Aamna Hussain, host of “A girl in the product world”, interviews me with her somewhat tricksy questions….

We worked together in Tandem Bank, while she worked with one of our Tech Partners back then, so she brings this perspective of seeing us grow the bank from scratch. She queries me on our culture in Tandem Bank, how was it actually working with our Tandem CEO.

As a curious product leader she is, she then gets deeper into my mind to understand the real journey on how come I ended up moving to Malaysia to help launch and grow BigPay. We explore the FinTech trends (at the time of recording), how to go about Market Expansion, and how to challenge your CEO when you believe what we are about to do is not the right thing. We share a passion for personal development, so she asked about my “worst day in this crazy financial services world”, how did I overcome it, and why mentoring is so important to me.

If you enjoy this Purpose Driven FinTech episode it would mean the world if you subscribe and give it a follow so that we can have more impact. Remember to connect in YouTube or LinkedIn to keep the conversation going.

Let’s dive into it!

👉 You can find Aamna here

1. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aamna-hussain-7981a677/
2. A Girl in the Product World Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/62HPd4JRR85Sofut4Z2Rck
3. 
   

👉 And you can find Monica here:

1. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicamillares/
2. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@moni_millares
3. TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moni_millares
4. Website: https://moni-millares.mystrikingly.com/

If you enjoy this pod, please follow and leave a 5 star rating on Spotify and a review on Apple podcasts

Questions:

1. How to build challenger bank culture from scratch?
2. What is it like working with startup CEO?
3. How to move countries for FinTech opportunity?
4. What are challenges of market expansion in Southeast Asia?
5. How to challenge CEO when you disagree?
6. What was Tandem Bank's Olympic dream team culture?
7. How to embed yourself in new market culture?
8. What is the difference between UK and Asian FinTech markets?
9. How to transition from corporate to startup leadership?
10. What is worst day in FinTech career?
11. How to overcome funding crisis in startups?
12. What is the importance of mentoring in FinTech?
13. How to do user research in different countries?
14. What is the role of leadership in building culture?
15. How to learn by osmosis from founders?
16. What are similarities between Mexico and Malaysia markets?
17. How to customize products for new markets?
18. What is the value of diverse leadership teams?
19. How to build psychological safety in startups?
20. What is the domino effect of good mentorship?

—

For inquiries about coaching, collabs, sponsoring the podcast or creating or editing your podcast email Monica at fintechwithmoni@gmail.com

Disclaimer: This episode does not constitute professional nor financial advice and does not represent the opinion nor views of my current, past or future employers. The guest has agreed to record and release our conversation for the use of this podcast and promotion in social media.

This episode was first released in June 2023 at A Girl in the Product World Podcast here - https://open.spotify.com/show/62HPd4JRR85Sofut4Z2Rck

You get to feel the market rather than to understand logically the market. And then you start getting the nudge of what are the differences, therefore, the how you need to communicate. And when you couple that with, let's say, the science and art of doing user research, you start seeing patterns, but from a much more.

Aamna Hussain: Hello everyone and welcome back to a girl in the product world for the season two episode one I'm so excited to bring this to you. This is our first video recording that's going to be published so so excited and even more excited to bring to you my special guest Who's very dear to my heart.

I've been following her journey And she's amazing And she is Monika. Hello,

Monica Millares: Monika. Hello, Kayamana. Hello, everyone. Really very happy to be here. Thank you. Thanks for the invite. Oh, it

She is a fintech product leader and she started off her career working for some of the world's biggest brands such as Visa and Barclaycard. She was one of the first joiners of Tandem Bank, which you may have heard of. Which is for those of you on, not in the UK it was a, it is a UK challenger bank and we'll go into that a little bit later.

And she was working with their CEO on building the strategy for the launch of Tenenbank. She now works for BigPay based in Malaysia within product. She's also on the board for PayEd and she runs her own podcast called Purpose Driven FinTech. Monica. Welcome.

Monica Millares: Thank you. Thanks, Amna. Thanks so much.

Aamna Hussain: Now let's get right into this. Could you please describe in your own words your journey? and where you are

And one of my friends in high school, she was like, no. You're good at science. You don't study gastronomy. You study engineering. And because of her, I ended up studying engineering, which then led me to find my first job, not in the travel or hotel industry, but instead in a bank, in a development bank.

So my very first job was in a development bank in Mexico. And it happened to be in the product team. So I was very lucky. And so basically I had a very early exposure to product since the beginning of my career, same as financial services. And then basically after that role, I moved to the UK to study my master's IT management.

So it's like I would run, I would work with all the departments in the company, let's say. Operations, legal customer service, data, like all of that. And then I go to work with them to launch the campaign. And then basically what happened was like, I had all this exposure. And when they basically, I was looking, they were looking, I met Ricky Knox, who's the founder of Tandem Bank.

I said, Oh, I'm going to a new bank. I said, like a new bank. Are you sure? What's the name? And I said, Oh, it still doesn't have a name. It's very early stages. And the response was like, Are you sure it's not a scam? I was like they seem like decent. So it was that early stages that the company was still like in stealth mode.

So whenever I was like, I want to learn, I want, I learned by osmosis. I want to sit next to you. I want to work with you. They did everything that they could for me to work with them. So that's how I learned to build a bank from scratch by learning from people who had already built a FinTech from scratch.

And basically that like my years in tandem were absolutely amazing. And then an opportunity came up. I got a phone call one day. They were like, Hey, there's opportunity in Asia. I said, no, thank you. Bye bye. Not interested. I'm happy in London. And then a month later, they called me again and they were like, Hey, there's opportunity.

I was like, no, tell me more. And then to make the story, the long story short, basically they were like, These guys, they are really interested. They are in London. The founders are in London. Why don't you go for a coffee? There is nothing to lose. That's

Aamna Hussain: where it all starts,

I was like it's a good sales tactic, but yeah, there's nothing to lose. I'll go for a coffee. And that's it. That was the beginning of the second the second journey that it was like, I ended up moving to Malaysia as part of the founding team of BigBay leading the product team. And then basically, I think the big step change for me was I felt like in tandem, I was part of the team.

That was helping the leadership team build a bank and they had experience on how to do this. And then now I was moving. It was scary and exciting. So I was moving to another country, to another continent, like to a new company, new culture altogether. But instead of being part of the team supporting the leadership team, this time I was.

And as of today we have about 1. 37 million. Transacting customers, which is a lot. We are live in Malaysia, in Singapore and expanding in Southeast Asia very soon too. So it's been. A fascinating journey. The company we started of course, like startup right now we have over 200 people. So even my role has changed a lot in the past six years, I've covered all sorts of products that you can think about.

Aamna Hussain: Wow. I'm not sure fascinating does that journey justice, but wow, amazing.

And there's so much to unpack there. And I'm going to start at Tandem. So what is it actually like sitting with the CEO? Because I've met Ricky Knox and I used to be at the Tandem offices on the supplier side. I've met him and amazing guy. But, whoa, he's a personality. What is that actually like to be amongst people like that?

How did that make you feel? I know you learn a lot,

So I was there to learn from him. I was not from him, like from everyone. Because what Ricky did really well. I remember I used to tell my family and friends, it was like like when you go to the Olympics, you have like really good teams and then you have probably the A team, the Olympics team.

So Ricky did an amazing job in hiring the Olympics team of FinTech basically. And what he did is he didn't bring a bunch of bankers. Or financial services people. He brought very diverse backgrounds with no financial services experience so that then we could innovate and see things in a different manner.

Behavior with their words, with their promises, with their energy, with everything over the years, not one time, but like week by week, month by month, they demonstrated to me what it feels like when someone really believes in you. So basically they gave me the project of we're building a bank from scratch, Monica, you need to launch credit cards.

So I think that's what I, the confidence Monica that you see today, the risk taker, the courage, the, all of that, I had it in me. Yes. I had it in me. But it was because of my experience with them that came to life later. So even especially when I first moved, like when I struggled, even though I did not call them, I was like, they are there for me as like they were my ex bosses, but it's I know I can.

Aamna Hussain: Absolutely love that. And by the way, I can 100 percent attest to the culture that was created at Tandem. Just as you described, it was so obvious to see that is how everyone felt.

It was this open atmosphere that We on the supplier side, I'll be honest, we were envious of it. Because anyone could literally go and speak to Ricky when he was at his desk. Go and speak to Nick. Everyone was on the same mission. And you're right. I met so many people within Tandem from diverse backgrounds, but everyone was just so on it.

Monica Millares: It really is that difference.

Yes. And that's also why I'm so passionate about mentoring and the podcast and sharing all that because like they did that for me. Like it's that domino effect. I know how it feels. I know the impact that it had in my life. Therefore, you just have to do it for someone because you want to.

Aamna Hussain: Love it. Yeah.

Like now you, obviously you moved to Malaysia and obviously, yeah. It's a huge change for anyone to go through. I know you had the coffee and the rest is history, you've done revolutionary work there. How is it different compared to the UK or other fintech markets? Because you yourself obviously you are from Mexico.

Monica Millares: challenges that you've had? It's fascinating. So when I made the decision to move, I flew to Malaysia for three days when I was still in tandem, right? And then when I brainwashed myself, I was like they speak English. They drive on the same side. They have the similar brands. They had Ted Baker right in front of me. I was like, I was like, it's familiar. And then on the other side, like the guys that were really nice convincing me and great hosts, they were like, no, but there's a lot of traffic and it rains a lot and there's a lot of inequality and there's also poverty and corruption.

So you could be out and about in London and you could see like the pink card and the Revolut card. And it was the thing when I moved to Malaysia. that was non existent. So FinTech as such was in very early stages. And when I first got here and we were doing a lot of user testing, just like the very first version of the product, and it was super buggy.

So that was a friction point because the market was not familiar with what a FinTech was. So it took us months to educate people and go through that barrier. Of course, after COVID, everything changed, right? Because now everything is super digitalized. But even before COVID, like we were one of the very first FinTechs and the difference was Other fintechs were popping up in the market, but they were part of way bigger groups, not a smaller independent.

They were buying customers. We never did that. So our product was very based on the value that we were giving to customers, rather the value that we were buying customers with. So I think the biggest difference. Against the UK right now right then, back then was that the market maturity, it was extremely fresh here.

And it's funny because like now, six years later, like Asia is like in some elements, it's in my opinion, ahead of the UK. So the crossword, the QR payments, like the national QR payments, it's been active in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia like many of the countries. For over a year now, and it's widely adopted.

So not everyone accepts cards. So if you are not from that country, you need to have access to the QR code, you need to have a local bank. But now that's changing. Now it's cross border interoperable QR payments. So I, with a Malaysian bank, travel to Thailand or Singapore and I use my same app and I scan in the local merchants with a national QR code from Thailand, let's say.

So it's cool. It's grown a lot. That's amazing.

So I would use a research and everything. We had to be very cognizant of the fact that these are not UK customers. They bank in a very different way. So can you tell us a little bit more about how you get over that resistance and actually educate people at what does that. involve?

Monica Millares: That's a very deep question that I'm not sure we all have the answer to, but what I like the thread that I'm seeing here, it's like, Hey, when you, let's say open in another market and you have your product and you're like, Hey, we need to customize the product.

People you get when you do the user research like face to face, you get to feel the market rather than to understand logically the market and then given that you get to feel the market rather than logically understand, you start getting that notch of what are the differences. Therefore, the, how you need to communicate and when you couple that with, let's say the science and art of doing user research, you start seeing patterns, but from a much more informed, intuitive, and also data [00:22:00] driven place rather than just logic.

I don't know if that makes sense, but yeah it's about because then when you understand the customer at that level in their context, then it's, there's no, the resistance. is less because you get them. Yeah. You understand that you get them, but then it's easier. There's not that barrier of you coming as a, especially if you're coming as a foreign entity, it's like going as a foreign entity and then you're trying to impose your product.

And it's like, Why? And

Aamna Hussain: going through that process, I wonder, do you ever

Monica Millares: think, are we doing the right thing? Oh, all the time.

Aamna Hussain: Talk us through that because that, that, that can be very scary. A lot of people, a lot of companies will base their whole business case off a hypothesis. And I think as a, as teens, sometimes you don't have the chance to prove it wrong.

Monica Millares: Okay. So there's two questions in there. I'll answer the first one, the last one first.

How did you tell your CEOs? You just tell them bluntly. I don't think this is going to work. And then they'll look at you. That's happened to me before, especially when I moved to Malaysia back then. I remember this conversation perfectly and it's this is not going to work. He was like, what do you mean?

Because if you are, then you're doing yourself and the team and the company a disservice. So you just have to be upfront and have the difficult conversations. And then you may be like, I may be hallucinating, but my assumption is that, and if the CEO or the management team are receptive, you as a team could listen to that hunch and be like, Oh, tell me more rather than be defensive, tell me more.

Aamna Hussain: good point. And I think it's something that I've certainly found working with, certainly startups and smaller companies

Monica Millares: is you have to have this.

Aamna Hussain: bravery about you and everyone around you also has to be quite brave. And sometimes that can be very hard because that could even be feedback for your team. That's someone else's being brave with sharing. So it's certainly a characteristic that I found is something you need to really arm yourself with.

Monica Millares: Yeah. I forgot the first question. So did I. I'm like, there were two questions in there. I

Aamna Hussain: think it was more around. It's a similar thing. How You question yourself with, is this the right thing to do and how do you handle

And the team that says, Hey, build the thing, build the MVP, ship as fast as you can, put it in the hands of the customer. And that gives you the feedback. I'm in the middle, I think I'm more towards the ship something fast MVP and then build upon that, but do it in a smart way, which means don't build something fast blindly do all the user research, but don't get stuck in the user research so much that you're delaying the launch.

As a startup, you're like like I said, like I used to sit next to a CEO, right? Like you just hang out with a very small team. So decision making can be fast and execution can be fast and smart. You have the ability to move very fast and Try. But you need to be smart, too. Yeah.

Aamna Hussain: And everything you said there about the big incumbents is, they don't have that speed.

And from my experience of working in fintech, I've learned the sheer scale of it and all the things that are involved and I've seen many people make a career out of just one area, for example, payments. We say payments is, if you think about it, it's part of a transaction, it's part of how we handle our money, but it's huge within itself and that there are all sorts of, roles around it as well. What area of fintech do you enjoy the most and why?

And one of the things that I love is the discovery process, love doing discovery process, love talking to customers, love going to interviews, focus groups, and all that stuff. So all of that brainstorming process, I think it has a little bit more of heart and soul when it's for a consumer than for a.

Another business as in large business. But when I say consumer like consumers and small businesses as well. So they fall in that category. So I would say that's my area, like B2C rather than B2B, but I'm open, of course, like in the future Oh, let's try something else.

Aamna Hussain: Oh, of course. Yeah.

Monica Millares: Exactly. Versus copyrights. Yes.

Aamna Hussain: Very cool. So then, FinTech is exciting. But we all know how stressful it can be. And listening to your story as well, as exciting and refreshing as it is.

I can imagine that there is a lot of stress there. Can you share what has been your worst day in this crazy financial services world that we know? And why, and how

you

Monica Millares: overcame it. My worst day. Ah, yes, I know. And it's not what people may think. The worst day in my fintech career was when Tandem went through the funding crisis.

We had built the bank. We had a community of co found, we call them co founders, but it's basically early stage customers. I were raving fans. Let's say that helped us build the bank. It was a community. And then we were getting ready to launch. Ricky had launched, had secured 30 million pounds, which is a lot of money.

I was living with a, I was flat sharing and I was with a creepy landlord. So I remember that week I was like, Oh my God, because I cried in the office. Rebecca was there and I was like, Rebecca was like, are you okay? I'm like, no, everything's falling apart. Like the house situation and now the bank doesn't like we've lost all the money, but it's very interesting because the fact that we had lost all the money overnight, that meant that it was the end.

And it was emotional. And I didn't know how engaged I was with work, how much I loved work, until I was like, oh my god, this is horrible.

Aamna Hussain: It's a very good display of your passion.

But it makes complete sense. Maybe you were there from the beginning. and you were so immersed in it and I think everyone was so immersed in it and I remember when it happened and it was absolutely devastating and also just reading it from an external point of view it was awful so I can't imagine what it was like for you.

How did you bounce back?

And they were equally devastated as I like you can see in people's faces and everything. It's like people were stressed out. I could see that in them. But then by day three or something after they shared the news, they were back into their high performance mode. And I was like, Oh, wow, that's impressive.

I saw them, how they were knocked out with these news. And they were human and they showed emotion and their facial expression showed emotion. But within two days or so, they were back in high performance mode to save the company. And we just all went back into high performance mode to be able to continue.

Aamna Hussain: example of how they've been an example and have led And I love what you said there also, they were human, so for the first two days they actually showed they were stressed and it was very open for everyone to see and you almost all took that grieving time together.

And then you bounce back together as well, which is it's a lovely thing to

Monica Millares: hear. And to add to that, the management team had to make very tough decisions. Like Ruth left the company. I think Nick also left the company at the time, but these were decisions of how are we going to restructure the company such that the company has the best chance to survive.

And they made really difficult decisions that affected them personally. Yeah. And that was impressive. Respected them a little bit more.

Amazing. Right now, given your vast experience, what would you say are the top trends in the FinTech world on a global level?

And I am. To be honest with you, I couldn't wait to ask you this question because of your experience but also your global coverage as well, because I think from experience as well, like looking at how finance in general is seen in different parts of the world and also within different demographics me working within Islamic finance, I've seen how it's different between men and women and between the different age groups as well.

So what would you say are the top kind of trends globally? Or is it that it's just completely different everywhere?

That now they are becoming international as well. And this is without using Visa, MasterCard, the usual rails. This is like proper interoperability that I live in Malaysia. I traveled to Singapore and I can scan. I traveled to India and I can scan without changing my app. That is like amazing. But as part of that interoperability.

That's like a big one. That's number one. Number two is The big trend that it's starting, but it has to accelerate very soon is green finance. And then there's two, two, three elements to that. One is let's say sharing economies, how our customers starting to change their behavior. How are we Transcribed Going to become, let's say, less consumer driven and then how are fintechs going to support that because it's not good for buy now pay later, right?

And right now, we don't have a strong answer, but we will, it's just a matter of time. We will come up with an answer that it's like, Hey, if we were to use digital currencies and the energy consumption. At some point, it has to be like net zero, but the third bullet point, let's say within green finance is the regulators.

So that is huge. I think we're going to see a big boom. And then the fourth one that it's obvious, but not obvious. It's a, obviously it's the AI. How is it going to impact the industry? I think there's two ways, two angles to this one. The first one is hyper personalization of services. So we will properly start to see products and services customized to me and my financial needs.

When I think of a department, whether that's product finance, marketing, CE, like whichever department I think of, I can think of use cases on how to use ChatGPT. That will make my job so much easier. So there's fear that ChatGPT slash AI tools will replace people. I think we need to turn that around its head and be like, how can I make a super humans?

We're under banked and the other bunch of billion that to me right now, everyone is under banked with the rising cost of living. We are all under bank. We're on the on their financial stress unless you're a super millionaire, like who's not struggling with stress right now, the financial stress right now, everyone is.

We say during COVID, we're going to see it again. Therefore all the KYC fraud monitoring, transaction monitoring companies within the industry. If they are not working on this already they are already behind because whomever is working on this is going to win big time. And then because of all of these things, this is my very personal opinion, is that the future of FinTech Is to be more human.

Aamna Hussain: And I love that we got a preview into money.

So much there. But there's two points that I really want to pick on

Monica Millares: is with green

Aamna Hussain: banking. It is something that's growing. People are more conscious of it. What's the impact of us not being green with within the financial services?

Monica Millares: I'm not the expert on green as such. However. What I'll answer the question the opposite way.

We all have A phone, an app, like online banking, like it's part of our lives. It's just like eating and breathing. So it could be very irresponsible of all of us if we were not doing something about it, because we have the potential and the responsibility and the impact and the infrastructure and the brains and the people and the money to do it.

If we choose not to do it, then we know where the world is going. Like it's a very dark future for everyone.

That's it.

Aamna Hussain: Absolutely. And when you talk about unbanked people, and you

Monica Millares: also said people

Monica Millares: at a level where they are

Aamna Hussain: where they should be at peace

Monica Millares: with their banking?

I think you use the right word. That is my personal belief that it's we I believe in financial safety for all. And if I were to summarize financial safety is that I feel at peace. I feel at peace with my with my finances. I can buy what I need. I can also afford like a holiday, a luxury, a blouse, or like I can afford that.

I consider myself underbanked. Do I have a very strong retirement plan? No. Do I live outside of Mexico, outside of UK and in Malaysia where I cannot get a mortgage? Where do I get a mortgage? I'm like, I'm underbanked. And if I'm underbanked, every single one of us has an element of underbanked in our very particular way.

That's why. Hyper personalization is so important because the definition of underbanked will be different for everyone. Oh,

Could you tell us more about why it's so important to you because you do a lot of work on mentoring, but also empowering women as well. And it's clearly a passion of yours. Why is it so important to you?

Monica Millares: I'm like, you answer, you ask very good questions. I'm like, I don't know. I do know, but I'm like, oh, I haven't expressed this before, not in a podcast.

I will not use it. I will not use it. And at some point I wanted this coaching program. And I just did. But the reason why I wanted that coaching program was because I was in pain and I was looking for solutions and I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't take drugs. So I didn't go that route. I went the healthy route, which is good.

So it's just like gratitude to all the people that did support me in the journey. And I just look back and I was like I was very lucky that I was in pain, but I saw, I found a solution in front of me and I pursued that solution. I paid for it. Yes, it's the best investment that I've ever done.

Aamna Hussain: grown yourself out of being

Monica Millares: in a bad place.

Oh, it was that time. It was that time when I got my first job at Visa. He gave the job to me when at the time we as foreigners, we knew jobs go first to Brits, [00:53:00] second to Europeans. They don't go to Mexicans, but he did. Yeah. And then eventually, like when I moved to Barclays, it was same. I applied for the job and my future manager happened to be friends or colleagues or something with one of my colleagues in my previous job.

Asked for, Oh, how about this girl, Monica? And this other woman she spoke very highly of me, and that's it, that's how I got the job, right? It's because of all these little quote unquote coincidences and acts of kindness from different people. that I've been able to grow.

Aamna Hussain: And I love that you recognize it as well, because I feel a lot of us don't, we don't learn from people enough and also the positives that they give us.

I think sometimes we do it because we get that help, but we don't realize it.

Monica Millares: Exactly. And I think right now it's easier because of internet. Yes. So the podcast is mentoring at scale, social media is mentoring at scale. I don't need to be sitting. If Ricky Knox had a podcast, I don't need to sit next to him and work with him to learn from him.

I can just listen to his thoughts. So it's social media is allowing us to amplify mentoring.

Thank you so much. And I'm so excited for your future.

Monica Millares: Thank you. Thank you, Abner. It's been a pleasure. You asked really good questions.

Aamna Hussain: Thank you.

Monica Millares: Thank you so much. Bye bye. Bye bye.