Barefoot Innovation Podcast

Today's guest is Michael Butler, CEO of Radius Bank in Boston. As with our recent show with Bob Rivers of Eastern Bank (which is also based in Boston), Mike belongs to a small, but growing, group of CEOs who are truly transforming their community banks through technology. When conversation turns to the tech future for community institutions, these two banks' names always come up. We'll link in the show notes to the Eastern episode and you'll notice many common themes -- especially that both CEOs focus first and foremost on full embrace of a tech culture. Not a mixed culture, not one that's hampered by pockets of resistance, but full embrace. We all know it's hard for smaller banks to keep up with cutting edge technology. I know some community bankers who say they have given up. I know many others -- maybe most -- who hope they are keeping up enough to please their customers, but can't tell for sure how well they're doing. And I think many worry that they have no clear idea of what the road ahead looks like. For Radius Bank, Mike explains how they analyzed this challenge. Their conclusion was that in today's market, in which customers expect Amazon-type technology, their small bank was not going to be able to offer fully competitive full-service retail banking products. As a result, they shifted quite radically to a new strategy. In this show, Mike tells the story of that journey, beginning in 2008 at the height of the Great Recession. He shares their reasoning that a full-service, branch-based, locally-confined strategy would actually be more risky than offering a narrow product set to a wide market, with a very low cost structure. He argues that a small bank like Radius has powerful advantages over larger ones that have more complex and rigid systems that slow them down. And he talks about how they tackled the task of building, as he puts it, a great tech platform, including for attracting deposits from a very specific niche of customers -- those who don't want a branch, and actually prefer to bank through their phone, if the experience is wonderful. You'll enjoy listening to Mike describe the internal debates they undertook, including the fears around offering something like, for example, a free ATM. He says they concluded that the whole banking industry's platform is wrong, if you want to offer a virtual product. They also realized that a key to their future is fintech companies, both as customers and as partners. He says they now think of their "branches" as being located at the "corner of Radius" and the partner company, not on a physical street intersection where they would be competing with other banks' street. Mike says it's "a beautiful place to be." He also talks in depth about making the tech great. For example, he describes getting the deposit account opening process streamlined from fifteen or twenty minutes down to three or four. He says that, behind the scenes, Radius Bank does things like Amazon, and delivers an Amazon-like experience. He also has tips on how to attract tech talent (hint -- it includes empowering young employees). Mike has thoughts on how to modernize the Community Reinvestment Act for the digital age. More broadly, he shares insights on overall regulatory challenges which, as he says, are "not easy." He describes tasking the bank's risk people to figure out how to work with new-generation vendors, because, as he puts it, "we can't just go with the big guys that look good and look safe," if they have old and inferior technology. He describes the checklist they've developed to handle this modernized third-party risk management for partnering with fintechs and regtechs. He says one secret is to have a "rock star compliance person." Another is to interact constantly with the regulators. Listen especially closely to how he thinks about the risk in these partnerships, and specifically his thought process on how these newer tech partners are able to make any needed course corrections quickly and nimbly, and at low cost, so that even if things don't work perfectly the first time, the bank is still ahead for having experimented or for trying a new approach. I'm hearing this thinking more and more from innovative banks, including the point that while older technology may look safe, it's actually high-risk because much of it is too rigid, and changes too slowly, to keep up with the market. I've long believed that the two top challenges facing banks, and especially community institutions, are, first, keeping up with technology and second, regulatory burden. The good news, which is sometimes hard to see, is that new technology can be the answer to both. Radius bank is pioneering a new pathway to reaching those solutions. I know you'll enjoy my conversation with Mike Butler. More Links Link to Full Transcription Radius Bank Website Podcast with Citi Fintech - Citi Fintech Global Head of Policy, Andres Wolberg Stock Podcast with Eastern Bank CEO Bob Rivers More on Michael Butler Michael Butler is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Radius Bank. Since joining Radius Bank in March 2008, he has transformed Radius into an innovative leader in the financial services industry, focused on delivering superior customer service and leading-edge technology to its clients. He is an experienced banking executive with an extensive background in all facets of commercial and consumer banking. Prior to joining the Bank, Mike served as President for National Consumer Finance at KeyCorp in Cleveland, Ohio. He is a graduate of Providence College and the ABA's Stonier Graduate School of Banking. Mike serves as a member of the Financial Services Committee for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, on the Board of Trustees for Thompson Island Outward Bound, on the Advisory Board for FinXTech, and has been active with the Habitat for Humanity program. More for our listeners We have many more great podcasts in the queue. They include a number of leading government officials, including Congressman Gregory Meeks and Jan Owen, the banking commissioner of California, as well as World Bank official Harish Natarajan. We'll have an amazing show with Greg Kidd, Founder of Global ID; a show with the co-founders of EarnUp, and two regtech firms -- Alloy and Compliance.AI. The fall events schedule is filling up. Some of the places I'll be speaking are: Get Smart On Blockchain, US Chamber of Commerce, August 1 in Washington Finovate Fall, September 26, 2018, New York, NY NFCC Connect, October 2, 2018, Dallas, TX Money 2020, October 21-24. Among other things, I'll be speaking on the Revolution Stage about the regulation revolution LendIt Europe, November 19-20, 2018 in London. Regtech Rising, December 3-5, London 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 do 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 digitizing regulation. We want to widen this dialogue. Until next time, keep innovating! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Today's show brings us two fascinating guests. Alex Lintner is President of Consumer Information Services for Experian, and Sasha Orloff -- who is a previous guest on Barefoot Innovation -- is founder and CEO of LendUp. They recently joined forces to explore using new kinds of data to widen financial inclusion. We all sat down to discuss it at the LendIt conference this spring in San Francisco. Credit scores are a great tool for evaluating the creditworthiness of many consumers, but as Alex explains, not for all of them. He and Sasha think -- as do I -- that we need a fuller view into what Alex calls the consumer's financial "reputation." Experian estimates that 100 million people in America need this kind of broadened evaluation. We know that many consumers with low or no credit scores are actually creditworthy, and in fact could prove it if we had systems that could look closely at their financial behaviors and situations beyond reported credit history. Traditionally, though, we didn't have efficient ways to get that information because, in the analog age, when the current systems were designed, data was scarce and costly. Today, in contrast, we have massive volumes of digital information we can access and analyze, instantly and efficiently. This creates the ability to do what used to be impossible -- make financial services more inclusive, without sacrificing lending soundness. Toward that goal, LendUp and Experian undertook a joint research project to look at the benefits of capturing data on customers' performance on single-payment loans. The study produced really striking results -- the overwhelming majority of consumers in the study came out with positive impacts on their credit scores. And as Alex explains, single-payment loans are just one kind of nontraditional data. In today's digitized world, there are many other factors that we can begin to capture methodically and build into routine credit scores. Experian is now routinely doing this, offering a new score called Clear Early Risk. In our conversation, Alex and Sasha share insights drawn from their own lives and talk about the many situations in which people have trouble accessing credit when they need it. Some of these consumers are young people or new immigrants with thin or no credit file. Some are facing life changes like a family death or divorce. Some are contending with emergencies like loss of a job or medical bills. Our discussion also tied these kinds of individual challenges into big shifts underway overall in lifestyle and in technology -- the advent of mobile financial services, the rise of the gig economy, and expanding use of artificial intelligence. In addition, we touched on the future of the Community Reinvestment Act, which is due for much-needed, tech-driven modernization. Using alternative credit risk data has complex implications for fair lending regulation, especially in the US and especially regarding "disparate impact." US policy bars use of credit practices that have a disproportionate adverse effect on "protected classes" like women and minorities, unless the lender can demonstrate a business need and show that less-discriminatory alternatives are not available. The criteria for proving this are not clear today, and I'm among the many people who think that clarifying them is essential to expanding financial inclusion by fostering use of new data. Despite having the best of intentions, policymakers have inadvertently made hard-to-score consumers the riskiest market to serve, due to the regulatory risk arising from uncertainty. That chills efforts to address these customers' needs by many mainstream and high-quality lenders. The CFPB is exploring this issue through its evaluation of alternative data and issuance of a "no action letter" for Upstart. A similar effort is underway, also, at the new nonprofit FinRegLab, which is run by Melissa Koide and funded by the Omidyar Network. I chair FinRegLab's board, and we're conducting empirical testing of alternative data -- specifically cash flow underwriting -- including how these new methods relate to disparate impact. Today's show is a glimpse of a promising future, harnessing innovative technology to produce lending that is more inclusive, and also more sound. More Links Episode Transcription Podcast with Al Ko - Episode recorded last year with Al Ko of Intuit LendUp Infograph Alternative Credit Data trends and reports Op-Ed by Sasha on innovation in credit scoring More on Sasha and Alex Sasha Orloff is CEO and co-founder of LendUp. LendUp's mission is to provide anyone with a path to better financial health. The company builds technology, credit products, and educational experiences that haven't existed before for the emerging middle class -- the 56% of Americans shut out of mainstream banking due to poor credit or income volatility. It has originated more than $1 billion in loans. With offices in San Francisco, CA and Richmond, VA, LendUp is backed by debt and equity financing from venture and social impact investors including Y-Combinator, Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Victory Park Capital and Yuri Milner's Startfund. In June, both Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman of QED Investors joined the LendUp board of directors. Prior to founding LendUp, Sasha held roles in risk management, finance, online acquisitions and customer insights on Citi's consumer credit team, and most recently served as Senior Vice President on Citigroup's Venture Capital team. He previously worked for the Grameen Foundation Technology Center and The World Bank. He has a B.S. in applied math and economics from the University of California, San Diego and an MBA from Georgetown University. Alex Lintner is President of Experian's Consumer Information Services, overseeing the company's US consumer credit bureau and the National Consumer Assistance Centre (NCAC). He's responsible for all aspects of Experian's consumer credit activities within the business-to-business marketplace, including delivery and management of value-added credit risk, marketing, and collection products to help clients manage and optimize their customer relationships. Alex was previously CEO and President of Vertafore, a $450+ million revenue insurance industry technology provider. Prior to that he was President of Intuit's Global Business Division and also Senior Vice President of Strategy, Government Affairs and Corporate Development. He's also spent 15 years as a consultant, starting as a Business Analyst at Dr. Hoefner & Partners in Munich, Germany and later serving as Vice President of The Boston Consulting Group in their London and San Francisco offices. More for our listeners Our next guest on the show will be another community bank CEO, Mike Butler of Radius Bank in Boston. Upcoming episodes include a fascinating conversation with Congressman Gregory Meeks on financial innovation and policy; a talk I recorded this year at LendIt with my friend Greg Kidd of Global ID; and three discussions with regtech firms -- JWG in London, Compliance.ai, and Alloy. Speaking of LendIt, I was a guest this month on Peter Renton's Lend Academy podcast, and he'll be on our show soon as well. I was also a guest in June on the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation podcast, CFTC Talks, with Andy Busch. And here are my two podcasts with the CFTC, one with Chairman Giancarlo and a recent one with innovation head Dan Gorfine. It's not too early to register for the fall's premier fintech event, Money 2020, in October in Las Vegas. I'll again be MC for the regulatory track, which, remember, is on Sunday -- be sure to plan accordingly! I'll also be speaking on the Revolution Stage, which is new this year, about regulation innovation. Also watch for Regtech Rising in December, which I'm helping to plan. We'll also be posting 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, and I'll be a guest on Brett's great radio show Breaking Banks this week, on July 5. Please remember to give Barefoot Innovation a five-star rating on iTunes to help us expand the show. I hope you'll sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at www.jsbarefoot.com. Follow me on Twitter and our Facebook fan page. And please send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going! SUPPORT OUR PODCAST Until next time, keep innovating! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Some organizations are so interesting that we come back to them more than once. Among US regulatory agencies, the most fascinating may be the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Last July we ran a podcast conversation with the Commission's Chairman, Christopher Giancarlo, which goes into greater depth about the role of the CFTC and it also contains Chairman Giancarlo's thought-provoking statement that the top priority facing every regulatory body is to convert the rule book from analog to digital design. The CFTC is at the forefront of regulatory innovation in part because its leader is so passionate about the importance of it. In that spirit, they recruited the perfect person to lead the LabCFTC innovation project -- today's guest, Daniel Gorfine. Luckily for us, the CFTC was able to attract Dan into government from the fintech sector – I first met him when he was at OnDeck – and he's been bringing an innovator's mindset and working models to this venerable government agency. This episode has three very meaty topics, each of which could have been a whole show. First, Dan talks about the vision and work of LabCFTC, sharing insights about how it's organized that I know other regulators will find helpful. He talks about how they track and facilitate innovation in the financial markets, including a "primer" they issued on rules applying to cryptocurrency. He also explains how they explore new technology for use by the agency, itself -- they call that CFTC 2.0 -- as well as "Digital Reg," an internal think tank for rapid learning and sharing of tech insight. Second, Dan talks with me about an exciting initiative they've just launched, issuing the first-ever CFTC Science Prize Competition Act challenge. They discovered this law empowering agencies to run competitions to solve regulatory problems in science and technology, and they decided to crowdsource ideas on both the problems to tackle and the process to use. Public comments are due July 24. In our conversation, Dan throws out some of the ideas he and his colleagues have thought of -- maybe regulatory data visualization tools, or machine-learning for market surveillance, or machine-readable and machine-executable regulation -- but they want to hear from you. Our listeners are among the most thoughtful people anywhere on regulation innovation, so please comment. You could even become CFTC Innovator of the Year! Our third topic is one that rarely surfaces in the innovation dialogue, and solely needs discussion: the legal and procedural obstacles to government agencies that want to embrace innovation. We could call the topic, government modernization. Think about it. If you were a federal agency wanting to keep up with technology innovation, you would want to be able to do a few things. You would want to be able to try out new technologies, hands-on. If the innovation was something you might adopt for your own agency, you would want to test it before you had to commit to a major procurement budget and procedure. You would also want to be able to brainstorm with a wide range of people, learning from them, thinking through ideas with them. All of this is stunted today by well-intentioned rules that were designed long ago -- for good reason -- to prevent inappropriate influence, backroom deals, and the like. Dan talks in particular about the Anti-Deficiency Act, which restricts procurement activities and prevents the CFTC from being able to try out new kinds of tools. Another issue is the procurement process itself. I met a few months ago with people from a different agency, showing them some innovative technology that could make their regulatory work easier, and one of them said, "If we decided today that we should adopt this, we would have it in seven years." I've talked with other agencies that cite the Federal Advisory Committee Act, with its restrictions on meetings, and the Administrative Procedure Act, which structures the rule-making process and, at some stages, limits interactive dialogue. Agencies have raised concerns about various "government in the sunshine" rules, which again make it difficult to talk informally. Some can't readily attend a breakfast or lunch event. They have to ask about the value of the meal being served and if it's more than, I think it's $15, they can't eat it, or they have to go through paperwork to pay for it. And of course, there are complex approval processes for participating in various kinds of forums. More than any show we've done, this one puts you in the shoes of the regulatory agency and shows how their hands are tied by procedural prohibitions and requirements. I'd love to see someone do a study, maybe a graduate thesis, on how rules that were written in an older, slower era may now undermine the ability of regulators to keep up with exponential change in technology. We could use suggestions on updating them for the digital age. And remember, it's an issue much broader than finance. I've been in and around Washington for decades and can remember the bad old days before some of these rules were created -- indeed, I remember some of the bad old practices that led to them. Still, we don't need to straightjacket our regulators. Other countries have a much more fluid discussion between agencies and industry, and also have the ability to try things. One model is the Bank of England's Fintech Accelerator, which explores new technology for the bank itself. And Dan and I both participated in London last month in the amazing AML Tech Sprint run by the UK Financial Conduct Authority -- which is a stunning model of innovative regulatory process. Its leaders were my guests on the last podcast we posted (which my friend Peter Renton of LendAcademy and LendIt called the "most fascinating discussion he's ever heard on the future of financial regulation" -- if you missed it, check it out). Meanwhile, here's some great news. Just a few days ago, Congressman Austin Scott (R-GA) introduced the CFTC Research and Development Modernization Act, H.R. 6121. Dan refers to it in our talk – it's bipartisan legislation to address some of these hurdles at the CFTC. We'll link to it in the show notes. The bill would permit the Commission to collaborate on projects with fintech developers. It would also allow it to receive "gifts" for R&D purposes, including software to try out, subject to common sense safeguards. The bill echoes work by Congressman Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who has sought to facilitate innovation by all the financial regulatory agencies. And the US agencies, themselves, are all moving ahead, too. The CFPB's Acting Director, Mick Mulvaney, plans to launch a regulatory sandbox. The FDIC held a tremendously impressive technology forum. Five US agencies attended the UK tech sprint. Regulation innovation is coming, and no one is more thoughtful about it than Dan Gorfine. More links Our Podcast with Christopher Woolard of the UK Financial Conduct Authority Our Podcast with Nick Cook, the FCA's head of regtech FinRegLab, which is leading regulatory innovation in the US Link to transcription of this episode (Note that transcripts may sometimes contain errors and that transcript timing notations do not match the posted podcast) More on Dan Gorfine Daniel Gorfine is Chief Innovation Officer and Director, LabCFTC at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. LabCFTC is dedicated to facilitating market-enhancing financial technology (FinTech) innovation, fair market competition, and proactive regulatory excellence and understanding of emerging technologies. Daniel is also an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center where he teaches a course on 'FinTech Law & Policy.' Daniel was most recently Vice President, External Affairs & Associate General Counsel at OnDeck, and previously served as director of financial markets policy and legal counsel at the Milken Institute think tank where he focused on technology-driven financial innovation, capital access, and financial market policy. Earlier in his career, Gorfine worked at the international law firm Covington & Burling LLP and served a clerkship with U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake in the District of Maryland. A graduate of Brown University (A.B.), Daniel holds a J.D. from George Washington University Law School and an M.A. from the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. More for our listeners We have many more great podcasts in the queue. We'll talk with another community bank CEO, Mike Butler of Radius Bank. We'll have two more episodes that we recorded this year at LendIt. One is a discussion of new research by LendUp and Experian, on credit reporting, and the other is with Greg Kidd, Founder of Global ID. We also recorded two episodes at last month's Comply 2018 conference in New York, with 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. Speaking of LendIt, I was a guest last week on Lend Academy podcast, and Peter Renton will be on our show soon as well, so watch for those. I'm also excited we'll have several leading members of Congress on the show in the coming weeks. So, stay tuned! The summer conference slowdown is nearly upon us, but I hope to see you at upcoming speeches and events including: American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, June 26, Nashville, TN Money 2020, October in Las Vegas. Among other things, I'll be speaking on the Revolution Stage about the regulation revolution 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 digitizing regulation. 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!

This is the most unique, and the most consequential, show we've ever done. If our thousands of listeners all think about it and especially if you share it widely, it has the most potential to actually change the financial regulatory world for the better and also in turn, therefore, to improve the financial world, too. It goes right into the heart of the most important work, being done by the most innovative people, on redesigning regulation for the digital age. My guests are Chris Woolard and Nick Cook of the UK's Financial Conduct Authority. We sat down to record it on the last night of their enormous, ambitious, mold-breaking tech sprint held in London a few weeks ago. This regtech sprint, the fifth one they've done, focused on how to use new technology to combat financial crime. The sprints -- which are hackathons -- play a dual role, both sparking new ideas on specific regulatory challenges and also innovating in regulatory process, itself. I'll set the scene for you. It was a Thursday night, dinner time, in the London offices of EY, in the Canary Wharf section of the city on the Thames, just a few blocks from the FCA's building. EY generously offered their beautiful training facility for the sprint, because the FCA's building is too small to hold the 400 people who were there by the end, or even the 260 who had been there for three days, working feverishly, day and night, to invent new solutions for money laundering. Those people had arrived on Tuesday morning and had self-formed into sixteen small teams, usually with total strangers, in a format mixing organizations and most importantly, mixing knowledge and skill types. Regulatory experts and AML experts and lawyers had worked elbow-to-elbow with tech experts, brainstorming ideas together and then translating these, live, into computer code, using test data provided by the participating tech companies. We sat down for this recording in a quiet conference room, just as the main gathering began to shift into post-conference socializing and bonding and celebrating over food and drink. It was one of those special moments where everyone feels elated and excited, and at the same time, completely drained. For me, as I think I say two or three times in this show, the sprint was the most fascinating and inspiring thing I've ever experienced. I hope that listening to it will inspire you to take up the FCA's challenge to build on it in your own country and with your counterparts in other countries, and perhaps to take up their offer to help. People came to the sprint from all over the world, including, I'm especially happy to say, a substantial contingent of both regulators and financial companies from the United States (and also a new nonprofit, FinRegLab, with which I'm affiliated and which is building an empirical testing environment for regtech concepts in Washington). The FCA is at the forefront of a global regulatory awakening about the need to innovate regulatory models as technology increasingly outpaces the speed at which government can change. Its most famous innovation is its Regulatory Sandbox, which enables fintech innovation to be tested in a controlled experiment under the regulator's close scrutiny and is being emulated throughout the world. Less well-known is their equally important innovation on the regtech side, for which they invented this creative new format, the regulator's TechSprint. Both the sandbox and the sprints have three key elements essential for regulatory innovation. First, they make collaboration happen, especially between the regulatory and tech worlds. Second, they enable very fast learning by the regulator, through direct, hands-on experience. And third, and most crucially, they use experimentation. They provide a safe space for trying things out, testing, learning, shaping -- quickly and cheaply. They apply the techniques that technology innovators figured out years ago, about the need to start small, try something, adjust as you learn, and if some ideas are going to fail, let them "fail fast" in a controlled setting where critical lessons can be learned early, and no harm can be done. These ideas are hard for people to grasp in the abstract, especially the notion that regulators need to get comfortable with learning through trial and error because there's no other way to learn fast enough. I'm a former bank regulator and I know this idea is completely alien to regulatory culture and tradition, which have been designed, for good reason, to be careful and thorough and deliberate. A couple of years ago, a senior U.S. bank regulator told me that her agency had figured this out by spending time on the FCA's website, reaching this epiphany that, the regulator doesn't need to have all the answers -- even can't have all the answers on tech change, before moving forward. It's really the other way around. You have to move forward, to get to the answers. Chris and Nick describe the very same process -- as Chris calls it, the light bulb turning on, suddenly realizing it was riskier NOT to move, even though you're not sure exactly what to do and what will happen. To me, the most interesting thing you'll hear in this show is their voice as they describe this journey, the struggle toward creating a new way to work. Again, this was the fifth tech sprint. Be sure listen to my two earlier FCA shows, one with Chris that explains the FCA's regulatory sandbox and one with Nick on regtech. The regtech one featured the breakthrough, two-week sprint held last November, successfully proving that regulatory reporting requirements could be updated directly, computer-to-computer, by issuing a rule change in the form of code, rather than words. That one was like a regulatory moonshot -- it could eventually change regulation, itself. This new sprint last month, by contrast, focused on the specific use case that's most ripe for regtech transformation -- anti-money laundering. The UN estimates that there's $1.6 - $2 trillion in annual global financial crime, and that we catch less than 1 percent -- despite spending tens of billions of dollars each year. And it's getting worse. The criminals and terrorists today use sophisticated technology and operate as networks, while banks and governments use old technologies, with data trapped in silos. As Chris and Nick said, it will take a network, to beat a network. Chris also said that a million children are trafficked, each year. There's a moment, in our conversation, where Nick says the sprint brings people to realizing that collectively, we can actually DO something about money laundering -- and you can hear the tone of excitement in his voice. For decades, we couldn't really do much better, because we've had analog-era technology. Today we can use digitally-native tools. We can use them to fight crime and also to tackle nearly every other aspect of financial regulation -- all the areas where problems are so hard to solve. Financial inclusion. Consumer education. Preventing discrimination and predatory finance. Identity verification. Risk assessment. Financial reporting. New technology can make it all work better, and cost less, at the same time -- something that in the past was completely impossible. Believe it or not, I'm actually curbing my enthusiasm for this. This is the tamped down version. I think this is a regulatory revolution, beginning to move. Please listen to this episode, share it with everyone you know, and join in the dialogue. More on Chris Woolard Christopher Woolard is Executive Director of Strategy and Competition and an Executive Board Member of the Financial Conduct Authority. He's responsible for policy, strategy, competition, market intelligence, consumer issues, the Chief Economist's department, communications and the Innovate initiative. He is chair of the FCA's Policy Steering Committee and a non-executive board member of the Payment Systems Regulator. Christopher joined the FCA in January 2013. Previously he was Group Director and Content Board member at Ofcom. He has spent most of his career in regulation or policy development including working at the BBC and in government as a senior civil servant. He is a Sloan Fellow of London Business School. More on Nick Cook Nick Cook leads the FCA's RegTech activities, including the FCA's TechSprint events - the first events of their kind convened by a financial regulator. He is responsible for creating the FCA's Analytics Centre of Excellence to drive the organization's use of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Nick is the FCA's representative on the European Securities and Markets Authority's (ESMA) Financial Innovation Standing Committee and an advisor to the RegTech for Regulators Accelerator Programme. Nick joined the Financial Services Authority (the FCA's predecessor) in 2009, initially in its Enforcement and Market Oversight Division. Prior to joining the regulator, Nick qualified as a chartered accountant at KPMG Forensic. More for our listeners Full interview transcript. We have many more great podcasts in the queue. We'll talk with another community bank CEO, Mike Butler of Radius Bank. We'll have two more episodes recorded this year at LendIt. One is a discussion of new research by LendUp and Experian, on credit reporting, and the other is with my friend Greg Kidd of Global ID. We also recorded two episodes at last month's Comply 2018 conference in New York, with 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. Speaking of LendIt, I'll also be a guest on Peter Renton's Lend Academy podcast, and he'll be on our show soon as well, so watch for those. I'm also excited we'll have several leading members of Congress on the show in the coming weeks. So, stay tuned! I hope to see you at upcoming speeches and events including: CFSI's Emerge, this week in Los Angeles, CA North Dakota Bankers Convention, June 10-12, Fargo, ND American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, June 26, Nashville, TN Money 2020, October in Las Vegas. Among other things, I'll be speaking on the Revolution Stage about the regulation revolution 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. And tell me what you're thinking about digitizing regulation. Let's widen this dialogue to more people, and more and more ideas! 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 my goals for Barefoot Innovation is to amplify the voice of America's community banks about the future of financial innovation and regulation. Today's guest is perfect for this. He is Bob Rivers, CEO of Eastern Bank in Boston. At age 200, Eastern is the oldest and largest mutually-owned bank in the United States. At the same time, it is one of the most "young" and nimble community banks in adopting new technology. Mutual savings banks were once common, especially in New England. Most have converted to stock ownership, but Bob points to Eastern's mutual structure as a key advantage in its strategy, which includes a strong focus on social mission. He explains the bank's roots in Salem, Massachusetts, serving people who had no bank, and describes how it evolved to emphasize empowering marginalized customers, including women. He also tells the story of his own rise to leading Eastern, from a start 36 years ago that included cleaning bank branches at night. It's a classic community banking story, for both Eastern and its leader. What mainly drew me to Eastern's offices, though, on a cold day in Boston last February, was its reputation for innovation. When people talk about community banks and the technology change that's transforming banking, Eastern's name always comes up. In this episode, Bob describes how their innovation strategy began six years ago, when he invited Eastern's Chief Technology Officer, Don Westermann, out for "walkabouts" in Kendall Square, a Boston neighborhood noted for innovation. Bob and Don just introduced themselves, cold, to tech firms, hoping "to understand the mindset of the disruptive innovator" -- their goals and approaches, and also how to reach their networks. Two years into that process, they met PerkStreet Financial, which Bob describes as similar to Simple (we've done two shows with Simple CEO Josh Reich, who just stepped down this month -- they are here and here, still great listening.) In Boston, PerkStreet was giving up (actually as a result of regulatory changes), when Bob met its CEO Dan O'Malley, and they went into business together. The resulting Eastern Labs set out to digitize the lending application process for small businesses, including on SBA loans. Three years later, Eastern spun off that enterprise as Numerated Growth Technologies -- whose website describes it as "Built For Banks, Incubated Inside A Bank." Now Eastern has opened a new Lab 2.0 with plans for additional tech solutions. In our conversation, Bob gives a road map for how a community bank can undertake this kind of innovation -- how to position it, structure it, staff it, fund it, and run it; how much capital it needs; how to price the services; how much to integrate the innovation team with the bank versus leave it independent; and how to use tech-world concepts like agile design and minimum viable products, or MVP's. He also explains how an initiative like this can radically transform a small bank's ability to attract tech talent, and how it can remake the bank's culture, itself. Bob also has views on how regulation factors into innovation. Notably, Eastern recruited Steve Antonakes, former Deputy Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former Massachusetts Commissioner of Banks, to lead its enterprise risk function. Bob has a range of insights into what regulators are doing right, along with suggestions. This bank has cracked the code on one of the most critical challenges facing community institutions, namely how to partner with innovators to leverage the respective strengths and weaknesses of each. As he says, fintech startups used to see themselves as replacing lumbering old banks, but most now hope instead to work with them, because these two groups need each other. Few banks of any size can innovate the way startups can. Yes, banks have always innovated, but today's changes, coming so fast, driven by trends erupting in the wider tech world, are simply not in basic banking DNA. Few banks can build a world-class, digitally-native user experience. Few can afford and attract the data scientists for new-generation risk analytics. Conversely, though, very few fintechs can readily get the building blocks needed to scale up, like rapid, affordable customer acquisition, or accessing stable, low-cost funding, or deeply understanding financial products, markets and regulations -- all of which are strengths every bank can bring to the table. And the good news for community banks, specifically, is that they also have natural advantages over large banks, despite having less sophisticated technology, precisely because they're small. They can be nimble. They don't have to turn the proverbial battleship. They can chart and follow a new course, as Eastern is doing. Smaller banks see this logic, but most struggle to know where to start. Bob Rivers has the answer. It's simply, start where you are and just move forward. You don't need to figure it all out first. Really, you can't. Instead, start small. Try things. Immerse in rapid learning. Talk to people. I'll add, go to tech conferences and read tech publications. Do the walkabout! I recently spoke at a state bankers association conference. On the hotel elevator, coming down to the event before my talk, I chatted with a former bank CEO, now a director. When he learned my speech was on technology, he laughed and said, "I'm too old to learn it!" I told him I was going to try to change his mind about that, because, here's the reality: banks' CEO's must lead this. They don't have to be techies -- Bob Rivers isn't. He says he still balances his checkbook with a calculator. But he's leading his bank into a new digitized financial world, by knowing it needs to change and embracing innovation with boldness and imagination. More about today's show Link to Full Transcript of This Episode Our podcast episode with John Ryan, CEO of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, on banks and communities. My cover story in Texas Banker, with tips for community banks on digital transformation. More about Bob Rivers Bob Rivers is Chairman and CEO of Eastern Bank, America's oldest and largest mutual bank with two centuries of service to the communities it serves. During Bob's tenure, Eastern has built on its long legacy of community service and philanthropy by developing a robust advocacy platform in support of various social justice and sustainability issues. In 2014, Bob co-founded Eastern's innovation venture, Eastern Labs, which earlier this year spun out Numerated Growth Technologies, a new fintech company offering a state-of-the-art small business lending platform. Bob has also been personally recognized for his work in championing social justice and sustainability issues by organizations and outlets like The Boston Globe, Boston Business Journal, The Partnership, Get Konnected!, Color Magazine, the Massachusetts Immigration & Refugee Advocacy (MIRA), Asian American Civic Association (AACA), Association for Latino Professionals For America (ALPFA), El Planeta, the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, The Theater Offensive and The Ad Club. Since the podcast was recorded, Eastern Bank has opened a new branch in Roxbury Crossing, the first bank in that community to open in 20 years, reflecting the bank's work in underserved communities. More for our listeners We have many more great shows in the queue. We'll talk with the CEO of another community institution, Mike Butler of Radius Bank, which is much smaller than Eastern and is pursuing a fascinating innovation strategy. We'll have two more episodes recorded this year at LendIt. One is a discussion of new research undertaken jointly by LendUp and Experian, on credit reporting, and the other is with my friend Greg Kidd of Global ID. We also recorded two episodes at this month's Comply 2018 conference in New York, with 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. Speaking of LendIt, I'm also going to be a guest on Peter Renton's Lend Academy podcast, and he'll be on our show as well, so watch for those. I'm also pleased to say we'll have several leading members of Congress on the show in the coming weeks. In addition, we'll record a very special show at the upcoming, global AML tech sprint being run by the UK Financial Conduct Authority in London this week -- which will be, in my view, the most important regtech development in memory...for reasons we'll talk about. So, stay tuned! I hope to see you at upcoming events including: Financial Conduct Authority AML TechSprint this week -- May 22-25, London, UK (By invitation only) American Bankers Association Payments Forum, June 1, Washington, DC CFSI's Emerge, June 6, Los Angeles, CA North Dakota Bankers Convention, June 11-12, Fargo. ND American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, June 26, Nashville, TN Money 2020, October in Las Vegas. Among other things, I'll be speaking on the Revolution Stage about the revolution in...what else? Regulation! 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. As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Again, follow me on twitter and facebook. Support the Podcast And please send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

We're moving into a new era of regulation and compliance that will be driven by new technology. Most of our listeners know I've co-founded a regtech firm, Hummingbird, to help bring this new model, first, to anti-money laundering, which is widely seen as the arena where the old compliance model is most broken, and where new technology could go the farthest, fastest, to solve everyone's problems -- by both improving outcomes and cutting costs. There is a growing global "regtech" community, in both the public and private sectors, aiming to transform financial regulation and compliance, and specifically to make them both digitally-native, with all the power of digitization to make everything better, faster, and cheaper, all at once. Executing this transformation will take imagination, vision, wisdom and even courage, which is why I invited today's guest to join us. He is Jim Richards, founder of the new firm, RegTech Consulting, and I think he used the word "courage" six times, in our talk. We sat down together at this year's LendIt conference in San Francisco, just a few days after Jim had retired from his position as the Bank Secrecy Act Officer and Global Head of Financial Crimes Risk management at Wells Fargo, a job he held for more than twelve years. He's also an attorney and a deep expert in financial crime. Jim is famously outspoken. He's also funny (he says the book he wrote on transnational financial crime sold more copies in Russian than in English. Most of all, though, he's frustrated. He thinks we can do better in fighting financial crime. I do too. According to the United Nations, there's about $2 trillion in global financial crime each year, and we're catching less than 1 percent of it. To achieve these paltry results, the financial industry spends around $50 billion a year. In other words, launderers can fund terrorism and amass wealth by trafficking in drugs, weapons, and human beings, with very little risk of getting caught. No wonder financial crime is a growing global business. Jim says that the heart of this problem is that incentives are misaligned, which means resources are too. He thinks we've built a regulatory system that does not reward effectiveness but instead prizes compliance "hygiene." The theory of the system, of course, is that banks' careful compliance with the AML regulations should lead to high levels of effectiveness in helping law enforcement stop financial crime. Possibly, in an earlier era, it did. Today, though, there is a massive mismatch between the compliance activities required by our regulations and the desired outcomes -- partly because the technology of both money laundering, and anti-money laundering, has shifted under our feet. And today's methods can't scale up. Like many people in the AML world -- including me -- Jim envisions a better system in which, mostly through newer technology, we could take some of the thousands of people and billions of dollars devoted to this effort and redirect them to drive better results, and cut the costs, too. He has lots of ideas. They include updating the rules on Currency Transaction Reports; fixing the Know Your Customer process through more information standardization, prescreening, and data sharing; addressing the new beneficial ownership requirements (which he calls a tsunami hitting banks and their small business customers; and resolving what he calls "The Clash of the Titles" -- the four titles of the US Code that govern financial crime. He suggests getting law enforcement input into financial regulators' enforcement efforts. He has thoughts on how AML and fraud detection overlap and differ. He says there's a lot to learn from how fintech companies do AML since they generally have good data and new systems. Like our previous Barefoot Innovation guest, Ripple's Chris Larsen, Jim sees a useful model in how global trade was transformed by the advent of standardized shipping containers, as explained in Marc Levinson's book, The Box. A key issue is transaction monitoring (although Jim vigorously argues that term is obsolete). The law requires banks to monitor their customers' activity and report suspicious patterns. Today, this process, systemwide, produces huge over-reporting of meaningless alerts that drown both bank personnel and law enforcement in low-value information they don't have the tools to analyze. It's a perfect use case for AI, which Jim says Wells Fargo began using in AML as early as 2008 and is now building further under his successor, Graham Bailey (whom Jim calls a genius, the best AML technologist in the industry). Jim says that banks like Wells Fargo devote less than ten percent of their AML compliance people to working on sophisticated, complex crime, while the other 90+ percent do regulatory compliance, just "crunching through the volumes." This is at a time when the crime itself is getting more and more sophisticated because the worst criminals are adopting new tech and are building global networks, most of which we can't find with current methods. He makes the case that it would be good to flip that and deck the 90 percent against the big problems. We already have the technology to do that, both in process and analytics. We just need to enable the system to adopt it, for both government and industry. The original AML law in the United States, the Bank Secrecy Act, is approaching the half-century mark. It's been modernized and automated along the way -- FinCEN has brought in a lot of automation -- but the system doesn't yet leverage the newest technology. It needs to shift to digitally-native design, probably with open source technology that can enable new, efficient, effective approaches, system-wide. A few weeks after we recorded this episode, I hosted a roundtable in Washington where experts from across the AML ecosystem -- large and small banks, fintechs, regtechs, bank regulators, trade groups, Congressional staff, academics and, crucially, law enforcement -- spent a day together thinking through next-generation AML. The new Comptroller of the Currency, Joseph Otting, has made AML modernization a top priority. Change is coming. And it's attracting great people, including great tech people, into solving these problems, including many who, a year ago, would surely have laughed to hear Jim Richards say, as he did to me, that BSA Officer is "the most fascinating job you can have in banking." People think compliance is boring. They're wrong. It's fascinating, and it's important. Jim has founded his new firm, RegTech Advisors, to, as he puts it, "develop the next generation of professionals, technologies, programs, and regimes and really make a difference." He thinks doing that will take courage... including the courage to make some mistakes. That's a type of courage that doesn't come easily to the regulatory sector, but we're going to have to develop it. More on Jim Richards James R. Richards, B.Comm., JD, CAMS Principal and Founder, RegTech Consulting, LLC www.regtechconsulting.net Richards@ThinkRTC.net (925) 818-6612 Author, "Transnational Criminal Organizations, Cybercrime, and Money Laundering" (CRC Press, New York, London, Boca Raton, ISBN 0-8493-2806-3) Jim Richards is Principal and Founder of RegTech Consulting, LLC, a private consultancy aimed at developing the next generation of BSA/AML and financial crimes professionals, technologies, and programs. Services include BSA Officer coaching, program reviews, crisis management, director support, non-financial institution development and awareness, and FinTech due diligence. From 2005 to April 2018 Jim was BSA Officer, Global Head of Financial Crimes Risk Management, Wells Fargo & Co., where he was responsible for governance and program oversight of Bank Secrecy Act and AML for Wells Fargo's global operations, including quarterly reporting to the Board of Directors. As Director of the Global Financial Crimes Risk Management group, Jim oversaw governance and program execution of BSA, AML, External Fraud, Global Sanctions, Financial Crimes Analytics, and High-Risk Customer Due Diligence. He was a member of the Wells Fargo Management Committee and Enterprise Risk Management Committee, and he represented Wells Fargo with the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group (BSAAG) of the US Department of the Treasury. Jim previously held AML and financial intelligence positions at Bank of America and FleetBoston. He was also an Assistant District Attorney, Special Investigations Unit, Middlesex County District Attorney's Office, in Cambridge, MA, investigating and prosecuting cases involving narcotics, organized crime, white-collar crime, and economic crime in the largest county in Massachusetts. Investigations and prosecutions included felony embezzlement, attorney fraud, public corruption, computer-based larceny, gambling, money laundering, and organized gambling cases. He was Supervisor of the SIU's Narcotics Forfeiture Group, with carriage of and supervision over the Group's civil and criminal forfeiture caseload. Jim has prior experience in private legal practice at Choate, Hall & Stewart in Boston, as a Barrister in Ontario, Canada, and as Special Constable, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, E Division (British Columbia). More for our listeners Article I co-authored with Hummingbird Cofounder Matt Van Buskirk on how to fight human trafficking My podcast on the India Stack with Sanjay Jain The Box, by Marc Levinson Thank You For Being Late, by Thomas Friedman We have great shows in the queue. We'll talk with the CEO's of two community banks -- Bob Rivers of Eastern Bank and Mike Butler of Radius Bank, both of which are leading the way in innovation by smaller institutions. We'll also have two more I recorded at LendIt. One is a discussion of new research undertaken jointly by LendUp and Experian, on how to improve financial access through credit reporting. The other is with my friend Greg Kidd of Global ID. I'm pleased to say we also will have several members of Congress in the coming weeks, and also several guests I'll record at the upcoming, global AML tech sprint being run by the UK Financial Conduct Authority. I hope to see you at upcoming events including: Comply 2018, May 16, New York, NY FCA TechSprint, May 22-25, London, UK (By invitation only) American Bankers Association Payments Forum, June 1, Washington, DC CFSI's Emerge, June 6, Los Angeles, CA North Dakota Bankers Convention, June 11-12, Fargo. ND American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, June 26, Nashville, TN Money 2020, October in Las Vegas where, among other things, I'll be speaking on the Revolution Stage about the revolution in...what else? Regulation. As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Again, follow me on twitter and facebook. Support the Podcast And please send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

My guest this week is Michael Wiegand, Director of the Financial Services for the Poor strategy at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. If you had new ideas for solving the world's toughest problems, and ample resources to devote to pursuing them, you might do what Bill Gates did when he stepped back from running Microsoft in order to apply what he'd learned there, especially about the power of technology, to problems that have long seemed unsolvable. He and his wife launched their foundation to tackle age-old challenges like eliminating malaria, or combating disease that's spread by lack of clean water and sanitation, or... achieving worldwide financial inclusion. Anyone who spends time with the developing world's financial inclusion efforts is in constant contact with the Gates' Foundation, both directly and indirectly through the many projects and entities they fund. Their efforts are always notable for incisive analysis and insight. Like their counterparts at the Omidyar Network, which works in the same space (and with whom I often work), they have a genius for finding the critical, concrete, doable things that, if accomplished, will set needed change in motion across an entire complex ecosystem, drawing in the efforts and energy of more and more people with leverage on the problem. Michael and I met at the Asian Development Bank summit last winter in Manilla, and then both went on to the Monetary Authority of Singapore's enormous FinTech Festival, where we recorded this conversation. Anyone interested in emerging markets will find it fascinating, but I also recommend it to everyone who cares about consumer finance, financial protection, inclusion, and technology in the developed world as well. As I've said in other shows, developing countries are in many ways ahead of the larger economies in both fintech and regtech. That's mainly because their consumer financial markets are already mostly digital -- i.e. delivered through the mobile phone -- and therefore easier to regulate through digital means. It's also because the rush of new, lower-income consumers into these markets makes it critical for regulators to figure out how to protect them. That is going to require new regulatory tools that are already being designed. The World Bank has set the goal that every adult in the world should have financial access -- essentially a "bank" account in their phone -- by 2020. Michael discusses where we stand in that effort -- nearly two billion people short -- and describes Gates' goals for progress by 2030. He explains what the pathway toward it looks like -- the most critical things that have to happen, including the technology, the infrastructure, and the trust. The pathway starts with payments, since payments innovation like Kenya's M-Pesa has been the first step in mobile financial access almost everywhere and, once established, makes everything else possible. Michael describes Gates' Level One project, which includes offering workshops for central banks on how to develop electronic systems that will function safely and well in replacing cash and other forms of payment. (As Michael explains, a key is to use "push" payments initiated by the sender of the money, rather than the more common arrangement in which payees "pull" the funds.) They also have launched the Mojaloop initiative, using blockchains and digital payments with partners like Ripple (Mojaloop is the Swahili word for "one.") Michael talks about how phone-based payments activity can accumulate a data footprint for people who lack one, so that the combination of their growing data identity and the mobile delivery channel can enable other financial services to begin to stack on top of the payments capability, in the phone -- lending, savings, insurance, financial management, and the rest. He answers the often-asked question of whether any of this can work, when most people now do have phones, but not yet smartphones. He cites a McKinsey Global Institute study estimating that digital financial services could add $3.7 trillion to the GDP of developing countries by 2025. He also talks about the disproportionately positive effects of all this on women, including how the men in their own lives view them -- a key focus of Gates' work. We also talked about digital identity in the context of the Know Your Customer, or KYC, anti-money laundering rules that create such barriers for people trying to come into the financial system without traditional identity documents. (Here is my episode with Sanjay Jain about this point, on the India Stack and Aadhaar card.) Again, if you think these developments aren't relevant to the United States, ask yourself this: how are we going to protect consumers' financial data from cyberthreats, when we've built our identity verification around outdated paper-based systems like social security numbers -- which are now widely for sale on the dark web? We too will have to move to protectable digital identity over time, and we'll learn a lot from the advanced efforts underway now in other parts of the world. The Gates work, again often teamed up with others like the Omidyar Network, includes helping regulators innovate, themselves. He talks about the Regtech for Regulators initiative, or R2A, that's using technology to help several countries solve their main regulatory pain points, with solutions ranging from digitized AML to creating a complaint chatbot on consumers' mobile phones. He talks about funding the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, or AFI, which consists of the central banks and financial regulators of the Global South (here's my podcast with AFI's leader, Alfred Hannig.) Michael talks about how Gates chooses which countries to work with as learning laboratories, where they can develop lessons that may apply everywhere. He also talks about supporting C-GAP, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, under the umbrella of the World Bank's financial inclusion work. And also the Better Than Cash Alliance, under the umbrella of the United Nations. I could go on -- again, they are touching nearly all the important innovations underway. There's a genius here for figuring out what needs to happen, including what needs to happen first, and second and third; learning through small, concrete experiments; and then seeding and building coalitions or where needed, new institutions, to make progress actually...happen. It's breathtakingly ambitious, and yet, it's practical. Here's the thing. This is not an old-style charitable effort to chip away at a problem that will always be there. It's an actual effort to solve it. In other shows I've talked about "wicked problems" -- problems too complex to be solved -- and how sometimes technology solves them. That's the Gates vision on the problem of financial inclusion. More for our listeners We have more great shows coming up. We'll talk with the CEO's of two very innovative community banks -- Bob Rivers of Eastern Bank and Mike Butler of Radius bank. I also have three wonderful episodes I recorded at this year's LendIt conference in San Francisco. One is with Jim Richards, recorded just a few days after he retired from his role as global head of Anti-Money Laundering for Wells Fargo. Plus I had an incredibly fascinating conversation with my friend Greg Kidd of Global ID. And we'll have an overview of new research done jointly by LendUp and Experian, on how to improve financial access through credit reporting. We also will have several members of Congress in the coming weeks, which I'm really looking forward to. And we'll have a show with the head of innovation at the CFTC, Dan Gorfine, who is going to talk about WHY it's so hard for government to change -- some of the barriers that, while well-intentioned, may need to be rethought for today's fast-changing technology environment. I hope to see you at upcoming events including: Women Corporate Directors Global Summit, May 10, New York, NY Comply 2018, May 16, New York, NY Financial Conduct Authority AML TechSprint, May 22-25, London, UK (By invitation only) American Bankers Association Payments Forum, June 1, Washington, DC CFSI's Emerge, June 6, Los Angeles, CA North Dakota Bankers Convention, June 11-12, Fargo. ND American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, June 26, Nashville, TN As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Again, follow me on twitter and facebook. And please send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going! Until next time, 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!

Tim Chen is the founder and CEO of NerdWallet, and he's a classic American story. In today's episode, he describes the remarkable journey he's taken so far in his still-young life, which has had dramatic ups and downs -- (as he says, when one door closes, a bigger gate may open). NerdWallet, which he founded at age 26, now helps more than 100 million people every year shop for and choose financial products that meet their needs. NerdWallet is a matchmaker, guiding consumers to find the financial products that fit them best, and doing it in a way that automates large swaths of the financial advisory process in order to make advice affordable for people who don't qualify for a personal wealth manager. Tim says, "Money is so complicated" and he talked with me about how to make it all simpler, especially for people with relatively simple financial profiles. One key is automate the process of learning about their situation and needs, without making that process intrusive or too burdensome to be practical. In our conversation, he talks about how to do this, finding the areas where people's situations are fairly similar versus those where there's huge variation. He talks about doing living room visits, and how surprised he's been by the vast differences among people who look the same if you just consider top-line factors like income. He talks about how much people struggle just to know where they stand, and about being humbled by how little we know. Tim says traditional finance has been opaque, and he wants to change that. Among other things, he wants to break the "entrenched behaviors" around, as he puts it, people basically just taking what they're given. As a man who founded a company in his mid-20's, Tim has ringing advice for other entrepreneurs, including that it really helps to be "delusionally optimistic" about your product. As a startup cofounder myself, I've often recalled another bit of advice, on how to set priorities and stay focused on what counts the most. Tim also has interesting thoughts on regulation, and had recently written an op-ed on the future of the CFPB (note that we had this conversation late last year). Finally, he shares his secrets of personal effectiveness, which I suspect you will find surprising. More for our listeners We have great shows in the queue. They include my talk in Singapore with Michael Wiegand, who heads the Gates Foundation's work on financial services for the poor. We'll also talk with the CEO's of two community banks -- Bob Rivers of Eastern Bank and Mike Butler of Radius bank. I was able to record three wonderful episodes at this year's LendIt conference in San Francisco. One is with Jim Richards, recorded just a few days after he retired from his role as global head of Anti-Money Laundering for Wells Fargo. Plus I had an far-ranging conversation with my friend Greg Kidd of Global ID. And we'll have an overview of new research done jointly by LendUp and Experian, on how to improve financial access through credit reporting. We also will have several members of Congress in the coming weeks, which I'm really looking forward to. I hope to see you at upcoming events including: Bank Director, The Reality of Regtech, April 18, New York, NY Texas Bankers Association Annual Conference, May 3, Houston, TX Women Corporate Directors Global Institute, May 10, New York, NY Comply 2018, May 16, New York Financial Conduct Authority AML Tech Sprint, May 22-4, London CFSI's EMERGE, June 6-8, Los Angeles, CA American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, June 26, Nashville -- I'll be moderating a general session panel on regtech, and also teaming up again with the ABA for some special podcasts. As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Again, follow me on twitter and facebook. And please send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going! 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!

My guest today is pioneering a crucial innovation within the innovation landscape in finance -- by providing banking services to fintechs through a platform-based financial services model known as the sponsor bank, or partner bank. In today's episode, Gilles Gade tells the story of founding and building one of the leading sponsor banks, Cross River. Most fintech companies are licensed by their states, but are not banks. That means that every one of them has to find a bank through which to clear payments and connect to the payments system (which only banks can do). That's not easy -- many fintechs struggle with this because banks are required by their regulators to set up complex systems for due diligence and risk management in dealing with any kind of third party that could affect the bank's soundness or its customers' wellbeing. Over the last decade or so, this challenge, combined with the enormous potential of the fintech market, prompted a number of banks to focus on meeting this need -- Gilles points to Webbank as leading the way. These banks have to meet a range of specialized needs including, crucially, taking responsibility for the partner fintechs' compliance with regulatory requirements. Gilles describes founding Cross River in 2008, when the financial crisis had curtailed many kinds of consumer and small business credit, and talks about how new companies emerged to fill the gap, with either new kinds of products, or new ways of creating access to old products. He points to fintech lenders -- like Affirm, Lending Club, and Sofi -- and also to payments-focused companies like Coinbase, Transferwise and ActiveHours, as innovators that are opening up more inclusive finance. Gilles is especially thoughtful on regulatory issues, which he calls "by far" the biggest challenge for the fintech world. He emphasizes that the single biggest difficulty is sheer uncertainty, as technology change outstrips traditional regulatory change mechanisms. Gilles cites the Madden v. Midland litigation, with its controversy over national versus state interest rates, and the "valid when made" doctrine, as issues that need clarity so that lenders can build stable business models. Gilles also has thoughts on the Comptroller of the Currency's proposal for creating a special fintech charter (note that we recorded this discussion during the tenure of Keith Noreika as Acting Comptroller of the Currency). Gilles laments that we have no fewer than 12 federal regulators involved in these issues (I myself have actually counted twice that many, directly and indirectly involved). Like me, he's optimistic about the innovation efforts of the regulatory agencies -- he mentions the OCC in particular -- and of congressional leaders like Congressmen Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and Gregory Meeks (D-NY) -- both of whom, I'm delighted to say, are going to be guests on our show. Cross River's emphasis on policy issues has led it to a number of leadership initiatives, including creating the Online Lending Policy Institute, which sponsors an outstanding Online Lending Policy Summit in Washington each fall, and also sponsoring the policy programming at the LendIt conference, which is coming up next month -- I'll be there, by the way, and I hope you will too! More on Cross River and Gilles Gade Video about the bank Gille Gade: Gilles Gade is a founder of Cross River Bank (CRB) and has served as its Chairman, President and CEO since its inception in 2008 as an innovation-driven state-chartered bank and a provider of fully compliant financial solutions to the marketplace lending and payments sectors. Gilles has over 20 years of experience in investment banking and venture capital including as Co-Founder and Managing Director of Chela Technology Partners and Chela Internet Ventures, a boutique investment bank and venture fund focusing on emerging technologies and telecommunications; technology investment banker at Barclays Capital; and FIG investment banker at Bear Stearns. He started his career in 1990 at Citicorp Venture Capital, after graduating from the MBA Institute IMIP (Groupe IPESUP) in Paris with an MS in International Management. More for our listeners Our upcoming shows will include Nerd Wallet CEO Tim Chen; Michael Wiegand, who heads the Gates Foundation's work on financial services for the poor; and the CEO's of both Eastern Bank and Radius Bank. As I mentioned we'll also have shows soon with two members of Congress, one a Republican and one a Democrat, and some other very special guests. I hope to see you at upcoming events including: Lendit Fintech USA, April 9-11, San Francisco, CA Bank Director, The Reality of Regtech, April 18, New York, NY Texas Bankers Association Annual Conference, May 3, Houston, TX Women Corporate Directors Global Institute, May 10, New York, NY Comply 2018, May 16, New York CFSI's EMERGE, June 6-8, Los Angeles, CA American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, June 26, Nashville -- I'll be moderating a general session panel on regulation and AI, and also teaming up again with the ABA for some special podcasts. Support our Podcast As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Again, follow me on twitter and facebook. And please send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Today's episode is like a crystal ball glimpse into the future of banking, narrated by my guest, Anne Boden, the thoughtful and charismatic Founder and CEO of Starling Bank in the UK. Anne has years of experience at large banks, including in IT roles. At one of them, she led an effort to develop an innovation transformation. It brought her to a critical conclusion: that the only way to create a really innovative bank is to start "from scratch." When the UK government in 2013 responded to the financial crisis with a new type of charter, Anne founded Starling. Starling was the first of what the UK calls "Challenger Banks," designed to foster increased market competition. It is also a "digitally-native" bank, built as a fully digital business, for the digital age. Starling is mobile-only. It operates on open platform principles and leverages the new personal data rules in Europe. These say that financial data belongs to the consumer, not the bank, and require companies to implement the customer's instructions to share account information with any entity the consumer chooses. Among other things, this makes bank accounts "portable," and also give customers the right to terminate such arrangements and to control how the data can be used. Building on this is a new emerging business model that is, again, essentially a platform. In Starling's case, they take deposits and do payments, and then they operate what they call a "marketplace" with specialized partners that offer their customers everything from mortgages to insurance, to an array of financial management tools. One result is efficiency. Anne says 100 or 150 people can do work that needs 10,000 at a large bank. Another is innovation. She talks about how hard it is to seed and propagate an innovation culture at traditional banks, and why they can't just buy the technology they need and plug it in. As she puts it, "some poor CIO somewhere has to be brave enough to press the button." Anne also notes that the as the platform model disaggregates traditional functions, the front end of the chain -- the customer relationship and interface -- might separate off and end up in the hands of Google, Facebook or Twitter. Our conversation included her insights on how this new model will evolve; the roles of each partner; why Starling chose to become a bank instead of offering a prepaid card; and how hard it is to do that -- the high attrition rate among those that attempt it. Starling customers (who, by the way, are not just millennials) have a new kind of financial life. They can simply ask Starling, by voice, whether they can afford to buy a car. They can opt to have bank statements itemize by a given shop, right down to the cheese sandwich and the diet coke. Anne says they could add calorie counts to that and can integrate it with health information from the fitness app, and suddenly, money, lifestyle, and health are integrating in new ways. More on Anne Boden Three decades ago, Anne Boden pioneered the UK's first same-day payment service – and in the process transformed the future of electronic money. Today, that revolutionary zeal continues to inform her work at Starling Bank, the mobile-only current account app she launched earlier this year. Recently recognized as one of the Global Power Women in FinTech, Anne's worked at a senior leadership level across some of the world's best-known financial heavyweights, among them Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland. It was during her tenure as CEO of Allied Irish Banks, however, that she began to explore the exciting potential of financial technology for transforming customer's everyday lives. At heart a tech startup with a banking license, Starling is a challenger bank built on a foundation of disruptive emerging technology, competing with traditional legacy banks and helping people develop a healthier relationship with their money. More for our listeners Upcoming shows will include Cross River Bank CEO Gilles Gade; Michael Wiegand, who heads the Gates Foundation's work on financial services for the poor; NerdWallet CEO Tim Chen; and the CEO's of two community banks -- Eastern Bank and Radius bank. And there's much more in the pipeline!. I hope to see you at upcoming events including: CFSI's Fintech and the Federal Government: How Policymakers and Startup Companies are Exploring Financial Innovation, March 15, U.S. Senate, Washington Innovate Finance Global Summit, March 19-20, London, UK Regulation and Innovation in the Age of FinTech, with FSD Africa, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance and RegHub, March 22-23, London, UK Lendit Fintech USA, April 9-11, San Francisco, CA Bank Director, The Reality of Regtech, April 18, New York, NY Texas Bankers Association Annual Conference, May 3, Houston, TX Women Corporate Directors Global Institute, May 10, New York, NY Comply 2018, May 16, New York CFSI's EMERGE, June 6-8, Los Angeles, CA American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, June 26, Nashville -- I'll be moderating a general session panel on regulation and AI, and also teaming up again with the ABA for some special podcasts. As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Again, follow me on twitter and facebook. And please send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going! 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!