IBS Intelligence Global FinTech Interviews

As artificial intelligence continues to make waves in the banking sector, this episode dives into how it’s reshaping working capital management. We discuss how AI, APIs, and automation are unlocking new efficiencies in liquidity, supply chain resilience, and sustainable finance. The conversation covers AI’s transformative role in improving credit scoring, fraud detection, and operational agility. With insights on AI-driven decision-making models, the episode also highlights the balance between speed and responsible risk management. As financial institutions scale globally, the need for innovation and regulatory adaptability becomes even more critical. Discover how AI is not just enhancing but revolutionizing banking and financial services for the future.

Navigating Bank Partnerships - A West Asia FinTech Guide: The latest from IBSi Perspectives, offers a strategic view of how FinTechs must navigate geopolitical uncertainty while strengthening their relationships with Banks in the region. It provides practical insights on how FinTech firms can work with banks, focusing on partnerships, regulatory considerations, and evolving priorities shaping the next phase of banking across the Middle East.

Bhavana Mallesh, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Gieom Business Solutions Private Ltd. As regulatory expectations shift from periodic compliance to continuous supervision, financial institutions are rethinking how they manage operational resilience, risk governance and regulatory accountability. Against this backdrop, Puja Sharma speaks with Bhavana Mallesh, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Gieom Business Solutions, about embedding AI-driven intelligence into compliance and resilience frameworks, navigating complex global regulations and emerging RBI guidelines, and how financial institutions can move from reactive, deadline-driven compliance to building transparent, future-ready resilience operating models.

Vaibhav Tambe, Co-founder & CEO, TransBnkWhat happens when money becomes programmable? In this edition of The Big Interview, we spotlight how TransBnk is re-engineering transaction banking from the ground up.Speaking with Co-founder and CEO Vaibhav Tambe, we explore how programmable finance allows businesses to embed logic directly into payments - releasing funds on milestone verification, automating sweeps, and reconciling in real time. The company’s recon-first architecture replaces end-of-day processes with continuous, rule-driven matching.We also examine how Escrow-as-a-Service is opening secure, conditional fund flows to MSMEs, startups, and real estate players - capabilities once limited to large corporates. With 220+ clients and 40+ bank integrations, TransBnk is positioning itself as a treasury operating layer, built compliance-first and API-driven.The larger ambition is clear: democratise sophisticated banking infrastructure and make intelligent money movement accessible at scale.

Hari Padmanabhan, Founder – Chairman, UnciaThe discussion moves beyond buzzwords like AI and cloud-native, arguing that most institutions are still in early transformation stages. True AI-driven lending, he suggests, will emerge only when every transaction continuously trains the system. Uncia’s Zero Implementation and Self-Serve model challenges traditional, time-heavy deployments - shifting control to institutions through configurable, low-code tools like Uncia Studio.We also explore how the Pay-As-You-Grow model is reshaping cost economics for SME lenders and NBFCs, turning technology from upfront capex into scalable opex.The broader shift? Lending platforms are evolving from static systems into adaptive ecosystems - where cloud, AI, and embedded learning quietly redefine how credit is designed, deployed, and scaled.

Brajesh Khandelwal, EVP and Head – Lending Intellect Consumer Banking, Intellect Design Arena LimitedAs artificial intelligence reshapes the future of lending, financial institutions are rethinking how credit is assessed and delivered across underserved sectors. Against this backdrop, Puja Sharma speaks with Brajesh Khandelwal, EVP and Head – Lending at Intellect Design Arena, about embedding AI at the core of SME and agri lending, unlocking deeper financial inclusion, driving measurable impact through large-scale implementations, and how banks can build intelligent, future-ready lending ecosystems by 2030.

Sundararajan S., Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of i-exceed technology solutionsi-exceed explores the future of digital banking through three key pillars: AI-powered personal financial management, real-time risk mitigation, and unified customer profiles. By leveraging predictive AI and low-code platforms like Appzillon, banks can modernize quickly while maintaining transparency, enhancing customer trust, and improving financial wellness. As banks shift from reactive to anticipatory engagement, i-exceed is driving innovation with solutions that balance legacy integration challenges and accelerate digital transformation. With a roadmap focused on next-generation explainable AI and expanded Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), i-exceed is poised to lead the future of intelligent, customer-first financial services.

Raj MKK, CEO of CreditNirvana.ai, discusses how agentic AI is reshaping the credit and collections cycle by replacing manual, fragmented workflows with autonomous, hyper-personalised recovery processes. Focusing on India and Southeast Asia, he highlights the role of multilingual voice intelligence in overcoming regional language barriers, improving compliance, and enhancing borrower experience. Raj also emphasizes the importance of bounded autonomy and human-in-the-loop governance to ensure trust and oversight in AI systems. As agentic AI evolves, it is transforming lending and collections, enabling real-time data-driven decision-making and integration of ESG factors into credit decisioning.

Ashish Lath, Founder & CEO, SaveSageLoyalty programmes and credit card rewards promise value, but for many consumers, the reality is complexity, fragmentation, and missed opportunities. As digital finance evolves, technology is beginning to change how users track rewards, optimise spending, and make more informed credit decisions.In this episode, Vriti Gothi speaks with Ashish Lath, Founder & CEO of Save Sage, about the biggest challenges consumers face in managing loyalty points and credit benefits, and how AI, automation, and Open Banking are enabling smarter rewards management and credit optimisation. They discuss the role of intelligent tools in improving financial wellbeing, the shift toward unified and interoperable rewards ecosystems, and how companies can balance engagement with ethical design and responsible borrowing. 

Debiprasad Sarangi, Founder and CEO, iServeUFrom soundboxes in small-town kirana stores to APIs running national banks, India’s FinTech stack is quietly rewriting how participation scales. Puja Sharma speaks with Debiprasad Sarangi of iServeU, on the infrastructure powering this shift.