S1E4 - The State of FinTech in 2024 and Beyond - Theodora Lau
You may know TodorAlo's name from those many fintech influencer lists or from those few lists of influencers that happen to also be female. What you may not know is that she's an incredible friend as well as the editorial voice that you have come to love and hopefully subscribe to many many years ago and the author of Beyond Good and the Metaverse Economy and other seminal pieces of work that have helped shape the past and the future of fintech. I invite you to listen to our conversation today and hear some of the reminiscing we've done as well as some of her hopes for the future and ideas towards where are we really taking financial technology and the humans in it? Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Tales from the Fintech Crypt. Let's see if we're going to be uncovering a lot of piping hot tea today.
Duena:I somehow doubt it. We tend to have been conditioned by many, many years of saying and doing the right thing so that we fit in with our peers in the space. But I do have an amazing guest today that I'm really pleased to have this conversation with. Thao and I have been talking about starting a chat on this topic forever, with me rewriting a number of books about it meanwhile. So hopefully, we're gonna get into them anyways.
Duena:But welcome to the show, Thao. Finally, finally get to chat. Thanks so much for accepting it.
Theo:Thank you for having me. And next time, let's do this Right? In person somewhere around the are the world citizen anyway. We we managed to to
Duena:not always be in the same places, but we are practically right next to each other anyhow with in the last few years in in so many ways. So thank you so much again for being on the show. People who are listening to this know exactly who you are, but there's gonna be a mini intro to the podcast, and there's also gonna be, like, a link to everything afterwards so that people can find you books and can shower you with the money and appreciation you deserve. But how have the last few years been then, Toda?
Theo:Oh, how much time do we have? Let's see. I think we talked about how we thought COVID was going to be a game changer, an equalizer of sort. Let's start with that. So I wrote the first book during COVID and for sure I thought, wow, wait a minute, we finally see the value of respecting each other.
Theo:We finally see the value of different people in the society coming together and creating something good. It's going to be good. Well, it was until it wasn't. I don't think I need to narrate back what has transpired the last few years other than if you are interested in the funding trends for women in FinTech, that hasn't changed. If you are looking at the trends for supporting, underrepresented demographics, that hasn't changed.
Theo:If we're looking at what are we doing in the payment space, right? Let's start with that. Okay. A few interesting things here and there by and large, but we still have more than a billion people unbanked. I don't know.
Theo:Where should we go? I don't I am trying really hard to be positive in here, being the year is 2024. And since I have turned 50 last year, but my children keep reminding me I am half a century old. So which means I have half a century of wisdom. I don't know.
Duena:Good question. We go? Where do we start? And and it is sad that we have two minutes in and we're already despondent. But we are we're we're honest with you guys because otherwise, you wouldn't be listening to us if we've we've this has been us for the last ten, fifteen years.
Duena:We've never minced our words. That's probably not served us very well, or else we would be leading some Baines or Ernst and Young divisions from our YAC today. But where we are and what our journey has been like, hey, you wrote your first book during the pandemic, I wrote my second one, Keep Up Before Tech. I would check if I were you, if it's even captured by Chattypetty because mine came out just as Chattypetty forgot to take it, and it's not even showing up any place. We sat around going like, well, it's great.
Duena:It's never even heard of me. But but, yes, we worked hard because in that moment, and it was, you know, I don't need to tell anyone, there were those incredible hopeful moments in the midst of desperation where we were all extraordinarily excited about where we're going to come out and the fear of maybe we're not going to come out quite on the other side. And I think you conflated, thankfully, two big things there. One, were we going to come out with different processes? Were we going to come out with different attitude to people and organisations?
Duena:And were we also going to come out with more done as a result delivered on the FinTech side? And what we're saying is, and we know that we didn't come out with either of those things necessarily. So, is it because, you know, kind of everyone accuses this and it's very evident we're all afraid or all tired or all burnt out in particular leadership that's done it for twenty years of making digital and then wanting to off themselves. But outside of these things, do you think it's also because of this desperate need of return to set point that is the discussion in leadership circles, the BAU?
Theo:It could be. I mean, there is comfort in BAU, right? There is comfort in returning to status quo and where we found ourselves before the pandemic, before the change. Perhaps, and I think that's a good way to try to explain some of the things we see. Let's go back to how it was before we had all the DEI initiatives.
Theo:Let's go back to how it was before we start, you know, putting people in different positions and trying different things out. Even if you take a step back, look at, for for example, something as simple as college admission. Right? For a while we said, well, you know what? Let's put the grades and everything aside.
Theo:Let's bring, you know, young adults in by we think they can do by how well they did in test. Well, that lasted for what, two years at the most. And then we go back to, well, yeah, no, we really need the test scores. So there is certain comfort in business as usual. But here's the thing, though, if we don't change, if we don't push the envelope, we'll never go anywhere.
Theo:And I think that was precisely what we've been seeing in this space yesterday. I saw an article that a mutual friend of ours shared on social something about the future, trends And of digital I looked, I'm like, wait a minute, that, that, that, that's not future. You know, having a mobile app, that that's not future. That's, it's been around for a while. Being able to do things and chat with reps, you know, not in branches.
Theo:No, that that's been around for a while too. Why are we calling it future banking? It's present. And he said a good point. He said, Yeah, it is present for many of us, but it is not there for yet many more of the banks.
Theo:And, and then it brings back memories. Remember those days when we said, Oh, you know, millennials are going to do XYZ. There's we need to do hyper focus on millennial banking. Fast forward to 2024. Now I keep seeing things about, well, you know, how Gen Z is different.
Theo:Now we need to focus on Gen Z banking. And I shot back a note to someone this morning. I said, well, but, but that's silly. You can't base your trends, if you will, on how how many birthday candles you have on the cake. That's silly.
Theo:It needs to be based on what you need. And what you need is based on your life stage. And what you need will change when you get older, when you have a family, when you realize that, oh, it is not a millennial thing to not own a house just because they were too young. You know, they will need it. Think about it.
Theo:The oldest millennial are what, in the forties right now? I would say, you know, what they need now is a little different than what they needed ten years ago. So it's not really generation. Absolutely. What they're going through
Duena:in I mean, you're you're you're pretty to acquire. I never really understood this obsession with segmentation in banking when we were unable to first determine what are basic money moments in a human's life. What are basic emotions regarding your money in a human's life? Let's start there. Then we can discuss these other very minute difference between cultures, between humans, between life stages, which, of course, there are plenty of upsell opportunities to discuss in juicy meetings.
Duena:You're not going to reach those until you have gotten this baseline of banking that makes sense in an emotional way. But I don't need to start doing all of this all over again, because God only knows I'm sick of my own voice talking about emotional banking. But what I wanted to ask you is, I say, I see this, and I feel like maybe I'm being jaded and old and it's very possible because I remember the first time we said fintech, right? And I was speaking on another podcast with Nectarios and he too remembers the first time someone said, Is that Finnish technology? To him.
Duena:So, were all there when it didn't have a name, but it did have, I said this a lot, it had a moment, it had a passion, had all of us knew the way we're doing banking and money is wrong. We got digitally. So, let's all build it together. What I don't see and again, it could be because I am jaded and because meanwhile, I realise that the bigger problem is human debt and organisations and these leadership teams that are afraid to move and so on, is the progress in between. What I have noticed is incremental change.
Duena:What I have seen are different versions of what looked like a good digital bank ten years ago, maybe, yeah, slightly different colors, maybe propositions are better, you know, kind of tailored to certain segments, if that's what they're doing. It's the equivalent of changing the background of your online bank checking account that we discussed for a good ten years in the 2010s. Now, granted there were no big massive things to change. If you were to sit down, a genuinely good hearted banker ten years ago and said to him, how do we throw everything out and make what we should make? Almost any CXO would be able to tell you what we need is human centered design.
Duena:We need to do this in an agile fashion. We need to throw out all the human and tech that we have and to get in new practices that are going to make us all love each other. Simple. Where are we with that? Because I have yet to see one active cultural transformation plus innovation plus digital plus tech project anymore.
Duena:And they used to exist a good few years ago. So the hope for big change existed. Have you seen many of late? Where are they?
Theo:That is a big question. I think that's why I've been spending more and more time in Asia, because that's where I see more hope and I see more change and I see more passion and drive to change. And it was interesting. So last month, I spent an afternoon with a bunch of secondary school you know, just talking to them about FinTech. And I asked them, I said, you know, what is FinTech?
Theo:Right? And these are kits that are ranging from like about 12 years old all the way to pre college, so 17, 18. And it was fascinating because I can almost guarantee you if I posed the same question in my kid's school, they wouldn't be able to answer. But these kids are like, Oh, you know, easy. It's, you know, doing finance with technology.
Theo:And then they gave me examples. You know, in Hong Kong, we had the Octopus card, it's been around for twenty seven years. And it's, a card you can use to get through mass transportation. You know the public transportation. You can use it to buy things in the store.
Theo:It reloads, know, connects it to your bank account. It's easy. It's been cashless for a long time. And now you can have a mobile app. They have a way to generate a virtual Mastercard number when you travel, etcetera.
Duena:Or do they are?
Theo:They're like this. Right? They're looking at me like, Why is this person asking us this stupid question? And I was like, wow, okay. And this is a culture, right?
Theo:Where they're so used to not just paying, you know, not with cash, but they pay with QR code, right? Alipay has been around for so long. And now there's Alipay Plus, where they are connecting all of the local wallets together in Asia. So everywhere you want, you go. Let's say you're a visitor from Philippines that you're used to using GCash.
Theo:You can be in Hong Kong. You see the Alipay plus sign. You can use your GCash wallet. And as if you're back in Philippines, it shows your local currency and and everything else. So you don't even have to worry about, like, you know, how I always stumble, I'm like, 'Wait, do they have?
Theo:Do they take Apple Pay? Because that's the only thing I have. Otherwise, I'll have to have a pile They of don't have that, right? They don't have that problem. For them, it's like, it's easy.
Theo:Tap and go. Oh, okay. And then you and then we start looking at, okay, so but what is the value prop? And I remember when I came back from Asia, gosh, this was, like, back in 02/1516, when I was telling people about this super app, they're like, So what? You pay with a QR code.
Theo:But it's not just about paying with a QR code. It's what it enables. Right? It enables people to get instant access to microcredit. Right?
Theo:You can get a loan
Duena:that and payment money moment. It allows that money moment indeed. Exactly.
Theo:Right? You need something. You're a small, small business owner. You're a small hole farmer, and you need access to something right at that moment. And you get it.
Theo:You don't have to go to a bank. And that's what FinTech was supposed to enable. Not a beautiful logo in teal and light green color. That's wonderful. Not a mobile app that says, Oh, look, I can open account in 10 Okay, so what?
Theo:Like, what else? Right? What else can you do other than you can open an account faster? It doesn't move money faster. It doesn't allow me to get to what I need in that instant And when I need that's what we seem to be missing.
Duena:I am wondering how we And are we are, if anything, are too calm in
Theo:a sense.
Duena:I haven't even brought this up because I'm trying to be I haven't processed it yet, but I'm looking at the state of both payments and money movements and banking experiences in Spain. And I am pained because I was part of the first people that sold technology in Spain. So for instance, we sold to Santander Bank and we worked with them very closely and understood up and down their back and their front and then their middle every and four years. We worked with Sabadell and so on. But then seeing their propositions as a consumer ten years later is heartbreaking because none of the things we were discussing are there.
Duena:None of the dreams that we were going to put in the app even work. None of the actual incarnations of the safe to spends of the features that we were creating for them are present. So I do wonder if there hasn't also been a rollback. And this sounds absolutely almost insane, but consider the following thing. The big changes we've made in banking have been people based and segment of bankers based when that change of gods happened.
Duena:Many of these unrealized potential projects haven't really moved forward. So I think if anyone were to do a serious audit, we'd see we probably have the same level of fintech that we had in, I don't want to be too harsh, but twenty sixteen ish and very little on the consumer side has changed because meanwhile we got bored and we got very busy doing some blockchain. But talk to me about that, please. Tell me why we dropped every consumer bit and went into this theoretical let's play with money in the sky.
Theo:I don't know. I see value in looking for a different way to bank, especially in countries where things are a little bit less structured, right? So I see a lot of that momentum, or I saw a lot of that momentum in Asia, for example, around Web3, around blockchain applications. Tokenization is like, you know, the latest buzzword, right? Let's tokenize all of the physical assets and let's
Duena:figure Then we'll let the them know of it. That's what we'll do with them.
Theo:Then now we're back to the AI train, which is not the first round we've gone through the AI train, by the way. I remember, oh gosh, this was back in maybe seven, seven, eight years ago, when I used to get pitch decks all the time. And one of the decks, and I told this story because this is like epic, I got a deck, three pages. The first page was, you know, pictures and name of the founders and what Silicon Valley College they did not graduate from. And then the second page was literally one sentence: We use AI NLP to improve your ROI.
Theo:Then the third page
Duena:Contact information.
Theo:Us. And I was like, But do you want to get a meeting out from this? You didn't even tell me what it is that you do. And how arrogant it is to think that you can just plaster a picture of three dudes on the front page. The fact that you were Silicon Valley school dropouts, and you want what exactly?
Theo:And meanwhile, you have all of these people who put in hard work thinking through their ideas, who put in hard work putting their pitch stacks in, trying to show people what they do and why they're qualified to do it. And then you will
Duena:Are you sure they didn't get financed out there? It I don't want to think about it because I've seen too many of these.
Theo:I don't want to think about it. Right? Exactly. And I I told the company, I said, never ever would you send me anything like this. This is stupid.
Theo:But to think about that culture, right, that whole startup culture that is supposed think differently, to help us think about money movement differently. Mean, there are great founders. I don't want to dismiss them. There are a lot of amazing people trying to change the status quo. But amongst with that, there's still the story of all of these people who come in and They've Right.
Theo:Learned enough
Duena:This is it is a little bit terrifying to me because obviously, you know, you and I have been mentors around the clock in the last few years and we've seen hundreds companies, and we've invested in hundreds of companies and so on, not hundreds, but tens, maybe too many. But just looking, for instance, at the last ten years of Finnovate, you'll have a solid percentage of companies that have put blood, sweat and tears into what they're building. And then you're going to have a percentage, it's not a solid, thankfully, of companies that simply know how to play the financing game. And this has been part of the problem of the mushroom of FinTech at all times. We were one of the industries that had the most amount of startups and companies when we were solving the least amount of problems.
Duena:We had three things to fix in online banking and 3,000,000,000 companies fixing them at one point. But so, it's not necessarily, you know, it was a very busy space. It became a busier space when almost we hadn't really fixed that much. But I think and in a sense, it made sense because in the middle of it, and let's not forget, we had the opening of banking as a closed box. And I think that I try and say this to my little one, there have been some pivotal moments in my lifetime in terms of advancements, right?
Duena:We had our nuclear fusion, we had our TEDDPD, and we had our bloody ability of dismantling banking and getting some digitization out of money, right? And we were unfortunately involved in all of these, not necessarily in a good way, not necessarily in a pleasant way. But what I'm trying to ask you is, is it possible that there's both a plus and a minus in this mushrooming of FinTech? And where do you think it's going beyond? Look, there's going to be a solid amount of people who are gonna rehash the same predictions for the next fifteen years.
Duena:Good for them. I just can't stand myself if I say the same thing over and over, but hats off if they can.
Theo:Job security.
Duena:This is a scary topic. We need another episode about it because I have this new theory that there are the ins and the outs these days. And this is going to continue for the next ten, fifteen years. And the ins are gonna be like this, and there's not gonna be one ounce of innovation or anything. And the outs are gonna be like, but come on.
Duena:Look. I'm not seeing a lot of happy things for the industry. Are you are you believing that good, big change can still happen in banks?
Theo:I think eventually it will. I don't think it will be as quickly as we all hoped it would. How long have we been talking about, you know, cashless, which, by the way, it might not actually be the best thing, you know. And in The US, we're still using cheques. Right?
Theo:I mean, I still have to write cheques, not because I like cheques, and not because I'm a gimmick, but because that's the only way I can move money from my big bank personal account to my big bank business account. That's the only way, right? So I'm constrained by what the banks can provide, not because of a consumer preference. So is that going to change? Maybe.
Theo:Am I going to see it before I retire? Probably not. I have no hope. Is it going to get better? I think incrementally, we'll see change.
Theo:But like you say, it's increments, it's small increments. We've gone from open banking to open data, open finance. A lot of buzzwords. People are talking about being able to open everything up so that you can have not just banking services, but utilities and everything all lumped in together. That's wonderful.
Theo:Can we just get through step one first properly and then move on? I think we are making progress, but I think we are also not making progress fast enough for us to be happy. So I think I'm jaded, as you say you are too, because we expect big things. Yeah. Maybe we're some bloods.
Duena:Impatient for I mean, for good reason. Look. I our first
Theo:Oh, I'm impatient.
Duena:We won Finovay the first time when my little one was a few weeks old. That was 02/2011. That is many, many billions of years ago. And when we did, the the the the features we showed, the kind of the online banking experience we showed then, does still not exist anywhere else in an online digital bank today. Still no bank allows you to think at the point of purchase, should I be buying this or not?
Duena:What am I really spending money on? What am I saving for? What matters to me? None of those things that were so obvious seem to have necessarily translated. And it translates to me as a genuine lack of care, a deeper lack of care for the need, the emotional needs of buyers on consumer side.
Duena:There's a lot that happened, I believe, on the railing side of banking, right? If we just look at kind of
Theo:Absolutely, the back end.
Duena:The back end has moved. The front end hasn't, and that's a lack of respect, I think. And it needs, maybe it doesn't even necessarily need to change because I think you made a really wonderful observation there, which is many of these organisations might become bypassed completely simply by consumer experience and other money moments offered by other providers. So hopefully, we won't need it.
Theo:Do you think so? It's an interesting thing I've been thinking about. So in The US, we had the Apple Card and then the Apple Bank, right? So, and I distinctly remember this. Back when they started offering Apple Bank, I made a reminder on my calendars that I need to sign up right away when it's offered.
Theo:So on that same day, when when it came alive, I'm like, yes, I'm gonna do it. And I remember sitting in my living room, my son was across from me, and I set it up. It was beautiful. It was easy. Just as you expect the Apple experience to be.
Theo:Few steps done. And, and I thought at that time, okay, what is the biggest thing that I need? What is my biggest pain point as a consumer and a small business owner is to be able to move money, right? Money movement. And so I said, well, how about, how about I try moving money from my Small Business account to the Apple account, fund it like that?
Theo:And guess what? It worked. Just like that. Just like how you expect it to be. And it still doesn't work with my big bank today, by the way.
Theo:This morning, I tried and I checked, it didn't work. And I was lucky to even be able to get my balance because they're upgrading something. I mean, you know, it's only middle of the day on a Tuesday. And I thought to myself, Wow, this is really cool. Now, why wouldn't everyone flock to using
Duena:-Because adoption.
Theo:-Instead of sticking. Right? Because now is an an another option. And I remember my son, he was watching me. He's like, this is interesting.
Theo:This is cool. He's like, mommy, why do you still have your big bank? And he asked the perfect question, right? You know, you want to talk about generations, you want to talk about, you know, preferences of younger kids. He was 13 at the time.
Theo:And I thought, Yeah, you know, that's a good question. Why wouldn't we? And then you start thinking about all these things. You start thinking about inertia because it's a pain to move banks. We don't really have that service to
Duena:It does exist in The UK. Made no difference. Auto payment. Clear u switch service that made no difference. So I wouldn't hold my breath for that.
Theo:Yeah. So you have that mess to deal with. And then you have all the other questions, you know, is my money going to be safe? And that's a big, big question. And we've seen in The US in the last few months with some of the fintechs having issues and some consumers having their money being tied up in the whole legal space until all of that get resolved.
Theo:I think that's a big thing, right? It's not so much so just that we don't have options. Yes, maybe we have options. But from a regulatory perspective, can we get it to a point where people can trust using those other options?
Duena:Exceptional point. I think you're bringing us to something that you and I don't spend enough. Maybe you do, I don't want to speak for you, but I don't. People in Nontech doesn't, and we should. I wrote about this extensively in Tech led Culture.
Duena:Thank you for making me bring the book. I don't normally do the podcast. But I wrote about it because I think one the many things we need to do now in the face of what looks like a complex type crisis we're facing in the workplace. And I want to make it very clear in banking, it's what if you're listening to this and you're in banking, no matter what we say about culture in other industries, it's 10 times better than what you're having in. So, the human debt in pharma, in retail, in whatever is monstrously smaller than it exists in banks.
Duena:And I think that's possibly connected to the very poor proposition we've just been discussing. It's very difficult to be producing anything better when we are that fit with human debt all around us and fear and no experimentation and the situations we're in. So, are less generative cultures than other industries. And make no mistake about it, they need it even more. But in the midst of all of this crisis, perhaps, and this is the thing that we wanted to get to, perhaps it's more of taking a step back from the technology and take a step back from the proposition altogether, because let's face it, even when the proposition was dissected and banks knew precisely what they need to do, and there was a waterfall fifty thousand years plan of exactly when we change this feature.
Duena:We still haven't gotten there. So can we just instead take a much bigger step back and look around as a bank and say, am a technology shop and I am a trust shop. And if I am a technology shop to do my technology work, I need these things that happen to be cultural and I'm not very good at them, but I'm going to start learning. And to be a trust shop, I need these things that happen to be cultural. So, I'm finally bringing us back to the fact that you and I and everyone else started from, right, what's this technology we need to get so that we get things fixed?
Duena:We made that technology. And then we found ourselves holding it and going, this was not the problem. Making the thing was not the problem. We can't put it anywhere because these people don't think they have a hole for it. So, maybe it's time that instead of kind of going into the proposition, we get out of the proposition, we get out of the innovation, we get out of the nitty gritty of what's happening and we say, look, let's just talk culture instead, because it's where your back stopped in banking.
Duena:You haven't done those big hard conversations. And finally, finally to the question, I see a hopeful role for the regulator. Do you? I see FCAs around the world. I see financial conduct authorities saying, you know what?
Duena:You've done nothing else but counted money so far. I need you to start thinking of humans. I'm hoping they could change something. What do you reckon?
Theo:I'm hoping too, but have you noticed how fragmented that world is and how many different directions they go? And let's bring it back to The US. How many authorities there are here trying to take a piece of the pie? I it's it's complex. It's like spaghetti.
Theo:It's worth the spaghetti. It makes a huge mess, And it's hard. And you reminded me of something that a mutual friend of ours have told me years ago. He said, look, Theo, no one wants to be that first bank CEO to lose money.
Duena:Probably true.
Theo:That's how that's how he summed it up, you know, with the current state of what we lack is not technology.
Duena:Then what we lack is.
Theo:Tech part is easy. We lack the leadership and the and the I don't know.
Duena:The guts? I call it balls on this. I call it
Theo:balls on this
Duena:podcast because we tick the box where we can say balls. And I was saying this to I had an episode with someone I built product with because I used to be part of this fintech company for many, many years, we built product. We went to Finnovate. We did we lived all that. And I was saying to him, we used to refer to ourselves as bulge holders.
Duena:We knew what they knew. And every other, every banker we talked to knew the same thing. They just needed someone to go, no, no, no, I got you. And they got that from the product companies at the time. They weren't getting that from the analysts or the rest of the industry because we were all learning at the same time.
Duena:But if you were an agile product making company, then the change is very fast. And I still make software to this day because you get the parts to what your user wants in a way that you will never get any other way by just chatting about things. But I'm just saying, I think that fact that they had those moments, they meant a lot to the people in them. But it's also the question of where are we left to them and how much massive imprint has been left? One of the things you were saying earlier about the progress, it's not even just about money.
Duena:In society we're in these days is so intersectionally complex that it becomes almost impossible to affect change because you then have intersectionality towards the state of digital, for instance, which is a silly thing. But until moving the company back to Spain, I didn't realize that sometimes you have to go in person to a human to give you something called a digital CDE, which is this electronic signature. I kid you not. To get this certificate, you have to go to a human being.
Theo:I've heard about it.
Duena:It was hilar Yes.
Theo:And then they'll open the entire day. Right?
Duena:They're gonna call it. I mean, it's it's hilarious in a sense. And it also made me appreciate the idea that there's a lot of infrastructure missing in many places, but it hasn't stopped in Pesa twenty five years ago. It won't be stopping anybody else. So, people have found ways to kind of go around the context.
Duena:Where I don't think they can go around the context is where there is no goodwill. And that is what we've potentially The goodwill that comes from being courageous, that comes from being safe, that comes from wanting to do big change. And the ins and the outs that we were talking about before are going to potentially remain locked in this. Do we have enough courage to make something big move? Or are we all in this business as usual for the next however long?
Duena:And if so, how how long? Is it decades? Decades. Do you think we have decades? Because here's another question.
Duena:What if we don't? What if we finished doing all the digital and now we just have to let the machinery finish it and now we're left with only the human bits that we are associate at.
Theo:If that's the only problem we have, I think that's wonderful. The pessimistic side of me often thinks that we don't have to worry about the day when machine takes over the world, because we humans do an enough, good enough job to practically mess everything up, to the point where we won't see when AI takes over.
Duena:Unless he already has the right, if you're
Theo:listening Yeah. Yeah. So And everything you've said is right. The courage to do the right thing. The empathy to do what is right for others, not just for ourselves.
Theo:And the worldview and the respect that we have for people outside of our circles and our countries. I think that, unfortunately, has all been lacking. I think not one thing has contributed to where we are right now, not just in banking, but also in society, but as multiple, right? Multiple of those things. I don't know how to
Duena:solve it. We are called to solve it though, I think. We will eventually. Who knows? Maybe some things we've done will be useful.
Duena:I was laughing with my team the other days. We were reading comments about from students that are reading my People Before Tech book in Japanese. And they were very disappointed with the machine translation and they weren't quite sure how that agile particular topic and obviously there's lots and lots of nuance that's lost in translation when you do machine translation of something like my work. The reason I say that is because what I think the answer is, and it's not elegant or nice or anything that anyone wants to hear is, I think we need to take our little boxes or staplers and go home earlier than we wanted to. Those of us that built the digital and hear me out.
Duena:I think that this is only solvable with the new batch of humans that are in a different shape. The new batch of humans know more. They've come into the world in a digital place directly. They have immense self respect and a host of boundaries that they will bring to the workplace that are vastly different. And they will change HR departments in ways that you and I and the tens of millions we've put into them never could.
Duena:So I'm almost thinking, you know, when we were younger and we thought, oh, you're going to have to wait until the dinosaurs in the boards of the banks finally either retire or die. And let me tell you, they did neither. And it is now our turn to maybe even leave earlier because I think what we need is a complete change of cards. And I would say to anyone that's younger listening to this, there's almost as much work to be done in fintech as there was twenty years ago, if not more, because the first pass we've done at things has left consumers with unmet needs. So if you want to go back and read your history of fintech, just do those same things, but smarter.
Duena:There's plenty of space for apples to fix things, smaller apples. And maybe that's the answer. Maybe we just need to, I don't know, retire, become a farmer and let the new generations of fintechs.
Theo:I would love to retire, except that I don't know how we can Then pay for there is that, right? That's the other part that we're supposed to have fixed with FinTech and Wealth Tech in general, is to create ways for consumers to plan better, not just at the moment, but plan better for the future So that we can actually do the things that we wanted to do, right? How long have we been talking about this? I'm tired of repeating myself. Like, yes, there are, you know, things that we can use machines to do that we can't do because it's too complex for us because we're too emotional beings and we need ways to take emotion out of the process so that we can plan for our future.
Theo:Maybe not quite there yet. Yeah. Now we're talking about using AI again, which has done an amazing work in the backend, to analyse data, to feed it to the wealth advisors. And we're using AI to sum up meeting notes to get them to clients. I don't think we're quite to where we needed to be.
Theo:One day, one day I hope. Maybe by the time I Right,
Duena:maybe by the time retire, it is going to be super interesting, what they want to do, how they want to do it, and where they want to place their effort. And I think I have to have hope that they will just say, to hell with it. We got to redo all these things with heart, with genuine communication, with transparency. There are you don't need an extreme amount of PhDs to be doing the right thing when it comes to these industries. You need an extreme amount of courage, you do.
Duena:And then you need an extreme amount of heart and goodwill. Heart and goodwill. Literally, the only things we we need still need to find a way to master, which, as you say, is hard because we also have to be honest, and anyone listening to us knows, most economies are going through a horrendous time. It hasn't even really kicked in. We haven't paid the bill for the piper of the COVID yet.
Duena:I still feel like that's coming anytime in the next ten years. And I think from the point of view of, you know, looking around ourselves and seeing the layoffs and seeing the fact that people don't find that you have amazing names. Every time I get on LinkedIn, I try to get on LinkedIn as soon as I can because there are signatures of the manifesto of Agile that are not gainfully being paid for their wisdom in the universe, which to me just sounds like we have failed as humans, big time. So, in a sense, climate, fact that we don't have the resources to be doing this, and this maybe it comes back to resources, right? The hilariousness of let's not call people resources lately.
Duena:I've come back to saying, no, let's bloody call them resources. And let's start dealing with all our resources the same goddamn way, which is to be super careful and attempt to preserve them because otherwise where are we getting to? Speaking of culture, last big, big, big question. What do you think would be the top one or two or three, however you want to phrase it, things that you would do if you were president of the world and going to change all banks tomorrow.
Theo:Wow. Oh, wait, what?
Duena:Where would you start?
Theo:Okay. I will start with finding ways to put the tool to move money and save for the future in every single human being in the world. And that means that financial inclusion, but that also means digital inclusion. And I think that's why we missed the mark. We keep saying, well, you know, we have the tool now.
Theo:What's the problem? Well, the problem is, A, not everyone have access to a mobile internet. Not everyone have access to affordable mobile internet. And not everyone has access to knowledge on how to use it, nor equipment to use it. We need to solve that before we can say, Here is a shiny little thing that not only can help you open an account because it's only the first step.
Theo:It's us understanding and having the respect for you might want something different than the other person down the street, but this is how we're going to help you get there. We are so far from it. We keep saying that we will solve it. We're not there. And I think a lot of If we take a step back and look at a lot of the challenges that we have in different societies and economies nowadays, a lot have to do with people have no hope.
Theo:Right? You have young graduates from school, they're like, I can't find a job.
Duena:I understand.
Theo:You have people who want to go to school, but they can't because they cannot afford it. You have young families who struggle, and they live paycheck And to then you have a big group of people who simply don't trust the institution, and they are paying a high price to get around it. And you can't solve the societal issues unless you can help people get to a more equal and fair state when it comes to money. 100%.
Duena:Know, that is both hopeful and deep. I won't put it any other negative way. We need to get there. There's a lot to do. Please reach out to the Adora.
Duena:She will tell you exactly what to do. There are a few things that need to doing. It isn't even hard. But in just genuine ask of anyone listening to this, if you're an exec still on the in and you know, I know maybe 40 of you still left And you have the courage and the people around you to say, right, this hasn't worked. We need to do something big.
Duena:We need to ask all the whys again. Everyone come back to the room. Let's ask the whys. I would say don't get yourself one of those people that also offered the prezi, like Nectarios was was saying in the other episode. Just get yourself one of the people that understood this hard part like Theodora did.
Duena:Like all of those other people in the back in the day of the FinTech Mafia that we were all comprehending that it starts with the heart, it starts with a willingness to put your feet on the line. And it starts
Theo:And park your ego.
Duena:Right. And then to do the right thing. But thank you so much for going through all of this with us. There's a lot more I want to ask you. And there's a lot more of after dark ones we should do with a glass of wine or glass of Coke Zero in my case.
Duena:So there we kind of spill some secrets as well. If people tune in to these ones, presuming we're going to start talking about kind of who's had what parties and what orgies existed in FinTech in the 2000s. And they leave going like, oh, and then they made another proposition for FinTech, nobody cares. So it's not as juicy as that. We didn't live quite the Wall Street, wolf life we would have painted out.
Duena:But instead, we're going to keep trying to fight it. Thank you so much, Todorov, for coming over, and we'll chat again.
Theo:Thank you so much for
Duena:joining me.