Barefoot Innovation Podcast

In a moment you will hear Jelena tell her story, and I promise, you will see what I mean. Last year the Wall Street Journal ran a profile on her called, America's Most interesting Bureaucrat. She was born in the former Yugoslavia, grew up in a Communist society, got herself to the US, bootstrapped herself into law school, worked in private practice, and at a bank, and at the Federal Reserve and then at the US Senate in the midst of the financial crisis. Her eclectic background has enabled her to look at today's financial system from many angles.

Joseph M. Otting was sworn in as the 31st Comptroller of the Currency on November 27, 2017. The Comptroller of the Currency is the administrator of the federal banking system and chief officer of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC supervises more than 1,200 national banks, federal savings associations, and federal branches and agencies of foreign banks operating in the United States. The mission of the OCC is to ensure that national banks and federal savings associations operate in a safe and sound manner, provide fair access to financial services, treat customers fairly, and comply with applicable laws and regulations. We covered a great deal of other ground. He shares his thinking on how the OCC needs to use technology; on how technology is transforming banks; on top emerging risks, especially in cyber; on the need for banks to use AI in compliance and risk management; and on equipping community banks to compete in today's high-tech market. He talks about the increasing level of interagency coordination underway today. The US has five federal agencies that directly supervise depository institutions, which makes coordination complex and sometimes slow. I was pleased to hear that just before we recorded this show, he had been at a recurring lunch meeting he has with two other agency heads. The Comptroller also talks about the OCC's innovation initiative, which was one of the first set up by a US regulator. In a prior episode we talked about that program with former Comptroller Tom Curry, who established that unit.

Richard Teng is the CEO of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), an award-winning International Financial Centre (IFC) in Abu Dhabi. Richard spearheaded the establishment of the financial regulations and financial centre, leading up to the successful launch of ADGM in October 2015. He oversees the whole spectrum of financial services spanning the banking, insurance and capital market sectors with integrated prudential and conduct supervisory responsibilities. He also leads several innovative ecosystem initiatives and the development of financial services offerings in Abu Dhabi.

We have the perfect show to kick off the new year and new decade in 2020. This is one of the most interesting conversations we've ever had, in our hundred-plus episodes of Barefoot Innovation. My very special guest is Congressman Bill Foster, who represents the 11th District of Illinois. He is a member of the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services, and was appointed by Committee Chair Maxine Waters to lead the special task force she set up to examine how artificial intelligence will transform finance. And, maybe better yet, he is Congress' one and only PhD physicist (you'll enjoy hearing his list of credentials). As he explains in today's show, he went from working on theatrical stage lighting, to high energy particle physics, to politics -- in our talk, he shares the inspiring family story of what prompted him to enter public service. I love talking with people who "cross the lines" -- who transcend the silos and straddle multiple realms of knowledge. Congressman Bill Foster, the scientist politician, is one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking guests we've ever had on the show. I know you'll enjoy our conversation.

Lamine Zarrad is the co-founder and CEO of Joust. He began his entrepreneurial journey as a refugee, going on to serve in the U.S. Marines, and then building an expertise around banking regulations and financial services. With Joust, Lamine combines his passion for inclusion with his banking skills to create the nation's first, all-inclusive banking services app for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and the self-employed.

Today's show is a bonus episode, giving a glimpse of an important project that's underway. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have funded an initiative to think through the future of central banks and how they will, and should, advance the goal of financial inclusion. To lead the work, the foundation selected two leading thinkers in the space. Michael Barr is the Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He was previously Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Institutions, in addition to being a law professor (I'll link in the show notes to our earlier episode with him). Adrienne Harris is a professor at the Ford School and a former (give her old title in Obama White House). They have teamed up to undertake a deep reimagining of central banks, decades and even a half century out.

Today's guest leads one of the most important institutions in that movement. She is Greta Bull, a director of the World Bank and CEO of CGap, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor. In our conversation, Greta describes the progress and also the daunting work ahead. She talks about challenges in cyber-security. She talks about interoperability -- how to address fragmentation within and between markets, since digital finance is all about scale. She explains the role of e-commerce in driving change in various parts of the world. She talks about the potential role of big tech firms, their strengths in leveraging data, and the challenge of working with financial systems that have an analog-to-digital interface. She talks about the need to help people become financially resilient, so that they can weather shocks without falling so far backwards that they can't recover. She explains where we are in solving the gender gap in financial access, which continues to be very high.

Today's show zeroes in on the most foundational question facing us all, not only in financial innovation but in our whole new world of ubiquitous data. That challenge is, how can we gain the benefits of this huge new universe of digital information, and at the same time, prevent it from hurting us. My very thoughtful guest on this dilemma is Vinny Lingham, CEO of Civic Technologies. Vinny's story is fascinating. A star on Shark Tank South Africa, he immigrated from that country to Silicon Valley about a decade ago. In the US he founded and built successful startups in the payments space, and then launched Civic to develop blockchain solutions for the burgeoning problem of online identity fraud. That effort brought him to focus on new technologies for identity verification, such as zero-knowledge proof. It also brought him to a philosophy about identity and personal data, which is that we need a decentralized system in which our data is controlled not by governments or companies, but by us.

I think this is my all-time favorite episode of Barefoot Innovation. We have two guests. Nick Cook has been on the show twice before in his former role as head of regtech at the UK Financial Conduct Authority. He now leads the FCA's newly-created division-level unit on innovation. I believe this model is unique in the world-- a financial regulatory agency establishing a high-level unit that, when staffed out, will have 200 people. Reporting to Nick are two groups. One is the group called Innovate, which includes the FCA's famous regulatory sandbox. The second is the group on regtech and advanced analytics that Nick used to head, himself. And my second guest is his successor in leading that regtech group -- Francesca Hopwood Road. If you're interested in regulatory innovation, today's show may be the single most valuable source you can find on how to do it. Every minute is packed with both fresh information and rare insight about how regulators, themselves, will have to change to keep pace with changing technology.

Today's show is amazing on two levels. First, my guests, Ida Rademacher and Jamie Kalamarides, explain new frontiers of thinking about how financial services, including insurance and retirement funds, can promote real financial health and inclusion. And second, the whole conversation is permeated by a critical theme, an insight that needs to be elevated from the background to the foreground in every discussion of how to do better for financial consumers. That second theme is that we are going to have to break down the walls -- dismantle the siloes, get rid of the boxes, make connections, graft together hybrids -- across the ecosystem of both finance, technology and regulation. Listening to these experts talk, you can almost see our current world -- labor markets, financial markets, the economy, consumer behaviors -- transforming out from under the rigid structures we now use to organize our industries and regulatory regimes. For decades, we've had slow-changing financial products that we regulate through a slow-changing (and ever-growing) set of laws and regulations. We have distinct legal and regulatory frameworks for banking and investment and insurance. We have old definitions of products, each subject to specific rules on how they should be designed and offered. Suddenly, today, many of these old structures are becoming obsolete. And, increasingly, we can see that many of them are actually standing in the way of better solutions for consumers.