Barefoot Innovation Podcast

Welcome to Barefoot Innovation and to a new dimension in the topics we explore. We've talked with many startups in lending, payments, and managing personal finance. Today, we're looking at the most exciting change underway in the investment space - "robo-investing." My guest is Jon Stein, the founder and CEO of Betterment. We met in their fast-growing offices in New York, a converted warehouse steeped in industrial character and with mouth-watering aromas wafting from a very substantial food bar that lined one end of the busy open space, and offering the special charm unique to businesses where people bring their dogs to work. In our conversations, Jon told me the story of his personal journey. He graduated from Harvard and - since, as he says, no one was recruiting for jobs with the description of "making people happy" - went into finance. Eventually he went on to Columbia Business School, gained Series 7, 24, 63 certifications, and become a CFA, Chartered Financial Analyst. He expresses respect for traditional financial businesses, but became frustrated by their transactional focus, and also by his own financial life - he had 7 brokerage accounts, invested in Enron, and finally concluded that the industry encourages the wrong investor behaviors, especially in trying to "beat the market." He'd studied both economics and human behavior in college (before behavioral economics caught on) and realized that his interests lie at the intersection of behavior, psychology, and economics. He remembers a professor saying "how crazy people can be, and how very often they would get in their own way, and how even when we wanted to do the right thing, we would do the wrong thing." He also says he always knew he wanted to do "something big." So in 2008, he founded Betterment. Betterment is now the largest independent "robo-advisor," with $4.3 billion in assets under management and 150,000 customers. I've interviewed many founders of startups on Barefoot Innovation, but this is the first one that runs commercials on television. Betterment aims to optimize investment through automation that produces sound advice for the long term, and that also makes the process both easy and more affordable. It builds around what Jon considers the MOST important advice -- which is too often overlooked, namely -- "How much to save?" The company has also taken on the "behavior gap" in financial advice - Betterment has the lowest in the industry and is trying to drive it to zero. They are also constantly driving for efficiency gains (his colleagues say if you want to sell Jon on an idea just tell him it will increase efficiency), and for fee transparency. They think this combination of strengths - being advice-centric, transparent, and hyper-efficient -- will revolutionize the investment world. They also think their model, over time, can be applied to a much broader set of financial services. As Jon's biography puts it, "What excites him most about his work is making everyday activities and products more efficient, accessible, and easy to use." One highlight of our conversation is his insights on the thorny questions of how these innovations should be regulated, including on the advice given, how data should be used to be sure it's helping customers, and how performance should be measured. Note on upcoming podcasts Click below to donate your "buck a show" to keep Barefoot Innovation going and growing. (If you didn't hear my explanation on this, it's at the end of the previous episode, with Raul Vazquez of Oportun). Support the Podcast Upcoming shows are going to be so interesting. Keying off Jon Stein's thinking on human behavior, we'll have an episode with one of America's top experts in how behavioral economics impacts investment and retirement savings, Harvard Professor Brigitte Madrian. I'm delighted to say Brigitte is also my faculty advisor on the book I'm writing on financial innovation and regulation for my Harvard fellowship this year. We're also working on a fascinating show on innovation emerging in the insurance sector, dubbed, "insure-tech." Other guests in the queue include some of the country's most thoughtful bank compliance officers, and the very thoughtful founders of Bee. Note on Regulation Innovation Briefing Series Meanwhile, click here to explore my Regulation Innovation briefings, while you still can for free! The briefings are short monthly videos, each paired with a deep article about the twin and intertwined challenges of financial innovation and regulation. They are still free for a few more weeks, and then the series will be for subscribers, so please check it out. As I said last time, these articles are the most important and valuable thing I've ever written. I hope you'll join the journey. Subscribe to Our Mailing LIst Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

This episode updates one of the very first ones we did in our Barefoot Innovation series, last year. Episode Two featured the two co-founders of Simple, Josh Reich and Shamir Karkal. A year later, we all found ourselves back at the same conference where we'd recorded that program. Shamir has now taken on a new role, leading the open platform innovation of the very innovative bank that bought Simple, BBVA. Josh, though, is still CEO of Simple (a fact that he says tends to surprise people). So on a very rainy afternoon in Southern California, he and I found a place where we could duck out of the weather (you may hear the deluge in the background), and talked about how Simple has progressed in the year just past. So...very few people are more fun to talk with than Josh Reich, but I think my favorite thing about this episode might not be the podcast, fascinating as it is, but rather something the podcast led me to. In our conversation, Josh talks about a customer whose dog chewed her debit card - twice! Simple sent her a customer appreciation package with the second card, and she was so grateful that she made a YouTube video about getting it. Every banker in the world should watch this: customer appreciation reaction video I won't update the full show notes here - please look at Episode 2 for the basics on Simple which, again, is now part of BBVA bank. And if you missed it, be sure to listen also to my podcast with Manolo Sanchez, the CEO of BBVA Compass, who I think may be the most innovative bank president anywhere. BBVA is all-in on fintech innovation. Also, Josh and I did not get to a key update, which is the big move Simple made last year to eliminate ALL its checking account fees. I'm linking to his blog post here explaining what they did and why. Remember, Barefoot Innovation is a search for better solutions for financial consumers through all kinds of innovation. BBVA and Simple are making this search in a great many interesting ways. So enjoy hearing Josh's insights, ranging from how to succeed when a big banks buys a small innovator, to the make-or-break power of a bank's culture, to the incredible efficiencies of growing a bank without branches - he shares some numbers -- to his advice for regulators. And watch for fantastic episodes coming up: Oportun CEO Raul Vazquez; Betterment CEO Jon Stein; two of the country's top compliance officers, together; and Blythe Masters of Digital Asset Holdings - to name a few. Regulation Innovation Video Series: Briefing One - The Five Tech Trends Driving Financial Transformation The Five Tech Trends - the latest video in the Regulation Innovation Video series. Meanwhile be sure to sign up for our new video series, Regulation Innovation - Thriving on Disruption. These are short briefings - 10 to 15 minutes each - designed to be the single easiest way to understand the huge issues raised by fintech, in both technology and regulation, and how best to address them. Since fintech is far more about "tech" than "fin," we're starting the series with The Five Tech trends transforming finance. Plus we have a lighthearted little extra, straight from my own kitchen, on how I was inspired to some thoughts about innovation by a very unusual gadget. The briefings are designed share in meetings and training sessions, from board rooms to business and compliance teams. They come with access to a subscriber-only website with resources and advice. We have group pricing available - just contact us! Please sign up for them, and also to get my podcasts by email. And be sure to leave reviews on ITunes. Please consider a donation to support our efforts to bring the best thought leaders in the financial innovation world to you. A dollar a show is all we ask. Support the Podcast Subscribe to Our Mailing List Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

We have a very special show today. I realized – rather late – that we should do an episode on the CFSI financial solutions lab competition. It's belated, because the contest is open, now, for its second year of applications, and the deadline is April 7 – just a few days from now. My guests are Ryan Falvey, who heads the lab, plus three of last year's 9 winners. They are Sheri Atwood of SupportPay; Jerry Nemorin, of LendStreet, and Quinten Farmer of Even. They explain how the competition works, what they are looking for this year, and, from the standpoint of last year's winners, what they have gotten from participating in the program. FINLAB: The FinLab is investing about $5 million each year in the contest winners, who also receive a huge array of expert advice and access to networks and resources. Here's the information on the competition and how to apply by April 7: Finlab.cfsinnovation.com. And here is an overview of the full list of last year's winners. For today's show, we're featuring these guests: RYAN FALVEY As a Managing Director at the Center for Financial Services Innovation, Ryan oversees the Financial Solutions Lab, bringing together innovators from the fields of technology, behavioral economics, nonprofit services and design to provide guidance, share best practices and develop scalable financial products. He loves to help organizations solve hard problems. Prior to joining CFSI, Ryan was at Silicon Valley Bank, working with leading technology firms to develop innovative payment products and solutions. He also served as the Strategy Group Lead at Enclude Solutions, overseeing its global strategy consulting work in over 30 countries and supporting the development of several of the world's most successful mobile-enabled financial products. Ryan has a graduate degree from Yale and an undergraduate degree from UCLA. Twitter: @TheFinLab, @CFSInnovation Personal Twitter: @Ryan_Falvey SHERI ATWOOD Sheri Atwood, Founder and CEO of SupportPay by Ittavi (acronym for "it takes a village"), is a former Silicon Valley executive, single mom and child of a bitter divorce. Atwood, who was raised by a single mother and was the only person in her family to attend college, married at 19, completed her undergraduate degree in less than 4 years and completed her MBA 10 days before her daughter was born. When Atwood herself divorced at 25, she was the youngest Vice President at Symantec. Before SupportPay, there was no easy way for parents to exchange child support -- and Atwood was so determined to create a solution that she taught herself to code and is today an expert in front-end development. Atwood was named "#5 of 50 Women in Tech Dominating Silicon Valley" and a "Top 40 Under 40 Executive in Silicon Valley." Website: www.supportpay.com Twitter: @SupportPayApp Personal Twitter: @SheriAtwood JERRY NEMORIN Jerry is founder and CEO of LendStreet. He previously worked at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in its Global Corporate & Investing Banking division, helping major companies restructure their debt during the financial crisis and raise money from the high yield debt market. Jerry is now putting that expertise to use in a way that helps consumers in financial distress deal with their debt and rebuild their credit. Jerry has been a speaker, guest, and advocate for responsible lending and sustainable financial services on Capitol Hill and industry events such as Finovate, SWIFT Innotribe Competition, Experian's Vision Conference and Credit Suisse Impact Investing Conference. Jerry recently served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Darden School of Business Incubator. He began his career in Tyco's Treasury group and received a B.S. in Finance and Exercise & Sports Science from the University of Florida and an M.B.A. from the Darden Graduate School of BusinessAdministration at the University of Virginia. Website: www.lendstreet.com Twitter: @LendStreet Personal Twitter: @JNemorin QUINTEN FARMER Quinten Farmer is Co-Founder at Even. Previously, Quinten ran Client Operations at Taykey, a venture-backed advertising technology company, and was Vice President of Operations at Onswipe, a New York-based startup. Quinten studied Computer Science at Columbia University, and also founded the Open Loans Project, a nonprofit working to bring transparency to the student loans industry. He founded Even to help employers enable workers to even out timing mismatches between paychecks and expenses, especially in volatile or disruptive situations. Website: https://even.com Personal Twitter: @Quintendf Also, be sure to come to the CFSI Emerge Forum on Consumer Financial Health, in New Orleans, June 14-17. The new contest winners will be announced, and there will be an amazing lineup of speakers and events focused on technology solutions to building consumer financial health and well being. As always, please donate to my free podcast series (which seems to be trying to take over my life) and please write a review of it on ITunes! Support the Podcast Subscribe to Our Mailing List Be sure sign up for email notifications on the videos and podcasts and major blog posts if you haven't done so yet Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

In 1967, the Beatles sang: "I get by with a little help from my friends." That sentiment captures something at the heart of many people's financial lives today, and it embodies the idea behind the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC), the oldest and largest nonprofit credit counseling organization in the U.S. I have known Susan Keating, NFCC's President and CEO, for about 30 years. I've been wanting to record a Barefoot Innovation episode with her, because the NFCC is on the front lines of the topics we're exploring here. They work directly, personally, with the people who are not thriving in our consumer financial system. The reasons people don't thrive are complex. We've talked about a lot of them, and I find it's easy to get excited about new technologies or regulatory challenges impacting them, and to lose sight of the real people who are immersed in these struggles. Helping these people is the driver behind much of the search for better solutions by industry, government, and the innovation world, and it's good to pause and think about who they are. As we discussed with CFSI's CEO Jennifer Tescher LINK TO IT, the so-called "underserved" market is enormous -- estimated between 70 and 140 million Americans -- and covers a huge percentage of the middle class. It is also heterogeneous. Data from NFCC, CFSI and others is breaking the old stereotype of a monolithic "low and moderate income" category whose problem is just not being able to afford traditional financial services. Many underserved consumers, in fact, can afford to pay for high-cost financial services, and are doing so, but are stuck there due to a wide array of issues. Some of their problems are caused by their own errors and difficulties. Some are caused by the difficulties of serving them through the business models and cost structures that prevail in the industry today. Some are a mix of both. Both of these kinds of problems are ripe for improvement today, thanks to the innovations we discuss here on this show. I think, though, that we'll still have a big gap between new financial solutions and the people who need them, unless we build some bridges -- add in some glue -- in the form of human beings who can help people learn to use new technology. NFCC is one of the key organizations able to do this. Susan talks about all this in our conversation. She describes the massive scope of the challenge; the "new face of poverty" in the United States; the NFCC's focus on "breadwinner moms;" and its key new initiative for helping people manage student debt, with a insight into the daunting scope of that challenge. Susan's background: Susan began her banking career in 1974 at First Bank System in Milwaukee, where she became Senior Vice President of retail banking. In 1988 she joined MNC Financial in Maryland and later became President and senior banking executive for Maryland when NationsBank (Bank of America) acquired MNC in 1993. She went on to become the highest-ranking female CEO of a US-bank holding company, as President and Chief Executive of All First Financial from 2000-2002. Then in 2002, she was appointed to the Group Executive Committee of AIB (Allied Irish Banks plc), which is responsible for developing corporate strategy and overseeing management of AIB Group. In 2004 she took on the role of NFCC President. She thought is was a short term move but, to her own surprise, she's still there twelve years later, caught up in the mission. Upon reappointment after her first three-year term, she said, "The NFCC is uniquely positioned to serve the many consumers who are struggling to make ends meet and find their way to a better financial future. I am deeply committed to doing all that I can in order to lead the efforts in the years ahead." Susan also serves on Bank of America's National Consumer Advisory Council; is a board member of the Council on Accreditation; and participates in the Financial Regulation Reform Collaborative, a non-partisan group committed to finding solutions for reforming financial services regulation. NFCC: Last fall I had the honor of joining the NFCC's board on the occasion of the organization's 50th birthday. Today the NFCC works with 90 member agencies through more than 750 offices in communities nationwide. Its certified counselors counsel and provide financial education to three million clients annually, focusing on issues that include seniors and the military and guidance relating to financial literacy, mortgages, and credit cards. It recently launched a key initiative on helping people with student debt, and in helping illuminate that magnitude of that challenge, and plays an invaluable role in consumer financial research overall. Here are some links: 2015 Consumer Financial Literacy Survey 2015 State of the Financial Counseling and Education Sector Student Credit Counseling initiative Enjoy my conversation with someone on the front lines -- NFCC's CEO Susan Keating. And please note: The video series is launched! Please come to my new site www.RegulationInnovation.com where we have launched my video briefing show. It's a practical guide for financial companies trying to figure out how to thrive on disruption-to thrive through the twin, intertwined challenges of technology disruption and regulatory disruption. We're off to a terrific start with the series. The next video will be called, "The 5 Tech Trends." I made it because I think financial people often underestimate the disruption underway, because we tend to think of fintech as a financial topic. In reality, it's mainly a technology topic. That means the forces shaping it lie mainly in the tech world, not the financial world. That in turn means they are mostly over the horizon, outside the field of vision of busy people focusing on finance. I've been spending a lot of time in that world, and am creating this video to explain what these five huge drivers are, how they are converging, and how they will transform both consumer financial services and financial regulation. Again, fintech is way more about "tech" than "fin." I'll also have a light-hearted short video for your entertainment, brought to you from my very own kitchen. I'm going to demonstrate an extremely odd little gadget that contains a big lesson for innovators. Coming episodes: Last but not least, come back next time to Barefoot Innovation, when my guest will be the visionary CEO of Opportun, Raul Vazquez. Among other things, he is totally fascinating on the topic of how he personally keeps up with technology. Up next in the queue after Raul, we'll have a short update with Simple CEO Josh Reich, and then an interview with the founder and CEO of Betterment, Jon Stein. See you soon! As always, please donate to my free podcast series (which seems to be trying to take over my life) and please write a review of it on ITunes! Support the Podcast Subscribe to Our Mailing List Be sure sign up for email notifications on the videos and podcasts and major blog posts if you haven'tdone so yet, at jsbarefoot.com. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

I'm calling this episode "Consulting the Source." My guest would be the first to say he is not the source of our consumer financial protection rules -- that would be Congress. Still, no one has had more to do with translating law into regulatory form than Leonard Chanin. When Leonard left the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for his current position at the law firm Morrison & Foerster LLP, it was big news. American Banker wrote: "Morrison & Foerster can't say it hired the attorney who wrote the CFPB's rulebook. But it picked up the guy who started the job." Actually, Leonard has been involved in the crafting of pretty much all the consumer financial regulations since 1985. And for years he led the legal teams – first at the Fed and then at the CFPB – that wrote them. I consider him the single most expert person in the world on how to write consumer protection regulation in finance. His deep knowledge of the field and his great sense of humor led to a really fun and animated discussion about the challenges of financial regulation. In fact, our conversation continued for nearly another hour after we turned off the microphone. I often find that, after the recorded part of the podcast, my guests go on to say things even more interesting. In Leonard's case, he said something I've been thinking about ever since, and I got his permission to share it. He said, "The only solution is to blow it all up. If we just take what we have and try to improve it, we will fail." Our regular listeners know I'm at Harvard this year writing a book about modernizing consumer financial protection for the innovation age. I think most people in the financial field agree that the system we have hasn't worked well. And yet, the course we're on is exactly the one Leonard says won't work – taking what we have and just trying to improve it at the margins. The CFPB, of course, is adding vigor and rigor to the effort and having many impacts. Still, this is a good time to examine the basic questions of what works, and whether we could do better. I met with Leonard in his office in Washington, and we explored it all. Can disclosure ever really be effective? What should we do about information overload? Is it impossible for regulations to be both simple, and clear, at the same time, or do we have to choose between those two goals? Should we rely more on principles-based regulations instead of detailed rules? When should the law just ban practices, instead of requiring them to be disclosed? Should we have a regulatory sandbox? Is it worth trying to do better, given the enormous costs the industry incurs every time the rules change? What could we do better now that people can get information instantly on their cell phones? Should government try to protect people from their own mistakes, or just prevent deception and let consumers make their choices? I recently spoke at a conference where I said I think disclosure has largely failed as a consumer protection strategy in finance. Someone afterwards said to me that he thinks it was never meant to work – that it was just the industry's strategy for preventing tougher regulation. I was involved in a lot of those early efforts, and as I say to Leonard in our talk, it seemed like a good idea at the time, to me. It seemed worth trying. But today, it's time to think again. (For an interesting analysis of the ineffectiveness of disclosure, see this article by Temple University's Hosea Harvey. Leonard is currently Of Counsel in the Financial Services group at Morrison & Foerster LLP. He advises clients on issues relating to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, Truth in Lending Act, Electronic Fund Transfer Act, Fair Credit Reporting Act, Truth in Savings Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Before rejoining Morrison & Foerster, he was the Assistant Director of the Office of Regulations of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, heading the agency's rule-making team of nearly 40 lawyers. He also provided legal opinions to Bureau supervisory and enforcement offices on federal consumer financial protection laws. Prior to that, he was Deputy Director of the Division of Consumer and Community Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board. His role there included providing legal opinions and policy recommendations to the Board and the Division on federal consumer financial services laws, negotiating rules and policies with the other federal banking agencies and providing legal views on enforcement actions against state member banks. Leonard's law degree is from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, where he served on the board of the Washington University Law Review. He is a currently a fellow of the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. So, please enjoy my conversation with Leonard Chanin. And…try my new video series, Regulation Innovation! And be sure to come to my new site, www.RegulationInnovation.com, and sign up for my new series of video briefings! I've posted a short trailer (EMBED?) explaining the videos as a roadmap for navigating through the two toughest challenges facing every financial company – how to thrive on all this regulatory and technology. You can try it out and get started very easily. If you enjoy our work to bring together thought provoking ideas and people please consider a contribution to support the site. Support the Podcast Please subscribe to the podcast by opening your favorite podcast app and searching for "Jo Ann Barefoot", in TuneIn, or in iTunes.

Welcome to our first episode focused on Bitcoin, digital currency, and the blockchain. My guest is one of the most thoughtful people anywhere on this topic and on payments overall: Circle CEO and Founder Jeremy Allaire. I met with Jeremy at his office in south Boston's "Innovation District," a few blocks from where I live myself. They have quintessential startup space in an old brick warehouse, and we sat down on a New England winter day for a really fascinating conversation. I often talk about the five huge technology trends that are revolutionizing financial services. Number 4 on my list is digital currency. Not long ago, even senior leaders in banks and regulatory agencies dismissed Bitcoin as insignificant and weird at best, and dangerous at worst. Today, many people still think it's weird and dangerous, but no one thinks it's unimportant. I'm going to assume our listeners know the basics - that Bitcoin invented the "blockchain," which is an open "distributed ledger" of transactions, visible on the internet, and that being on the internet makes it (like everything else there) instant and free. Most people also understand that this can transform our slow, high-cost payments system, and also any other system that is, in effect, a chain of transactions or records. Most people also know the blockchain record is unfakeable, unbreakable, and again, visible - attributes that can fundamentally change how we organize things from money and contracts and legal titles to operational systems and markets of all kinds. I once wrote a blog post called "The Benefits of Bitcoin", arguing that the cheap and instant movement of money can bring incredible upside potential for financial consumers, as well as new risks. It will eventually change everything from remittance services to the struggles facing people on tight budgets who now rely on cash, since it's the only way to be sure a bill gets paid exactly when it's due. As understanding of Bitcoin has spread, a new conventional wisdom has emerged - the notion that the crucial innovation here is not digital currency, but rather the blockchain, including closed chains inside companies and closed networks. In our conversation, Jeremy challenges that idea head-on. He argues passionately that the big power in this technology is its openness. He reminds us, for one thing, that the internet initially spurred hot debate over how to secure the unprecedented free-flow of information. In a widely-circulated article on re/code.com last November Jeremy wrote, "Remember, the Internet was unreliable, insecure, and filled with creeps and hackers. People wanted safe, secure, trusted and proprietary networks. That was the future...(yet) We all know what happened. Smart creators and engineers from all around the world got inspired by the open Internet...Permissionless innovation took hold, and we changed the world." He thinks we now need to take the basic DNA of the Internet - open protocols and distributed and decentralized networks - and apply them not just to sharing data and information, but to the sharing of value. He also emphasizes a core power of this - the fact that if you don't have to trust a single centralized institution to facilitate value exchange, amazing things become possible. Jeremy refers to bitcoin as a distributor of trust, one that "provides a highly secure ledger to exchange value around the world." He believes that just as the early Internet disrupted media and communications, this wave of innovation will transform the "trust and assurance" industries - "which includes government, law, accounting, insurance and, last but not least, finance." Entering into a global economy in which everything from social identities to commerce flow instantly and freely is discomfiting to some. Even though today's closed and proprietary technology and networks create frustration and high costs for consumers, Bitcoin critics still doubt the soundness and resilience of the model. For innovators like Jeremy, though, it is creating a whole new set of solutions that use financial technology to build "smart rules" and business logic that can eventually shape the new laws of global commercial and legal governance. Jeremy's "aha" moment on this came in 2012, and inspired him to start a company that would use blockchain technology, which he calls the "global trust and transaction ledger," to change the way we store and use money. That company is Circle, a provider of mobile apps "aimed at enabling greater ease-of-use in online and in-person payments, enhanced security and privacy for customers, and the convenience of free, instant, global digital money transfers." A revolutionary idea. As I say in our conversation, I'm a Circle customer myself. Every time I use it, it amazes me. Before Circle, Jeremy was an entrepreneur who'd already spent two decades building and leading global technology companies. His first startup, Allaire Corp, pioneered the use of the Web as a platform for commerce and business applications, and grew to serve over 1 million customers around the world. In 2000, Allaire Corp was acquired by Macromedia, where Jeremy became Chief Technology Officer and helped transform Flash into a platform for rich applications and video that became the most widely adopted piece of software in the history of computing. He then founded Brightcove, the first Internet video publishing platform for websites, smartphones, tablets and connected-TVs. The company has customers in more than 100 countries and powers video operations for 25 percent of the top 10,000 websites in the world. From 2003 to 2014, Jeremy also served as a Director at Ping Identity Corporation, an industry-leading software and online service provider for securing identity on the Internet whose clients include many of the largest financial institutions in the world. In our conversation, Jeremy explains his vision, his long background in technology, how Circle works, their business model and plans, and his thoughts about regulation of finance and fintech. The regulatory challenges are obviously huge. Circle sought and received the first-ever (and at this writing, still only) New York State "bit-license." Jeremy talks about the challenges of becoming licensed as a money transmitter in the U. S. state-by-state regulatory patchwork. He also recognizes that, importantly, governments throughout the country and the world see potential as well as risk in these innovations. An example is that Jennifer Shasky Calvery, Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, has testified before Congress that FinCENrecognizes the "potential for abuse by illicit actors," and that the agency has for almost five years worked with its regulatory partners on designing rules that provide the "needed flexibility to accommodate innovation in the payment systems space under our preexisting regulatory framework." Jeremy Allaire has an exceptional gift for making mind-bending technology and regulatory challenges easy to understand - and for provoking thought. This is, without a doubt, one of the most fascinating episodes we've had. Enjoy it, and please be sure to click the "Donate" button HERE, and to write a review on ITunes, to keep supporting the show. And.....Introducing my video series: Regulation Innovation Meanwhile, I have a video for you -- two of them, actually. Many listeners know I have long been a consultant to the financial industry, first on regulatory matters and more recently on fintech. A couple of years ago, someone suggested that I take the kind of advice people pay me for as a consultant, and distill it into video briefings that are accessible and affordable for a much wider market. It was a great idea, and so I began building a video series offering my advice. I've focused the videos on the most important question facing consumer financial services -- How to survive, and actually thrive, through the twin disruptions that are hitting the industry: technology innovation, and regulation. I think everyone in fintech will enjoy them, but the series is specifically designed as a guide for financial companies - it's informative, thought-provoking, and practical. It's for both traditional companies and innovators. And it's for the people working on innovation, regulation, and building the business. I am very confident in saying there is nothing else remotely like it. Please check it out! And while you're there, check out my little bonus video because it answers, at long last, this burning question: "Why does Jo Ann Barefoot have an Xbox, since she's never played a videogame in her entire life, and what the heck does this have to do with financial innovation?" www.regulationinnovation.com. See you there! If you enjoy our work to bring together thought provoking ideas and people please consider a contribution to support the site. Support the Podcast Please subscribe to the podcast by opening your favorite podcast app and searching for "Jo Ann Barefoot", in TuneIn, or in iTunes.

This is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done - my conversation with Digit founder and CEO, Ethan Bloch. Digit has set out to solve one of the core problems in consumers' financial lives - how to save. Their solution is to make savings effortless, using an intelligent algorithm that analyzes your spending and income patterns and automatically moves funds into savings. I had dinner with Ethan last summer and suddenly realized he was describing an "Uberization" of savings, paralleling the financial industry's efforts to "uberize" payments, in the sense of making the mechanics disappear, like the non-exchange of money at the end of an Uber ride. Out of sight, out of mind. With Digit, you sign up, and you automatically start to save. I had always assumed that getting people to save requires fostering mindfulness - getting people to think long term instead of short term. Digit is going in the opposite direction - not mindfulness, but mindlessness. Again, effortlessness. Instead of hoping people will form habits that keep them focused all the time, on saving Digit just lets them decide to save one time. After that, they save. He's trying to drive the "minutes per year" spent on saving to nearly zero. No more budgets, expense tracking, figuring how much you should save and can save and did save. They're breaking all those practical barriers that keep most people stuck. I know it bothers some people to have consumers saving without thinking. We wish, instead, that everyone would become financially educated and focus on their life goals - you could call it developing the financial virtues. There are innovators working on that approach, too, using behavioral economics to get people motivated. Still, if the eat-your-spinach approach was going to work, it probably would have by now. It's time to try new tools. I know other companies working from the same logic. And here's an interesting twist. After Digit gets people started on effortless saving, they actually do switch over to mindfulness. They start texting their customers about daily savings progress. And they do it with humor which, as I've been saying, is a secret weapons of many fintech innovators. They are blowing up the boredom factor that keeps so many people from focusing on their finances. I asked Ethan for examples of this. Unfortunately I didn't get the jokes because they're aimed at millennials, but if you -- unlike me -- happen to know what's cooler than cool, Digit will send you this fun GIF. Speaking of millennials, Digit's average user is 27 years old. Some people want to dismiss fintech solutions for this group, because so many other consumers need tools too My answer to that is, the millennials are the early adopters of new technology. It makes sense to start with them. As these products get traction, they will broaden. Listen to Ethan, and many of our other guests, and you hear a big vision about remaking the financial lives of everyone. (And by the way, we do have a show coming up with Bee, which is reaching for a very different market.) At the age of 30, Ethan is at the forefront of the fintech revolution. Digit is a winner of the Financial Solutions Lab competition sponsored by CFSI and JPMorgan Chase, which focused its first year on solutions for the more than one-third of Americans who struggle with managing cash flow management. (Recall that another winner was Ascend - we talked with its founder, Steve Carlson, in Episode 9). Ethan explains how much money Digit has saved people so far (by the way, we recorded this discussion late last year, so his progress data are for 2015, not 2016). He explains how customers are using the savings they build up. He describes their investors and business model and plans. And he talks about how to design great financial tools, that are like smart phones - that people can just pick up and use, without needing manuals, much less lengthy federal disclosure documents. Speaking of those, Ethan really calls out the failures of disclosures. He also discusses the shift underway toward a more principles-based approach (echoing our episodes with other guests, including Thomas Curry). He describes, too, the huge obstacles to innovation that arise from well-intentioned government efforts, including the difficulties innovators face in working with banks. Ethan also had the most surprising answer I've gotten yet to my standard question on how he keeps up with technology change. Finally, for our many listeners who play Barefoot Innovation while you're carpooling to school in hopes it will inspire your kids to grow up and found the next PayPal, I should say I'm rating this episode PG-13, for language. Ethan uses a few words in our conversation that...let's put this way, you hardly ever hear them on National Public Radio. Learn more at www.digit.co and @hellodigit and @ebloch and find further links below: On banks opening up their APIs The book "Rainbow's End" CFSI's research on the U.S. Financial Diaries Note to Our Listeners: If you're enjoying Barefoot Innovation, please be sure write a review on ITunes and also click the Donate button, to help us can keep it growing! Last but not least, I am finally launching my long-in-the-making video series, Regulation Innovation. It's for people in the financial world contending with the top two disruptive challenges - regulation and technology innovation. It for both business and regulatory people, and for both traditional companies and innovators. I'll have much more information coming on this, but please come to www.jsbarefoot.com in March, and check it out! I promise, there is nothing else remotely like it. If you enjoy our work to bring together thought provoking ideas and people please consider a contribution to support the site. Support the Podcast Please subscribe to the podcast by opening your favorite podcast app and searching for "Jo Ann Barefoot", in TuneIn, or in iTunes.

Dominic Venturo, CIO of US Bank Visiting Dominic Venturo is a little like walking onto a James Bond movie set during the Q gadget briefing scene. There is a wonderful "wow" factor in encountering the most fascinating new technologies in banking. The title "CIO" used to mean Chief Information Officer. It still does, of course, but today that "I" increasingly stands for another word too: innovation. Dominic Venturo, the Chief Innovation Officer of U.S. Bank, reflects a growing trend of banks assigning specialized leaders to spearhead their work in innovative technology. U.S. Bank actually took this step long ago. As we learned in Episode 12 with CEO Richard Davis, this is the country's fifth largest bank, and its focus on innovation caused them to name Dominic for this role eight years ago. In fact, he was such an early user of Twitter that he got the extremely cool handle @innov8tr (be sure to follow him on Twitter - he's one of my favorites). I always love hearing the backgrounds of our podcast guests, and especially noticing how they break down between people with financial backgrounds, and people with anything but. Dominic is a career banker with 16 years at U.S. Bank and 26 years overall in financial services product development and management, commercial risk management, commercial lending and sales management. He talked with me about how he's complemented that background with a wide mix of the other skills. He has 25 people, including many who, as he says, probably "spent a lot of time in the principal's office." In our conversation, he talks about how to make these trouble-makers highly productive and more broadly about the "art" of making great innovation happen inside a big company. There's a lot of conventional advice about that challenge, including the need to wall-off the innovators. Dominic agrees with that, and also emphasizes that innovation must be a full-time job - he thinks it's delusional to imagine that part-time people will somehow stay on top of today's tech trends by catching up on their reading backlog after hours. At the same time, he talks a lot about how to keep innovation focused on the practical. One key, he says, is that "innovation loves constraints." Another is not to start with an abstract white board session, dreaming up brilliant solutions in search of problems, but rather to focus on finding the real problems that need to be solved - especially problems impacting the customer. When you do that, your bank will usually want them, even if implementation is going to take some work. At the same time, though, the practical focus has to be balanced with imagination and vision. Dominic's group tries to look 3-5 years ahead in thinking about the bank's operations, and at how people are behaving differently and doing jobs differently. They brainstorm trends and find the insights that will reshape markets and technologies. One key to getting this balance right is to set up new kinds of success metrics. Dominic discusses the dissonance between bank cultures built to keep risks and failures extremely low, versus innovation that requires trying a lot of things that will fail. Financial companies need new ways to keep score. Our conversation also covered the downside risks that innovation creates for consumers; his thoughts on how regulation impacts innovation; and his advice on how to keep up with technology change. As I mentioned in my year-end wrap up, I always advise bankers to attend some fintech conferences. Dominic shares his list of favorites, including Finovate, Bank Innovation, and SXSW (I'll see you there this year, and also check out my end-of-year interview with Chuck Harris of Netspend for my own list of suggestions, including Emerge). We also got Dominic's recommendations for fintech trend-watching: Wall Street Journal Personal Tech, TechCrunch, and qz.com. And last but not least, again, I recommend following him on Twitter for cutting edge insight on tech trends, mixed with humor, such as on much needed respites from the content overload. Dominic's background: A few highlights on Dominic's background. He is frequently featured as a keynote speaker at industry conferences and has been recognized by Bank Innovation as a Top Innovator in Financial Services (#3, 2013), Bank Systems & Technology as one of "Elite 8" CIOs (2012), Twin Cities Business Magazine as one of "200 Minnesotans You Should Know" (2011), "Bank Technology News as "Mobile Banker of the Year" (2011) and as "Top 10 Innovator" (2009) and by Paybefore Magazine as a "Top 5 Innovator" (2011). He also serves on the board of directors of the Minnesota Community and Technical College Foundation. He earned a bachelor's degree in finance from Oregon State University and is a graduate of the Pacific Coast Banking School at the University of Washington Graduate School of Banking. The Q Factor: In our discussion, Dominic shares examples of innovation successes at U.S. Bank, including "advances in mobile payments, voice bio-metrics, tokenization and integrated mobile and web commerce solutions." As often happens, though, I found that our discussion got even more interesting after we turned off the microphone. He showed me an amazing product demo that's still embargoed but that really wowed me. And we talked about the Internet of Things. And then, he admired my iPhone 6s - we met just after they came out, and I'd gotten one before he did. He started talking about the Live Photo tool, which he described as "Harry Potter feature." As often happens with me, I had a cool feature on my phone without even realizing it. So we recorded a little bonus feature as he showed me how to make a photo animation that looks a bit like the living portraits in Harry Potter's world. These are fun, as is my Google Photo tool dreaming up little animations for me using the photos I've taken. If you have Live Photo and don't know how to use it, here it is. Enjoy my conversation with Dominic Venturo. If you enjoy our work to bring together thought provoking ideas and people please consider a contribution to support the site. Support the podcast Please subscribe to the podcast by opening your favorite podcast app and searching for "Jo Ann Barefoot", or in iTunes.

I am absolutely delighted to share today's episode -- my conversation with Michael Barr. Most of our listeners know Michael as the former Assistant Treasury Secretary for Financial Institutions who shepherded the Obama administration's efforts on the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Fewer people may know of his role in developing the proposal for, and negotiating the enactment of, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is when I got to know him. He is now back at the University of Michigan (my own alma mater) as a law professor, and continues to be very active across a wide spectrum of consumer finance and financial regulation activities, and also on lending to small businesses. Michael has thought hard about the toughest challenges in consumer finance, drawing on both his government experience and his academic activities (among other things, he's a Rhodes Scholar). He also works extensively with innovators and nonprofits. In our conversation he offers insights on some of the most critical topics facing consumer finance. Perhaps the most central principle driving his ideas is behavioral economics - coming to grips with the reality that consumers are not perfectly rational, and don't have perfect information, in making financial decisions. "We ought to design both products and policy around the way human beings actually make decisions and behave," Michael tells me. See below for links to his research on this, including his paper "Behaviorally-Informed Regulation." One result of his behavioral focus is a refreshing readiness to rethink consumer financial education. At one point he says, "just as we couldn't explain how our smartphones operate," financial consumers don't necessarily need to know how financial products are designed, in order to use them effectively. He thinks, as I do, that today's technology can create simple new tools that nearly anyone can use, whether they have a sophisticated financial education, or not. Another issue he raises is his involvement in developing the "small business borrowers' bill of rights" (see our earlier podcast discussing this with Brian Graham of BancAlliance). There is growing concern that online small business lending is creating borrower risks as well as opportunities, especially as America shifts toward the so-called 1099 economy and more people run small businesses in ways that closely parallel consumer finance. Michael also explores the challenge of crafting regulation that enables innovation while still blocking harm. He says regulators sometimes allow harmful practices to emerge and grow until they hit a "tipping point," at which point they drive industry standards so low that good companies can't survive without adopting activities they would rather avoid. I agree with him that this is a key challenge, especially as innovation accelerates. If regulators intervene too early and aggressively, we'll have the government designing our financial products, instead of the market doing so. On the other hand, if they are too passive or too late in addressing really harmful practices - especially if they wait until after that tipping point has actually tipped - they will fail to protect large numbers of people from harm, and they may also find it difficult to act. Once products are widespread, there are strong political forces ready to defend them, as well as practical problems with potential regulatory impacts on businesses and sometimes even the financial system itself. I asked Michael for his advice about these kinds of challenges, for all the players in this ecosystem. I think you'll find his answers really interesting, including some thoughts he shares about the logic behind the design of the CFPB. I also asked him whether we might be moving toward a fundamentally new market model, in which technology-driven transparency will require financial companies to compete mostly on winning and keeping people's trust. His answer to that is thought-provoking, too. Michael was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Institutions from 2009-2010. He previously served as Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's Special Assistant, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Community Development Policy, as Special Advisor to President Bill Clinton, as Special Advisor and Counselor on the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department, and as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, an M. Phil in International Relations from Magdalen College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and his B.A., summa cum laude, with Honors in History, from Yale University. His activities today include serving on the boards of Lending Club (in Episode 5 we interviewed CEO Renaud LaPlanche) and Ripple, as well as ideas42, a behavioral economics research and development lab. He's on the FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. He's on the advisory board of CFSI and has advised its U.S. Financial Diaries Project (see our interview with Jennifer Tescher of CFSI for more). He is also a fellow at the Filene Research Institute. In his current role as Roy F. and Jean Humphrey Proffitt Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, Michael teaches courses in domestic and international financial regulation. He's also been instrumental in forming the University of Michigan's Center on Finance, Law and Policy, which integrates finance, law, business, and computer science to work on difficult problems facing the world, including how to make the financial system fairer and safer. I highly encourage you to peruse his faculty website to find more resources. Below you can find links to works referenced in the episode: Small Business Borrowers' Bill of Rights Michael's latest book "No Slack: The Financial Lives of Low-Income Americans" Hamilton Project paper on increasing access to capital for minority and women entrepreneurs Michael's paper on Behaviorally Informed Regulation co-authored with Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard University and Eldar Shafir, Princeton University And here is the site of the FDIC's Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion Enjoy my conversation with Michael Barr! If you enjoy our work to bring together thought provoking ideas and people please consider a contribution to support the site. Donate Please subscribe to the podcast by opening your favorite podcast app and searching for "Jo Ann Barefoot", or in iTunes.

Welcome to Barefoot innovation as we start into a fresh new year. Being appreciated! We are kicking off 2016 with a wonderful guest, Nitish Pandey of BMO, and also with exciting momentum for Barefoot Innovation. In December, we were named one of the top 9 fintech podcasts by FintechNews Switzerland. We are delighted to be counted among the best in the world, including the Breaking Banks show of my friend Brett King. (If you're enjoying Barefoot Innovation, please do consider donating to our efforts to produce it using the button below!) Innovation Nation – fintech in the UK That recognition of our series was especially timely, because I was in London at the time to participate in a roundtable of the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority on the topic of today's podcast. The FCA has taken the lead globally in proposing creation of a "regulatory sandbox" – a safe space in which financial innovators can experiment with ideas that might benefit consumers, but that could hit trip wires or raise concerns under today's rules. Americans should focus on this: the U.K. has adopted a national strategy, from its top leaders on down, of becoming the fintech capital of the world. One facet of that strategy is the FCA's launch ofProject Innovate, which has goals like this one: "We promote competition through disruptive innovation − innovation that offers new services to customers and challenges existing business models." Consider that language – the regulator is explicitly "promoting…disruptive innovation." The FCA's efforts include creating an Innovation HUB that provides support for promising innovation, and a methodical review of how regulation impacts innovation. Last year they formally requested public input on two crucial questions: what regulations are impeding beneficial innovation, and is there a need for new regulations to foster innovation? While digesting the resulting comments, they put out their proposal on the sandbox concept. They've been sharing these ideas globally and exploring very creative approaches, like whether it would make sense to create a "virtual sandbox" in which innovators could test certain ideas through shared data, without exposing real consumers to any risk at all. Lawrence Wintermeyer of Innovate Finance, speaking at the FCA's December sandbox roundtable, cited growing excitement around both "fintech" and "regtech." He argued that London has the "tech" of the U.S. west coast, the "fin" of New York, and the "reg" of Washington – all clustered in one city where everyone can get together by public transport in fifteen minutes. The U.K. has other innovation advantages over the U.S., including a more concentrated banking system and a much simpler regulatory structure. Startups are also attracted by the ability to "passport" UK activities throughout the European Union, offering easy access to large markets. All this contrasts sharply with the U.S. model in which innovators seeking national scale must undertake the complex process of securing either a bank charter or 50 state licenses, or both. Still, part of London's innovation success clearly stems from deciding to value the upside promise of innovation, in addition to policing the very real downside risk. The FCA's efforts include a conscious effort to be nimble – something that does not come easily to any regulatory system. The resulting vibrancy is palpable. On this side of the Atlantic In the U.S., the same thinking is gaining traction. Comptroller of the Currency Tom Curry has appointed anew task force for Responsible Innovation, as we discussed in our recent episode with him. The CFPB has its Project Catalyst innovation lab, and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco held a conference last fall on the "(R)evolution Underway" in financial services, addressing "how technological changes are presenting opportunities and challenges for financial institutions while compelling regulatory agencies to think about how innovation impacts the supervisory process." These U.S. discussions increasingly include exploration of creating a regulatory sandbox – which brings me to our guest for this episode. Nitish Pandey is Senior Vice-President & Chief Legal Officer, U.S. Personal & Commercial Banking, for BMO Financial Group of BMO Harris. He believes our financial ecosystem needs a safe sandbox in which to innovate (as did Jesse McWaters and Rob Galaski in our episode on the "Secrets of Fintech"). Nitish and I started discussing the sandbox concept last summer (before the U.K.'s proposal). I'd convened a roundtable on disruption of consumer finance and how to (and not to) regulate it. Nitish, whom I've known for years, came to the meeting armed with the most specific blueprint I had seen on these ideas. In the months since then, he's refined it and shared it publically several times. The goal of a sandbox approach is to allow testing of pro-consumer innovation, while assuring that customers are still well-protected. The issue has endless subtopics. For instance, is a sandbox really needed? How do current rules impede innovation -- if they do – and which ones are most problematic? Is it appropriate to use the concept of "risk tolerance" in consumer protection? If so, can risks be defined? Can they be quantified and measured? And, if a sandbox would help, how should it be designed? Do regulators have the legal power to waive or suspend rules to allow experimentation and if not, should they? What standards should innovators have to meet? How would experiments be time-limited? What standards should be used to permit them, and to judge their success? If new ideas prove out, should they be publicized? Should the whole market be allowed to adopt them? If so, would this require extensive rewriting of current rules? Will innovators have sufficient incentive to enter the sandbox, if competitors can simply adopt the ideas they pilot (in contrast to, say, government approval of new drugs after testing that ultimately produce patents)? How can innovators protect their confidential intellectual property? Would agency pre-review of sandbox proposals bog innovation down in bureaucracy, defeating the purpose of the whole exercise? And perhaps most importantly, how should consumers in a sandbox be protected? What limits should be placed on potential harm to them? Should they be compensated for any harm and if so, how? What disclosures should they receive? Should they have to give consent? How would harm be quantified? While Nitish doesn't try to answer all of these questions, he tackles many of the hardest ones. And he pinpoints a core issue that's widely underestimated. The problem is not just rigid and potentially counterproductive regulatory requirements. It's also the sheer cost and effort of implementing full-scope compliance for virtually any change. If businesses can't inexpensively test how customers would respond to an innovation, they won't offer it. And they can't test real-life response to new ideas today, without also building out massive compliance machinery – Nitish calls it the "pipes" – affecting nearly every function of the company. We're in a "Lean Startup" world today where innovators grow by designing and refining a minimum viable product (MVP) through quick, intensive consumer interaction. Traditional companies can't do this well, partly because their compliance systems weigh them down. Nitish has ideas how to design and execute a practical solution for this – without going bureaucrazy! Compliance as innovator? While I had Nitish with me, I also took the chance to have him share his advice on the revolution underway in the compliance function. He is the first bank compliance manager we've had as a guest, and a visionary in the field. He believes, as I do, that consumer financial protection is migrating from a rules-based system to an increasingly principles-based one. That shift is bringing permanent uncertainty which, in turn, requires deeply remaking the compliance management model. "It used to be, if you knew your regulations, you were fine," he says in our discussion, whereas today's compliance manager is a "true risk management professional who can be creative in the process and demonstrate excellent judgment as we rapidly move into an increasingly gray world." He lays out the new role of compliance in today's bank, why it's needed, the key changes required, and how to make it happen. Nitish's insight derives partly from his broad background. He has undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in Law, Economics and Management in his native Australia and has held positions ranging from marketing to nearly every facet of risk management. He spent a decade at American Express in Compliance, Risk Management and Operations, focusing on consumer, small business and commercial portfolios. He was Deputy Chief Compliance Officer for American Express Centurion Bank, responsible for the oversight and implementation of the bank's Compliance Program. In November 2014 he joined BMO as Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) for U.S. Personal and Commercial Banking. I hope you enjoy my talk with him as much as I did! More Links: BMO Bank Nitish's slides from his presentation The FCA's Project Innovate The FCA's Paper on the "Regulatory Sandbox" The CFPB's Project Catalyst CFSI's research on consumer financial wellness If you enjoy our work to bring together thought provoking ideas and people please consider a contribution to support the site. Donate Please subscribe to the podcast by opening your favorite podcast app and searching for "Jo Ann Barefoot", or in iTunes.