My guest today is Marijke Koninckx, Chief Product Officer at Bankifi. We talk about the challenges of SMEs managing their payments flow, getting financing and managing their money, the importance of creating a safe environment to innovate and run successful FinTech's, the difference between product strategy and roadmap, and how to go about market expansion as per Bankifi’s success story.

“The question would probably be what would life and work be without purpose, right? Then it's just spending time. Everyone's looking for meaning in their life, but also in their work, because you spend a significant portion of your time working. And if you can, do something where that really aligns with the values you have”

Let’s dive into it!

👉 You can find Marijke here

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marijke-koninckx/
• LinkedIn Bankifi: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bankifi/
• Website Bankifi: https://www.bankifi.com/

👉 And you can find Monica here:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicamillares/
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moni_millares
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@moni_millares
• 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

In this Purpose Driven FinTech episode we cover:

(0:00:00) Challenges of late payments and financial admin for small businesses

(0:08:43) Importance of creating a safe environment for diversity and inclusion

(0:11:05) Marika's journey from saying yes to taking on new roles

(0:15:01) Bankify's mission to help small businesses manage their finances

(0:18:08) Pain points of SMEs: late payments, financial admin, and financing

(0:29:41) Bankify's successful entry into the US market

(0:34:57) Challenges for Bankify: scaling, prioritization, and maintaining company culture

(0:43:42) Difference between product strategy and roadmap

(0:47:29) Bankify's open and collaborative company culture

(0:50:41) Making a positive impact and democratizing financial services

SEARCH QUESTIONS

• What are the biggest pain points for SME businesses?
• How to solve SME payment and financing challenges?
• What is the difference between product strategy and roadmap?
• How to create psychological safety in FinTech teams?
• How to successfully expand to the US market as a FinTech?
• What is embedded banking for SMEs?
• How to serve small business customers better?
• What are the challenges of SME banking?
• How to build diverse and inclusive product teams?
• What is the role of purpose in product management?
• How to celebrate team successes effectively?
• How to democratize financial services for SMEs?
• What makes a successful Chief Product Officer?
• How to say yes to opportunities outside your comfort zone?
• What are the differences between US and European markets?
• How to create user-centric banking solutions for SMEs?
• What is the impact of late payments on small businesses?
• How to reduce financial admin burden for SMEs?
• How to build a product management function from scratch?
• What are best practices for team communication channels?

—

Production and marketing by Monica Millares. For inquiries about supporting or sponsoring the podcast, collabs or guest appearances 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.

Monica Millares: Hi Marijke Koninckx, it is an absolute pleasure to have you in the show. I am really looking forward for this conversation. Yes, same here. Thanks for having me. Thank you. And then the reason why I'm looking forward to it, it's well, it's multiple ways. One you're a CPO, so this is like a product, podcast, right?

So it's cool. We get to speak with a CPO, but then I am thrilled that you're a woman in a because in the fintech industry, there is. It's like unicorns, right? There is like such few women in a CPO role and that needs to change. So I'm thrilled to have you in the show. And then also one of like part of the work that you're doing is like focusing on financial inclusion from another angle that it's not just like focusing on consumers, but it's focusing on businesses as such.

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): I would probably say, choose your communication channels wisely. So one of the things that in my opinion can be. An immense loss of time and reduces productivity a lot if you try to resolve things over lengthy email conversations and so on. So we've got so many options to communicate with coworkers, clients, users of our product.

Monica Millares: Oh yeah. I love that because like you say, it's like today we have emails, Slack WhatsApp, even though it's also written, it's different to Slack phone meetings, like there's so many ways to communicate. And I like that. Thank you. I think what's your best channel of communication, yeah, exactly.

Okay. So what is your definition of success?

Sometimes you'll overachieve and it will go really well. But often it won't and you'll fail, but you learn from it and you just keep going. And I think that's the definition of success. If you can just keep going you learn from your mistakes. You celebrate your successes. And that's what it's about, isn't it?

Monica Millares: Yes. And I love that because you use one of my favorite words that it's like celebrate. Yeah. Celebrate the success. We need to celebrate even the micro wins, the small wins, because then that, like you said, that keeps the enthusiasm going. The enthusiasm bank keeps growing when you celebrate.

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): Yeah.

And that's what I like about, Working, with teams that support each other. Yeah,

Monica Millares: that's super important. Talking about teams of course you are a woman in fintech at the C level product CPO, and of course, by now we know it's research, right? It's research based evidence that diverse teams perform better.

However, I think as an industry, we still need to put that in practice properly such that we can. Move the needle a little bit more, what are the practical things that you think we can do as an industry to improve diversity?

And if you've got like a safe environment where people can raise ideas or concerns or whatever it is they would like to raise in whichever way they want, because not everyone likes speaking up in a group. Some people are more comfortable in a one on one context, but if you've got this environment where everyone's input matters, it automatically creates an environment that's much more inclusive and that will attract more diversity because there's the mindset is there to accept different opinions, to accept different backgrounds, levels of experience, and so on.

Monica Millares: Exactly. I like that because then you, I love that you were not like, Oh, we need a mentoring.

Oh, we need a quota. So we need all that, It's more of a, no, we need a safe space.

Can everyone be comfortable with who they are when they go to work? Do they feel like they're accepted and appreciated the way they are, that their opinion matters? I think that's the foundation, and then if that's not in place, you can put all the programs in place you want, but I don't think it's gonna massively change.

It's really the foundation that needs to be right.

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): the question would probably be what would life and work be without purpose, right?

Then it's just spending time. And I think everyone's looking for meaning in their life, but also in their work, because you spend a significant portion of your time working. And if you can do something where that really. Aligns with the values you have and for me, the main thing is I want to have a positive impact whether it's on the people around me, my friends, my family.

How can you help them make that a success and not just, making some money on the short term, but for them to actually grow their business to do more of what they are passionate about. So I think, that's probably the main thing. It's making a positive contribution, in whichever or whatever hat you're wearing at that point, whether it's a friend, a family member a mother, a colleague, I think that's really important.[00:10:00]

Yeah,

Monica Millares: and I think you summarized it really well. That's a positive contribution. It doesn't have to be you have to go and change the world and it has to be a positive contribution to people around you. Yeah, yes,

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): I think it's a big enough goal. If everyone would just try to make positive contribution in their surroundings, the world would be a really nice place.

No,

Monica Millares: I totally agree with you. Yes. So before we go into Bankify in detail, tell us a little bit about you. How did you end up in product and how did you strategize to get to the C level?

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): I think I. Got to where I am today by saying yes, a lot. And, so as an example, I got into FinTech for this.

So that it's. More than 20 years ago. So at that point in time, if you would see a job ads, it's usually what kind of salary can you expect? What are your responsibilities and you get a company car and health insurance or something like that. In any case, they said we have the usual benefits. But we also have great coffee.

And I took a chance and people took a chance on me as well. But. It's because of that I was a bit out of my comfort zone when I first picked up a new role. I was able to learn so much, but also I was able to shape the role because the first, time I got into a product management role, I was working at a company and they didn't have a product management function, even though we were building and selling products.

And that goes back to those. Failures and still keeping the enthusiasm to try again. I think the number of failures was. Okay I made a mistake here and there, but nothing major, but having the privilege to, get a responsibility and, then shape that and make that evolve.

Monica Millares: Cool. So if we move then a little bit more into Bankify, what are you guys doing? In the business

So what we bring to the table is a solution where all the financial workflows that a small business needs on a day-to-day basis to run their business, gets all brought into one single place. And that single place is the bank's channel. So in essence, what we do is we flip the embedded banking model on its head.

So rather, so the way a lot of small businesses operate today is they have solutions for subsets of the flow. So they've got a little payment solution there. They've got an invoicing capability there. They've got their bank accounts with this bank and so on. So that's not how a small business owner thinks.

So they think in terms of what does Customer. Yes. What is that journey for me? So what we do is we actually bring that entire journey in the bank's channel. And that's a big change in thinking about how Should we serve our small business customers? Because rather than thinking about what products do I have that a small business could use, I've got accounts, I've got cards, I've got credit products, I've got some insurance products.

And the role that we play is we built the technology to make this happen. So that's what we do.

Monica Millares: So can we expand, you touched many different good points. So let's start with, you said, understand what SMEs need, businesses need to manage their finances. So I'm like, yeah, I'm like, what do they need?

And also, in general, have a sense of what your cash flow position will be over the next couple of months, for example, because it's really important to understand if there's going to be a gap, what measures can I take to Prevent me getting in trouble. Maybe ask one of my suppliers for an extension on the payment terms, or I incentivize my customers to settle their invoices a little earlier.

Never forget to pay your taxes. But also how healthy is my business from a financial point of view. So not just looking at patterns in the past, as in, I know that. On average, I've got this many revenue on a monthly basis and this many expenses, but also a projection in the future. I already know about, money that's due to me or that I owe to suppliers, staff, could be anything.

Monica Millares: Yeah, I think you did an excellent job by being the voice of the customer. I, as you were talking, I was like, Oh my God, that sounds like complex as a business owner, I need to think of all of that, but that's the reality they need to.

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): But that's the thing about small businesses. So all the larger corporates, they are equipped with teams that can do all of that, so they've got resources, they've got complex accounting software, they've got relationship managers at banks, so they have all the tools.

It's no different. You need to raising voices. You need to keep your accounting up to date, all of that. But the main difference is you don't have a fully fledged accounts receivable team that does that on a daily basis. It's usually the small business owner or the one finance person that does that on a Sunday morning, instead of spending time with their family.

So if we can, yeah, also give them a bit of time back. Instead of spending that on financial admin, we can automate some of that for you. It's still going to be done. So

That's the company or with five in total. So it's they are humans. It's not the corporate, McDonald's. Yeah, exactly. Or Netflix. It is the bakery shop that's owned by

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): a couple. Yes. And let's be honest, nobody sets up a business because they enjoy raising invoices or chasing payments, that's not why you do it.

Monica Millares: No, So what do you think are the biggest pain points of SMEs?

Same goes for making sure You pay your own suppliers on time, the saving time on financial admin. So the time spent on financial admin I think is a huge pain point. It's one of the least favorite tasks of most small business owners. And if we can do anything to help that, and then also on the back of that, being able to access.

They don't necessarily have all the resources, so they've got similar pain points, but the way they can go about them is a little bit different, yes.

Monica Millares: And that is beautiful and concerning at the same time, because if we think about it, like SMEs in any country, it's roughly 98 percent of the businesses are small.

So the, what is the implication of all sorts of financial services industry of not serving SMEs well

Because it's more, the impact is bigger for a small business than it is for a larger or more established business. But at the same time, as you point out, the vast majority of businesses is in that category. So as a bank, would you, why would you miss out on this big market of small businesses, they're there, they need help, they need support, they need good products.

So why would you not go for it?

Monica Millares: Yeah, which is a great question that I'll play back to you in a different way. That it's so far, if we look at FinTech in the past 10 years, it's been very focused on neo banking and disrupting B2C as well. See being a consumer individual person, but the SME segment is still not to be the hasn't been disrupted.

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): Yeah, I think it's being solved for, but not by necessarily by the bank. So if you look at what accounting software vendors are doing, what commerce platforms are doing. The extent of the financial services that they are starting to offer or are already offering today. The market is there and people are taking it.

If you look at the types of end users that we have for our product. So sometimes just out of curiosity, we look at what types of businesses do we are using our platform. And it can be anything, it can be anything, the list is endless. So we've got, people in the health and fitness space, but also people who are in construction, small software companies.

So yeah, and then it's also being aware that. It's happening. Like I said, the accounting packages, the commerce platforms, they don't just offer you to accept card payments or something like that, they Allow you to open a bank account, they will lend you money if you need money, like [00:29:00] Amazon it's we have in lending, they have several lending products actually that you can get through the Amazon platform.

So I think that banks need to pay attention. And if they still want to sit at the table, they probably need to think about the problem a little bit differently. Yeah,

Monica Millares: so thinking about differently, like you guys in Bankify. You just not you just like about a year ago, you did a massive move that it's like you guys moved to the U S just a massive market and other European fintechs have gone in the U S and then left the U S others tried to get into the U S and they don't how, what was your approach?

To make a successful entry into the US, how did you think about it?

For example, in the U S you have thousands and thousands of banks. So there are a lot of, community banks, regional banks, so that the, you have very small, very. Niche type of banks that focus on a very, specific target audience. In Europe, most of the countries, they have a handful of big banks that govern pretty much the whole market.

Because there is one thing for sure, you can have the best. product on the market, it's really, hard to change behaviors. It is very, for example, type of payment method you like to use something that's very much, one of our day to day, areas that we look at. If for example in a given market, people are very much used to using cards for their payments.

Monica Millares: not impossible because it's hard to

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): change behavior.

They typically have IT teams that do an awful lot of work on all the technology they have. Like the community banks in the U. S., they tend to subscribe to services and they will Ask the vendor to run the whole thing end to end, and they don't want to be involved in any of the tech side of things.

In the UK, for example, WhatsApp is a big deal. Lots of people use that to interact. With their clients. It's not used, not at all, but it's very Limited in usage in the US, for example. So it's all those things you need to work out and to see how you can make your solution also fit with the local market requirements.

So it goes from payment rails, what accounting software do people use? But very simple things also, like what language do they use? It's really funny, and you probably know that in the UK and in the US people speak English, but it's a very different language. The terminology is very

Monica Millares: different.

Monica Millares: definitely. It is. Localization is a challenge, but it's important. As we move more towards talking about the products. Today in 2023 it's been challenging 12 or 18 months for the industry in general.

What are the challenges that Bankify has?

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): So I think on the product level and then specifically looking at the US market and the fact that there are more smaller banks that are looking for really off the shelf, out of the box solutions, while if you work with most banks in Europe, They would like to have their own little thing added or changed.

Entering in a new markets and more getting more and more clients on board also comes with the very typical challenge one has in many managing a product is how do I balance all the priorities? I think everyone who's ever been in product management will know this challenge really well.

It comes with a risk of losing some of that because the more people you have, the more difficult it is to, to just keep that going, but so far so good. But I, think it's always going to be an attention point for us because We value our company culture so much. It's really important to us and [00:38:00] also to everyone, in our team.

And that's why people enjoy working with us. So we want to keep that as best as we can.

Monica Millares: I love that. And I'll come back to culture in a minute, but I totally love like culture to me is one of the most important things when looking where to work, that's it, because you spend half of your life at work, so it has to be, it has to be the right fit for you to be able to thrive.

I want to go back to what you said about prioritization, because you said it's a challenge, but we're doing a good job. Which is great. What are you doing to do a great job prioritizing?

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): How we do

Monica Millares: that? Yeah, what have you done that it's it's working?

Because it's not just you being able to feed into the tech team so they can build the right features in the right order. So setting the priorities for that, but you work with the sales team to understand what customers want. You work with the finance team to make sure the budget stays on track and so on.

And it's dangerous to think that you are the single source of truth and that you know what's best. So the main responsibility of product for me is to make sure that you understand where the company is going and why, that you understand who your customers are, what they need, why they buy, how you can create value for end users of your product.

And so on the feedback from that is so valuable. When it comes to setting the priorities, it's just basic logic you apply, if I can make a change that will have a positive impact for a lot of my users. Then why wouldn't I do this first? There are other things like we have commitments with clients that need to go live by a given date for whatever the reason is [00:42:00] they need to go live.

on that date. So it's about bringing all of that together and that it's a puzzle. Yes, where you try to build the puzzle or put the pieces together. And in the end, it always works. And the other thing is, I think I've done this Long enough to know that things change all the time. And if you are fine with that, you'll do a good job.

Then it's all good.

Monica Millares: Yeah, I agree with you. I think if you are new to the industry, you need to be very conscious that things change very fast and there's uncertainty and then you need to be able to function well with the. Yeah.

So I'm more of a, let's take a step back, have a good look, rationally think this through and then we'll get there. No, I, as you said I often think. You've never experienced working in an environment like in Fintech where change is a given, there's lots of priorities to juggle. I can see, and then add to that given the nature of the industry we're in, it's all highly regulated.

There's all these rules you have to follow, certifications, data privacy, and so on. Throw that on the pile. I can see how that could be overwhelming, but it all comes down to the team, doesn't it? It does.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. There's a lot of people wanting to get into fintech, so there's a lot of advice for how to get into fintech, how to get into product management. However, there is not, a lot of advice out there in internet on how to go in a fintech, how to go from a head of product or product director to the C level.

In your experience, what is the difference from director, product director and CPO and how people can do the jump?

The strategy. Yeah. I think with where we are at Bankify, we don't have any distinction between those two roles and I don't mind. I actually like both of that. But I think the. In a larger organization, you probably need to make that split between someone who looks more after purely strategic elements of the role and others who are a bit more involved in getting those strategies executed.

Is how do I create a good product strategy versus a roadmap that a roadmap, many people see a roadmap as a list of features that you just like.

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): Yeah, it's two different things, isn't it? I agree with you. So actually the, strategy. It's quite broad, right? So what am I building as a product? How am I taking this product to market?

It's just, everything you ever want in a product, before you release it, because then you'll never release anything. But it's then that prioritization and where do we focus on first. So perhaps There's only a subset of end users that you want to target initially, and then you can extend into additional features, which opens up the [00:48:00] opportunity to serve another or an additional type of end user with solution and so on.

So the strategy is is the, 360 view on product. So what, how. For who who are my competitors and so on, what's the value proposition and all of that the roadmap is simply, okay, how do we translate this into a real product?

Monica Millares: I think it's a beautiful explanation. Before we go, you touched about Bankify's culture and that it was very important for you as a team.

Can you describe the culture and how you maintain that? Okay. Yeah. How do you maintain it?

I think, I'm not exaggerating. This is exactly how we operate. And when that shows best, it's when things are difficult. So when things are difficult, what happens in our organization? Is we all get together, nobody is looking at anyone else to be responsible for the problem. We all feel like, okay, there's something that's not working or we're facing a deadline and it's going to be tight.

And, if you have that environment where also, I like to involve a lot of people from different backgrounds, as in developers, but also sales, customer engagement, even our finance team, because they do financial workflows for small businesses every day. Correct. So they are the best people to ask feedback to when it comes to a new product feature, [00:51:00] because they are your end users.

We make sure that everyone's on board with changes that we're going to make, and I think it really helps in us creating a better product to start with because we've got those different viewpoints that all get included. But also the tech team, when they then take that away and they build a product, they know why they're building that feature and going back to purpose.

If you know why you're doing something, it's just more. Rewarding to work and you know why you're doing the work. It's not because Marek asked me to build this feature. No, it's

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): I actually think that a lot of the work that's being done in FinTech is actually about changing things. It's about making things faster, cheaper, safer, more accessible, and so on. I also think that there are less, solutions out there looking for a problem, which was, I think, a bit of an issue a couple of years ago.

As the one reason the positive impact for sure is, a key value. I think we all need to. Hold ourselves to, but yeah, making positive change and democratizing services, so that everyone can benefit from them. I

Monica Millares: absolutely loved this episode. Thank you so much, Marika. You're welcome. That's a very wonderful way to finish.

Where can we find you?

Monica Millares: that in the notes in the show notes. Marijke , it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

It's nice to meet you. Thank you. Likewise.

Marijke Koninckx (Bankifi): Bye-Bye. Bye. Bye.