Barefoot Innovation Podcast show

Barefoot Innovation Podcast

Summary: Jo Ann Barefoot discussion disrupting innovation in the financial services sector and beyond.

Podcasts:

 Complete Financial Inclusion: The World Bank's Harish Natarajan | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

In this episode, Harish describes this whole transformative landscape. He talks about the Financial Inclusion Global Initiative, or FIGI, a three-year program with three partners, and three global themes -- cybersecurity, e-payments acceptance, and digital ID. He explains why people don’t have access to accounts, how digital ID can satisfy documentation requirements, and the varied regulatory models evolving in different counties. He talks the World Bank’s research on blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) as critical components of a better system.

 Know Your Customer: Alloy CRO Laura Spiekerman | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

My guest today has a company that is setting out to fix those. She is Laura Spiekerman, the Chief Revenue Officer of Alloy.

 Talking Through the Storm with Jan Lynn Owen | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

I am especially thrilled about today’s guest -- California DBO Commissioner Jan Owen -- because this episode has been years in the making. I’ve known Jan for a long time, and as anyone who knows her will attest, she’s a breath of fresh air in the regulatory world. She’s candid, she’s outspoken, she’s thought provoking, and she's fearless in tackling thorny issues. We’ve been looking for a good chance to sit down and talk, and we finally found one this summer.

 Machine-Readable Regulation: Compliance.AI CEO Kayvan Alikhani | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

A lot of people are working on this concept, both at regulatory agencies and at regtech firms. One leader in that effort is my guest today, Kayvan Alikhani, Co-founder and CEO of Compliance.ai. We both were speakers this year at the Comply 2018 conference in New York, and while we were there we found a chance to sit down and talk.

 Transforming Identity: GlobaliD CEO Greg Kidd | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Greg has an unusual background. He was involved from the early days of Ripple, Twitter, and Square. Unlike most Silicon Valley innovators, though, he’s also been a banking consultant and worked for the Fed Reserve Board

 Congressman Gregory Meeks on Win-Win Fintech | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Gregory Meeks is the United States Congressman representing the Fifth District of New York. He is also a leading member of the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services. I was able to sit down with him, in his Capitol Hill office on one recent, hot summer day, to talk about how technology is changing consumer finance and, especially, how it can expand financial inclusion.

 Innovation at a Small Bank: Radius CEO Mike Butler | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

As with our recent show with Bob Rivers of Eastern Bank (which is also based in Boston), Mike belongs to a small, but growing, group of CEO’s who are truly transforming their community banks through technology. When conversation turns to the tech future for community institutions, these two banks’ names always come up.

 Data that Deepens Financial Access: Experian and Lendup | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Experian and Lendup recently joined forces to explore using new kinds of data to widen financial inclusion. We all sat down to discuss it at the LendIt conference this spring in San Francisco.

 Regulatory Challenger: LabCFTC and Daniel Gorfine | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 01:05:46

More than any show we’ve done, this one puts you in the shoes of the regulatory agency and shows how their hands are tied by procedural prohibitions and requirements. I’d love to see someone do a study, maybe a graduate thesis, on how rules that were written in an older, slower era may now undermine the ability of regulators to keep up with exponential change in technology. We could use suggestions on updating them for the digital age. And remember, it’s an issue much broader than finance.

 Regulation Revolution: The Financial Conduct Authority and Digitally-Native Regulatory Design | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:56:23

This is the most unique, and the most consequential, show we’ve ever done. If our thousands of listeners all think about it and especially if you share it widely, it has the most potential to actually change the financial regulatory world for the better and also in turn, therefore, to improve the financial world, too. It goes right into the heart of the most important work, being done by the most innovative people, on redesigning regulation for the digital age.

 Innovation and Community Banks: Eastern Bank CEO Bob Rivers | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:59:12

In our conversation, Bob gives a road map for how a community bank can undertake this kind of innovation -- how to position it, structure it, staff it, fund it, and run it; how much capital it needs; how to price the services; how much to integrate the innovation team with the bank versus leave it independent; and how to use tech-world concepts like agile design and minimum viable products, or MVP’s. He also explains how an initiative like this can radically transform a small bank’s ability to attract tech talent, and how it can remake the bank’s culture, itself.

 The Courage to Change: Former Wells Fargo BSA Officer Jim Richards | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 01:13:24

Jim Richards, founder of the new firm, RegTech Consulting, and I think he used the word “courage” six times, in our talk. We sat down together at this year’s LendIt conference in San Francisco, just a few days after Jim had retired from his position as the Bank Secrecy Act Officer and Global Head of Financial Crimes Risk management at Wells Fargo, a job he held for more than twelve years. He’s also an attorney and a deep expert in financial crime. Jim is famously outspoken. He’s also funny (he says the book he wrote on transnational financial crime sold more copies in Russian than in English. Most of all, though, he’s frustrated. He thinks we can do better in fighting financial crime.

 How to Change the World: The Gates Foundation’s Michael Wiegand | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 01:07:21

Anyone interested in emerging markets will find it fascinating, but I also recommend it to everyone who cares about consumer finance, financial protection, inclusion, and technology in the developed world as well. As I’ve said in other shows, developing countries are in many ways ahead of the larger economies in both fintech and regtech. That’s mainly because their consumer financial markets are already mostly digital -- i.e. delivered through the mobile phone -- and therefore easier to regulate through digital means. It’s also because the rush of new, lower-income consumers into these markets makes it critical for regulators to figure out how to protect them. That is going to require new regulatory tools that are already being designed.

 Affordable Financial Advice: Nerdwallet CEO Tim Chen | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:40:20

In today’s episode, he describes the remarkable journey he’s taken so far in his still-young life, which has had dramatic ups and downs -- (as he says, when one door closes, a bigger gate may open). NerdWallet, which he founded at age 26, now helps more than 100 million people every year shop for and choose financial products that meet their needs. NerdWallet is a matchmaker, guiding consumers to find the financial products that fit them best, and doing it in a way that automates large swaths of the financial advisory process in order to make advice affordable for people who don’t qualify for a personal wealth manager.

 Sponsor Bank: Cross River Bank’s CEO Gilles Gade | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:37:28

My guest today is pioneering a crucial innovation within the innovation landscape in finance -- by providing banking services to fintechs through a platform-based financial services model known as the sponsor bank, or partner bank.

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