Barefoot Innovation Podcast

This is our second show with Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief Fintech Officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. We recorded it at the MAS annual fintech festival in Singapore, which is a remarkable event. I think it's probably the world's largest financial conference, with an incredible 45,000 people attending this year from all over the world. Maybe even more surprisingly, it's a "fintech festival" that is sponsored by a central bank!

One of the things I love about our Barefoot Innovation conversations -- and about fintech, for that matter -- is the passion you find in so many founders, these people who really believe they can do better for consumers. You hear it in the voices of many of the guests we've had on the show, the note of excitement, the sense that they can almost see a better future. They're often people from the technology world who looked at some traditional, stuck feature of the financial system and said to themselves, I can do better than this. Today's guests are wonderful examples. They are Matthew Cooper and Nadim Homsany, cofounders of EarnUp.

Today's show is coming to you from London. I'm here to speak at the LendIt Fintech Europe conference, and I'm delighted to say that my guest is the cofounder of the LendIt Fintech conference series, Peter Renton, who is also the founder of Lend Academy.

My guest today is one of the world's foremost thinkers on how to modernize financial regulation through technology. He is PJ Di Giammarino, CEO of JWG and founder of the global RegTech Council.

My guest today is the World Bank's Harish Natarajan, a leader of one of the most visionary and ambitious efforts underway in the financial world -- to achieve complete financial inclusion. Throughout history, the idea of reaching full inclusion -- enabling everyone to access the mainstream financial system -- seemed like fantasy. Financial services have always been expensive to produce and deliver, making it unprofitable to serve everyone. In addition, they often involve the need to evaluate and risk-rate customers, and to verify their identity information, all of which has always been costly and complex. Mainstream services were for people who had some means and had traditional identity documents. Other people had to rely on high-cost alternatives, or had no access at all. And then, we got cell phones. Suddenly, here was a new delivery system that could reach nearly everyone, through a channel that was already there, already built, and that could, furthermore, serve them inexpensively. No more need to build and staff high-cost branches. Everyone, today, can have a bank branch in their hand. Recognizing this new opportunity, the World Bank set a transformational goal -- that every adult on earth should have financial access by 2020. They defined inclusion as having a transaction account, since for most people, that's the easiest and most-needed starting point. Once that exists, other services can be added on top of it, from lending to savings to insurance. As the consumer's financial information becomes increasingly digitized and consolidated in the phone, it becomes possible for financial providers to evaluate that digital profile to extend more products. It also becomes possible to authenticate identity -- which is critical because the anti-money laundering Know-Your-Customer regulations currently block millions of people from the system because they lack traditional ID documents. Technology is making this shift possible, but of course, it isn't easy, nor is it a panacea. Some people still don't have mobile phones -- although that problem is rapidly evaporating -- the UN says more people have had access to mobile phones than to plumbing since 2013. Of those who do, many don't adopt electronic financial accounts, and many who do so become vulnerable to scams and predatory products, especially since hundreds of millions of these consumers are being exposed to financial services for the first time. Those challenges, in turn, create an urgent need for regulatory modernization. Finance is being digitized, and regulation will have to be digitized too in order for government to protect consumers and assure financial stability. So the World Bank's work includes a focus on modernizing the regulatory infrastructure itself, building up capacity to understand new technologies and address risk. In this episode, Harish describes this whole transformative landscape. He talks about the Financial Inclusion Global Initiative, or FIGI, a three-year program with three partners, and three global themes -- cybersecurity, e-payments acceptance, and digital ID. He explains why people don't have access to accounts, how digital ID can satisfy documentation requirements, and the varied regulatory models evolving in different counties. He talks the World Bank's research on blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) as critical components of a better system. The United States has been a relatively slow adopter of mobile phones, partly because most Americans traditionally had landlines. That means cell phone adoption is much more advanced outside the United States, which in turn means that the US can learn many lessons from countries that are leapfrogging over us in digital transformation of finance and financial regulation. Much of this modernization is being driven by NGOs like the Omidyar Network, where I'm a Senior Advisor, and the Gates Foundation. For example, Omidyar and Gates have financed a Regtech for Regulators Accelerator, or R2A, which is bringing technology solutions to regulatory challenges in multiple countries. More on Harish Harish is Lead Financial Sector Specialist in the World Bank's Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice, heading a global team working on payments and market infrastructures. He is a core member of the cross-sectoral teams addressing Universal Financial Access 2020, ID for Development, government payments, Digital Economy and FinTech. Harish represents the World Bank in the working groups of the Committee on Payment Market Infrastructures (CPMI) at the Bank for International Settlements and FinTech-related working groups at the Financial Stability Board (FSB). Previously, Harish worked with VISA Inc. in the South Asia region in various senior roles in business development, operations and risk management. Prior to VISA, he served in positions at Citigroup, Infosys and other technology companies in the areas of payment systems and retail banking. Harish holds an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from IIT-Madras and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management, from IIM-Calcutta, specializing in IT systems and finance. More links Link to Full Transcription World Bank Financial Inclusion World Bank DLT Report Universal Financial Access by 2020 Financial Inclusion Global Initiative (FIGI) Payment Aspects of Financial Inclusion (PAFI) Findex G20 Digital Principles for Financial Inclusion Access For All: CIIE's Sanjay Jain and The India Stack How to Change the World: The Gates Foundation's Michael Wiegand Transforming Identity: GlobaliD CEO Greg Kidd More for our listeners We have great podcasts in the queue. From London, we'll have a talk with P.J. Di Giammarino of JWG and the Regtech Council. We'll also have a far-ranging conversation with Peter Renton, who leads Lend Academy and the LendIt conference series. As part of our series focused on global developments in fintech and regtech, we'll talk to Anju Patwardhan of CreditEase and Stanford University, who describes fintech developments in China. And we'll have a show with the co-founders of EarnUp, and one with Walter Cruttenden, Co-Founder of Acorns and Co-founder and CEO of Blast. A few places I'll be speaking this fall include: Singapore Fintech Festival, November 12-16, Singapore LendIt Europe, November 19-20, London Consumer Federation of America Financial Services Conference, November 29-30, Washington, DC ABA Financial Crimes Conference, December 2-4, Washington, DC RegTech Rising, December 3-5, London Fintech Connect, December 5-6, London Boston Regtech Meetup, December 10, Boston, MA I also have a number of events coming up where I'll be speaking directly to groups of regulators. Watch for upcoming information on my collaboration with Brett King on his new book, Bank 4.0, which you can now buy on Amazon. I co-wrote the regulatory chapter with Brett, and we'll have a show and events on that as well. Last year, my autumn conference circuit became a "world tour" designed to speak in seven countries in seven weeks. I chronicled it with mini-videos about what I was learning, and since a lot of people told me they enjoyed joining in those adventures, I'm doing it again this year. My fall travels will be fewer countries but more events, in America, Europe and Asia. Please follow along with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook and come to jsbarefoot.com for more information on it all and to subscribe to my newsletters and get the latest podcasts as soon as they come out. Also, here's my fall newsletter, titled Whirlwind. Innovation everywhere! support our podcast Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

One of the biggest challenges in fighting money laundering is satisfying the KYC, or Know Your Customer, rules. These regulatory requirements make sense in concept -- they require financial companies to verify customers' identities before letting them connect to the system, in order to screen out high-risk people and entities and as a foundation for meeting the legal mandate to monitor financial activity for potential crime. However, the traditional verification process has always been expensive and time-consuming. In recent years it's also been creating new problems. My guest today has a company that is setting out to fix those. She is Laura Spiekerman, the Chief Revenue Officer of Alloy. The new problems are two-fold. One is that millions of people lack traditional identity documents and therefore can't gain access to the system at all. That isn't actually a new issue -- it's always been true -- but it's becoming more acute because mobile technology is making it possible for more and more people to connect to the financial system through their phones, if they can identify themselves. In much of the developing world, hundreds of millions of people cannot, because they lack formal ID documents (a factor that tends to disproportionately harm women, members of disfavored minorities and people with low incomes). Having large swaths of the population detached from mainstream finance, in turn, undermines economic growth and opportunity. As a result, many central banks throughout the world view KYC modernization as a top priority. For example, see my episode with Sanjay Jain who was one of the leaders of the India stack on their project that is connecting everyone in India to the financial system and mainstream commerce. Some governments are trying to create customer identity through biometric identification. Global organizations ranging from The World Bank to the Gates Foundation and the Omidyar Network (where I am a Senior Advisor) have all elevated AML as a core goal in their efforts to wide financial inclusion. The KYC barrier also impacts consumers in the United States, including many young people and immigrants or, say, people who have moved frequently. If a financial company cannot verify identity by investing a reasonable level of time and effort, it usually will not open an account. The second problem with the current KYC process hits the US and other developed countries even more directly. We still rely on traditional identity information like name, address and Social Security number that is, quite simply, no longer secure -- it's widely for sale on the dark web. (Re-listen to our episode with Greg Kidd of globaliD) for more insight on that). The solution to both problems -- both access and insecurity -- is the same: more data and better technology. Alloy is bringing these into KYC. The company enables real-time decisioning through an API that lets a financial institution access the data it needs, in a fully transparent way, and that also provides a rules engine to control how to waterfall the data to put it into a rule. I spoke to Laura at the Comply 2018 conference in New York this year -- you'll hear some of the conference bustle in the background. In our conversation, Laura describes the impact Alloy can make. In retail banking, they've been able to automate about 98% of decisions for onboarding, as opposed to a standard of about 50%. Once the remaining 2% are sent to manual review, they have also been able to reduce manual review times by about 95%, while also seeing reductions in fraud and increases in conversions, seemingly a win-win for all. Laura also shares her advice for other fintechs, including how to overcome the many barriers faced by regtech firms in trying to work with financial institutions. She talks about Alloy's plans for building AI into their solutions. And she offers advice to regulators. Like me, she's hopeful that the regulatory landscape is increasingly receptive to new technology. I know you'll enjoy my conversation with Alloy's Laura Spiekerman! Links Full Transcript of Episode Alloy on Twitter Innovation at a Small Bank: Radius CEO Mike Butler Access For All: CIIE's Sanjay Jain and The India Stack More for our listeners We have great podcasts in the queue. We have a series focused on global developments in fintech and regtech. One is with Harish Natarajan of the World Bank, who talks about their remarkable work in global financial inclusion. Another is with Anju Padwardhan of CreditEase and Stanford University, who describes fintech developments in China. From London, we'll have a talk with P.J. DiGiamarino of JWG and the Regtech Council. We'll also have a far-ranging conversation with Peter Renton, who leads Lend Academy and the LendIt conference series. And we'll have a show with the co-founders of Earnup...among many others. Last week I spoke at the National Foundation for Credit Counseling's NFCC Connect in Dallas, where I was very honored to receive their Making the Difference award. I'm on the NFCC board and want to share that we have a visionary new CEO, Rebecca Steele, who is bringing technology more and more into the work of credit counselors -- the people on the front lines of helping consumers make their financial lives healthier. Keep your eye on the NFCC and try to connect with its work. Other places I'll be speaking this fall include: Online Lending Policy Institute, October 9, Washington, DC P20 Conference, October 10, Atlanta, GA American Banker RegTech, October 15-16, New York, NY Singapore Fintech Festival, November 12-16, Singapore LendIt Europe, November 19-20, 2018 in London ABA/ABA Financial Crimes Conference, December 2-4, Washington, DC Regtech Rising, December 3-5, London Last but not least, Money 2020, is only two weeks away and it's going to be amazing. I'm chairing and hosting the regulatory track, which is SUNDAY, October 21, starting at 10AM. The day will include amazing speakers, including a fireside chat I'm doing with Lord Digby-Jones of the House of Lords, and an Oprah-style regulator town hall. On Monday, all ten of the senior regulators and former regulators participating in the conference will join in a mix and mingle with anyone who would like to talk with them. And then Monday afternoon at 3:15, I'll be on the new Revolution Stage speaking on Regulation Revolution. I'm aiming to make it the most interesting speech I've ever given. If you'll be at the conference, be sure to come, and tell your friends to come too. Also, watch for upcoming information on my collaboration with Brett King on his new book, Bank 4.0, which you can now buy. I co-wrote the regulatory chapter with Brett, and we'll have a show and events on that as well. Last year, I ended the fall with what I called my world tour designed as seven countries in seven weeks, ending at the Dutch Central Bank right before Christmas, and I tried to share the main takeaways from each by posting mini-videos from the scene. This year I'll be in fewer countries but at more events, so I'm going to do the videos again -- a lot of people said they enjoyed coming along on those adventures. So please follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook and come to jsbarefoot.com for more information. And yes, we're going to revive the newsletter. One of my colleagues recently suggested we call the next post Whirlwind, because that's what the year has been. Innovation everywhere! Support Our Podcast Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

I am especially thrilled about today's guest -- California DBO Commissioner Jan Owen -- because this episode has been years in the making. I've known Jan for a long time, and as anyone who knows her will attest, she's a breath of fresh air in the regulatory world. She's candid, she's outspoken, she's thought provoking, and she's fearless in tackling thorny issues. We've been looking for a good chance to sit down and talk, and we finally found one this summer. As it happens, it turned out to be one of Barefoot Innovation's most fun settings ever (and we've had some great ones, including beachside in Fiji at the AFI conference). Jan and I were both in Santa Fe in July for a conference and we decided to record our talk on an outdoor balcony, as a thunder storm approached. It was extremely windy, and we could smell the ozone and coming rain, and you'll be able to hear the thunder booming, sometimes startlingly well-timed to punctuate Jan's more pointed comments. We took our chances with the weather, staying outside as the sky darkened and dozens of lightning strikes forked down out of the clouds onto the mountains behind Jan -- I wish I'd gotten a photo of that. In the end, we had to run for it as the rain began, first with big drops spattering the deck and then, ten seconds later, deluge! So the episode ends a little abruptly! Jan Lynn Owen is one of the most important financial regulators in the US because she heads the California Department of Business Oversight (DBO). Since California arguably leads the world in financial innovation, the DBO is at the forefront in addressing emerging regulatory issues around fintech. Importantly, state regulators, unlike most of the federal ones, oversee both banks and nonbanks. The US federal regulators dominate financial policy, but they don't directly supervise nonbank startups. That means they're not in close touch with the cutting edge of innovation, which is not in the banks -- it's in the nonbank startups. So having a regulator like Jan who understands both banking and fintech is invaluable. In our conversation, she shares her diverse background, including having been a banker and regulator. She describes the scope of the DBO, which is breathtaking -- 368,000 licensees, over 4,000 small business and small dollar lenders, over 300 payday lenders, over 400 nondepository mortgage companies - you get the picture. As you would expect, we had a lively discussion about the proposal by the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to create a fintech charter. Jan is famously opposed to it and I have been an outspoken advocate for it - we'll link in the show notes to my debate on that topic with John Ryan, CEO of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS). Jan is of course a leader in CSBS and in our talk, she describes their efforts to modernize and streamline the state regulatory systems and licensing system in ways that she believes can meet the needs of the fintech sector without the OCC establishing a new type of federal charter. (Note that my discussion with Jan was recorded in mid-July, and so predated the OCC's July 31 announcement that it is going ahead with the new fintech charter.) Jan points out that the fintech world has transitioned from seeking to avoid regulation to embracing it, in the realization that it helps their business model. She says this shift is putting healthy pressure on government to figure out how to regulate these novel companies, and she's candid in saying that many of our financial laws and rules are old and out of date. In our talk, she invites input from anyone and everyone on how to fix them. The OCC fintech charter was not the only issue on which Jan and I disagree. If you read the news, you probably already know that she's been outspoken in her skepticism about regulatory sandboxes -- and our regular listeners know that I think regulators really need them. Much of the issue comes down to how they're designed, and we had a good conversation about the dos and don'ts of sandboxes, reglabs, and innovation hubs. The key is to give regulators a safe space to do easy experimentation, mainly to accelerate their own learning, while still assuring full consumer protection. (Since Jan and I spoke, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection also announced that it will launch a regulatory sandbox.) Before we fled the rainstorm, I asked Jan to talk about a speech she's been giving titled "Sex, Drugs, and Skinny Jeans" (a perfect example of her style). The "sex" topic is the #MeToo movement, including Jan's personal experience with workplace sexual misconduct. The "drugs" issue is, of course, how to regulate the financial issues raised by legal marijuana in states like California, since federal law still bars banks from opening accounts for these cash-rich businesses. And "skinny jeans" is about the culture clash between traditional, suit-and-tie finance and the jeans-and-tee-shirt worldview of Silicon Valley. We're going to have to bridge that divide, if we want to optimize the technology change coming to the financial world. Enjoy this thunderous episode with Jan Lynn Owen. Links LINK TO FULL TRANSCRIPTION Podcast with John Ryan - Conference of State Bank Bank Supervisors President Recent Speech at Lendit More on Jan Lynn Owen Jan Lynn Owen was appointed the first-ever Commissioner of the California Department of Business Oversight by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. on July 1, 2013, following a merger of the departments of Corporations and Financial Institutions. Previously, Ms. Owen served as Commissioner of Corporations. Prior to becoming Commissioner, Ms. Owen was the principal at The Jan Owen Group; a strategic initiatives manager at Apple Inc.; vice president of government affairs at JP Morgan Chase; state director of government and industry affairs at Washington Mutual Inc.; and executive director of the California Mortgage Bankers Association. From 1999 to 2000, Ms. Owen was acting commissioner of the Department of Financial Institutions, following on her role as deputy commissioner from 1996 to 1999. She also served for several years as a consultant to the state Senate Banking Committee. Ms. Owen is an alumna of California State University, Fresno, where she earned her degree in Economics. More for our listeners We have great podcasts in the queue. We have a series focused on global developments in fintech and regtech, including Harish Natarajan of the World Bank and Anju Padwardhan of CreditEase and Stanford University, who talks about fintech developments in China. From London, we'll have a talk with P.J. DiGiamarino of JWG and the Regtech Council. We'll also have a really thought-provoking show with Peter Renton, who leads LendAcademy and the LendIt conference series. We have a regtech firm coming up, Alloy, which has high-tech solutions for meeting the Know-Your-Customer rules in AML. And we'll have a show with the co-founders of Earnup. So, lots to look forward to! The fall conference circuit is exciting. Some of the places I'll be speaking are: Finovate Fall, September 26, 2018, New York, NY NFCC Connect, October 2, 2018, Dallas, TX Online Lending Policy Institute, October 9, Washington, DC P20 Conference, October 10, Atlanta, GA American Banker RegTech, October 15-16, New York, NY Money 2020, October 21-24, Las Vegas, NV Singapore Fintech Festival, November 12-16, Singapore LendIt Europe, November 19-20, 2018 in London ABA/ABA Financial Crimes Conference, December 2-4, Washington, DC Regtech Rising, December 3-5, London I'll also be speaking at several events hosted by US regulators this fall. It's great to see so many of them really digging into the issues surrounding fintech and regtech. Also, watch for upcoming information on my collaboration with Brett King on his new book on the future of finance -- we'll have a show and events on that as well. If you listen to Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, please leave a five star rating and also remember to send in your "buck a show" to keep it going. Come to jsbarefoot.com for today's show notes and to join our email list, so you'll get the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts. As always, please follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Support our podcast Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

What if regulations were machine-readable? What if, when regulatory changes come out, financial companies wouldn't have to download hundreds or thousands of pages of rules and read them all? What if they didn't have to rely on lawyers -- their own, and also the legions of legal experts and consultants who translate rules for the industry as a whole, to help them understand what to do? What if, instead, they could run new rules through a machine-based review, and get all those answers automatically? For very little money? Banks would be able to update compliance processes much more easily. Startups could easily find out what rules apply to them. The results could feed into other new, high-tech tools, to automate and streamline implementation. A lot of people are working on this concept, both at regulatory agencies and at regtech firms. One leader in that effort is my guest today, Kayvan Alikhani, Co-founder and CEO of Compliance.ai. We both were speakers this year at the Comply 2018 conference in New York, and while we were there we found a chance to sit down and talk. Kayvan and Compliance.ai set out to solve the problem that today's solutions are aging, rigid, slow, and expensive. Among other things, these systems fall behind the deluge of regulations that hit the financial sector every year. Compliance.ai looked at which industry most needed its new tech and chose finance, in part, based on research findings that compliance teams spend at least 30% of their time just chasing changes. Compliance.ai aims to automate the manual work of collecting, cleaning up, and parsing data and figuring out what is relevant to its customers, using machine-readable technology. Their software can speed up and simplify much of the work done today by traditional GRC -- governance, regulation and compliance -- systems. More basically, they are trying to redesign the whole model of importing data manually, analyzing it in spreadsheets, communicating on it via email, and all the rest. While today's regtech innovation is mostly point solutions for particular use cases, remember that they're converging. Machine-readable technology will meet up with other new ways of capturing and using data, from cloud computing to blockchains, and we'll see big breakthroughs when these connections really take. Kayvan is especially thoughtful about artificial intelligence. AI has incredible power to save massive time and money in compliance processes. I myself have no doubt that AI and machine learning are the future of regulation and compliance. However, getting to that future is a journey, and Kayvan describes how it is likely to go, and especially steps that will be needed to surmount reluctance by both industry and regulators to adopt AI they don't fully understand, by gradually building up understanding and trust and by assuring that AI meets the standards needed for accuracy and fairness. Significantly, regulators themselves are working on machine-readable regulation too. In particular, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is aiming to "digitize the rulebook" by tagging regulations with machine-readable markers. In the US, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is exploring the same concept. We'll link in the show notes to our episodes with both agencies. Regtech firms like to emphasize the time and money they can save the industry, which in turn sometimes leaves compliance professionals worried about robots taking their jobs. One lesson from my talk with Kayvan is that there's a mountain of human compliance work ahead. The machines are going to do the rote tasks, and the higher math. The people, with their deep expertise in both rules and the complex systems around them, are going to be freed up to do ever-more meaningful work, better than ever before. They will be busy shaping these new tech tools, and they will be using them to tackle the work only they can do -- the deep dive analysis, the hard cases, the systemic reforms. They'll have less frustration, less boredom, and more traction in achieving the big goals that our laws and regulations were written to further, from protecting consumers to expanding financial inclusion to catching money launderers. At my regtech firm, Hummingbird, we say our mission is to give compliance people superpowers. Compliance leaders are going to emerge as heroes in their companies as they produce better results, cut costs, cut risks, and help lead their organizations, especially banks, into the twenty-first century. I asked Kayvan to help us envision a day in the life of a compliance professional a few years into the future. He paints a fascinating picture, and he says it's going to be beautiful. That's not usually a word we associate with regulation and compliance. Links LINK TO FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION A day in the life of a compliance officer - Part 1 A day in the life of a compliance officer - Part 2 A day in the life of a compliance officer - Part 3 Chris Woolard and Nick Cook Podcast Podcast with Nick Cook Podcast with Dan Gorfine, LabCFTC Chief Innovation Officer and Director Podcast with CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo More on Kayvan Alikhani With more than 25 years of experience in hi-tech, Kayvan leads operations, strategy, sales, and marketing for Compliance.ai. Most recently, Kayvan led the identity strategy at RSA, and represented EMC on various industry alliances such as the FIDO board. He is Co-Founder and CEO of PassBan (acquired by RSA), a company focused on mobile identity assurance. Kayvan also led strategy at LiteScape (as CTO and later as CEO), creating security and mobile identity solutions for VOIP-based networks. He was Co-Founder and CTO at BeNotified, a cloud mobile communication service provider. Prior to that, Kayvan co-founded AVIRNEX, a cloud-based enhanced fixed- and mobile-communication service provider. More for our listeners We have great shows coming up. We have a wonderful episode with the California Banking Commissioner, Jan Lynn Owen. We'll also have another regtech firm, Alloy, which has high-tech solutions for meeting the Know-Your-Customer rules in AML. We have one with the co-founders of Earnup. From the global perspective, we'll have the World Bank's Harish Natarajan; one with Anju Padwardhan of CreditEase focused, among other things, on fintech developments in China; and one with P.J. DiGiamarino of JWG and the Regtech Council. We also have a great show in the queue with Peter Renton of LendAcademy and the LendIt conference, one of the most thoughtful people we've talked with. I'll be speaking this fall at some great events: Finovate Fall, September 26, 2018, New York, NY NFCC Connect, October 2, 2018, Dallas, TX P20 Conference, October 10, Atlanta, GA American Banker RegTech, October 15-16, New York, NY Money 2020, October 21-24, Las Vegas, NV Singapore Fintech Festival, November 12-16, Singapore LendIt Europe, November 19-20, 2018, London ABA/ABA Financial Crimes Conference, December 2-4, Washington, DC Regtech Rising, December 3-5, London If you listen to Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, please leave a five star rating to help us continue to build the show, and remember to send in your "buck a show" to keep it going. Also come to jsbarefoot.com for today's show notes and to join our email list to get the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts. As always, please follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. I'm so grateful that you listen to Barefoot Innovation. Our audience is growing rapidly all over the world, and hardly a day goes by without someone telling me how much they enjoy the show or how they were helped by an insight shared by one of our wonderful guests. Let's keep that going -- and let's all keep innovating! support our podcast Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

It's always extra fun when we have a show where the guest talks about the days when Jack Dorsey hacked him and lived in his backyard. For today's conversation, I'm joined by my friend Greg Kidd, Co-founder and CEO of globaliD. I'm predicting right now that this one is going to be a Barefoot Innovation fan-favorite. Greg has an unusual background. He was involved from the early days of Ripple, Twitter, and Square. Unlike most Silicon Valley innovators, though, he's also been a banking consultant and worked for the Fed Reserve Board. He is famously a big thinker (I like to tell him that people sometimes have no idea what he's talking about, although I promise that doesn't happen in this show). I remember the first time I met him -- we walked into a party at the same time one night in San Francisco, and were still talking, barely inside the door, two hours later. This is actually the longest episode we've ever done, because he's just fascinating to listen to -- I couldn't tear myself away. We recorded it this spring in globaliD's space at the Digital Garage in San Francisco, where Greg shared his vision of what's ahead in finance, commerce, and technology. We talked about the magnitude of the shifts he sees, and his passionate belief that new technology should be used to empower people, not control them. The secret to that, Greg says, is decentralization. He thinks blockchains and distributed ledgers are as revolutionary as the internet was. And he thinks, above all, that we should decentralize control over people's identities. As he says, government-issued identities are inherently insecure -- they create huge centralized "honeypots" of data that attract hackers -- and they can invite misuse by government itself. Greg's firm globaliD is building an alternative. Its software can be downloaded to the phone to create an individual token of identity that can attach a unique name, which then can collect identity proofs, or "attestations," based on the person's electronic footprint and relationships. The individual can customize how to share identity information for different purposes, shielding sensitive information for some uses and revealing it in others, in order to protect privacy. Because the underlying information lives in the individual's device, not a government or corporate database, it's relatively secure from cyber-attack. As mobile phones approach ubiquity worldwide, this kind of system can also expand financial inclusion by authenticating millions of people who lack traditional credentials and therefore can't enter the mainstream financial system. We've done other shows on this (I suggest re-listening to the one on the India stack and Aadhaar card with Sanjay Jain). Governments throughout the world are working on this, especially in countries where much of the population (often, especially, women) lack documents and therefore can't satisfy the bank Know-Your-Customer regulations. A few years ago I ran into Greg in Fiji at the annual summit of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion. He was speaking there on how to use mobile phone-based data to help refugees identify themselves to authorities, to make it easier to screen people even in the midst of mass migrations and humanitarian crises. The US needs updated identity methods too. Our analog-era systems like social security numbers are no longer secure -- too often buyable on the dark web. Digital solutions will be coming here soon. Greg also gets excited about making innovation work with regulation. He says we don't have to end up in George Orwell's world, nor in Mad Max's, as he argued in this memorable piece. I promise this episode will leave you with some new ideas. Links Link to Episode Transcription www.hardyaka.com Podcast with Anne Boden More on Greg Kidd Greg Kidd is the CEO of globaliD and the former chief risk officer at Ripple. His work taking his own startup public (Dispatch Management Services) on the Nasdaq is book-ended by time at Booz Allen, Promontory, and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. He was an initial investor and advisor for both Twitter and Square, and his investment firm Hard Yaka continues to back many fintech and regtech companies. His leadership pursuits include work at Outward Bound and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). More for our listeners We have many more great podcasts in the queue. We have a wonderful episode with the California banking commissioner, Jan Owen (which is extra exciting because we recorded it outside with lightning and thunder through the whole thing). We'll also have other regtech firms, including Compliance.ai, which is creating machine-readable regulations, and Alloy, which has high-tech solutions for meeting the Know-Your-Customer rules in AML. And we have one with the co-founders of Earnup. There are many more in the works. The fall events schedule is filling up. Some of the places I'll be speaking are: Finovate Fall, September 26, 2018, New York, NY NFCC Connect, October 2, 2018, Dallas, TX P20 Conference, October 10, Atlanta, GA American Banker Regtech Conference, October 15-16, New York, NY Money 2020, October 21-24, Las Vegas, NV Singapore Fintech Festival, November 12-16, Singapore LendIt Europe, November 19-20, 2018 in London ABA/ABA Financial Crimes Conference, December 2-4, Washington, DC Regtech Rising, December 3-5, London If you listen to Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, please leave a five star rating on the show to help us continue to grow. Come to jsbarefoot.com for today's show notes and to join our email list, so you'll get the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts. As always, please follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. support our podcast Meanwhile, keep innovating! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

We have such a special guest on today's show. Gregory Meeks is the United States Congressman representing the Fifth District of New York. He is also a leading member of the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services. I was able to sit down with him, in his Capitol Hill office on one recent, hot summer day, to talk about how technology is changing consumer finance and, especially, how it can expand financial inclusion. Congressman Meeks has been bringing breakthrough leadership to this issue on Capitol Hill. As he says in our conversation, his views are grounded in his own experience growing up in public housing in Harlem, where he learned firsthand the struggles faced by low-income families in making ends meet, and also in getting access to credit. He talks about his own parent's situation in being able to purchase a home, and the effect it had on his family. As a passionate advocate for these communities, it's hugely important that he believes some of the solutions for them lie in fintech. I think it's fair to say that many advocates for financial inclusion are still skeptical that fintech is a good thing. Obviously it sometimes isn't, and clearly there are many questions that need to be addressed as these new technologies expand. As someone who has worked with financial inclusion efforts for decades, however, I think these new tech innovations are actually the best hope we've ever had for building a truly affordable, accessible and healthy financial system for everyone. As we've discussed in other shows, fintech is attacking all the things that cause people to have unhealthy financial lives, other than lack of money itself. It is sharply reducing the costs of providing financial services, by leveraging both mobile delivery channels and new kinds of data. It's enabling accurate underwriting of the millions of people who can't qualify for good loans because they lack traditional credit files -- again, using new data and data analytics. It's helping people build digital identities, which equips them to satisfy the Know-Your-Customer rules of the banking system and thereby access transaction accounts (this progress is especially dramatic in the developing world). Fintech innovation is also creating a wide array of tools that just make it easier to manage money wisely, regardless of your level of financial education. New tools are simplifying everything from saving, to budgeting and bill-paying, to new solutions for people with "gig" jobs, to getting alerts when funds are getting low. Fintech is not a panacea, obviously, but my view it that it can accomplish many of the goals we've been pursuing for decades through regulation, with mixed results at best. Congressman Meeks is focusing on this powerful potential. We had a wide ranging conversation, including talking about modernizing the Community Reinvestment Act which the Congressman has called for -- here is his op-ed on that challenge. And you'll hear his passion for building a bipartisan approach to crafting solutions that work for everyone, including how both rural and urban communities' financial health can benefit from fintech. The Congressman has a keen sense for how we need to embrace technology, rather than fighting it. He's optimistic, as am I, that we are on the verge of finding truly superior ways to use new technologies to better communities. More Links Link to Full Episode Transcription Fintech Charter and Financial Inclusion Op-Ed Corporate Board Diversity Op-Ed Twitter @repgregorymeeks Facebook @repgregorymeeks Congressman Meeks' Office - 202-225-3461 More on Gregory Meeks Congressman Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY) is now in his tenth term serving the 5th District of New York, which is one of the most diverse constituencies in the nation. He is known for working with Democrats and Republicans alike and is one of sixty-one pro-growth Democratic members who comprise the New Democrat Coalition (NDC). He co-chairs the NDCC Trade Task Force. Congressman Meeks is a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, having previously served as a Dodd-Frank conferee. Key provisions in the Wall Street reform law – including its stress testing requirement, the creation of the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion at the financial regulatory agencies, and the requirement that U.S. public companies that use natural resources must report their due diligence in stamping out conflict minerals– were authored by Congressman Meeks and remain in the law today. The Congressman is also a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he is the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats. A multilateralist with decades of experience in foreign policy, he believes the United States should build coalitions around our interests and work with other countries to build a stable and prosperous future. He co-chairs several international organization caucuses, including the European Union Caucus. More for our listeners We have many more great podcasts in the queue. We'll have a really thought-provoking discussion with my friend Greg Kidd, Founder of GlobaliD. We have a wonderful episode with the California banking commissioner, Jan Owen (which we recorded amidst a gathering thunderstorm that adds some drama). We'll also have two regtech firms -- Compliance.ai, which offers machine-readable regulatory compliance, and Alloy, which has high-tech solutions for meeting the Know-Your-Customer rules in AML. And we have one with the co-founders of Earnup. There are many more in the works. The fall events schedule is filling up. Some of the places I'll be speaking are: Finovate Fall, September 26, 2018, New York, NY Money 2020, October in Las Vegas. Among other things, I'll be speaking on the Revolution Stage about the regulation revolution NFCC Connect, October 2, 2018, Dallas, TX LendIt Europe, November 19-20, 2018 in London. Regtech Rising, December 3-5, London I'll also be speaking again at AFI, in Russia, if we can make the schedule work. Also, watch for upcoming information on my collaboration with Brett King on his new book on the future of finance -- we'll have a show and events on that as well. If you listen to Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, please leave a five star rating on the show to help us build it. Also please remember to send in your "buck a show" to keep it going, and come to jsbarefoot.com for today's show notes and to join our email list, so you'll get the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts. As always, please follow me on Twitter and Facebook. support our podcast And tell me what you're thinking about fintech and financial inclusion. Let's widen this dialogue to more people, and more and more ideas! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!