as a key quality differentiator in insurance, Alzouniès chose “service quality

MARSH FRANCE

fintechmagazine.com fintechagazine.com

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Julien Alzouniès discusses transformation at Marsh France

simplification” and “digitalisation” as his guiding principles. Subsequently, the team was expanded 1,000% to 200 people. “The objective was to put the key enablers of user experience transformation under the same scope of accountability, namely data and project management, as well as two main business activities: policy servicing and claims,” he explains.

Marsh France added automated dashboards for its sales placement and servicing activities, modernised its client portals, and implemented internal workflow systems to track tasks and monitor service performance more effectively. The company also launched several new digital solutions, including: • MarshSignature: an electronic signature solution, wherein contracts can be “recorded, validated, certified, signed and archived” via an online platform (EDICourtage).

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• MarshOnline and MarshPartner: online underwriting platforms in support of the company’s Affinity portfolio.

• MarshMotor: a multi-device solution allowing the user to report vehicle-related accidents, select a repair company from Marsh’s approved partners and benefit from remote damage expertise.

The latter solution was developed with Paris-based insurtech WeProov. Founded in 2015, the company is transforming claims through photo recognition AI (artificial intelligence) capable of facilitating easy, fast, and secure online FNOL (first notice of loss).

“WeProov is one of our key partners and working with a fintech has actually enriched Marsh by providing added value and agility,” Alzouniès explains. “MarshMotor is a great way to collect information documenting damage and the process has been simplified enough to work on a smartphone; you can raise a claim in as little as five minutes.”

MARSH FRANCE

JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS TITLE: CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER COMPANY: MARSH FRANCE INDUSTRY: RISK MANAGEMENT & INSURANCE BROKERAGE

“ The objective was to put the key enablers of user experience transformation under the same scope of accountability” JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: FRANCE Julien Alzounies is O&T leader for France and BeLux and a member of the Executive Committee of Marsh France.

Julien Alzounies began his career at Capgemini Consulting, then worked at Stanwell Consulting. He then worked as a change lead at Axa Group Solutions on international transformation programs in Western Europe. He joined AIG Europe Limited in 2012 and AIG France's Management Committee in 2016. In February 2018, he joins Marsh France as Chief Operating Officer, in charge of Operations & Client Service and Technology & Client Solutions. Julien Alzounies holds a Master in Management from Skema Business School and an MBA from the Asian Institute of Technology.

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MARSH FRANCE

Another key partner is LTI, one of Marsh’s largest global strategic partners over the last two decades. During that time, LTI has supported Marsh on a number of transformational and digital initiatives. “In developing the newly revamped digital extranet offering, LTI has been playing an extremely important role by bringing its deep domain knowledge of our systems and processes acquired through supporting Marsh’s legacy BCP platform,” says

“ It's very important for us to harmonise our platforms” JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

Alzouniès. In the digitisation journey, LTI has helped in improving the user experience, enabling a SSO (single sign on) mechanism for clients, building more advanced reporting capabilities, and partnering on the optimisation of approximately onethird of Marsh’s processes, thus providing clients additional flexibility. “LTI has brought very high-quality technical and domain expertise to the initiative, which has augmented Marsh’s capacity to build and launch the new, enhanced Marsh BCP. With LTI strengthening its offerings around cloud, we look forward to strengthening this partnership further.”

Forging strong partnerships and developing innovative solutions has been particularly crucial over the last 12 months, as the COVID-19 pandemic placed significant strains on normal operating fintechagazine.com

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MARSH FRANCE

1871

Year Founded

800

Number of Employees

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MARSH FRANCE

paradigms. Marsh France’s staff were already well versed in remote working methods, meaning the general shift was weathered with poise. However, this is not to say that the totality of the change wasn’t challenging: “Moving to a new operating model, where we previously had only an average of 10 to 20% of our people working remotely to close to 100%, was a significant challenge.

Nevertheless, it only took us about one week to reach the optimal level of performance for all our employees,” says Alzouniès.

This impressive achievement is made even more resounding by the concurrent finalisation of Marsh’s integration with

“WeProov is one of our key partners and working with a fintech has actually enriched Marsh by providing added value and agility” JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

British multinational insurer Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT), which formed a significant logistical obstacle in terms of HR and client data migration.

For Alzouniès, remote working is just one component of a larger consideration: the digitalisation of processes, data and document exchanges. “The need has only been accelerated by the pandemic situation and it’s going to become even more important in the future.” Having met this internal transformation with fintechagazine.com

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Digitizing the Core Experience Transformation Operate to Transform Data Driven Organization Learn More

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MARSH FRANCE

“Marsh wants to enrich the quality of the data that we provide clients, not only to deal with risk management but also to enhance risk prevention” JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

aplomb, Alzouniès states that refining the company through a new OPEX (operational excellence) programme will feature strongly in Marsh’s strategy for 2021. Started at the end of 2020, this will be an ongoing and far-reaching initiative that is currently scheduled to last until 2023. “We decided to launch this at a global level across all our geographies as a major transformation programme. Its scope covers all of our business functions, including sales, placement, policy

servicing, finance, and claims through digitalisation, service enhancement and quality improvement.” The end goal of this process is the “harmonisation” of Marsh globally through modernised operating models. “It's very important for us to harmonise our platforms,” continues Alzouniès. “System automation and service integration will also enable Marsh to capture and capitalise on more client data from a risk analysis and placement benchmarking perspective.” fintechagazine.com

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“ Data is important for our clients because they expect more benchmarking information. We also need to continue mastering our service performance, because it’s crucial to operate in the insurance market efficiently.”

JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

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MARSH FRANCE

Alzouniès is determined to further develop Marsh France’s core business solutions aligned with the company’s other offices in continental Europe. Taking a data-centric stance that emphasises the use of “maturing” technology like AI will form the crux of accomplishing this aim, although he states that this focus is not entirely new. “Data is important for our clients because they expect more benchmarking information. We also need to continue mastering our service performance, because it’s crucial to operate in the insurance market efficiently.”

When he considers the benefits that enhanced digitalisation will bring to the company as a whole, Alzouniès summarises them as service improvement through more efficient workforce deployment and overall service simplification. Through its OPEX programme, Marsh France has secured a flying start for incorporating these benefits. First and foremost in 2021, he states, the company’s main objective will be the finalised roll-out of MarshMotor, with the goal of making all the company’s French clients benefit from using the new application. Furthermore, new versions of client portals such as Marsh BCP (business continuity planning) will be launched before the end of Q1, as well as a new portal for real estate insurance management. “Over 2021, we want to significantly improve our work reporting capabilities and the quality of client reporting from a claims perspective. Marsh wants to enrich the quality of the data that we provide clients, not only to deal with risk management but also to enhance risk prevention.”

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GENDER EQUALITY

FINANCE’S NEW NORMAL MUST INCLUDE MORE FEMALE LEADERSHIP 94

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GENDER EQUALITY

Speaking with I. Javette Hines from Citi, we explore the reasons why supporting female-led business could be critical to finance’s new normal WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING

F

alling on the eighth of March every year since 1913, International Women’s Day is a global reminder that, although progress has been made over the last century, women still do not enjoy complete parity with men in terms of rights, wages, opportunities and more.

The world of finance, unfortunately, is no different: Deloitte reports that only seven per cent of startup founders in the sector are female, despite the same research revealing that the same demographic was more likely to deliver higher ROI. Furthermore, even though 50% of university graduates are female, they constitute a mere seven per cent of Fortune 500 CEOs. Clearly a disparity exists in the industry as it stands today, but it doesn’t need to stay that way. If the pandemic has taught the world of business anything, it’s that dynamic changes must be made to corporate operating philosophies if they are to survive in the new normal. To find out more and learn how a leading bank is addressing this critical issue, we spoke with I. Javette Hines, Director and Head of Supply Chain Development, Inclusion and Sustainability at Citi. fintechmagazine.com

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GENDER EQUALITY

A licensed attorney in the states of Georgia and New York, Hines joined Citi in 2008 after previously gaining seven years of supply chain management experience. “At Citi, I'm focused on diversity and inclusion with respect to suppliers, making sure that they get an opportunity to have a seat at the table and we're able to integrate them into our sourcing and selection process.” In practice, this means setting well-defined goals concerning diversity on an annual basis. From the perspective of Citi’s supply chain, Hines states that the nature of conversation is changing, “It's a great time to be focused on diversity as the conversation morphs from a compliance and social issue to a strategic consideration. The surface has been broken; meaningful conversations are taking place.”

Making gender equality your business Gender equality is a discussion that’s being

“ It's a great time to be focused on diversity as the conversation morphs from a compliance and social issue to a strategic consideration” I. JAVETTE HINES

DIRECTOR & HEAD OF SUPPLY CHAIN DEVELOPMENT, INCLUSION AND SUSTAINABILITY, CITI

raised on several fronts and seeks to address key areas of inclusion, not least of which are creating more opportunities for women in finance and spurring on female-led business’ development worldwide. We asked Hines for example of how Citi is addressing gender equality in three aspects: leadership, staff, and community:

I. Javette Hines I. Javette Hines, Director and Head of Supply Chain Development, Inclusion and Sustainability, Citi Hines’ significant experience has included being a Guest Speaker for UN Women and Rutger’s Business School, a Committee Member for the New York State Bar Association, and a Moderator at the Women’s Leadership Institute.

She holds a BSc degree from Clark Atlanta University (1985 to 1989) and won the 1987 Coca Cola Oratorical Content.

In her current role, she collaborates with Citi’s Corporate ESG team to identify environmental, human rights and governance goals for more sustainable operations. Prior to working at Citi, Hines worked for 11 years at IBM in a procurement manager capacity. fintechmagazine.com

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• Leadership: Jane Fraser’s announced succession to the role of CEO was significant not just to Citi but also in terms of history.

The first woman to occupy such a role at a leading Wall Street investment bank, Fraser’s appointment is a clear demonstration of the company’s commitment to addressing gender inequality. “There's still work to be done,” states Hines. “When we consider women of colour in leadership roles, there are even fewer. However, we’re always pushing beyond our comfort zone.” This is further attested by Citi becoming one of the first companies to disclose its unadjusted pay gaps in a bid to redress wage inequality.

• Staff: Citi has been actively improving the representation of women in Assistant Vice President and other management roles. To date, the company has managed to allocate 40% of such roles globally to women, up from 37% in 2018.

• The community: “We engage with suppliers and communities to close gender and race equality gaps in the areas of the world

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we operate. In particular, Citi is aiming to increase spend with the historically underrepresented black community to US$250m over the next year.”

Between 2015 and 2019, fintech startups founded by men received almost double ($15.6m) in average investment than those founded by women ($8m). Although ‘increasing equality’ is generally a goal most financial services companies view as important – McKinsey’s article ‘Closing the gap: Leadership perspectives on promoting women in financial services’ found that 90% of those surveyed indicated such a commitment – Hines adds that the importance of action and practicing what one preaches is essential.

That is why emphasising the strong business case for increased female leadership is so essential. McKinsey’s research found that for companies in the top 25% of gender diverse leadership teams: • They were 21% more likely outperform in terms of profitability

GENDER EQUALITY

• 27% more likely to demonstrate superior value creation • 33% more like to have industry-leading profitability when also factoring in strong commitments to ethnic and cultural diversity Ultimately, these encouraging figures point to one thing: enhanced inclusivity equals improved capacity for innovation. Deloitte even speculates in ‘Achieving gender equity in the fintech community’ that a flood of new ideas on par with the post-2007/08 financial crisis acceleration could take place under such circumstances. This is what underscores Hines’ supply chain focus, “you can only have a seat at the table if someone opens the door for you.” Unlocking value and gaining a competitive advantage can be the prizes for those who give priority to equality.

Collaborating on a solution It could be argued that there has never been a greater need for gender equality in the workplace than now: COVID-19 has had a disproportionately negative effect on women, with one-third reporting losing work opportunities because of childcare responsibilities – a figure which rose to 44% among BAME women. In recognition of this, Citi has given over $100m in COVID-related community relief and economic recovery efforts, including participation in the US’ PPP (paycheque protection programme).

Citi’s example also underscores the importance of establishing partnerships to address large-scale issues. One such partner is non-profit organisation WEConnect International: “We've been involved with it for a number of years and it's been an amazing partnership,” Hines explains. “Citi initiated the goal not just to spend more with female-led companies, but those specifically

“ By collaborating with WEConnect, Citi has been able to engage in some very meaningful partnerships” I. JAVETTE HINES

DIRECTOR & HEAD OF SUPPLY CHAIN DEVELOPMENT, INCLUSION AND SUSTAINABILITY, CITI

in developing countries. As a business, we needed to know where those opportunities were, and, in situations where there are none, how to work and connect with others to build capacity.” This is where WEConnect comes in: it enables female business leaders to compete in the global market by breaking down old barriers through the self-reinforcing principles of ‘connect, educate and assess’. “By collaborating with WEConnect, Citi has been able to engage in some very meaningful partnerships,” says Hines.

Hines makes it clear that Citi has made significant strides in tackling the issue of inequality, even if significant work remains to be done. But what about those companies which aspire to enhanced inclusivity but don’t know where to begin? Hines states that it is simple: set realistic goals. “You really need to understand your baseline and work from there. How many women are you already doing business with? Once you know that, you can put together a plan for improvement. You can always do a little bit better.” Next, she advises seeking out stakeholders who share mutual goals, whether it be hiring more women fintechmagazine.com

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“ You can only have a seat at the table if someone opens the door for you” I. JAVETTE HINES

DIRECTOR & HEAD OF SUPPLY CHAIN DEVELOPMENT, INCLUSION AND SUSTAINABILITY, CITI

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GENDER EQUALITY

The cost of gender inequality

to leadership roles, increasing spend with female-led businesses, or something else.

Widening your ecosystem will open up opportunities for both individuals and organisations, and setting informed goals will allow you to measure success accurately. “It really comes down to, ‘How do you want to be seen?’ Do you want people to visualise an amazing firm that's doing wonderful things with women and female-owned businesses? If the answer is ‘yes’, the right amount of communication will let others know your objective and enable the right stakeholders to engage with you.”

As more and more factors continue to shape the post-COVID-19 normal, leading companies in financial services have an obligation to make increased gender equality a priority. From greater levels of operational performance and profitability to increased innovation at a time when old

business models are being swiftly replaced, the case for greater female empowerment is overwhelming. Change, Hines suggests, is both eternal and inevitable, and the sooner companies embrace it the better.

“2020 was a year of growth and it was a year of change. At the start of 2021 there’s been a lot of anxiety, apprehension and fear surrounding whether we’ll ever return to ‘normal’; we've gone from normal to not exactly a ‘new normal’, but just a normalised way of learning to be innovative, thoughtful and more intentional globally.”

Diversity, she concludes, will continue to be a central lens through which to measure the shifting socio-economic landscape.

“We all need to rethink who we are and how we can make this world a better place. That will mean thinking about new ways to engage people through innovation and leadership.” fintechmagazine.com

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