Summary: Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Tearsheet’s editor in chief, Zack Miller. We’ve been talking a lot about Buy Now, Pay Later and its role in payments, lending, and banking. Today we’re going behind the scenes in BNPL to see how the sausage is made. I’m joined by Affirm’s head of risk, Karthik Ramkumar. He leads a team of dozens of people as he manages all aspects of financial risk, including consumer credit, consumer fraud, merchant credit and merchant fraud. Our discussion is pretty far reaching – from talking about the evolution of the underwriting model, to sought after skillsets to address fraud to mental health in the workplace. If you’re interested in what goes into building a world-class risk operation at one of the top firms in the space, you’re going to want to spend the next 25 minutes with us. Karthik Ramkumar is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.
