We have a special podcast episode, which is all about Embedded Banking. We hosted four excellent guests: Christine Schmid, Head of Strategy at additiv Eric Mouilleron, CEO & Founder at Bankable Scott Gordon, CEO at Kard Tue Mortensen, Global Head of Prime and Relationship Management at Saxo Bank. Main topics discussed: 1. What is embedded banking? 2. The mechanics of embedded finance 3. Making the business case for embedded finance 4. What creates differentiation in this space?

Aperture | Podcast

Embedded banking: cutting through the noise w/ C. Schmid, E. Mouilleron, S. Gordon, T. Mortensen

Today we speak with Hasan Nawaz, co-founder and CEO at HUBUC — a banking as a service (BaaS) platform that enables brands to open up new revenue lines by seamlessly embedding financial products into their customer journeys. HUBUC takes care of all the regulatory requirements and manages compliance risk. This allows their customers to get their services to market in less time with fewer resources. In this episode, you are going to learn what banking as a service or BaaS actually is, why it’s not the same as embedded finance. What’s happening right now in the BaaS landscape, the difference between BaaS 1.0 and 2.0, and more. Before we get to the show, we want to flag that on May 1st we say happy birthday to aperture. We’re two years old! In case you are brand new to us, we design build, fund, and scale digital age companies. Now on with the episode.

Banking-as-a-Service 2.0: Every company is a finance company, w/ Hasan NAWAZ

Today we host Neri Tollardo, Tinkoff’s Vice President of Strategy. In this episode, we discuss about Tinkoff’s entrepreneurial spirit (which has no hierarchy or bureaucracy, and this is something that they plan on maintaining as they scale), about the difference between creating an ecosystem as opposed to a conglomerate of different goods and services, how Tinkoff has managed to create insane customer engagement compared to most banks by combining their content with their technology, and more. Before joining Tinkoff, Neri was a top ranked sell-side research analyst at Morgan Stanley. Enjoy the episode!

Against The Tide: Embedding Engagement Into Banking

Today, we have a special podcast episode, which is all about Bitcoin, discussing topics like: should every investor have some exposure to Bitcoin or is it still too volatile? What’s its intrinsic value anyway? And is Bitcoin a sustainable investment when it consumes more electricity than Argentina? We hosted four excellent guests: Izabella Kaminska, FT Alphaville editor at the Financial Times; Preston Byrne, partner at Anderson Kill; Nic Carter, partner at Castle Island Ventures; and Seamus Donoghue, VP Strategic Alliances at METACO.

Is Bitcoin an Investable Asset for Every Portfolio?, w/ I. KAMINSKA, P. BYRNE, N. CARTER, S. DONOGHUE

What is the future of our cities? During the pandemic, places like London have seen an exodus of people who can work from anywhere. What is the future of office space? Is co-working going to continue? We dive into these questions with guest Zsolt Kohalmi, global head of real estate and co-CEO of Pictet Alternative Advisors. We also cover the future of retail and whether the pandemic plus Amazon has permanently closed a lot of our favorite shops and what’s going to become of these spaces. We discuss real estate: is it going to become more environmentally friendly? Will technology become more embedded into our urban infrastructure? Zsolt earned his MBA at INSEAD and he speaks nine languages. This is such an interesting conversation and if you like the interview that we have here on this show, then you will likely enjoy Pictet’s podcast “Found in Conversation” where they interview leading experts on how we can improve the modern world.

Real-estate rebound post-COVID, w/ Zsolt KOHALMI (#40)

Climate change expert Chris Goodall says that fighting climate change isn’t as challenging or as expensive as we think it is and can actually benefit our economy. In today’s episode, we discuss how the climate change movement can advance social change, whether we can save our planet without some structural shifts to capitalism, nuclear energy, the politics behind tackling the climate crisis, and more. Chris has written several books, of which What We Need To Do Now For A Zero Carbon Future and How To Live A Low Carbon Life.

Marrying Capitalism with a Zero Carbon Economy, w/ Chris GOODALL

This week’s podcast is the recording of an actual live event — a 4x4 Virtual Salon — we hosted in anticipation of the launch of our Digital Age Wealth Management Report (which is now out! ?). Our guests were Sid Sahgal (Product Manager at Hydrogen), Nikolai Hack (Head of Strategy & Partnerships at Nucoro), Qiaojia Li (CEO at Rosecut) and Michael O’Sullivan (author “The Levelling”, ex-CIO Credit Suisse). We discuss: changing consumer trends; changing technology; new business models and new fitness landscape for wealth managers. We hope you enjoy and, if you listen carefully, you will get access to some unfair advantage! ?

Making Wealth Management Available to Everyone (#38)

Our guest is Stian Westlake, co-author of ‘Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy’ and we discuss the implications of an economy built increasingly on intangible assets, even more so in the post-pandemic world. In this podcast, we discuss the four S’s that explain how intangible assets behave differently than tangible ones, why we’re not seeing more economic growth or higher productivity right now, even though intangible assets are more scalable, what governments need to do to mitigate the increased income inequality that’s occurring in part due to the rise of intangible investments, and more. Stian serves as the Chief Executive of the Royal Statistical Society. Previously, he served as an advisor to three British ministers for science, innovation, research, and higher education. He also led the policy and research team at Nesta — UK’s National Foundation for Innovation.

Capitalism without Capital and after COVID w/ Stian WESTLAKE

We sit down with Marc Rubinstein, a former analyst and hedge fund manager who currently authors Net Interest — a weekly insight and analysis newsletter on the world of finance. Each note of his newsletter explores a theme currently trending in the sector, whether it’s FinTech or economics, or investment cycles — and today, you are going to hear about a little bit of everything. Marc and Ben Robinson discuss the history of equity research and where it’s at now, whether current regulation is tilted too far against banks, the twofold challenge facing challenger banks, the past and future of embedded banking, the four key differences between investing in private companies versus public and more.

Taking A Long View Of Banking Industry Disruption w/ Marc RUBINSTEIN

Our guest is Manos Schizas — Lead in Regulation and RegTech at Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance at the University of Cambridge. We discuss how regulatory change is accelerating so fast that people alone can’t deal with it and how does the technological solution addressing the problem looks like. Can technology solve this problem at scale? How much innovation are we seeing thanks to machine learning? And we also discuss about the Regulatory Genome Project, a recently launched long-term project that aims to sequence the world’s (financial) regulation, allowing developers and firms to build own applications on top of the platform. Before joining the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, Manos also served as a regulator with the UK’s FCA.

Sequencing the World's Regulatory Information, w/ Manos SCHIZAS

Bitcoin is the best performing asset in 2020. There is growing institutional interest in crypto and broader digital assets. Tokenization is poised to be a huge market opportunity. In light of all this, we’re inviting you to a masterclass on all things crypto. We’re sitting down with Adrien Treccani, CEO and co-founder of METACO — a provider of security critical infrastructure for financial institutions that enables them to safely enter the digital asset ecosystem. Adrien is a leading software engineer specialized in high-performance computing and financial engineering and an advisor to banks, hedge funds and associations on distributed ledger technology. So today, you are going to learn about the difference between cryptocurrency, digital currencies, stable coins, you’ll hear about the evolution of blockchains, what will happen to commercial banks if we start seeing Central Bank-issued Digital Currencies, and more.

Digital Assets are Coming of Age, w/ Adrien TRECCANI

Today’s guests are reinventing the way the world measures how sustainable companies really are. Yes, we do have ESG data and CSR reporting, but those measure practices rather than impact, and describe policies rather than outcomes. In this episode, the co-founders of Impaakt — Bertrand Gacon and Sylvain Massot — are sitting down with host, Ben Robinson, to talk about how they are creating the Wikipedia of impact investing. Leveraging the collective intelligence of a large community of analysts to assess the social and environmental impact of large listed companies, they offer investors and the financial institutions the data they need to allocate capital to the companies who are having the most positive impact, and also to give everyday citizens the information they need to decide who they want to work for, who to buy from, who to advocate for.

Creating the Wikipedia of Impact Investing, w/ Bertrand GACON and Sylvain MASSOT

We’re discussing with Leda Glyptis, a self-described recovering banker and lapsed academic, who’s worked in technology implementations for the last 20 years. Leda is one of the leading voices in banking and FinTech today, she has served as Chief Innovation Officer at QNB group, she was Director of EMEA Innovation at BNY Mellon, and most recently she was Chief of Staff at 11:FS. In this episode, Leda and Ben discuss what a Chief Innovation Officer actually does, whether innovation can come out of innovation departments, what most companies miss when they talk about culture, why emotions are holding back traditional and challenger banks from making money, why selling banking services like supermarket offers doesn’t work and what banks should be doing instead. For more information on Leda, look up the hashtag #LedaWrites on Twitter. She publishes an article every Thursday.

Hard Truths About Digital Banking, w/ Leda GLYPTIS

We discuss with Ian Hathaway — Senior Executive Director at Techstars, Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution, and a Co-founder and Board Member of the Center for American Entrepreneurship and book author (latest book co-authored is called ‘The Startup Community Way’ ). In this episode, Ben and Ian discuss entrepreneurial ecosystems, what governments are getting wrong when they try to foster entrepreneurship and how they can create better outcomes; why entrepreneurship can lead to bigger and better outcomes than direct engagement in politics; why entrepreneurs are going to have more opportunities than ever during the pandemic and after it — and more.

Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem, w/ Ian HATHAWAY

Your host, Ben Robinson, is joined by Michael O’Sullivan, author of ‘The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization’ and former CIO of the International Wealth Management Division at Credit Suisse. Michael currently serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the New Economy. In this episode, Ben and Michael discuss what is the role central banks will play in the transition period to a post-globalization, multi-polar world; what international organizations should be completely reshaped to meet the needs of this new world, what new institutions should be created, and more.

Transitioning to a Multi-polar World, w/ Michael O'SULLIVAN

We’re in conversation with the people who are thinking and doing things differently. We cover strategy, technology, business models and much more.

hubhopper

Aperture | Podcast

hubhopper