Today on Bridging the Gap Susanne Chishti joins us from London. Susanne is the CEO of The Fintech Circle, author and co-author of 8 books, a keynote speaker, a former Morgan Stanley Asset Management employee, and successful and award-winning woman in the fintech industry. 

In this episode, Susanne sheds light on the challenges financial advisors face, shares the knowledge of the mindset behind her books, and the key lessons and takeaways for consumers. Matt and Susanne also discuss how AI technology can be utilized within our industry, and how it can augment, but not replace, the advice provided by financial advisors. 

Susanne also dives into how she helps tech startups scale up and sell more to financial institutions, where she sees technology evolving in the future, and how women in the industry are making an impact within financial services and fintech. 

Susanne Chishti Bio:

Susanne Chishti is the CEO of FINTECH Circle, Europe's 1st Investor Network focused on fintech investments and a leading fintech innovation, learning and communications platform. She is also the Co-Editor of the Bestseller "The FINTECH Book" which has been translated into 10 languages and is sold across 107 countries, The WealthTECH Book, The InsurTECH Book, The PAYTECH Book, The AI Book and The LEGALTECH Book (published by WILEY in 2020). She is also a board member of a FTSE 250 company CMC Markets PLC, a UK bank Crown Agents Bank and the fintech company scaleup Lenderwize.

Awards:

1. Top 32 Fintech Leaders in the UK (Business Leaders, Sept 2020)
2. Top 24th Fintech Influencer in the World (Onalytica, 2020) - among the Top 100 Fintech Influencers globally
3. Winner of the Fintech Champion of the Year Award 2019 (Women in Finance Awards)
4. Social Media Influencer of the Year 2018 (Investment Week)
5. Top 7 Crypto Experts globally 2018 (Inc Magazine)
6. City Innovator - Inspirational Woman in 2016
7. European Digital Financial Services ‘Power 50’, an independent ranking of the most influential people in digital financial services in Europe (2015)
8. Top 5 ESG Influencers Globally (Refinitiv, 2020) and top 100 Fintech Influencers globally (Refinitiv, Sept 2020)

Susanne has also been a fintech TV Commentator on CNBC and a guest lecturer on financial technology at the University of Cambridge and Warwick Business School.

After completing her MBA she started her career working for a fintech company (before the term "fintech" was being invented) in the Silicon Valley 25 years ago. She then worked more than 15 years’ across Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley and Accenture in London and Hong Kong. Susanne can be followed on twitter, instagram and LinkedIn under @SusanneChishti.

If you need anything else, pls let me know. In terms of tech for the podcast, which systems would you like to use? Thanks,

Susanne Chishti

CEO | FINTECH Circle & Co-Editor The FINTECH Book Series

Investor & Board Member

www.FINTECHCircle.com

Email: susanne.chishti@fintechcircle.com

Fintech for Good - Fintech Circle

Follow Us And Find More Content For Financial Advisors and Wealth Management Firms At:

www.mattreiner.com

YouTube

Twitter

LinkedIn

These are what adds value, because you want to add more

value more often to your clients. But you can't do this anymore

just on your own time. You need advice. You need help yourself.

That's where technology comes in. Yes. Today on Bridging

the Gap all the way from London, I am joined

by Suzanne Chaisti. Suzanne is the CEO

of The Fintech Circle, author and co author of eight

books, a keynote speaker and a successful and award

winning woman in the fintech industry. She is

dynamic. We jump into the conversation with Suzanne as she

speaks about her books, the knowledge behind the mindset

of these books and the lessons consumers will take away

when reading her books. Suzanne also dives into how

she helps tech startups scale up and sell

more to financial institutions, where she sees the technology

evolving in the future. And also we talk about women in

the industry and how women are making an impact within financial

services and the fintech industry. It was just an all

around awesome conversation. Suzanne was an incredible guest.

She brought so much insight to the table and it was

just an amazing and great conversation. So enough with

me. Let's jump into the episode with Suzanne.

This is Bridging the Gap with your host,

Matt Reiner. Suzanne chisty

from London, but born and raised in Austria, world flavor

here today on Bridging The Gap. Thank you so much for taking time out of

your busy day to join us here on Bridging The Gap. How are you?

How's everything going over in London? Thanks,

Matt, for inviting me to join the podcast

today. I'm really excited to be here in London. It's beautiful

here at the moment, so sunny, shining. So really happy to report

from what's going on in the UK. Across Europe as well.

Very nice. I love that. And so how long have you been

in London? You said you were born originally from Austria

and now you're in London. So how long have you been in London for?

Yes, I'm originally from Vienna, which is a city of music in

Mozart, as you know, and wonderful food and

wine. And then I came to Berkeley to study,

actually at the University of Berkeley, doing my MBA. And then

I moved to Accenture, working for consultancies

and working for banks, and they moved me to London. This was about 25

years ago, Matt. So long time. And then I had my family here,

my children, so I decided to stay in London. But I still

go back to Austria twice a year. Once for skiing,

which is mandatory for us, and once in summer

holidays. Very nice. And I actually was reading

somewhere recently, I think, and I may be misquoting

it, but I think Vienna by The Economist was

rated the best place to live. The best place to

live, is that right? Vienna, Australia. It is true, because lifestyle,

the quality of life is just fantastic. It's so safe, it's very

clean. It's just very happy. It's a very happy nation.

As soon as you go there, you feel at ease, you enjoy life.

And I think that's what we all need more of. I think after two years

of COVID. Gosh, can Vienna support the

entire world? Can we all just move to Vienna? Australia will be able to support

us all. Can we all live there? Yeah. You're all welcome to

come and visit. Such a beautiful city. There's so much to see and

so much culture and lovely food from Venus, schnitzel, apple,

Strudel, all these specialties and, of course, amazing music.

And so definitely you should add it to your list,

Matt, to visit Europe and to visit Vienna and Austria.

It wasn't on the list. Now it's on the top of the list. It's easy.

I'm very easily influenced. They always say that salespeople are easiest to

be sold, and you sold me on that very easily done deal.

I'm going to Vienna, my wife and I, and we're going to take our kids.

Maybe we'll leave our kids so that it's still a happy place.

Just kidding. I love my kids. They're the best. They're just young.

Well, I want to jump into this because you are just amazing.

I mean, I can't believe everything you're involved in and everything

you've done. I was counting here, I think it's three,

six, seven books you've written in a span

of basically five years,

which is absolutely incredible. I've written a few books myself. I can't

even imagine writing that many books in that period of time. And we talked a

little bit about your background. You were at Berkeley, you were at Accenture, you went

back to London. But let's go from those time in

London 25 years ago to where you are today. Tell us about that journey.

How did you get to this point to write seven books,

head up the Fintech Circle, you're a

footsie board member, the Fintech book series. Like, so much

going on. Tell us about your journey. And I'm also curious, I always like to

ask people, was this what you wanted to be when you grew up? When you

were ten, 1112, what did you want to be? Were you like, I want to

be in finance, or was it something different? Yes,

wonderful questions. Maybe I almost have to go

back to Berkeley, Matt, because when I was studying in Berkeley, it was at

the time the Internet was being invented.

When you think back 20 years ago, we had Netscape had its IPO,

we had the first Viet yahoo was being launched

in Cupertino, and I was studying there in 95,

94. And I remember I was

a young student from Austria, and I did not

realize that the Internet would change our world and our lives.

And therefore, I did not decide

to join the tech sector at that time because I thought

I wanted to get more safe job, traditional roles.

I went back to Vienna and joined a consulting

company, Accenture, instead of joining Yahoo as

one of the first employees in the Silicon Valley, for example.

So at that time I didn't realize the importance of

technology in our lives, but it

taught me a lesson because I was being in Berkeley, being in the

Silicon Valley, you're surrounded obviously by the best entrepreneurs,

the best investors who are changing the world to

some extent. And I didn't see that because I was

just too young and too immature at that time. But now, 20 years

later, when I went then to via Vienna,

back to London and worked for banks here and before I

left banking in 2014 to launch Fintech 30,

I could see 20 years later that the whole innovation which

launched 20 years ago for us overall with

the Internet is now hitting the financial services sector.

And finance has been an old industry,

has been around for hundreds of years. And I thought, okay, now it's

happening again. 20 years later, I'm again now in London where

I can see all these entrepreneurs launching their fintech startups,

all these investors around me wanting to invest in fintech

companies. But there was a huge gap and the gap was

the people in banking did not know where the startups

were and vice versa because if you put yourself into

the shoes of some banker, you sit in your ivory tower.

What I did, working for large blue chip banks

and we just know ourselves, we don't know the

startup ecosystem, we didn't know where the startups were even based in

London. And so if we wanted to invest in startups,

we would not find them and we would not have very good deal flow.

On the other hand, I saw startups wanting to raise capital.

But if you're a fintech company, a financial technology startup,

ideally you want to raise capital from investors who understand

what you're doing, which either means they're coming from financial services

or they've got a tech background. And ideally they should have both,

because they really get what you're working on and that they can decide if they

want to invest in your company or not. And that's what

often is a mismatch. So startups pitch into the wrong investors, they can't

raise funding. That's why I launched Fintech Circle

because I wanted to set up the first investor network which consists

of fintech investors who understand financial technology and

we choose the best fintech startups to invest in in order

to find the best investment opportunities for ourselves and

our investors. And your question, if I wanted to do that from

the beginning, probably I did not know about this sector, to be

honest. And if I would have known about it, I would have said yes because

I love what I'm doing and I love to be my own boss

and run my own business. But sometimes I guess when we are

younger in our lives, we just don't know what's out there in terms of career

opportunities. I think the key lesson really is to be

open minded and to almost go with the opportunity and take

it step by step. I love that.

I think that there's such a need out there to what you're saying, right,

of amazing fintech companies are just a disconnect.

It's such a large moat in between the startup and

the established and for the established to understand what the startup is

all about because how they analyze decisions is totally different than how startups

analyze decisions or how startups should be analyzed and vice

versa, right? How startups think about business, they should

think a little bit more like an enterprise, but they just can't at that time

and they don't know. And so I'm curious to see, as you all

built this out, right, you all are helping these startups

connect or are you all bringing a community of investors and

investing in these startups? And I'm curious, maybe just highlight

one or two of the startups that you've got, you all have invested in so

far and I'd love to just know what they're doing and how is fintech

circle helping them beyond just, of course, the capital

from that standpoint? I would love to dig into that because I think it's something

that's so necessary and even more needed than ever before.

If you want to keep innovation happening, you want to change an

industry, we need more of this. So I love what you're doing. Yes.

That's so true, Matt. I mean, I can give you one example.

So one example. The company is called Lenderwise. Lenderwise is

a global platform which sells and buys digital

commodities. And what this means is if we think

about telephone calls, even now when we do a call for

a podcast, there are normally lots of telecoms operators

in the middle to connect a phone call. And banks

traditionally, they cannot see that. I mean, we all can't see that

unless you actually measure the minutes, how long a phone call takes.

And these are called digital assets. And Lenderwise has developed

a platform to monitor and count those

digital assets and then to provide cash flow forecasting

for telecoms operators who need cash flow because

they maybe need to pay out money, but they've not received it yet. From the

tier one players pay 90 days, but they already need

money now. So Lender Wise is an example of a

platform which allows investors to get higher interest

rates. I mean, we know that in the last few years we had a very

low interest rate environment where most people were

getting, I don't know, 1% at all. In banks,

when you put your money in a bank account, a current account, you got nothing

back. But at this Lender Wise platform, you got like six,

7% back. And now, of course, it all goes up because inflation is

now with us for maybe a few years.

So now people look for higher interest rate

investment opportunities, but which are still safe. And lenderwise

here, all these invoices, they are insured by

Hermis, an insurance company, so you can invest safely

in a risk reduced way, but you're using a

technology platform to connect the investors and the telecoms

operators who need the cash to operate well. And that's

what the company does. That's a company I invested in the first time

they were launching five years ago. I now am on

the chair, a chair, the board, so an investor and also

a board member. And I think this company is on to become a unicorn

because they are doing something which nobody else can do globally yet.

But that's one example. But there are incredible,

lots of great that's incredible. Something that I wouldn't even think

about turning it into an asset, but it's a niche and it's

a need. And now with the evolution of technology, there's an

ability, right? So there's an ability to solve it. I don't know if there would

have been an ability to solve that maybe ten years ago, but now there

is because of how much evolution and innovation has happened in the industry.

So I want to transition for a second, and I want to go to your

books and some of the lessons you learned. I think it's so interesting how you

wrote these books. You crowdsourced from the best fintech experts.

I'm curious why you went that way. Right. And how did that process

look to build a book when you're dependent on all of these other people

and bringing it together to make it tell a fair story?

And then I want to dig into a couple of these books and understand some

more about them. But just the process, I mean, God bless you.

It's tough enough to write a book by yourself now that you're dependent on others.

It's got to be kind of such a crazy experience.

And I'd love to learn more about that and how that all went

and why you went that route. Yes.

As a background, I tell you about fintech

circles. The fintech circle is 130,000, a community

of 130,000 people globally. These old fintech startups,

fintech financial services professionals.

And when we said we launched our first book, which was called the

Fintech Book five years ago, we concluded that

none of us knows it, knows everything. There's not one

person who has all the answers. And so we came from

a humble point perspective where we said, instead of just

having one author for the book who could just share their own expertise,

let's reach out to our global community and

say what we want. To write about, give them the table of content, and then

run a competition to get the best experts

and thought leaders to contribute to this book. And so

this was the idea behind because we wanted the best know how globally

combined in a book, because it's also more valuable for the reader,

because the reader gets the know how of 70 co authors instead of

just one. And that's why we did those crowdsourced books,

which we did. I love that. So let's

dive into some of these that are near and dear to my heart. And we're

going to start with the it's a more recent one that you launched, which is

the AI book, right? The artificial intelligence handbook for investors,

entrepreneurs and Fintech visionaries. I'm not going to ask you to read the whole book

or tell us the whole table of contents, but I would like to know

after writing that book and

also for people that read that book, what are maybe one or two takeaways

that you have regarding AI for this

industry, for financial advice or for wealth management,

for fintech, for whatever it may be. What are one or two takeaways

that you took away from the book, that you hope others would as well?

Yes. So the AI book about artificial intelligence

in financial services basically analyzes how AI

machine learning can be used across the whole

financial services sector in order to help

us individuals make better decisions,

in order to help us reduce our risks,

and sometimes to also earn more money to earn more revenues.

Those are normally the idea examples. So one example

is client onboarding. When you think about client onboarding

as a financial advisor, for example, you want to onboard the right clients.

You want to avoid any fraudsters,

anybody you don't want to onboard. So you need to assess

them. You need to do your customer checks, KYC checks,

anti money laundering checks, and those things. Now you

can use also more technology to help you do those checks faster,

more accurately. And that's one area where I becomes

more important to play an important role. The other option

or the other use case are payments. If you

are a payment company and you get payments every

second, you can't have a person checking for fraudulent

payments because this person wouldn't see that. It would

flicker through your screen. You couldn't even spot those payments coming in. So you need

to use AI solutions, choosing and checking for certain patterns,

at what time of the day, in what volumes, how are those

payments being made, are they suspicious? These suspicious

transaction reports use more and more AI as well.

So that's what we analyzed in the AI book.

How can AI be used? And our principal

thought process always is. We just know it's very similar to yours,

Matt, is that we want to empower people

with technology. So we are not there about replacing

individuals or financial services experts. We want

to empower them. So what are the best uses for AI,

for technology, for fintech, to really make us people

more effective and make us better in what we do?

I mean, that's music to my ears. That is exactly kind of the mo and

the mentality that I have and that's kind of the passion that I bring,

I want to bring to this industry is that technology is there to augment and

to help, not to replace. And I think that AI is there.

And I think about onboarding, that's such an interesting area to look

at, right? Because there's got to be an easier way. I talk with

many advisors each week, and they all talk about wanting to figure out

how to simplify the onboarding process. And the thing is that the tools are there.

There's a regulation gap as well that we need to kind of fill that

void. Because in theory, we have all that data. We should be

able to have them put in their Social Security number and pull all the rest

of the data to be able to fill out forms quite quickly

to help with that. I think that the challenge that people have

right now is that AI is used as a marketing ploy.

Hey, I got AI. This is AI. And nobody really knows what it

is, which causes people to call I'll just be blunt,

call BS on it, right? Being like, I don't believe it, I don't

trust it because I don't know what it is. And I think that there's an

education gap there. And so I'm curious, from your perspective, right?

And I bet you if I asked five people what AI is, they'd get five

different answers. And I think that that's the main challenge that we have to overcome

in the industry. But from your perspective, what is artificial

intelligence? I mean, there are many definitions

it comes down to. And the way I define it,

it's basically, I would say, computer assisted

decision making using vast

amount of data, which helps us make

better decisions. But then, of course, there is also AI where decisions

are being made individually, without our support, without our

input, where the computers are being trained to see certain

patterns, to see certain data

points, and therefore make certain assumptions, certain conclusions.

That's where ethical AI comes in. Because when you think about how do you train

the computers to do certain things? And I give you

an example of unethical AI. We have seen that

thinking about who works in the kitchen.

AI in the past has been trained to show just

images of women. It was the mother being just in the kitchen preparing

the food. And so when people said in the household,

if AI would have picked the gender of the person staying in

the kitchen, they would have chosen a female, because that's the data

which was fed into the AI, into AI platforms.

And that's where it's so important. Now, when we think about training, you often

heard the verb, you have to train AIS with thousands, with millions

of images. And the question is, who is doing that? Who is doing those

training examples? Who is feeding?

Who is teaching how AI works? And there

are ethical considerations to be taken into account.

And that's where there's a huge goal now in our

industry to develop global standards.

Because in this case, you don't want any arbitrage,

you don't want countries to cut corners and allow things to happen which

shouldn't happen. But ideally you would like us as

global nations to ensure that all these

systems are being fed with the right amount of data. Because otherwise,

when you think about discrimination,

discrimination can happen on the surface, which is easier

to spot, but it would be horrible if discrimination goes almost

underneath the surface. It's triggered or built into AI

systems, where you then would havei systems making the wrong

decisions. For example, lending. Who gets a loan? There are lots

of online technology companies out where you apply for

a loan online and you get either rejected or accepted

within minutes. And those decisions are made by

AI. So if you get rejected, you want to know

why it shouldn't be a black box, but you should be told what

should you improve in order to be more credit worthy. And certainly

it should not be done in any discriminatory way.

So those decisions are so important. That's why AI is such

an important role, plays an important role in our society. And I

would say it's important for us as a society to ensure that

everybody in our society so all genders,

all age groups, everybody in our society

really has got the opportunity to participate in

building these AIS in. Learning and studying how

it works in being part of companies who build it and that it's

not left to just a certain group of our population because

this would not be fair and would not make sense long term.

Yeah, I think that that's one of the biggest debates is the ethical

nature of AI. And I think that we can

get over that. I think that your explanation of AI is really good because

it's a matter of the simplest way that I've tried to say people,

is it's human intelligence at scale?

Right? You're taking what you would do that maybe in

processing it faster and doing it quicker and more

deeply than a human probably could do. But you train it and tell it what

you would want to do. Right? It's what you would want to do. But we

cannot process data that fast. And you think about

the loan example, and there's a lot of examples out there

that show potential, but there's also potential

for discrimination, unethicalness or unethical standards

or actions. But I think that one of the things that we all have to

have an open mind on when it comes to artificial intelligence is that we

get we always shun it away when there's times when it does wrong.

But in reality that same wrongness

by the technology is being done by humans. We just don't see it

all the time. And the beauty with artificial intelligence is that we

can train that out of it. Where we can't train that out

of humans. And I think we all have to keep that in mind,

right? Because I think that the unethical conversation comes up and

I think it should, but it needs to be reminded to everybody that

we can help to solve that and train

it with more data and more insight and more knowledge to get it to be

the ethical standard that we want. Whereas humans, it's hard,

right? We don't know every employee in every bank. There's discrimination happening all

the time and it's really unfortunate. And AI, we can actually put

some controls into it and monitor it a lot easier, which is a huge benefit,

I think, longer term for us. So I think we just have to change our

perception of it. Now, I want to switch gears one more time to the Wealth

Tech book. That's something that's near and dear to me. So again, I want to

ask the same question and have a conversation around this because wealth tech is again

where that's my love and passion, right? Wealth management is

what I grew up in. I believe technology can help to provide

access to human financial advice. That's my passion

to morph to everybody. Everybody should have access to human financial advice and I think

technology can help with that. So tell me one or two takeaways that

you took from doing the Wealth Tech book that you also hope that others would

take. Yes. I mean on the wealth tech,

I must say, as a background, I worked for Morgan Stanley Asset

Management for seven years in London and in Hong Kong.

And so being in a financial advisory capacity

is something which is deep to my heart. And that's why I wanted to

co write this book, because it's such an important book,

I think, for our world, and maybe to

set some background, give you some background data.

But if you look, we looked at the UK, for example. In the UK,

92% of UK adults don't take any

financial advice, which is incredible. So literally 92%

of UK adults don't take any financial advice. And then

we looked at the global wealth transfer and

we saw that about 68 trillion is going to be

inherited over the next two decades. So there's

a global wealth transfer happening. And then the other thing

which was concerning to us was that the average age of

people who took financial advice was about 63 years old.

So we have got the young people who probably need most

financial advice to build up the wealth don't get it because it's too expensive.

And so this poor penetration of the mass market of

the next generation is a big issue.

And then we had the issue that we have financial advisors

who say that 40% plus of their time is spent on admin

tasks because they don't use technology. So we have got

lots of financial advisory companies where the private bankers,

financial advisors spend 40% just on admin and not

on actually advising their end clients,

which they would prefer to do much more. And then also

on the large onboarding costs in the UK. It's about

2600 pounds, about more than $3,000 to an

average to onboard a client, to an IFA.

And all of that is an issue, obviously,

because we should advise more people, but we can't because it's too

expensive. That's where technology comes in,

because technology allows you to provide advice to

people whom you could not advise beforehand because it would have been

unprofitable for you as a company and

you could not therefore not offer this service to those people equally.

It means that with technology you can do more

advice and less admin because you've got technology

at your fingertips. And that's what this book is all about. The base

tech book at the end of the day is about how you

can use technology to reach customer segments which have

been unprofitable for financial advice in the past.

By using technology to scale up your advice such

as Client Robo Advisors would be one example,

but also using technologies to reduce your

own administration task as a financial advisory company

by using companies such as Mmonite. Mnite is a

company in the UK.

It's called b. Two b. So it's a B two B fintech company or

valid company. So they don't go out to the end customer,

but their customers are financial advisors and they saw that

87% of advisors want the firm to have better technology,

but normally companies don't. And the issue therefore

is when you meet your customer, for example, and you assess them,

what are their needs, what are their goals for the risk return parameters?

You often takes weeks before you go back to your customer with

a proposal. And with Ammonite, for example,

you do this within a few hours, a few days maximum.

And so you reduce 80% reduction of onboarding time,

but you also increase the conversion by 50% of

your customers because often customers jump off if

the onboarding takes too long or the value creation

takes too long. So those are all examples which are covered

in the Belly Tech book. So I really love that.

And you talk about the transfer of wealth, right? $68 trillion. And I think

that also within Wealth Tech, what is so inspiring to me

as well. And we all talk about the transfer in the nominal amount of

money. And I think that that's super interesting that the average age of someone that

gets financial advice is 63 years old, right? That's a little bit late to get

financial advice because you've already passed your well, you're well past your earning

years, right? There's not much that someone can do. I was on another podcast

that we had another guest on, Christopher Music, and we were talking about how

it's a matter of helping people not just invest and manage their

investments, but help them grow their. Income, but you can't do that at 63 years

old. But the difference with the wealth transfer that I think another way of

thinking about it is not just the nominal amount, but for financial advisors,

what that means is that you're going to have more families, that you're

going to have to serve for the same AUM or assets under management.

Because a family that has $3 million today that

passes away if they're a baby boomer and they pass away and they have two

kids or three kids. Now you have three new clients

that each have a million dollars, and they have three unique situations

that you have to plan for and help with, which now means that you have

a capacity challenge. And I think that that's really the interesting aspect,

because for people that don't have that money now, they have access to go and

get a million or 2 million new assets. But for the

company that does have that family, in order to keep that same AUM,

you have to have served three families. And that becomes a capacity challenge that

you have to use technology to help with, or you're

going to struggle and you're going to lose assets. And I think that

that's what the generational transfer of wealth is, that more people are going to have

wealth, which means more people are going to need to be served, which means that

we're already in a challenge with finding good

talent, quality talent in this industry. So the

question is, how are you going to serve it? And it's got to be with

technology, right? I mean, I don't know if you saw anything of that. I wonder

what you're seeing over in the UK on that. Suzanne as well, on that

topic. No, you're spot on match. It's exactly the issues

we see here as well, that you need to remind us about

what adds value to your clients. Because if you've got more clients

and you actually can remember in detail, you need to be reminded

what adds value, because you want to add more value

more often to your clients. But you can't do this anymore just

on your own time. You need advice. You need help yourself. That's where

technology comes in. Yes, very true. To scale up. To scale up your business.

To scale up and stay efficient. So I want to ask two more quick questions.

Well, this first one quick. The second one I want to dig into for a

second, and then I want to wrap up and get you back, let you get

back to the beautiful London weather over there.

The future of Fintech. Right? So you've written, you've followed,

you understand Fintech, your Fintech circle, you run, you see a

lot. I'm curious, what are some of the trends that we should be aware of

in Fintech? And where do you see Fintech

in five and ten years? Right? Is it going to have

this hockey stick kind of impact and growth in the industry, or is

it still just going to kind of continue to run into some established

hurdles that we see in the industry of the established players kind of

naming or building their own rules for this game?

Yes, we see three trends at the moment.

The first one is called green fintech or green

finance. The second one is called embedded

finance. And the third one is about financial inclusion.

And I will give you more information based on all three. But the first one

about green fintech or green finance, is all about ESG,

about environment, social governance, consideration,

about moving towards net zero,

reducing our carbon footprint. And there are fintech

companies out to help us with that. For example, if I

would ask you, are you carbon obese?

You wouldn't know. And I wouldn't know either, because I don't know if I'm carbon

obese or not, because I don't even know what my carbon footprint is today.

And that's the issue, because how can we reduce our carbon footprint as individuals

and also as companies if we don't even know the starting point?

And that's where fintech companies help us to measure where are we now

and how can we improve our carbon footprint in order

to avoid carbon obesity. So a new term I

learned I didn't know about this term beforehand. And so it's green

fintech, green finance, a big new development.

The second one is about embedded finance. And embedded

finance actually means you do things and you don't even notice. You don't see

that you buy something. Like Uber is the best example.

Take an Uber, you get out of the car and you've paid,

but you never actually paid, but you actually have paid because it

happens behind the scenes without you noticing it. And we will see

much more of that. We'll see more of embedded insurance, embedded financing

services, embedded payments, embedded lending.

So these are all areas where, for example, in the future, when you

buy a house, you buy a new property,

and what you want is a new house

to live in. You don't want a new mortgage, you don't want a new insurance,

but you have to get those things in order to buy the house. But these

are always the necessary things to get, but it's not the primary objective is

to own a mortgage or to own an insurance policy. So those things

will be embedded in the purchase of the house in the future.

So when you go to your real estate agent, you choose, that's a lovely house

I want. And then automatically it will tell you, these are the

loans you could get, these are the insurance policies. And just click

which one you prefer. So it will make our life easier by

having these embedded financial services at our fingertips.

And the third trend we see is global financial inclusion.

And, you know, probably there are 2 billion people in our world

with no bank accounts. So that's a huge issue

because I can't even imagine a life without a bank account. Where would you

put your money? Where would you save,

would sleep very unbeliev at night if you would have to put literally your money

under the mattress because you've got nowhere else to put it safely.

But there are 2 billion people who have no bank accounts,

and fintech can help them because everybody's got a phone,

everybody's got a mobile phone. And so we see mobile

phones becoming the new bank accounts, becoming the new ways

of sending money abroad to your families

back home, for example, to support them equally. Now,

when we see about the refugee crisis because of the war

in the Ukraine and Russia, Ukrainian conflict,

lots of refugees, the only thing they've got when they leave is cape.

They've got their mobile phone with them. So mobile phone

is key. And financial technology is helping refugees to

get access to money wherever they have to go. So we see much more

financial inclusion is at large. The third trend which we are seeing.

Yeah, I love that carbon obesity is

a new word for me as well. So thank you for introducing me to that

as well. Now, the last question I just want to touch on because I think

I'm a huge advocate for it, and I think that it's something

that needs to be talked about more is the aspect that women

are still underrepresented across finance and technology. And especially

you think, about leadership roles. And I was reading a stat earlier,

and again, don't quote me on it, but it was talking

about the progression of a ruling over in the United States called Title

Nine, which requires colleges to have more female athletics

at their schools and a ratio of females to male athletics.

And I think it's said that now there's 44%

of college athletes are women. And it

was, I think before the rule went in, I think it

was like ten to 20%,

roughly, which shows drastic expansion in there. And we're

making progress, but we're just not where we need to be in terms

of finance and women in this industry and in

leadership roles. And so I'm given where you are in

a leadership role, a voice for finance, a voice for technology,

for all the women listening to the podcast that have

this desire to do more in this industry or in

technology. What's a specific piece of advice that you can

give to help them really kind of continue to, quote,

unquote, break through the glass ceiling or just continue to advance

in this industry? Because we need more people, more women

to do so. Yes, I would say the advice

for women would be to ask for

more. Ask for more payment when they start their jobs,

ask for more promotions when they want to get

promoted, when they think that you serve promotions, ask for more bonus

payments. Just ask for more don't be shy and just

ask for more, because if you don't ask, you don't get normally.

So that's, I think, one key thing, then the other thing I would

say is that from the other the corporations point of view,

I think we need more targets, we need more goals, because anything

which matters in business has got goals. We've got

a budget at the end of the year, we need to achieve a certain budget

in terms of Am, in terms of revenues and costs. So we

should have budgets for gender diversity at

every stage of the company. And often the gender

diversity is equal at graduation stage, when people are

coming from university, we get 50 50 gender split. But the

more we go up in the hierarchy, the less women we have got.

And so we need budgets at each level. When you are an associate,

a vice president and director, a managing director, we should always

keep this 50 50 split. We need to encourage

women also to come back after maternity leaves and make it

easier for them, being both a mother and a career woman,

having more time away with the children,

being able to work part time. So those are just things, I think, which are

really important to achieve. But I think it definitely

has a big role, is the company to create a welcoming atmosphere

for women at every level of the organization,

up to board level. At boards, we often don't have

50 50 splits, not at all. In the UK we are very behind. I think

in America, you're further above the UK,

but we should have a goal to be 50 50

in every single layer of the organization and people should be rewarded

for achieving that. And if you don't achieve that, then it should be the management

who is responsible for that. And if they don't achieve, there should be consequences.

And that's how we move forward, I think,

in our society. Yeah, I think it's

definitely something us has continued to progress a little

bit better. Right. We've had a lot of progression there, but we still have a

lot more to go, right, we have a farther way to go. And so it's

just manner of voices like yourself and just all of us keeping it as a

topic of conversation and not letting it just go to the wayside as business

and the economy. Continues to move on,

I think, is what I know. Where the UK is advanced,

further advanced than in the States, is maternity leave.

In the UK we've got six months. Every woman has got six

months paid maternity leave. The belief in the US,

it's much less than that. And the best companies pay a

whole year maternity leave. So this allows women

then to really look after their children, have happy children at the end

of the day, because it's important for our society, but equally be able to

come back to work. So I think that's important because otherwise you've

got a mental health issues. If you expect women to do both

work full time and full time, raise their children, it's impossible to do that.

So I think where the government has to come in and offer more maternity

support for women who want to rejoin

the workforce afterwards, but also be able to relax at home,

because being at home actually is not relaxing with small children. It's very

hard work and you've got all nighters with small

babies. But I think to have more support at this age

for mothers, I think that's also very important.

Such a great point. Such a great point and just a great voice

for women in this industry. And I hope you continue to kind

of keep that voice heard. I'm going to let you get back to your

day to day. This has been a true pleasure. But before I let you go,

I have to ask the two questions I ask all my guests. And the first

question is, one of the main reasons I do these conversations is to be able

to learn. And I love to learn from others by conversation, because there's

a lot that I don't know. And this conversation was no different. I learned a

ton. And other way I'd like to learn is read

books. And I like to read books that others that are smarter than me are

reading. And so that's why I always ask my guests, what's one book that you

think outside of your own books? Outside of your own books? Because we all

know they should go buy all of your books. What's one book that you

think our listeners should read? Yes, I've got it here as well.

It's called influence the psychology of persuasion.

So that's a book I'm reading at the moment. I think it's over 5 million

copies sold. But I think it's such an important book because it shows us how

we get influenced by others equally, how we can influence

others. And it's just eye opening and

it gives examples, which I think which I use sometimes

in my daily life, subconsciously. But equally,

it opens you up how we get often influenced by

companies, and we might not want to fall for that. So it really is

a huge learning. A great book, very well witnessed, that's one. I would

recommend Matt. I love it. And then the last

question I have, I give credit to Barons because they did this at their conference

and I loved it, so I wanted to use it on the podcast is

from our conversation today. What do you think is one actionable takeaway

our listeners should take from this conversation to help them be

better tomorrow or the next day. But what's that one

piece of actionable advice you think our listeners should take away today?

I would say to acknowledge that technology

doesn't stop. So technology fintech velitech

there will be more and more coming. So there will be in our society.

There will be an Algo line. I call it an algorithm.

Basically, either you're on top of it or you're below it.

If you're below the algae line, it means that you've got a computer

as your boss. When you think about the Uber drivers,

they get told by a computer, by the app, where to go,

whom to pick up. If they lose their jobs, they get just

deactivated from the app, so they are below the Algaline.

Ideally, we want us, we want our children to be on

top of the Algaline. So we want to use technology to have better

lives, but to be aware there is an Algaline in our

society developing. And in

order to be on top of the Algaline, you need to use technology and you

need to learn about it. So keep on learning. I love that.

I love that. Suzanne Chesty. You're amazing.

You're great. So thankful for you to spend time with us and share your knowledge.

I mean, I learned a ton. I'm sure our listeners will definitely learn a

ton. And I can't wait to stay and continue, stay in touch and continue

to follow you. And I'm sure our listeners want to stay in touch and follow

everything you're doing. So what's the best way for our listeners to follow

you, stay in touch with you and continue to see all the impact that you're

making on the world of finance and fintech? Yes, one way

is to follow our website, which is fintechcircle.com.

I also tweet on Twitter, so it's either

my personal name, sussainchisti, or, again,

Fintech Circle Twitter accounts also on LinkedIn.

You can follow me on LinkedIn. And also we've got a Fintech

Circle group on LinkedIn, where we've got about 35,000 members

now, which you can join at no cost. So please feel free to join

the Fintech Circle group on LinkedIn, also on Instagram.

You can follow us. Fintech circle. Also, our books all have got their own

accounts on Twitter, on Instagram, on LinkedIn as

well. So depending what are your interest, please, yes, join us, follow us

online. And we'll put a list of all the books,

all seven of them, in the notes to this podcast as well, with links to

go and buy them. And please be sure to do so.

Suzanne, you're amazing. Keep doing the amazing work

that you're doing for our industry. I'm forever grateful for you for that.

And stay well and be well. And thank you again for taking time to join

us here on Bridging The Gap. Thank you so much, Matt. It was an honor

to join you today. Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Bridging The

Gap. Don't forget to give us a rating and let us know what you think.

Your heart desire,