Episode 1 - Raj Date

Launching Our Podcasts: Barefoot Innovation

I'm thrilled today to announce two innovations for my blog – first in what we're sharing here, and second, in how we share it with you.

Welcome to our brand-new podcast program, Barefoot Innovation, and to our first episode -- a conversation with Raj Date, former Acting Director of the CFPB and now Managing Partner at Fenway Summer LLC.

Raj has given us the ideal launch into our series, because these podcasts are designed to be a search -- for ideas on how to do better for financial consumers. We're seeking out better products and practices, smarter regulation, new kinds of business models and cultures, new ways to empower consumers, and above all, new technology, which is suddenly making it both possible, and necessary, to rethink today's system.

We're conducting our search through conversations. We're finding the most fascinating people in the field. That includes, importantly, lots of people who don't know each other – who barely even know about each other – but who are actually working on the very same challenges from different angles, amidst rapid change. We listen to them, mix their insights, and through the mixing, germinate new ideas.

Finding new ideas is urgent, because consumer financial services is the first industry to face technology-driven disruption while being both essential to everyone, and massively regulated. The changes coming will be both good and bad – which means they will, inevitably, disrupt the regulatory system, too – with all its enormous complexity.

Everyone involved in serving and protecting financial consumers needs new strategies, now, to navigate the years of upheaval ahead. To do that, people must look beyond their niches, at the whole landscape that's changing around them.

Barefoot Innovation makes that more easy, and more fun. We've built it for:

• Industry and regulatory people who want to understand the fintech world
• Fintech innovators who want to understand the regulatory world
• Tech companies – ditto, and
• All the people working toward financial inclusion and fairness

We will talk about it all. Mobile payments, big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, the internet of things, voice technology, behavioral science and manipulation, personal financial management (PFM), online companies and channels, marketplace lending and investment, Bitcoin and crypto-currency, and emerging new business models and cultures. We'll explore all the related regulatory trends in fairness, fair lending, inclusiveness, transparency, suitability, privacy, data security, risk-assessment, compliance innovation, banking system access, principles-based regulation, enforcement, and regulatory complexity and cost.

We'll talk with start-ups, venture capital people, bank executives, non-banks, global tech firms, compliance leaders, lawyers, regulators, ex-regulators (like me), policymakers, advocates, academics -- the whole spectrum.

Every podcast will provide some practical advice, some long-term insight, and some fun.

(And some will bring you surprises.)

So, for today, please listen in on my conversation with Raj Date as he shares his thinking on technology, competition, regulatory risks, advice for banks and non-banks, and some suggestions for regulators. Join me for Barefoot Innovation, Episode One.

Here is the URL to subscribe: http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/?format=rss

You can also find the podcast by opening your favorite podcast provider (iTunes, Overcast, etc.) and searching for Jo Ann Barefoot or by clicking HERE.

Listen and enjoy!

Please note that the views expressed by guests on Barefoot Innovation are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Jo Ann Barefoot or Jo Ann Barefoot Group LLC, nor do we endorse any product, service, or company discussed.