Barefoot Innovation Podcast

Gift from Gene Ludwig - Compliance isn't Mickey Mouse This is a very special show because we recorded it directly from the bustling floor of the American Bankers Association's 2017 Regulatory Compliance Conference. The RCC has long been the preeminent gathering of compliance professionals in the United States and, not surprisingly, it's growing -- with another attendance record this year at 1800 people. That makes it one of the largest events of the US banking industry. We gathered in Orlando this summer to grapple with the huge array of challenges facing compliance professionals, from bank compliance officers and attorneys, to industry vendors, to the regulators themselves. The episode departs from our usual format. Instead of having one in-depth discussion with one guest, I had eight short conversations with a diverse group of compliance leaders. Each discussion is about twenty minutes. My guests, in order, are: Part 1 Gene Ludwig - Watson Financial and Promontory Financial Group Alistair Rennie - Watson Financial Kristi Grant Hart - Spark Compliance Consulting Andy Sandler - BuckleySandler, Treliant Risk Advisors, and Asurity Technologies Richard Harvey - Colonial Savings Part 2 Elizabeth Snyder - Plante Moran Brian Levy - Katten & Temple Rajeswari Sathappan - The Mercadien Group Daniel Stipano - Buckley Sandler The episode kicks off with a lively discussion with Eugene Ludwig and Allstair Renee. As many listeners know, Gene was previously the Comptroller of the Currency and then founded Promontory Financial. Last year, he surprised the financial world by selling Promontory to IBM Watson, to form Watson Financial. At the conference, I also moderated a fireside chat with Gene and Allistair Rennie. It was the RCC's first-ever session on regtech. -- and I predict it won't be the last. On stage for our fireside chat, Gene Ludwig presented Alistair and me with...wait for it...Mickey Mouse ears (again, we were in Orlando). For better or worse, everyone in the room got the joke. People in finance have long complained about "Mickey Mouse" regulations that impose massive, hyper-technical requirements but produce only limited benefits. Gene's gift signaled that technology is attacking that problem. We're shifting from an analog-era regulatory approach to a digital-era one that will use data and machine learning to make compliance effective and efficient, through regtech. Watson Financial is part of a fast-growing regtech industry that is completely rethinking how compliance is done. Compliance isn't Mickey Mouse anymore. To the contrary, in fact, there was a theme at this year's conference about compliance officers as heroes. I've talked in past podcasts about this idea of "heroic compliance" -- that compliance people will increasingly be leaders in shaping the future of the industry. That's counterintuitive, since compliance has traditionally been seen as a side issue in banking. Today, however, as technology transforms both finance financial regulation, we will see compliance executives at the front, shaping how the industry moves forward. They will be gatekeepers on what innovation can and cannot take hold, blocking harmful change but also opening the doors of the banking industry fortress to allow in new, better, more affordable products, and delivery channels, that can serve more people, profitably and at scale, in ways that actively foster consumer financial health. I think we should all begin to use the hashtag, #HeroicCompliance. In the fireside chat, Alistair took this idea further, arguing that compliance officers may actually be the people who keep the banking industry competitive in a high-tech world. Why? As they adopt regtech, they'll be at the forefront of innovating in how banks use data and AI -- and therefore leading the charge to break banks' data out of it legacy silos and putting it to use -- first to transform compliance, and later, who knows? ...maybe to transform banking, itself. The conversations in this episode vary widely. We talked about regtech; the regulatory burden on community banks (including how regtech can help); how banking is changing; how compliance is changing; how regulators should balance use of rulemaking, supervision and enforcement; the grounding of compliance in mission and ethics; and the psychology of compliance, including that people sometimes look the other way on ethical failures in order to get along. We also discussed some of the top issues of the day, like AML and TRID. My guests have a mix of experience as regulators, lawyers, compliance officers, auditors, and compliance leaders, working with a wide range of large and small institutions. They have a wealth of insight into where we've been, where we are today, and where we should be going. More links ABA Regulatory Compliance Conference (plan to come next year -- June 24-27, Nashville!) Compliance resources from American Bankers Association www.ABA.com The artificial intelligence movie Her Kristi Hart Grant's books, How to Be a Wildly Effective Compliance Officer and Wildly Strategic Compliance Officer Conference Andy Sandler mentioned (I'll be speaking there) Regtech Enable, November 27-29 in Washington DC More on IBM www.IBM.com My previous podcast on Heroic Compliance with Treliant's Lyn Farrell Lyn Farrell's new podcast show, Compliance Hero Richard Harvey RichardH@ColonialSavings.com Elizabeth Snyder ElizabethSnyder@plantemoran.com Brian Levy BLevy@KattenTemple.com Raji Sathappan RSathappan@mercadien.com Daniel Stipano DStipano@BuckleySandler.com More for our listeners Please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on ITunes, and please sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Be sure to follow me on twitter and facebook. And please send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going. Support our Podcast Meanwhile, I'll hope to see you at the events where I'll be speaking this fall: Finovate, September 13th, New York City SourceMedia's RegTech -- Compliance Transformed, October 3-4th, Brooklyn, NY BAI Beacon/Fintech Stage, October 4-5, Atlanta, GA CFSI Network Summit, Fireside Chat with Thomas Curry, October 5, Chicago, IL FISCA, October 5-8th, Las Vegas, NV Money 20/20, October 25th, Las Vegas, NV Monetary Authority of Singapore Fintech Festival, November 13-17, Singapore RegTech Enable, November 27-29th, Washington, DC Fintech Connect Live, December 6th, London S&P's Fintech Intel, December 13, New York 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!

From the main stage This is a very special show because we recorded it directly from the bustling floor of the American Bankers Association's 2017 Regulatory Compliance Conference. The RCC has long been the preeminent gathering of compliance professionals in the United States and, not surprisingly, it's growing -- with another attendance record this year at 1800 people. That makes it one of the largest events of the US banking industry. We gathered in Orlando this summer to grapple with the huge array of challenges facing compliance professionals, from bank compliance officers and attorneys, to industry vendors, to the regulators themselves. The episode departs from our usual format. Instead of having one in-depth discussion with one guest, I had eight short conversations with a diverse group of compliance leaders. Each discussion is about twenty minutes. My guests, in order, are: Part 1 Gene Ludwig - Watson Financial and Promontory Financial Group Alistair Rennie - Watson Financial Kristi Grant Hart - Spark Compliance Consulting Andy Sandler - BuckleySandler, Treliant Risk Advisors, and Asurity Technologies Richard Harvey - Colonial Savings Part 2 Elizabeth Snyder - Plante Moran Brian Levy - Katten & Temple Rajeswari Sathappan - The Mercadien Group Daniel Stipano - Buckley Sandler The episode kicks off with a lively discussion with Eugene Ludwig and Allstair Renee. As many listeners know, Gene was previously the Comptroller of the Currency and then founded Promontory Financial. Last year, he surprised the financial world by selling Promontory to IBM Watson, to form Watson Financial. At the conference, I also moderated a fireside chat with Gene and Allistair Rennie. It was the RCC's first-ever session on regtech. -- and I predict it won't be the last. On stage for our fireside chat, Gene Ludwig presented Alistair and me with...wait for it...Mickey Mouse ears (again, we were in Orlando). For better or worse, everyone in the room got the joke. People in finance have long complained about "Mickey Mouse" regulations that impose massive, hyper-technical requirements but produce only limited benefits. Gene's gift signaled that technology is attacking that problem. We're shifting from an analog-era regulatory approach to a digital-era one that will use data and machine learning to make compliance effective and efficient, through regtech. Watson Financial is part of a fast-growing regtech industry that is completely rethinking how compliance is done. Compliance isn't Mickey Mouse anymore. To the contrary, in fact, there was a theme at this year's conference about compliance officers as heroes. I've talked in past podcasts about this idea of "heroic compliance" -- that compliance people will increasingly be leaders in shaping the future of the industry. That's counterintuitive, since compliance has traditionally been seen as a side issue in banking. Today, however, as technology transforms both finance financial regulation, we will see compliance executives at the front, shaping how the industry moves forward. They will be gatekeepers on what innovation can and cannot take hold, blocking harmful change but also opening the doors of the banking industry fortress to allow in new, better, more affordable products, and delivery channels, that can serve more people, profitably and at scale, in ways that actively foster consumer financial health. I think we should all begin to use the hashtag, #HeroicCompliance. In the fireside chat, Alistair took this idea further, arguing that compliance officers may actually be the people who keep the banking industry competitive in a high-tech world. Why? As they adopt regtech, they'll be at the forefront of innovating in how banks use data and AI -- and therefore leading the charge to break banks' data out of it legacy silos and putting it to use -- first to transform compliance, and later, who knows? ...maybe to transform banking, itself. The conversations in this episode vary widely. We talked about regtech; the regulatory burden on community banks (including how regtech can help); how banking is changing; how compliance is changing; how regulators should balance use of rulemaking, supervision and enforcement; the grounding of compliance in mission and ethics; and the psychology of compliance, including that people sometimes look the other way on ethical failures in order to get along. We also discussed some of the top issues of the day, like AML and TRID. My guests have a mix of experience as regulators, lawyers, compliance officers, auditors, and compliance leaders, working with a wide range of large and small institutions. They have a wealth of insight into where we've been, where we are today, and where we should be going. More links ABA Regulatory Compliance Conference (plan to come next year -- June 24-27, Nashville!) Compliance resources from American Bankers Association www.ABA.com The artificial intelligence movie Her Kristi Hart Grant's books, How to Be a Wildly Effective Compliance Officer and Wildly Strategic Compliance Officer Conference Andy Sandler mentioned (I'll be speaking there) Regtech Enable, November 27-29 in Washington DC More on IBM www.IBM.com My previous podcast on Heroic Compliance with Treliant's Lyn Farrell Lyn Farrell's new podcast show, Compliance Hero Richard Harvey RichardH@ColonialSavings.com Elizabeth Snyder ElizabethSnyder@plantemoran.com Brian Levy BLevy@KattenTemple.com Raji Sathappan RSathappan@mercadien.com Daniel Stipano DStipano@BuckleySandler.com More for our listeners Please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on ITunes, and please sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Be sure to follow me on twitter and facebook. And please send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going. Support our Podcast Meanwhile, I'll hope to see you at the events where I'll be speaking this fall: Finovate, September 13th, New York City SourceMedia's RegTech -- Compliance Transformed, October 3-4th, Brooklyn, NY BAI Beacon/Fintech Stage, October 4-5, Atlanta, GA CFSI Network Summit, Fireside Chat with Thomas Curry, October 5, Chicago, IL FISCA, October 5-8th, Las Vegas, NV Money 20/20, October 25th, Las Vegas, NV Monetary Authority of Singapore Fintech Festival, November 13-17, Singapore RegTech Enable, November 27-29th, Washington, DC Fintech Connect Live, December 6th, London S&P's Fintech Intel, December 13, New York 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!

My guest today is Sanjay Jain, Chief Innovation Officer at the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE). Among many high-impact achievements, Sanjay helped lead creation of one of the most ambitious government infrastructure initiatives ever undertaken -- the so-called India Stack that is connecting everyone in India to the financial system and mainstream commerce, by providing a biometric ID. I met Sanjay at the Jakarta international regulator meeting I've mentioned before sponsored by the Omidyar Network and Gates Foundation and put on by FintechStage. I sat next to him at dinner one night, and was astonished to hear him explain the project and to hear others at the table describe how it's already changing India. I'd been vaguely aware of it and knew it was huge, but had no idea how fast and transformational it is. At the conference the next day, we ducked into an idle meeting room to have this talk. We usually think of innovation as driven by the private sector. We think of government's role as either to protect people from innovation-related harm or as just to avoid blocking good innovation. In reality, though, government has another critical role, which is to provide the infrastructure within which new technology can work.. A core component of infrastructure is a system through which people can be accurately identified. People need to be able to prove who they are, quickly and easily and inexpensively, and in ways that can't be faked, so that no one else can pretend to be them, and so that they won't be excluded from opportunities because their identities are in doubt, or are too complicated to be worth the effort to verify. This identity infrastructure doesn't necessarily have to be provided by government -- we'll do a show at some point with my friend Greg Kidd of Global ID, who argues passionately that it's better to have a decentralized identity authentication system. Traditionally, though, government has played this role by giving people identity documents like birth certificates, driver's licenses, and passports, and also unique, standardized identity markers, like social security numbers. With old technology, that approach was the best we could do, and it worked pretty well for people who had the right documents. However, it's never worked well for people who don't, including many new immigrants, and certainly refugees, and of course, the very poor. The very poor have, always, been locked out of the mainstream. All that has changed today thanks to what is arguably the most democratizing technology ever invented -- the mobile phone. As of 2013, more people have access to cellphones than to toilets. As we've discussed before on Barefoot Innovation, we are headed toward total financial inclusion through the phone. This means that, technologically, everyone can be connected, easily and completely and inexpensively, to everyone else. In most of the developing world, a top goal is to enable full access to the financial system and commerce, through the phone, as a primary engine for economic growth and prosperity. However, people can only connect to the financial system if they can be reliably identified. So UIDAI -- the Unique Identification Authority of India -- has undertaken one of the largest government projects ever -- the collection of biometric identity information on every adult and every child in the world's second most populous country. They have gathered ten fingerprints, two iris scans and facial recognition data for about 1.2 billion people. And they have done it fast! The "IndiaStack" is being implemented in phases around four "layers": "presenceless" identity, paperless records, cashless transactions, and consent-based use of data. At its heart is the Aadhaar card, which contains the person's unique identity number, authenticated through the biometric ID. With this tool everyone can, among other things, open and use a bank account. Needless to say, all this has raised concerns about privacy and data security. The project has critics, and even its advocates agree that the challenges are daunting. India's leaders, however, believe the risks can be managed and that they are massively outweighed by the opportunity to open the doors of the economy to everyone. I've spent time in rural India, including with an NGO called Rising Star Outreach that focuses on micro-finance, education and health services for leprosy communities. India is curing leprosy, but leprosy-affected people and their families still face daunting challenges. As I listened to Sanjay, I found myself remembering people I've met in remote villages where families live in one room, sometimes in huts with thatched roofs and dirt floors, and I also thought back to being in Chennai, in southern India, with the streets teeming with cars and lorries and motorcycles carrying five people and bicycles carrying three or four and auto-rickshaws and people carrying bundles of goods on their heads. And I thought about all the languages -- India has twenty-two official languages -- thirty that are spoken by more than a million people -- and hundreds of minor languages and dialects. What it took these IndiaStack teams to find every single person in this huge country, and document them all -- it's stunning. And thanks to their effort, all these people can be connected up with everyone else in India, and eventually everyone else in the world, through a cell phone and a reliable identity. Listeners outside the developing world may be thinking this is interesting but not very relevant to them. However, the challenge of creating reliable and safe digital identity is one of the top issues facing finance. The digital age is not only enabling new forms of identity, it's also undermining the old forms. The dark web runs a thriving market in selling and buying personally-identifiable information including social security numbers. In the U.S., the 2015 Office of Personnel Management data breach, alone, compromised identity information like social security numbers for over 20 million people. Banks are increasingly caught up in fighting fraud and crime based on fake identities -- security experts tell me that criminals are more likely that real customers to accurately provide identification information, because they don't make typos. Meanwhile, regulatory "de-risking" standards for Anti-Money Laundering "Know Your Customer" rules have been cutting off whole sectors of people from financial access because they come from places, industries or groups that raise disproportionate risk, and banks find it too difficult and costly to sort out the good people from the bad ones Financial companies and regulators everywhere will need better ways to identify people, and India is blazing a trail that will yield fascinating lessons. Sanjay's Biography SANJAY JAIN, Chief Innovation Officer, Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) Sanjay Jain leads efforts to help create, promote, and encourage entrepreneurship in areas around digital technology. Sanjay is also a volunteer with iSPIRT, the software product industry think tank. He has been an active member of the India Stack, Open API, and Cashless teams. He has been working with the NPCI to define the next generation payment systems (the Unified Payment Interface), as well as with regulators and other bodies to help entire processes go paperless. He has been one of the key contributors to help create, and evangelize various government open APIs, which are collectively referred to as the India Stack. Sanjay has been responsible for the development of many large scale, high impact systems. He was the Chief Product Manager at the UIDAI, where he led the product development efforts from its early days till well after launch. The UIDAI has issued over a billion numbers to Indian residents. Sanjay was also responsible for the creation and launch of Google Map Maker - a crowd-sourced mapping product that is responsible for Google Maps data for 170+ countries (including India). He's been a part of many entrepreneurial teams through his career, including most recently at EkStep, Khosla Labs, and as a founder of Novopay Solutions. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science, from the University of California, Los Angeles and a B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering, from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. More for our listeners I'll be speaking this fall at these events: Finovate, September 13th, New York City SourceMedia's RegTech -- Compliance Transformed, October 3-4th, Brooklyn, NY BAI Beacon/Fintech Stage, October 4-5, Atlanta, GA CFSI Network Summit, Fireside Chat with Thomas Curry, October 5, Chicago, IL FISCA, October 5-8th, Las Vegas, NV Money 20/20, October 25th, Las Vegas, NV Monetary Authority of Singapore Fintech Festival, November 13-17, Singapore RegTech Enable, November 27-29th, Washington, DC Fintech Connect Live, December 6th, London S&P's Fintech Intel, December 13, New York Please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on ITunes, and please sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Be sure to follow me on twitter and facebook. And please send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going. Support our Podcast Keep innovating! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

I met today's guest, Sopnendu Mohanty, about 18 months ago. I moderated a panel on blockchain for last year's MIT Fintech Conference, and Sop, who is the Chief Fintech Officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, was a panelist -- explaining how MAS was building a regional innovation hub that included blockchain strategies. Since then I've seen him three more times -- once at Harvard, which he visited with the visionary head of MAS, Ravi Menon; once when I spoke at MAS's enormous conference last fall in Singapore; and last at a regulator gathering in Jakarta this year, where we recorded this short conversation. The thing that strikes me most is that, when I first met Sop, he was way ahead of nearly everyone else in thinking about regulating fintech and regtech for regulators -- and that the last time we talked, he had widened that lead even further. On these issues, he might be the most forward-thinking regulator in the world. The Jakarta meeting was extraordinary. Funded by the Omidyar Network and the Gates Foundation and organized by the amazing Fintech Stage, it drew regulators from six continents, all coming together to share problems and solutions on how to modernize regulation as technology transforms finance. Many were from the developing world, where rapid mobile phone adoption and mobile money services have outstripped traditional regulatory frameworks. Many, though, were from developed countries grappling with how to become innovative, themselves. Notably absent was the United States. In Jakarta, Sop and I ducked into an empty conference room during a short break and had this talk, as a teaser for a longer episode on his next trip to the U.S. Singapore is widely regarded as a top world leader in regulatory innovation, right up there with the UK Financial Conduct Authority that started the worldwide movement toward governments adopting innovation agendas. That movement is burgeoning -- recent research by the Aspen Institute finds that more than twenty nations have launched or are exploring regulatory innovation initiatives. MAS was either the second or third one, depending how you count (Australia was early too). MAS has built a "tech stack" that includes giving innovators wide latitude to try new things, as well as "co-creation" of some regulatory change with industry and a sandbox for experimentation. I've become convinced that regulators actually need sandboxes and reglabs, because hands-on testing will be the only way they can learn fast enough to keep up with today's technology change. Here's my recent article making that argument! In our talk, Sop explains MAS's "pragmatic" approach, which emphasizes small-scale experimentation, partnering with industry to solve specific problems, and learning from industry which, he says, generally knows more than government does. When you talk with Sop, you feel a palpable sense of urgency. I think that's why his thinking is evolving so fast -- he believes we're running out of time. He worries that the financial system will suffer a calamitous cyber attack and that we have to move much more aggressively to "future-proof it." Of course, Singapore has an easier challenge than we do in the U.S., since it's smaller and has a vastly simpler financial system and regulatory framework (every country has a much simpler regulatory framework than the United States). When I pointed this out to Sop, though, he had a response that has been haunting me ever since. I think you'll find it thought-provoking. I'll be speaking again at the MAS Fintech Festival in November and urge you to come. Last year it drew a stunning 13,000 people. This year, he thinks that could double! That would surely make it, by far, the world's largest financial conference. It will be an exciting place to be. So, enjoy my conversation with Singapore's Sopnendu Mohanty! More for our listeners I hope to see you at some of my upcoming speaker events, including: Finovate, September 13th, New York City SourceMedia's RegTech -- Compliance Transformed, October 3-4th, Brooklyn, NY BAI Beacon/Fintech Stage, October 4-5, Atlanta, GA CFSI Network Summit, Fireside Chat with Thomas Curry, October 5, Chicago, IL FISCA, October 5-8th, Las Vegas, NV Money 20/20, October 25th, Las Vegas, NV RegTech Enable, November 27-29th, Washington, DC Fintech Connect Live, December 6th, London Meanwhile, remember to review Barefoot Innovation on ITunes, and please sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Be sure to follow me on twitter and facebook. And please send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going. Support our Podcast We have great new shows coming up. We'll be posting the series I recorded from the floor of the ABA's annual Regulatory Compliance Conference, including one with Gene Ludwig and Alistair Renee of IBM's Watson Financial on how artificial intelligence will transform compliance. In addition we'll have Sanjay Jain, who helped build India's revolutionary "tech stack" project to capture customer identity on more than a billion people. We'll have the exciting startup, Petal, and we have several coming up on anti-money laundering. Keep innovating!

My favorite episodes of Barefoot Innovation are the ones that take a philosophical turn. That happened with John Ryan, the thoughtful president of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, which is the organization that coordinates America's state-level financial regulators. As you would expect, John and I began by discussing the events that have CSBS in the news these days. One is the launch of its Vision 2020 project to streamline state licensing and examinations for nonbank fintechs, to address the costly and monumental task these companies face in trying to grow to national scale by getting licensed state by state. The other news, and bigger controversy, is CSBS' litigation against the Comptroller of the Currency, seeking to block the OCC's proposal to create a national bank charter for fintechs. From these themes, though, we went on to far-ranging pondering about the future of banking, community banks and America's communities. On the OCC charter proposal, as John knows well, I'm for it. After talking with him, I still am, but this conversation is the best case I've heard anywhere about what could be at stake if such a charter were to bring more consolidation of the banking system. I don't think it would, but his insights are hearty food for thought. On Vision 2020, let me say that CSBS's innovativeness amazes me. At one point in the podcast John said, "we're not very imaginative, but we get the job done." Actually, I think they're very imaginative, and I think the 2020 effort deserves its "visionary" labeling. CSBS is a century-old body and it is, after all, a body of regulators. Neither of those factors makes it a likely leader in innovation, nor does its daunting mandate of coordinating fifty wildly diverse state regulatory systems. And yet it plans to design and execute a high-tech transformation of how states license and supervise nonbanks (a process that, as John notes, is often still paper-based). I think other regulators can learn a lot from watching this model, both in how to design new systems and how to build buy-in from a complex set of stakeholders. This innovativeness shouldn't be surprising because, since these states are the regulators of financial innovation. With some exceptions, the cutting edge of innovation is not in the banking system (partly because banks are so highly regulated), but rather in the nonbanks -- the startups and some of the large tech firms. And those are all almost entirely regulated by the states -- the federal government plays almost no direct role and in fact has very little contact with them. (This is one reason I support the OCC fintech charter -- because it would be the single best way for the federal regulators, who dominate national financial regulatory policy, to become expert about the technologies that are rapidly transforming all of finance. Today, they have little first-hand interaction with it. All that expertise resides in the states that license and oversee the firms that are pushing out the frontiers of the financial industry. For me, this puts a huge priority on the need for the U.S. to evolve new regulatory models, because our uniquely complex and fractured regulatory structure cannot effectively cross-fertilize the rapid learning regulators need to keep up with today's technology. John offered plenty of philosophical thinking about all these topics, but late in the discussion we moved on to even bigger challenges, including the stresses facing America's rural communities -- the kinds of places where people voted for disruptive change in last year's election. John grounds his thinking about CSBS in his concern about the seemingly inexorable centralization and consolidation of banking. He worries about the role regulation plays in that, and about the future of local lending, and about the future of America. My home in New Mexico is in a small town, and I've done a lot of consulting in them. Years ago, I did extensive strategic planning consulting with small banks, mostly in the Midwest. I spent a many days in little towns where, when lunchtime comes and you walk to the sandwich place with the bank president, half the people on the sidewalk greet him by his first name. There's a reason why these banks are called "pillars of the community." It's because if they disappeared, things would collapse. Talking with John made me remember one holiday-season visit with a little bank, where the management team told me they'd had to cover an emergency year-end budget shortfall for three local nonprofits, which would have failed without the help. One was a health clinic, one the library, and I can't recall the third. The giving was a significant hit to the banks earnings, but they'd done it anyway because, quite simply, no one else could -- and because without these facilities, the town's population would continue to shrink, and age. Think about this question….What would happen to America's rural communities if they lost their banks? And what would happen to America, if we lost our rural communities? These places are the wellspring of much of our unique national heritage. It seems to me they matter, in ways both visible and invisible. Their problems are hard to solve. They deserve new thinking, and the future of community banks has to be part of it. More information on John Ryan John Ryan is president and chief executive officer of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, the national organization of financial regulators from all 50 states and U.S. territories. Prior to becoming president and CEO in 2011, he was CSBS's Executive Vice President, and Assistant Vice President of Legislative Affairs. Mr. Ryan also led the financial services consulting practice at a public affairs firm and worked on the U.S. House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs committee. He has a B.A. in political science and economics from the University of California at Berkeley. More links Banking Exchange - Reglabs: Time for a major regulatory experiment? (My new article advocating for a new collaboration model for U.S. bank regulators, including through reglabs and a new alternative regulatory channel.) Karen Mills' Harvard paper on small business lending and fintech, and my podcast with her. More for our listeners I hope to see you at some of my upcoming speaker events, including: Finovate, September 13th, New York City SourceMedia's RegTech -- Compliance Transformed, October 3-4th, Brooklyn, NY BAI Beacon/Fintech Stage, October 4-5, Atlanta, GA FISCA, October 5-8th, Las Vegas, NV Money 20/20, October 25th, Las Vegas, NV RegTech Enable, November 27-29th, Washington, DC Fintech Connect Live, December 6th, London Meanwhile, remember to review Barefoot Innovation on ITunes, and please sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Be sure to follow me on twitter and facebook. And remember, on the website, to send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going. Support our Podcast SUPPORT OUR PODCAST We have new episodes coming up. We'll be posting the series I recorded from the floor of the ABA's annual Regulatory Compliance Conference, including one with Gene Ludwig and Alistair Renee of IBM's Watson Financial on how artificial intelligence and machine learning will transform compliance. Those also include an interesting discussion with prominent regulatory attorney Andy Sandler. In addition we'll talk with Sanjay Jain, who helped build India's revolutionary "tech stack" project to capture customer identity on more than a billion people. And we'll talk with Sopnendu Mohanty, the Chief Fintech Officer of Singapore. Keep innovating! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Brett King and I see each other often, partly because we often speak at the same conferences and partly because we're both on the board of the Center for Financial Services Innovation. For some reason, though, we went for over a year trying unsuccessfully to find time to record a podcast. So we we ended up getting together in London. We both participated in the wonderful Innovate Finance Global Summit at the Guildhall, in the old City, where we carved out some early morning time, met at a restaurant and, and over plates of hearty eggs and bacon and mushrooms and tomatoes, had a conversation unlike any previous one in the fifty-four episodes we've done so far on Barefoot Innovation. As most listeners know, Brett is a four-time best-selling author of an acclaimed series of books on the future of banking and hosts the global podcast and radio show, Breaking Bank$ -- on which I enjoyed being a guest in May. He is also the founder of the fintech firm Moven. He is a prominent media voice, and he is certainly the most popular speaker anywhere on the future of financial technology, both for his insightful content and his entertaining, unforgettable style. In recent years, Brett has also reached beyond banking to become an overall futurist, especially in his book Augmented, looking ahead at how technology will change our lives. I usually introduce each show by pointing out some highlights of my guests' comments and sharing some of my own thoughts about them. With Brett, though, I'm going to skip that, because the whole discussion is a highlight. My suggestion is that you listen to all of it, and then listen again. And maybe take some notes, because this might be the easiest way to get a glimpse of the future of finance, from someone who has been exploring far beyond the mapped frontiers for many years. On that note, be sure to watch for his next book, Bank4.0, which will go even further in predicting a transformation of finance. More on Brett King Brett King is a four times bestselling author, a renowned futurist and keynote speaker, the host of "BREAKING BANK$, the First Global Fintech Podcast" and the founder of Moven, with its concept of a downloadable bank account that incorporates mobile payments and banking capability, along with a gamification based money management system. King was voted as American Banker's Innovator of the Year in 2012, and was nominated by Bank Innovation as one of the Top 10 "coolest brands in banking". His books Augmented, Breaking Banks (based on the podcast), BANK 3.0 and Bank 2.0 have al ranked as a finance bestsellers and have been released in several languages in 19 countries. King has been featured on FoxNews, ABC, CNBC, Bloomberg, BBC, Financial Times, The Economist, ABA Journal, Bank Technology News, The Asian Banker Journal, The Banker, Wired magazine and many more. He contributed regularly as a blogger on Huffington Post. He has spoken to more than a quarter of a million finance professionals in over 40 countries in the last 3 years alone. Breaking Banks Book Bank 3.0 Book Branch Today, Gone Tomorrow Book Bank 2.0 Book More for our listeners I hope to see you at events where I'll be speaking this year, including: Finovate in New York September 13; Money 20/20 in Las Vegas in October; SourceMedia's Regtech Compliance Transformed, in New York in October; Fintech Connect Live in London in December; and others -- watch the website. I'm also speaking at a lot of regulator events. For all the regulators listening, it's great to see you all at these, and I'm glad that there are more and more of them. For everyone, remember to review Barefoot Innovation on ITunes, and please sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Please also join my facebook fan page, and follow me on twitter @JoAnnBarefoot. Support our Podcast And watch for upcoming podcasts. These include a special series I recorded from the floor of the ABA's annual Regulatory Compliance Conference, including one with Gene Ludwig and Alistair Renee of IBM's Watson Financial on how artificial intelligence and machine learning will transform compliance. We'll also have a provocative discussion with John Ryan of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors. We have a lively discussion with prominent regulatory attorney Andy Sandler. We'll hear from Sanjay Jain, who helped build India's revolutionary "tech stack" project to capture customer identity on more than a billion people. And we'll talk with Sopnendu Mohanty, the Chief Fintech Officer of Singapore. 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!

Today's program is a very special one -- a conversation about regulatory innovation, with the very innovative acting Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, Christopher Giancarlo. As regular listeners know, I've spent many years in and around Washington where there is a deeply entrenched belief that regulations, and regulators, simply can't change very much. Regulators are generally, by both nature and design, deliberate, and cautious, and risk-averse. That's exactly how they're supposed to be. The slowness of regulatory change can be frustrating, but I think most would agree that, broadly speaking, it's been better to err on the side of carefulness than boldness, or inventiveness, when taking regulatory actions that will ripple through big swaths of economy and often force change on whole industries and, often, millions of customers. Today, though, the tilt toward slow and careful under stress in finance, because the world that our regulators oversee is changing too fast for the old system to work well. Our familiar regulatory models -- stable, steady, solidly-rooted -- are being bombarded by technology that is knocking them off their axes. These technology trends, which are much bigger than finance, are developing so fast, and are so powerful, that they are moving us toward a tipping over, into a new world. And in that new world, we'll face a new paradigm -- namely, that if our regulators are going to be risk-averse, they will have to address not only the dangers of changing, but also the rising dangers of not changing. Technology is growing exponentially, pulling finance along with it, and we're still trying to regulate it with brains and institutions hard-wired for linear change. We will increasingly face the danger of getting things wrong -- very wrong -- due to falling behind. Fortunately, a growing group of regulatory leaders, in the United States and other countries, see this shift and are taking on its challenge. One of them is Christopher Giancarlo. Last summer, he and I spoke at the same conference in New York and happened to sit together at lunch, where he began talking about technology and innovation in ways I'd never heard before from a financial regulator. At the time, he was a commissioner at the CFTC -- he'd been named to that role by President Obama and confirmed unanimously by the Senate. This year, President Trump appointed him Acting Chairman and has now nominated him to be the Chairman going forward. Senate action is expected soon on that -- it may well be that, by the time this show is posted, he'll be confirmed as the Commission's chairman. This spring, he launched an initiative that's called LabCFTC. Its goal to focus and build the Commission's extensive work in fintech and regtech innovation. As he explains in our conversation, the Lab will pursue a wide range of activities, from guiding innovators about how to work with regulatory requirements, to participating in research, to building stronger collaboration among financial agencies. I knew it would be fascinating to have Chairman Giancarlo as a guest on Barefoot Innovation, but I wasn't prepared for the full vision that he laid out in our discussion. I think this is the single most thought-provoking and eloquent case I've ever heard from a senior official about why and how regulators, of all kinds, absolutely have to change. Remember...the CFTC plays an enormous role today in overseeing financial markets. Its mandate was expanded after the financial crisis, far beyond its traditional focus on commodities. It now oversees the derivatives markets and works to reduce risks to the economy associated with the futures and swaps markets -- areas where, as he explains, technology is rapidly changing everything. I know you'll enjoy hearing the Chairman's far-ranging insights, from the historical reasons why payments are cleared in three days to his eye-opening experience visiting a modern-day, high-tech family farm. More for our listeners Remember to review Barefoot Innovation on ITunes, and please sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Please also join my facebook fan page, and follow me on twitter @JoAnnBarefoot. And watch for upcoming podcasts. These include a special series I recorded from the floor of the ABA's annual Regulatory Compliance Conference, including one with Gene Ludwig and Alistair Renee of IBM's Watson Financial on how artificial intelligence and machine learning will transform compliance. We'll also have a provocative discussion with John Ryan of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors; will hear from Sanjay Jain, who helped build India's revolutionary "tech stack" project to capture customer identity on more than a billion people; and last -- but not least -- we'll have breakfast in London with the great Brett King. Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

"Sandboxes." "Greenhouses." "Pilot tests." "Labs." These are not words we normally associate with financial regulation. Yet suddenly, all over the world, regulatory agencies are giving these novel names to a new, unconventional kind of initiative. The break from tradition is being driven by a realization: they are going to need to find new ways to do their jobs well, in the face of fast-moving technology change and fintech innovation. My guest today oversees one of these fascinating programs -- Abu Dhabi's Reglab. He is Wai-Lum Kwok, Executive Director for Capital Markets at the country's Financial Services Regulatory Authority. The world's most famous regulatory sandbox is run by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (which was inspired, in turn, by the CFPB's Project Catalyst in the United States). We will have a podcast this fall with the FCA, which has just put out a new progress report. Speaking as a former regulator myself -- I was once Deputy Comptroller of the Currency -- I view the FCA's effort as a remarkable case of regulatory leadership. (Here's an article I wrote about it for Fintech Law Report.) When the FCA's initiative was launched it quickly caught the attention of other regulators around the world. As of today, approximately twenty countries have some form of innovation hub or sandbox underway or on the drawing board, including notably Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The Aspen Institute will soon issue a report with a global overview, which we'll link to in this episode's show notes when it's published. These sandboxes have a wide variety of designs and specific objectives. As Wai-Lum explains in this episode, the Abu Dhabi initiative accepts a wide range of companies and gives them two years to demonstrate that their innovations will be beneficial and safe. The Abu Dhabi approach, like the UK's and others, links to a wider national strategy to attract capital and companies wanting to do business in a regulatory climate that welcomes responsible innovation. Some of these countries are cultivating regional and even global leadership positions in fintech. Note that we recorded today's episode late last year. In May of 2017, the Abu Dhabi Reglab announced its first cohort of companies. We had this conversation in the bustling exhibit hall at the Fintech Festival sponsored last fall by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (think about that for a moment -- a central bank ran a 14,000-person fintech meetup, and this year's will be even bigger). Our discussion was short, but the topic is one of the most important ones we've ever discussed on Barefoot Innovation. I've been thinking hard about how regulators are going to keep up with technology innovation in finance, and the answers are not going to be easy. Our regulatory frameworks are designed to be deliberate -- and therefore slow-moving. And to be conservative, and to focus on preventing risk, not fostering change. Some countries have mandates to foster competition, but most, including the United States, don't. I've been researching this challenge in the book and paper I've been writing for the past two years as a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Business and Government. Over that period I've talked with regulators, innovators, and incumbent companies throughout the United States and all over the world. I've come to an opinion that might be controversial, but here it is. I think regulators will not be able to do a good job of overseeing emerging technology change, unless they create mechanisms for doing empirical testing. I think sandboxes, in some form, are not just helpful, I think they're necessary. Of course, it's far too early to tell how well they will work and which models are best. The regulators running them emphasize that they are figuring this out as they go along. No one thinks sandboxes are panaceas. Nevertheless, the very process of undertaking these experiments is moving a community of regulators forward in deeply understanding fintech innovation -- both its promise and, importantly, its perils. Despite the sandbox movement sweeping the world, the term sandbox, itself, has fallen out of favor among many in the United States. For one thing, sandboxes sound, well, unserious. For another, there has been talk of using sandboxes to waive or suspend consumer protection rules while companies experiment on real, live human customers. In practice, such suspensions aren't happening anywhere to my knowledge, but the issue is obviously politically sensitive. (Also, Innovate Finance in London is working on a "virtual sandbox" that could work by modeling innovations using pooled data, so that real consumers would not be affected). So, fine. Let's not suspend consumer protections (even though a lot of these laws don't actually protect people very well). And let's call these initiatives greenhouses, or pilots, or, as Abu Dhabi does, laboratories. In our conversation, I told Wai-Lum that I too came up with the name "RegLab" for a project I'm working on, exploring the idea of creating a non-profit that could function as an interagency regulatory sandbox in the United States. The U.S. is unique in the world in our dizzingly complex, fractured regulatory structure (five federal financial supervisory agencies, plus dozens of other federal agencies, plus 50 states). We're going to have to figure out two things -- how to coordinate a coherent fintech regulatory strategy and how to keep up with exponentially growing technology change. If we don't, we'll lose our global competitive edge. There is much more to say on all this -- again, I think it's one of the most important issues facing the regulatory community -- and we'll have more shows on it coming up. For now, please listen to my fascinating conversation with Wai-Lum Kwok about the Abu Dhabi RegLab. More about Wai-Lum Kwok Wai Lum joined the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) in June 2015. He heads up the Capital Markets division responsible for admission and supervision of financial market infrastructures and capital market intermediaries. The division also regulates the offering of securities, collective investments schemes. Wai Lum also spearheads FSRA's strategy and efforts to support the supervision of innovation in Financial Technology (FinTech) and development of the FinTech ecosystem in ADGM. Wai Lum has more than 10 years of supervisory experience. Prior to ADGM, Wai Lum served as the Director of the Capital Markets Intermediaries Division of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Wai Lum graduated from Imperial College, London with an M.Eng in Electrical Engineering and holds an M.Sc in Applied Finance from the National University of Singapore. He is a CFA charterholder. More links The Abu Dhabi Reglab -- www.ADGM.com, or email fintech@ADGM.com ADGM's Reglab consultation paper My podcast on sandboxes with BMO's Nitish Pandey June 2017 Treasury Department summary of proposed financial reforms including enhanced interagency coordination Bill proposed by Congressman Patrick McHenry (in last Congress) to require financial regulators to coordinate on fostering innovation More for our listeners Please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on ITunes, and sign up to get email notifications for new podcasts, the newsletter, and blog posts at jsbarefoot.com. Also go to jsbarefoot.com to send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going, and join my facebook fan page. I hope you'll also follow me on twitter. Support our Podcast Meanwhile, watch for a summer of amazing shows, including CFTC Acting Chairman Christopher Giancarlo; John Ryan of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors; and breakfast in London with the one-and-only Brett King. And watch for our special show that I recorded at the ABA's Regulatory Compliance Conference in Orlando, including a talk with Andy Sandler and one with Gene Ludwig and Allistair Renee of Watson Financial. Here's my perhaps counter-intuitive takeaway from the ABA conference: #ComplianceIsCool! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Today's guest is Colleen Briggs, Executive Director for Community Innovation and Corporate Responsibility at JPMorgan Chase. Colleen leads a visionary effort that is part of JPM's commitment to building "more inclusive growth," globally, by finding innovative models that build financial access and economic expansion. Our timing is great because just last week, the Center for Financial Services Innovation announced its new class of winners for the Financial Solutions Lab competition. The Finlab is funded by a $30 million, five-year commitment from JPMorgan that Colleen oversees, aimed at finding, supporting, and scaling innovative ways to promote consumer financial health. This is part of a $1 billion program that the bank has undertaken globally. Here is a link to the JPMorgan press release on this year's competition, which includes an overview of the winners, and here is a further article by the American Banker. Colleen comes to this work from a diverse background at nonprofits, on Capitol Hill, and now in the private sector, searching for better solutions for lower-income financial consumers. In listening to her, I was struck by the degree to which she has her finger on the pulse of the trends underway, both globally and in the U.S. She shares insights on how to make it profitable to serve low income customers; how to win the trust of consumers who are wary of digital products; on the failures of traditional financial education; on the primacy of behaviorally-based product design; on the need for new business models; on how to build partnerships between banks, fintechs and community organizations; on how innovative cultures can take root in big banks; on platforms that can get new solutions to scale; on the business opportunity for banks -- and their corporate customers -- from building global inclusion; on mixing high tech and high touch and the limits of automation; and on how to shift the whole marketplace. She has wise advice for all the players. Since we recorded this episode, I've become the board chair at CFSI. Last week we held the Emerge Forum in Orlando, where a record audience talked about exciting new ideas for financial health. There was huge enthusiasm there about the new Finlab winners. In a sign of the maturing of the fintech startup world, three companies in this year's class are reaching beyond the typical millennial customer base and instead building new tools for seniors. Watch for their progress. Here are my other podcasts with the Finlab and past winners Digit, Ascend, and Bee. More on Colleen Briggs Colleen Briggs is Executive Director of Community Innovation within the Office of Corporate Responsibility and Global Philanthropy at JPMorgan Chase & Co, a global leader in corporate philanthropy with $200 million invested in communities annually. She is responsible for helping establish and execute the firm's global philanthropic and corporate responsibility financial capability, including the Financial Solutions Lab, and community development strategies, including PRO Neighborhoods. The Lab is a $30 million, five-year initiative that convenes leading experts in technology, behavioral economics, and design to improve consumer financial health. PRO Neighborhoods is a five-year, $125 million program that works to increase the availability and accessibility of vital economic opportunities in vulnerable neighborhoods across the country. Colleen also manages the Foundation's portfolio of global financial inclusion grants, impact framework and grant guidelines and works with the lines of business to share best practices to improve the firm's products and services. Prior to joining, Colleen was the Economic Policy Advisor to Senator Debbie Stabenow. In this role, Colleen managed the Senator's economic portfolio, including policy related to financial services, tax, small business, job creation, community development, manufacturing, and housing. Colleen managed the Dodd-Frank market reforms for the Senate Agriculture Committee, and helped draft the Recovery Act, TARP, the Dodd-Frank Act, and healthcare reform. Colleen is a member of the Asset Funders Network Steering Committee and the Innovations for Poverty Action Policy Advisory Group. She earned an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. More links Some organizations Colleen mentioned: Neighborhood Trust / FlexWage / Lending Club / LendStreet / Propel And more for our listeners Please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on ITunes, and please sign up to get emails on new podcasts and my newsletter and blog posts at jsbarefoot.com. Also go to jsbarefoot.com to send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going. Please also join my facebook fan page, and follow me on twitter. Support our Podcast - Send "A buck a show" And watch for upcoming podcasts. My guests include Christopher Giancarlo, Acting Chairman of the CFTC; Brett King, founder of Moven; John Ryan of Conference of State Bank Supervisors; and a special series we recorded at the American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference this month. The ABA show includes a conversation with Promontory CEO (and former Comptroller of the Currency) Gene Ludwig and Alistair Renee of IBM Watson, who have teamed up to bring artificial intelligence to compliance through regtech. See you soon! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Here's a question: Would you like to file your taxes with just a keystroke, after your electronic devices automatically organized all your information and prepared the return? Here's another -- do you think you'll still be driving, five years from now? Today's episode is a far-ranging conversation with Al Ko, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of the Consumer Ecosystem at Intuit. Among other things, he heads up Mint, which is deeply innovating about healthier ways for us to live our financial lives. Al reminds us that Intuit founder Scott Cook pioneered PFM -- personal financial management that leverages technology to simplify financial tasks (That story is recounted memorably in Eric Ries' book The Lean Startup.) Intuit then acquired Mint. PFM tools work wonderfully, if you have the time and motivation to pay active attention. Unfortunately, though, most of us don't. It's been estimated that maybe two percent of people actively use PFM tools. The other 98% struggle, and juggle our many financial tasks, and sometimes drop those balls. Al says American consumers pay $77 billion a year, just in credit card late fees. Just for, basically, forgetting to send in even the minimum payment by the due date. Fortunately, big trends are bringing new solutions are starting to make the juggling easier, or even unnecessary. Finance will still be complicated, but it will feel simple. This is critical, because complexity is one of the main drivers of people's financial problems and bad financial health. Financial services are just inherently complicated, intrinsically hard to understand and hard to manage. If we can make it easy, a lot of problems simply go away. The foundational breakthrough is that technology can now easily consolidate our disparate financial information in one place, electronically. Once it's all there, technology tools can easily organize and analyze it. Then that consolidated information can be teed up, through new PFM tools, to give us at-a-glance insight on where we stand -- comprehensively, always up to date, and also benchmarked, if we want, against our goals, like what we're saving for, or against emerging standards that can help us know whether we're financially healthy, or not. Next, and crucially, new tools can also easily take the initiative to send us alerts, reminders, to do things like paying a bill, or like pausing before we make a payment that will cause us to fall short on the next rent payment. Not wait for us to look up a bill or find a statement, but initiate a reminder, in the midst of our busy lives. Now add in behavioral science-based tools, so that, instead of being boring, our financial management can become engaging, even entertaining and fun, or even funny (see my past podcast with Digit). Behavioral science can also "hook" us on good behavior through rewards and reinforcement that are psychologically effective. And then, as Al explains in this episode, all this will become universally accessible across all our devices. We'll be able to get those reminders, or get our questions answered, anywhere, anytime, all the time -- in our house, our car, our phone, our watch. And we'll be able to do it, when we want to, just by talking. We'll use smart voice assistants like Alexa, the Amazon Echo, or Google Home. No need to open apps, or look things up. No need, even, to find the phone, or even press a button. We'll simply be able to speak, into the air. That may not seem like a big deal to you if you've been using, say, Siri, but back to the point on behavioral psychology, the tiny nuance of easiness can make a huge difference in actually using a solution. Your voice assistant increasingly will be your full financial assistant (Capital One customers can already use Alexa for banking). If you want it to, it will greet you as your pour your morning coffee and say, "The electric bill needs to be paid today. It's $28." And you'll say, "Okay, pay it." And then you can say, "What's my account balance?" And, "Have I saved enough for my vacation?" And, "Where am I on my savings goals?" Now add in geolocation. For better or worse, our phones know where we are. So we'll soon have financial apps that will send us a text, or vibrate the watch on our wrist, with a message: "I see we're at the grocery store. We can spend $75 here today." Or, "I see we're walking toward the coffee shop. You asked me to remind you that this week's latte budget has already been spent. Keep walking!" We'll also be able to give our assistant, our helpful bot, a personality, an avatar, with a persona that is most motivating for us, whether it's, say, a basketball coach or a friendly dog. As Al explains in today's show, Mint has a new bill-pay app that already does some of these things, and it has many more tools like these on the drawing board. They are not science fiction. These technologies already exist, and innovators are working fast to bring to us. Are there new risks in these new tools? Sure. There are risks and drawbacks in all innovations, and we should be working on addressing them. But here's how I view that trade off. I've spent my whole career working with efforts to protect and empower financial consumers through regulation. And now, I look at these new technologies and realize, these are the solutions. With tools like these (and many more that are emerging) everyone will be able to live a healthy financial life, in the sense of easily understanding and managing their money. Easy budgeting, easy bill-paying, easier saving, easier investment, easier selection of the best product, easier self-discipline -- all of it. To make that happen, there's a key challenge to solve for: how will tools like these become profitable enough that providers will offer them to everyone? What are the business models that will evolve, and how can we be sure they're transparent and fair? I talked about that with Al Ko, and about the need for consumer empowerment on using financial data, and about what Mint does today, and will be doing soon, and about its ambitious future vision around for Powering Prosperity and Financial Freedom, globally. More information My past podcast with Colin Walsh of Varo, which offers a financial assistant chatbot. More for our listeners Remember to review Barefoot Innovation on ITunes, and please sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Also go to jsbarefoot.com to send in your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going. Please also join my facebook fan page, and follow me on twitter. Support our Podcast - Send "a buck a show" And watch for upcoming podcasts including John Ryan of Conference of State Bank Supervisors, Colleen Briggs of JPMChase, and a series I'll be recording from the ABA Regulatory Compliance Conference in Orlando. My guests will include Andy Sandler of BuckleySandler, and also Gene Ludwig and Alistair Renee of IBM's Watson Financial on how artificial intelligence and machine learning will transform compliance. Last but not least, I'm now the chair of the board of CFSI, the Center for Financial Services Innovation. Be sure to join us at the Emerge conference in Austin. There's nothing else like it! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!