Deciphered: The Fintech Podcast · 2025-07-02 · 34 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
54 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Recorded live from Money20/20 Amsterdam, Jeff Theisen (Bain's global fintech practice lead) sits down with Georgios from Nvidia and Phoebe Wall, Chief Revenue Officer of Griffin, a UK-regulated bank serving fintechs. The conversation reveals a sector moving from hype to practical implementation across fraud detection, payment processing, and treasury operations. Rather than blanket AI adoption, speakers emphasize the critical foundation of data quality, compute strategy, and regulatory clarity - particularly around stablecoins and capital treatment. Griffin's experience banking 25 transacting fintech customers (B2B2B/B2B2C) demonstrates growing market discipline; existing fintechs must improve products competitively while a new wave of AI-native fintechs emerges. Notable examples include Featurespace for transaction monitoring, Tactile for lending underwriting, and Yonder for personalized consumer credit. The shift from app-to-agent delivery, MCP server integration (Griffin's Claude demo), and stablecoins as treasury tools (USDC versus traditional FX swaps) signal where practical value is appearing. Regulators like the PRA are engaged but frameworks remain unclear, creating both opportunity and uncertainty for banks navigating custody and capital treatment questions.
Griffin is a fully regulated UK bank that provides accounts, payments, and card services to fintechs on a B2B2B and B2B2C basis, allowing fintech companies to embed financial products without building banking infrastructure themselves. They currently have 25 transacting customers spanning insurance, wealth, residential property, and treasury/FX sectors.
AI is being applied across the entire payments value chain - fraud detection, authorization, authentication, routing, and settlement - with the most mature use cases in fraud management. More advanced implementations optimize across multiple transaction steps and customer lifetime value rather than individual transaction components.
Without reliable data in the right places, AI cannot deliver personalization or accurate underwriting; for example, waiting days for bank statements undermines the value of sophisticated AI models, making foundational data governance a prerequisite for meaningful AI ROI.
Stablecoins like USDC offer efficiency for treasury operations and FX transactions - pushing a currency directly into stablecoin form is faster and cheaper than traditional swaps and hedging - though custody and regulatory capital treatment frameworks remain unclear.
Existing fintechs must use AI to stay competitive, but a new wave of AI-native fintechs is emerging; both may coexist, though which model wins - consolidation or parallel growth - remains uncertain and will influence fintech speed and market structure.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode covers broad fintech topics (AI, stablecoins, IPOs) with some substantive points about data foundations and regulatory challenges, but much of the discussion remains at a high conceptual level. Useful observations about AI needing good data and stablecoins requiring regulatory clarity, but few novel claims or deep operational insights that a B2B operator wouldn't already understand.
AI without the right data behind it you can do and it can definitely looks nice but if you have not solved the fundamentals behind it
how are the regulators going to deal with it...how are the regulators will apply capital treatment to stablecoin is something that I think about regularly
The discussion recycles widely-circulated fintech talking points: AI hype followed by real applications, the need for data infrastructure, vertical payments, personalization, and API-first fintechs. While Phoebe's point about Griffin banking fintechs and the shift from 'app to agent' is somewhat fresh, most frameworks and conclusions are familiar industry wisdom already covered extensively in fintech discourse.
shift from app to agent with the rollout of AI
Everyone starts from a particular use case and normally there's someone very passionate either on the board or across the organization that wants to go in this particular use case
Phoebe Walton (Griffin CRO) is a credible practitioner with hands-on experience founding and scaling a regulated fintech bank, demonstrated by specific customer traction and real product challenges. Georgios from Nvidia's payments practice brings vendor perspective but is primarily a solutions provider rather than an operator who built and scaled financial products. Mix of real builder and industry enabler.
Griffin is a fully regulated UK bank...we launched fully last year and when we came to Money 22 last year, we had like our first cohort of customers signed, but maybe two live...25 customers who are transacting
I lead the payments practice for um, Nvidia
The episode lacks concrete numbers, specific company examples, and measurable outcomes. While Phoebe mentions Griffin's 25 customers and references Featurespace, Funding Circle, and Tactile, most claims remain abstract. No data on market size, performance metrics, adoption rates, or concrete timelines beyond vague references to '12 to 18 months' and 'five years.'
we had like our first cohort of customers signed, but maybe two live. Uh, and it's been quite, quite fun coming back and having 25 customers who are transacting
Funding Circle, IPO then I'm very excited about that. And it's dropped off
Jeff Theisen asks reasonably structured questions following a prepared format (quick answers, landscape evolution, IPO outlook) but rarely probes deeper or challenges claims. When Georgios mentions data as foundational, there's no follow-up on specific data challenges. The host avoids pushing back and maintains a cordial conference-room tone rather than genuine investigative dialogue. Phoebe's anecdote about being blocked by Barclays receives a light laugh rather than deeper exploration.
We're all amongst friends here
I think the next couple of years is going to be very exciting and as one of our vestiklers said to me the other day, we're still in the very early innings of fintech
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
In this episode of Deciphered, Jeff Tijssen, partner and global head of Fintech, Bain & Company is joined by Georgios Kolovos, EMEA Payments & Fintech Leader, NVIDIA and Phoebe Wallis, Chief Revenue Officer, Griffin to discuss what’s next for Fintech. Timestamps: 5:51 What's next for Fintech? 8:50 Evolution of Fintech landscape post-funding boom 11:26 Emerging trends: AI, stablecoins, and data challenges 16:17 Nvidia's work with FS firms on AI efforts 20:20 Practical AI applications in fraud and risk mitigation 24:04 Outlook for Fintech IPOs and market sentiment 27:45 Future of Fintech: Personalization and vertical payments Please
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Foreign. Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of the deciphered podcast by Bain and company. On this podcast, we unpack the stats to give you an in depth perspective on different topics relating to fintech and the financial services industry. I'm, um, your host, Jeff Theisen. I have the pleasure and privilege of leading the fintech practice globally at Bain. And for this episode, we are recording live from the European edition of Money20 20 in my beloved Amsterdam. I lived here for many years and it's always great to be back in this wonderful city. Uh, and as a Dutchman, I'm obviously biased, but I do believe that this is one of the best cities in the world.
Speaker B: Do we agree with that or when it doesn't rain?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: Final details.
Speaker B: The first today was fantastic. Right. We were spoiled when it started pouring like today.
Speaker A: Then it just feels like my hometown, London. But hey, but just time to go home. This is how I feel before. Yeah, no, exactly, exactly. In today's episode, we'll explore what's next for the wonderful world of fintech. What trends we're excited about, perspectives on the IPO market, the impact of AI, which is clearly the key buzzword to this conference. Surprise, surprise. And what do we do?
Speaker B: Should we count how many times we say AI or A2?
Speaker A: We're going to lose track very quickly. I think, uh, I think we're close to 10 already by now. Um, and what do we believe the next 12 to 18 months are going to look like for the sector? Let's introduce the people around the mic. My two wonderful guests for today, um, starting with Georgios from Nvidia. Uh, Georgios, how's it going? How's Amsterdam been treating you other than the rain today?
Speaker B: I love it. I come again and again back to Amsterdam. I love the canals. Early morning is perfect. Just after breakfast, you go and stroll along the canals, cross a couple of bridges, and the day you're set, and then you come to money 2020 and you don't see the sunlight the entire day.
Speaker A: Yeah, but being able to escape and get some fresh air and see some daylight is very, very important. Tell us a little bit more about your role at Nvidia and some of the cool stuff that you're doing.
Speaker B: Yeah, so I, uh, lead the payments practice for, um, Nvidia. And when I say payments, it's not about payments acceptance, it's about working with payments companies across everything from issuers to processors to wallets to help them to embrace, uh, some of the new technology that you mentioned so many times already. AI. And it's phenomenal. It's, um, from the difference that a couple of months made in that space is astonishing. So I'm very, very inspired actually walking around and seeing how many people. And we probably go a little bit deeper into that. Um, there's a lot of hype, but also there's a lot of very, really interesting applications. And people start realizing that AI is here to stay. It's not something that will disappear.
Speaker A: I couldn't agree more. And I know you guys have been very busy and very popular in the last couple of days. Surprise, surprise. I am, um, glad to say that. Also joining us is Phoebe Wal from Griffin. Welcome, Phoebe. Have you enjoyed Money20 20 so far?
Speaker C: I have. It is a pink carpeted marathon each year. Um, but it's been good. It's been really, really interesting to be here this year. There's been like a more definite shift in how the market works AI stablecoins and there is a lot of hype, but it has been quite refreshing to actually see practical application because I think a lot of conferences last year were like, it's coming now, it's here, it's here. Um, and it's been a great week anyway, so it's great.
Speaker A: And for our global listeners that may not necessarily be familiar with Griffin, uh, give us, give us the spiel and tell us a bit more about your role within the company as well.
Speaker C: So Griffin is a fully regulated UK bank. And if you've been at monies for incentive, we went blunt on the branding this year. So it just says in capital letters we bank fintechs. And I think that's probably the easiest, uh, way to capture it. But, um, we're fairly new. Uh, we launched fully last year and when we came to Money 22 last year, we had like our first cohort of customers signed, but maybe two live. Uh, and it's been quite, quite fun coming back and having 25 customers who are transacting, uh, with all of their, uh, underlying customer base. Um, 25 may not sound like much, but we work on a B2B2B and B2B2C basis. So if you want to offer a financial product, we provide you the accounts and the payments and uh, we work with partners to layer cards on top of that. And it's been quite exciting because I think, uh, we had a really clear idea of what we thought we'd do and then the sector spread that has moved through this year has kind of trish and pulled us from insurance into wealth residential property. We've suddenly become a big Name in. I never thought I'd work for the bank for Landlord, but here we are. And, uh, now we're seeing some really exciting companies coming through who are, ah, embedding stablecoins into treasury and fx. And it's been really fun building the solutions around that as well. But, um, I'm our Chief Revenue Officer, so I look after everything that makes us money.
Speaker A: Most important part of the business.
Speaker C: Yeah. And if I do my job badly,
Speaker B: the important thing is you're still smiling despite everything that you've been doing.
Speaker C: It's like permanent. It's the Botox. I don't have it to stop the lines, I just have it. So I firmly look here for.
Speaker A: Very good. All right, uh, let's move on to the show. At Bain, we sometimes use a concept called an answer first, which is essentially having a relatively formed quick hypothesis using the collective facts, stats and brains from Bain. Uh, we're going to adapt this a little and ask our panelists for your quick 60 second answer to the top line question, which is what is next for Fintech? Or if we want to go first.
Speaker B: You've seen a lot of the fintechs coming through, so you know, what is next?
Speaker C: What is next? I think we're seeing the shift from app to agent with the rollout of AI, um, and the moment a lot of it feels very operational. It doesn't feel embedded in the fintech product, but definitely in the delivery of it. And I think that we're going to end up, if it is rolled out well and in a way where risks are managed, we're going to end up with a much slicker experience for the end customer. But I'm not sure you're going to have as much direct customer interaction with the agents just yet. We demoed yesterday on the moneypot stage, uh, our mcp, uh, server where we're enabling potential Griffin customers to build out what their instance on the bank will look like. With Claude, um, it's in our sandbox, it's not out of sandbox yet because we're a little bit. It takes time and I don't know how quickly you want to push it into prod, but if you think about the companies that will work with us, understanding what that integration will look like and how the accounts and payments will structure, they can reduce that discovery into days, if not a day. Um, and I think the pace is going to pick up and we are going to be moving a lot faster, which I'm very excited about. But, um, I think that it's, uh, we're somehow moving quite slowly and quite quickly through this.
Speaker B: I agree on the speed definitely things will happen faster and faster. I'll think two ways. The first one is existing fintechs. They will no need to improve a little bit their products using AI to make sure that they are competitive. But I would expect we will see a next wave of fintechs that are uh, AI native and the where and who win this battle is quite interesting. Will they be coexist next to each other or will one see the other? Still to be seen. But I definitely see these two things accelerating further and further, more releases faster coming.
Speaker A: Uh, I couldn't agree more. I think the next couple of years is going to be very exciting and as one of our vestiklers said to me the other day, we're still in the very early innings of fintech and there's a lot to be excited about.
Speaker B: Come on, answer the question yourself.
Speaker A: No, no, no, no. This is part of my job is to ask you the questions. So, um, all right, it's now nice avoid. It's obviously been a ra turbulent time for the fintech sector in recent years and we went from the crazy highs of 21 and sometimes crazy valuations to markets crashing relatively recently. Uh, luckily they've started to recover. How do you believe the fintech landscape has evolved in the last 12 to 18 months?
Speaker C: I think uh, there's been a lot of pressure in having fundraised across the last 12 to 18 months. You're expected to be much more focused, much more efficient and I think it's very much quality over quantity. The market has contracted a little bit. You're seeing areas of either you have to be hyper focused on doing one thing excellently or you have to solve all problems in one place. And I think there's no in between. I think the other thing that's come into play and you're seeing a lot in the UK is the venture funds are uh, moving into the growth funds that we're investing are expecting like series B unit economics and that is a really interesting dynamic to play with. We are no longer in this world of free money and low interest rates and it's definitely pushing a lot more focus and a lot more discipline. But then you're getting great products coming out of it. Like if you're looking at what's scaling and what is adopting, especially in the UK and apologies, I'm going to keep going back there but if you've got platforms like yonder doing consumer credit cards which are hyper personalized, very focused they have probably the world's best partnerships team. Their adoption rates are scaling really quickly, they're fairly new in market but it's because they have been hyper focused on like a good customer experience. And I think that discipline in fundraising
Speaker B: is driving better product development, efficiency and much more focus. Definitely seen it. Fintech has a little bit went into under the shadow of everything that happens AI uh so suddenly all the fintechs decided we need to slap AI uh in anything that we do. Doesn't matter if it makes sense or not. We just need to talk about that we are using AI and I think this has kind of slowly, slowly passed away. We start seeing real applications across the entire value chains of any of the fintechs organizations and we see the real impact coming. We are still early, there's still plenty, plenty of things to be done but it definitely efficiency and profitability are the
Speaker A: two words I would agree with all of those points and I'm really curious to see uh, when we come back to my beloved Amsterdam in 12 months from now for another edition of Money20 20 those practical applications will be and we'll come on to that in a second. Now there's obviously uh, a lot of talk also here at Money 2020 about AI and stablecoins and how that's fundamentally going to change and disrupt the financial services industry. What are the most notable new trends and technologies that ah, you feel are currently emerging in the financial services sector? And what are you the most excited about? You can say AI uh are stablecoins. I'm m not going to punish it.
Speaker B: Don't think it's only about technology. It's about applying this technology in the right way. Where we talked just a little bit earlier it's yes, this technology on its own doesn't mean anything. AI without the right data behind it you can do and it can definitely looks nice but if you have not solved the fundamentals behind it. So going back to the same thing that we've been talking in the industry for years and years and years we need to sort our data. We need to have the right data in the right places. There's nothing you can do to do more personalization if you don't know what has this customer has done or uh, if you in order to issue a bank statements for the last five years I need to wait a day, a week sometimes from some of the providers to see what's up. If they say that not there. Does it really matter what you do with AI? I'll still answer AI. It's the Most exciting technology.
Speaker A: You kind of have to say that you work for Nvidia chargers.
Speaker B: Nvidia is not only AI, Nvidia is their accelerating computing platform. Right. So it's not only about AI but it's also about uh, accelerating data science. So a lot of the goodness that is already existing there, just transitioning it from cpu also the sequential computing to parallel computing also makes a lot of impact.
Speaker C: I really agree with you on the data point. It's hugely, hugely important and I think that AI needs that, that basis to buckle. If you need good fidelity, you need good security and um, it is what's going to drive a lot of the changes in and around underwriting. For example, a rules based engine is not new. Using data science to decision is not new. But you're about to harness something that's going to be a lot more powerful and a lot quicker and I think that's really exciting and then it can be very boring. Let me talk about stablecoins because I think as a Treasury tool it is going to be hugely transformative, especially on the younger end of the market. If you're thinking around early uh, treasury operations, if you're thinking around fx actually it is much more efficient to push a currency into USDC than push free swaps. A few hedges and then get back to gbp. It's not available for everyone. I think there's still a fair amount of work that needs to happen from a bank's perspective. We've got to work out how we hold it in custody. That's not usually clear cut but the other side of it and I'm really making myself seem fun at parties. Are the regulators going to deal with it? I was part of the team that founded Griffin. I spent a lot of time in regulation. I've spent a lot of time writing uh, bank license applications. But um, how are the regulators will apply capital treatment to stablecoin is something that I think about regularly. Aforementioned very fun but I don't think there's like a playbook for it and I think it's going to be a really interesting journey to go on with them and a lot of regulators. The PRA is very open. I think D and B are as well but I think that's going to be like a something that needs to happen very, very quickly but will have an enormous impact and feel good about it.
Speaker B: It'll be interesting if before the end of the podcast we will find a topic that we disagree just becoming very agreeable.
Speaker A: We're all amongst friends here. Uh, so you know it's 100 degree. I think the point that both of you guys made about building that muscle and building the foundation to. Because I can easily give you a list of 257 use cases to get excited about when it comes to AI. But I think what most organizations fail to understand is yes, you can build a shiny veneer on top of all the legacy crap that you have, but that that's not going to allow you to be able to benefit from all the amazing things that this technology has to offer. And obviously every year there's a new flavor. Right now it's AI and stablecoins. Next year there'll be something else. If I think, especially if you're a large financial institution, building that muscle, building that, investing in the foundation required to be able to benefit from whatever the next, uh, exciting piece of emerging technology is going to be thinking about now, how do you change ways of working, your organizational setup, your talent makeup, the capabilities required and an end is such a vital aspect as well.
Speaker B: We should name this the boring podcast because, uh, I'll come back and say I'll go back really to boring stuff. In addition to the data that you need to sort it, the other very important thing is that you need as a company, FinTech or any other industry, if you want to go deeper into AI, uh, you need to have a strategy around how do you, what is your compute? Where do you get compute? The more AI use, the more compute power you need. It doesn't matter what is the strategy. But if you don't have a strategy, sooner or later you will be caught and it will either be very expensive or it can become even worse.
Speaker A: Jos, you briefly touched on this earlier, but could you tell us on a global list a little bit more about how are you working with FS and payments companies on their AI efforts?
Speaker B: Most of the company goes through a journey. Everyone starts from a particular use case and normally there's someone very passionate either on the board or across the organization that wants to go in this particular use case. But you're seeing companies start evolving across that, looking into how do you deploy it across the entire uh, value chain of a particular business. So I spend a lot of time with fintechs and payments in particular. So in payments AI applies pretty much everything. Of course the core is the payment processing. When you have and fraud, as you said earlier, fraud is such a foundational use case. A lot of the models are already there and just transitioning in from CPU to GPU start bringing a lot of benefits. But then you start Thinking about okay, so for payment transaction you start having a lot of different models that today are independent fraud, then authorization authentication, routing, settlement. If you can connect them it becomes very interesting. So you start optimizing for the entire transaction not only for this particular step of the transaction, then you can even take it further. So you stop utilizing it only for uh, the optimization of the transaction. You optimize it for the total value of the customer so you can start using transformers to train. So you see the expansion of foundational models for payment foundation models and this is just for the piece on the payment authority. There's a lot that can be done also on the customer onboarding. Right. So how do you set a merchants or how do you underwrite a customer or a merchant? So there's a lot of work that can be done there with AI. Then you have after post a post transaction when is there any disputes and uh, chargebacks that need to be managed. AI in many forums can be used customer service. No surprise. Genai agentic AI can be used. Let's go on and on. We haven't yet got into that part. Um, there's a couple of instances but we haven't really explored about how AI will change business models in payments. Right. All we were doing today is optimizing the existing business models. Agent E Commerce yes, there's a lot of hype around it and it's a very very interesting topic and kind of looking at how it will evolve will be fascinating over the next couple of years. Who knows where we'll be next year that time. But this is uh, uh, an additional area of additional value added service and then you even distill it a little bit further. Who will play what's the role that payments company play into the agent. E commerce is just another channel that payments will be the final step where you click a button an agent will initiate a transaction. Is that it? Or other payment companies going to actually help merchants and consumer to use and get more data.
Speaker A: I think that's such um, an interesting and exciting topic and you and I have had a few discussions about this and I was asked to come and give a talk to a very large bank the other day. And this is one of the things that we talked was if you, if you rewind the clock to the early 90s, the rise of the Internet, it led to the emergence of Amazon, Google, Salesforce, PayPal, a whole bunch of other companies. And what these companies did is they didn't just say hey we're going to build a business that is 10% better compared to an existing, more analog business they fundamentally reimagined, you know, what that business model looks like and what does the rise of the Internet allow us to do and what businesses does this allow us to build? To me, that is a much more. Yes, of course, if you're a lifeline institution, of course it's important to look at how does this allow us to drive efficiencies and enhance employee productivity and all the use cases that everyone has been talking about. I think in a way much more interesting conversation to have is the one that you just raised, which is how will this lead to the emergence of brand new business models? How will this allow us to do things that historically we haven't necessarily been able to do? That's a journey that most organizations are on. Early on in the show, we talked about practical applications, we talked about A.I. uh, we talked about stablecoins, we talked about a variety of other emerging trends. But what do you consider to be. And also working around the show floor here, what do you consider to be some of the best examples of where you've seen these technologies really start to reshape traditional financial services?
Speaker C: We've mentioned fraud and I think that if you take the kind of stacking around financial crime, risk mitigation is a lot on the floor out there, uh, to layer onto your payments. And I think that if you can do that. Well, if you think about transaction monitoring systems, you have hundreds and hundreds of rules. And if it's a good system like featurespace, you can apply it to different customer types and depositor types and you can have a pretty smart way of giving the customer a good experience and stopping them from losing all the money out of their account. And uh, in the UK app fraud is like a big thing. We have some pretty robust regulation around it now. And to be a bank or any sort of payment institution is the big concern. And it has a big penalty off the back of it. And I've spoken to a few exhibitors around 2020. Some of it is just fairly like light touch kind of. It's a, it's an add on to a rules engine. But there is a lot of really interesting learned behavior that can be applied. And I think you take a big bank, you think about all of the data that you think about the historic payments that Barclays, what it was digitized in like the 70s, you can do some really, really amazing things, kind of layer that into your experience. I say this because at Griffin, we onboard lots of customers, we test their products and I'm on Like a vulnerable, uh, customer list at Barclays now, because they block my account, because I make payments to myself at these different financial institutions. And I made the mistake of saying, oh, I'm testing it for work. They're like, you're being bribed. And so I have gone through all of their vulnerable customer fraud flows. And I think that, uh, having lived through half an hour on the phone every two weeks, that must have been a fun experience. It was a very fun experience. They didn't like me asking the questions I was asking. But, um, I think that if you take something like transaction monitoring and the huge amount of data you can harness against it, there's some very, very cool things out there. And the other business I really like is tactile. I think if you look at lenders and how we lend and the end to end, from your senior funders to the borrower underwriting, that platform is doing some pretty amazing things. And I think it's a very, very good use case, which does. Going back to my earlier point, you either do one thing really well or you do the entire piece. And, uh, I think they've done a fantastic job there.
Speaker B: Your question about walking up the floor is quite interesting. It's a physical visualization of the complexity of the financial services world. It has a good and bad. Right. It's a very rich ecosystem with a lot of players, a lot of very different, very smart people looking for problems for a specific sliver of the. This operation, on that operation and deploying some pretty amazing deployment. On the other hand, it's confusing. It's very confusing, which is the part the player partner I need to do, what do I need to keep in house, what do I need to, uh, get off the shelf and deploy? So I think it's a blessing and a curse in the sense there's a lot of innovation. But on the other hand, I can see if you want, um, to deploy something, there's a lot of choices. And making these hard choices is not easy.
Speaker A: No, no, it's very, very difficult. I want to shift gears a bit and bring it back to how do we think the space will evolve and what is next. Earlier this year, we saw several companies announcing that they're looking to go public. And in recent weeks they decided to hopefully temporarily postpone their plans to go and IPO the business. What is your view on the outlook for FinTech IPOs, and what do you think is needed to see more successful fintech IPOs in the next, let's say, 12 to 18 months?
Speaker B: I wish I have A good answer for you. It go back to the same thing with this cafe. Efficiency, productivity, profitability of the business. Sentiment also plays a role and we
Speaker A: saw how quickly that sentiment can change in a matter of weeks, if not days.
Speaker B: Exactly. And it really depends on what this company can control. And they can control their operation, they can control their opex, their uh, profitability to an extent. So everything else, really difficult to plan and manage around it. So I would see a lot more continuing efforts in this space.
Speaker C: I'm a big believer in listings. So uh, in uh, another life it feels like I used to work at the European bank for Reconstruction and Development and my team's sole mission was to move companies away from bank funding in emerging markets and push for equity and debt listings. And I think they're a really, really important tool. I do think that the markets are volatile, Sentiment is hugely important. Venture and growth funding is drying up a bit, it's getting harder to raise and we should see this kind of path towards listing which 10 years ago we were all quite excited about. And if the IPOs are coming through, I remember when Funding Circle, IPO then I'm very excited about that. And it's dropped off and it's dropped off for good measure. But I think it's a really, really important tool in fostering the growth of more companies and keeping a lot of the innovation alive. But um, the exchanges have got to think about their approach. It is not an efficient process.
Speaker A: I think that's such an important point.
Speaker C: If you look at how you list, if you look at the documentation you have to work with an investment bank, it becomes hugely expensive. And actually we've seen a real shift in the way that the retail customers manage money and invest. So I think everyone that I am friends with has become a self titled day trader on trading 212 and people are much more invested in choosing where they're putting their money. And you do have this growing base of equity investors that okay, they're not the pension funds but people are hungry, they want to control what they own. They're getting very excited. And if that keeps growing like you're going to see a really interesting shift in the market. But listing is hard, it's still pretty old school, you have tax considerations but there's also been some huge listings. And it's not just tech. Like you look at the private equity funds, kkr, CBC of both listed, they're moving from strength to strength here in the Netherlands. But uh, it is something that we should be optimizing for. It's A more sustainable path, but it is not maybe as fit for purpose as it could be.
Speaker A: No, no, I would agree with all
Speaker B: of those and I'm sure there's an AI solution to take some of it in the way.
Speaker A: Of course there is, I'm sure.
Speaker C: Prospectus please.
Speaker A: I'm um, sure there's. But I think everyone is craving those success stories in general whether or not they decide to go public or not. And I did a session on the mainstays with the CEO of Monzo early this week and obviously the number one question that's on everyone's minds is when are they going to go and IPO the business? Obviously there's a big difference as well between life as a public company versus life as a privately held business. So I think you need to think very carefully as to whether or not it really makes sense for you and whether you're ready as a company to go public because some things can really, really change as part of that process. Someone told me the other day that fintech, uh, is still in the first innings. How do you believe the fintech landscape will evolve in years to come? And what do you think if we were to future gaze for a little bit? What do you think is going to be different in five years from now versus today?
Speaker B: I think there's probably a couple of immediate and very simple changes. I think interface will definitely change. I'm surprised still that there's not many fintechs that you have a uh, chat based interface. You move away from your typical dashboard
Speaker A: to so the whole conversational conversation.
Speaker B: It's so easy. There are a few banks that are doing that, but very few. So I was expecting this will be probably one of the easiest and the fastest way to embrace some of this technology. So this is one thing, the other thing is going back to later. Once the data is sorted you start seeing a lot more, personalize a lot more. Some of the private banking experience moving to the masses with um, a lot of the data I'm very excited about vertical payments across specific industry. Healthcare is still such an interesting industry where the fintech side there's a lot more that can be done. Um, and as you go across the number of the industry there will be a lot more think the incumbents are not incumbents. The larger players will filter and you get definitely the, the people that have a clear strategy.
Speaker C: I'd agree on the personalization and the contextualization of finance. I think so much of our life we have hyper, hyper personalized experiences and then when you kind of go into Financial services, things like getting a mortgage. I know lots and lots of mortgage startups that have come through over the years, but mortgages and like the house buying processes. Archaic, painful. It's deeply, deeply painful. And I think also if we think about banks and their business models in the last 10 years where we had like this fintech boom, a lot of it was just building on your very poor banking experience or you know, SME lending went crazy because interest rates were low and banks didn't have the risk appetites. Monzo, uh, and Starling kind of picked up because you had like this hyper useful experience that didn't involve calling someone, which is something that I believe very strongly in. But we've got to do a bit more. Like we've just kind of scratched the surface. And I think if you think about banks, you think about payments, you think about how you interact with this in your day to day, it's going to get a lot better, it's going to get a lot more interesting. But I'm fascinated to see what the revenue models of banks will look like in five years and what's driving that. And you know, if we're bringing in alternative types of payments and we're going to move away from Fiat and the payment rails we work with at the moment, what does that look like for a bank? Because we're all heavily reliant on the transaction fees, assessment fees, the clearing fees and it's all about to become really, really interesting. And the other thing that I am um, very interested in understanding is how ownership will work in the next five years. Ownership of your funds, the custody of your funds, but also ownership of businesses. We've talked about IPAs, but it's fairly old school. How are the markets going to work? How liquid, how latent will they be?
Speaker A: So much to be excited about. Hey, we're almost up on time. Final question for you guys is an annual recurring question at this wonderful show is what have you seen around the shop floor that has caught your eye? So for both of you, I'd love to get your perspectives on what's the one thing that has really surprised you?
Speaker B: I gave my answer earlier. I should have kept it. It was the ecosystem, right? It's a blessing and curse. It's very dynamic. There's a lot of amazing innovation.
Speaker C: I'm going to be lazy and agree with that. I think the breadth of vendors here have felt really, really interesting things and having to pick through it because I was like, okay, we're going to have some sort of AI KYC solution. We're going to have an identity thing. But, um, as I've walked around, I've been really surprised at how wide ranging it's been and probably how little I understand is, uh, another thing I do not proclaim to be world's most intelligent person, but it definitely has stretched the way I've been thinking about things and how things are done.
Speaker A: There's two ways to put it. You're an eager learner, there's a lot to learn. And for someone who's been this whole career in financial services, I'm still learning every day. So obviously a big shout out to the Wonderful team at CEO at Money20 20 with Phil and Tracy and Scarlett and Zach and Mickey and lots of other people that don't forget Opie. Exactly the fantastic team that puts this wonderful show together every year. So thank you to that team as well. Excellent. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Deciphered. Where can listeners find out more about you?
Speaker C: Amy it's very easy. It's gryphon.com we are hyper transparent so you can build whatever you would like in our sandbox for free. And we have lots of uh, very interesting case studies and our full product suite maybe kicking the trend here. Our uh, pricing is all transparent as well. So there. Or LinkedIn where I am an inconsistent and somewhat awkward poster but the rest of my team are excellent.
Speaker A: Very good.
Speaker B: Uh, Georgios has a Fantastic website called build.Nvidia.com where you'll be able to see all the goodness that comes across not only around um, financial services but all the other but with service and LinkedIn. I'm a heavy user so I had
Speaker A: a chance to play around with that website the other day and I would indeed recommend having a look at. It's very, very cool to play around with some of this stuff and some of the stuff you guys have built. And ah, you can find me obviously@spain.com where we publish a ton of content or similar to my friends over here you can find my musings on um, LinkedIn as well. And obviously you can uh, listen to this podcast on every single podcast platform. The choice is endless. My way this, this podcast is being broadcasted. If you've enjoyed the show, please leave us a preferably 5 star review on Apple and Spotify. It really helps us and also please subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode going forward. Phoebe Jorgeous, thank you so much for joining us. Enjoy the rest of your time in Amsterdam and we'll see you soon for much more exciting content. Sam.
Speaker B: Sa.
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