Fintech Files Finale: Five Years of Tech, Transformation, and Career Growth

Speaker A: M After five years, five seasons and over 50 episodes, we've come to the end of Fintech Files.

Speaker B: We've both grown in our careers and had the distinct pleasure of interviewing some of the brightest minds in the industry. So for our final episode, let's take a look back at what has been an incredible journey.

Speaker A: I can't think of a better way to wrap things up. Let's do it. Let's rewind back to 2020. So if I think back to 2020, that's actually when I had my first project that had to do with fintech or more specifically a Neo bank. Um, it was actually at the beginning of COVID and I still remember, I think it was the first week of March or so. I got this call from Ludger and he was like, yeah, Nora, what would you say doing a project in Abu Dhabi? I was like, well, yeah, of course, why not? And it's actually, it's a really exciting topic because you're going to build a new digital bank. That's how it all started for me. Um, fun fact. So actually two fun facts. One, we built the bank. The bank is actually live and running and quite successful in the region. Second, I never went to Abu Dhabi or the region because obviously Covid hit and we did the whole thing literally from our uh, desks remotely distributed across Europe and the Middle east, which was exciting in itself.

Speaker C: It's crazy looking at it right now. And yeah, indeed, it's one of the most successful banks that have been built in such a short time, which is super cool. So it's still one of the famous BCG case studies.

Speaker A: It is. And I mean right after that Anika, you sort of took over the torch and went on to build the next bank, isn't it?

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. At that time in Switzerland, which was also like a super cool experience. Neo Banking builds is still one of my favorite type of projects to be honest, because you get in contact with like all the cool technologies that like the usual clients where we're consulting can only dream about.

Speaker B: And building this from scratch with like a fully cloud based technology stack, um, having a state of the art data layer and so on, this is still

Speaker A: um, one of the coolest things to do 100%. It's literally thinking of what in its essence does a bank constitute of and what's like really value adding, what are the things you really want to build.

Speaker B: Exactly. And at the same time this is also why we decided to focus on fintechs more in terms of um, new startups in the finance world. Or like rather new players, um, instead of traditional banks.

Speaker C: Because from a technology perspective, um, I think we both considered this a bit more interesting than looking at the legacy

Speaker A: side of tech 100% and also just very personally. Right. Anika, you and I, we both, I guess we can still say we're pretty young, but um, back in 2020 we both were at the start of our careers and there we were as senior IT architect and senior consultant working on these exciting projects. But obviously most of our colleagues and clients around us, they were much more senior, much more experienced. They had loads of years working in the industry, working with the big banks in their pockets, but they also haven't yet built a fintech. So it was more of a level playing field for us and it was actually a topic that we were really well placed to dive deeper into. So the opportunity we then took.

Speaker C: Fully agree. I remember when we prepared the pitch for the podcast, like all the excitement we had, like all the iterations we did before going to the key sponsors, like what is the value add for BCT Platinum? I think looking back when we first

Speaker B: pitched it, I could have never imagined

Speaker C: that we had this amount of support from our employer to basically bring the first BCT Platinian podcast to life while just being um, like senior architects and senior consultants.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean especially back then we were, I still remember also us talking like, hey, this whole Neobank and Fintech thing, this is really cool. We want to do more of that and what if we run out of projects like how can we still get a hold of it and do something with it? And you officially started the fintech initiative or Neo Banking initiative at Platinum and we were thinking of new formats to go out to the market. And I mean the default way is to write an article which is still a really good format, but we didn't deem it the most suitable for such a cool topic as a fintech. So we went for a podcast.

Speaker B: Looking back at when we started, what

Speaker C: were your personal dream guests when we started the show?

Speaker A: I definitely had a crush moment when Solaris agreed and when we had the CPO your co vine back then talking actually about how they built the product that they had back then, as in building their own core banking system, which was a pretty exciting case study for me. How about you, Anika?

Speaker B: This was also one of my favorites, to be honest. Maybe then on the more tech product side, I also really loved that we got the chance to speak with the um, former. I think it was general manager of Mambu at this point of Time. Since this is like one of the

Speaker C: most cutting edge CO banking systems that we touch on the daily life.

Speaker B: One highlight was also for me, the episode with ABN Amro where we talk to, um, Aneri, because I would have never imagined that we have so knowledgeable and senior guests that we got the chance to interview.

Speaker C: I also think it's pretty cool that we managed to get some of our own colleagues in the podcast. So just thinking about, um, Akin Soysal, who is really leading everything on wealth tech here for B.C.

Speaker A: kirsten, obviously one of our AI experts globally.

Speaker B: Kirsten was amazing.

Speaker C: Exactly. And similarly, um, when I interviewed Akram Awad a few weeks back, I mean, he just did a TED talk on AI that had like million views. So getting those people really sharing their thoughts and actually discussing their key ideas and the impact on the finance world, um, for me, this was pretty impressive, to be honest.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I just had to also think back, looking at, um, across the seasons, basically when we started in, in season one, and I mean, I still remember, I think Joerg Hohen was actually one of our first, let's say more senior guests. He was a chief product owner. I was quite nervous before that, um,

Speaker C: imposter syndrome was real.

Speaker A: It was still is, to be fair. But, uh, you get the hang of it. Uh, at some point, literally I was there sitting, like, firstly, how did we get this person sitting here with us and actually talking to us? How can we be worth their time? But then actually turning it into a really nice conversation and getting these great insights.

Speaker C: And it also gave me quite a few cool projects, like doing the actual casework we do.

Speaker B: So, Nacho, do you remember the episode we did with the, um, the CTO of Tum over Kreison?

Speaker A: Oh, absolutely, yeah.

Speaker C: Basically a super cool banking platform. And I remember, like, a few weeks after we published the episode, like, my client wanted to know, yeah, what do you think of this? And then I could like, casually drop. Yeah, yeah, it's quite cool from a tech angle. Like, I interviewed the CTO a few weeks back, so I think it was not only a super cool learning curve from a content perspective, but also getting to know all these, like, impressive experts and bright minds.

Speaker A: 100%.

Speaker C: One thing that's also super interesting is to just see where my podcast microphone has traveled with me. I mean, first I moved to Dubai to open up the Platinian office there. Then two years later, um, Riyadh is now my home base. And also whenever I had cases outside the region, like whether it was London, whether I went on the longer vacation in Australia. My podcast microphone always followed the journey. I think it's also a bit similar for you, Norano.

Speaker A: Yeah, fun fact. I'm recording this from my travel microphone. My good microphone is currently stuck at customs in Germany. Since I'm moving back, so first moved a bit within Germany, but I had the absolute honor to spend a year and a bit in Sydney. As I said, I'm just moving back, working literally on the other side of the world for some time and doing exciting banking and non banking projects. That was such a great opportunity and I learned so much from it, met so many amazing people and was just grateful for having that opportunity. I, uh, agree.

Speaker B: And at the same time I think it's also cool how we managed to cover most of the regions here in this world. I mean, I would have never thought in the first days of our podcast

Speaker C: that I would do a live recording at Money20 20 with the CEO of Saudi FinTech. Ever when I interviewed Paytaps. I think getting this opportunity, it was incredible.

Speaker A: And did your, um, imposter syndrome kick in back then?

Speaker C: Yes, for sure.

Speaker A: Well, you can't tell from the recording.

Speaker C: Still, it's super cool seeing what, like how far this has come and developed.

Speaker B: Nora, in terms of lessons learned, what were for you the uh, the biggest lessons in terms of industry or also career that you've learned through the podcast?

Speaker A: Let's maybe start with an industry one and then move to a personal one. So when we start the podcast, we always said we want to talk about the tech in fintech and make this podcast really about tech and not so much just about the business model because there's so many podcasts out there that do that already. And actually I found that quite challenging in hindsight because in the end all of our guests, they said technology is super important and you need to get it right. And if you start from scratch, obviously you want to do it on a modern tech stack. But when you ask them about like, what are the actual key differentiators, what would be a breaking point? It goes back to just understanding your customers and literally building something that they need or want. And there's so many different ways to do that from a technology perspective. So learning for me, as excited as you can be about technology, it still doesn't just give you a great fintech. You first need to have a really, really good customer value proposition.

Speaker B: I agree, that's a very good point from my side. I was really surprised how humble all of our guests were because everyone still knew where they started from most of Them were also talking quite openly about the challenges in their day to day life they have working on those topics. I remember when we did this episode with Jacqueline o' Flanagan who um, was leading at that point of time the financial service industry for Microsoft, having her talking openly about what a challenge it still is to find the right people in these areas. Also then the topic of diversity that it's really not easy to then also um, help on diversity aspects here. I think that's something we also experienced when we were looking for the right guests. I mean it's still such a heavily male dominated industry that we also saw

Speaker A: when looking for them same. I mean gender is one aspect but we looked at the industry across multiple dimensions and also looking at different geographies, emerging markets. I remember one interview I had with Rajat Dayal from Yabex Credit, um, Fintech in India, um, the lessons he shared about how to approach credit decisioning in a market that is, let's say less developed in terms of the infrastructure you have, the regulation you have, but still has so much potential because just looking at the Indian population and how you have to approach that differently, this just brought a super exciting angle to the topic of fintech that we otherwise probably wouldn't have seen.

Speaker B: I also remember when I interviewed um, the founder of Moneyhash and when he shared how he navigated his life during the Arab Spring, what actually then motivated

Speaker C: him to become an economist.

Speaker B: I think those kinds of insights were quite unique for me during all the episodes we recruited over the last five years. Yeah.

Speaker A: So it actually just personally also the Fintech Files podcast just gave me an amazing opportunity to talk to so many interesting people and meet so many interesting people that I uh, otherwise wouldn't have had. Like even if you go to the industry fairs you would have never met them all. So that's my biggest win of course.

Speaker C: And also having then this dedicated time with those bright minds and just asking everything you ever wanted to ask them. Both on like all the amazing external guests, but also sometimes on our own BCD leaders with for me one one of the highlights.

Speaker A: So looking at the industry also, how it evolved over the last five, six to be exact years. It's also quite interesting because when we started the podcast I think it was still in the fintech spring when we had so many fintechs and neo banks popping up from the ground. Some of them that we actively helped building, I think that has slowed down a bit and particularly incumbent banks also have caught up in a lot of the customer experience. Technology at least. But yeah, why don't we talk about the most obvious technological innovation that has happened that is shaping the industry right now?

Speaker C: No digital or IT strategy we're doing nowadays for banks is going without AI.

Speaker A: AI here it is.

Speaker C: Not sure if it was so unpredictable to be honest, but still five years ago I would not have thought about it with such a depth, to be honest.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. I remember one project that I did for about five years ago or so when we looked at data use cases. Basically we wanted to build a data platform and to understand what it needs to do. You need use cases to get a sense of what are the things you want to build on it. And looking at the use cases we had on our list back then and me having a bit of an AI, or I would rather say analytics background, I was going through it and I was like, out of the 30, 10 are easy to do, but a lot of the others, they will be doable at one point, but the technology is not there yet. And um, what large language models can do these days, it's just incredible.

Speaker C: I, uh, fully agree.

Speaker B: I think everyone has watched the news in the last week about the new cloud model.

Speaker C: You can now also detect security vulnerabilities. It is quite impressive to see how far this has evolved from me Starting to use ChatGPT two years ago by just saying, okay, please summarize me this article and now write me a poem. Imagine a day without it and the opportunities are endless. So I think fast forward, I can't imagine where we're going to be in five years.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So every rock that we hit with the technology still I feel like it's being broken through within the next few months. It's just crazy. But, um, I'm quite excited for what the future holds.

Speaker C: Me too. And I think cloud, AI and blockchain will still be there with us in five years or 10 years from now. But only the future can predict in which format

Speaker A: to that. Speaking of the future, Anika, we always ask our guests, right, what's your prediction for the next 10 years? But let's maybe limit it to five years for us.

Speaker B: I think the topic of integrated wealth management is becoming more and more important. So in terms of functionalities, that you don't need to switch to a different broker to just manage your money. And I also think that the end to end customer journeys will even become more seamless as they are now. So I remember when I opened my bank account here in Saudi, it worked perfectly. Within 10 minutes I had it, but

Speaker C: I still needed to Go to the branch to sign to get my credit card, which was quite interruptive. So there's still room for improvement from a customer perspective, um, while of course also still keeping compliance high. And I think AI will also become even more important not only with having

Speaker B: ChatGPT or Claude on your, on your iPhone and part of your day to day working. Also beyond this, what about you?

Speaker A: You triggered something when you talked about your banking experience when moving to Saudi. So looking at my banking journey, moving to Australia and now eventually moving back, I think banking across borders still has quite some room for improvement. And I know it's not easy obviously because you're dealing with different regulations and nations, it's obviously not an easy thing. But when you move between countries it feels very isolated and you feel like you're virtually or physically carrying bags of money around and it's quite cumbersome. So yeah, I think that can definitely still improve. But yeah, I think the other thing that's definitely going to change is I think we'll probably go away from a classic app, uh, or Internet banking experience.

Speaker B: So your agent will manage it for you?

Speaker A: Yes, 100%. Your user interface for banking will be an agent in the future and it will go across all of the functionalities, it will go across banks and also across other aspects of your life, like insurance, like official documents. You will have something sitting on top of that. And then as a bank, uh, I think you, you'll have to ask yourself how much money you'll invest in a fancy UI if people are not actually interacting with it anymore directly, visually, fully agree. On a more personal note, what are your plans, your own personal plans for the future?

Speaker C: Uh, we pretty much like where we are right now here in Henriet. So this is definitely one thing that will stay at least for the next month.

Speaker A: And your three cats will stay obviously.

Speaker C: Of course.

Speaker A: Will it become four or five?

Speaker C: I don't think so for the moment. What about you? I think your move from Australia to Germany is a bit more exciting.

Speaker A: It is, yeah. It's obviously been a bit more exciting the other direction. It was a, uh, big adventure. But yeah, my partner and I are moving back from Australia to Germany now. Right now doing a bit of a travel in between. We did a camp event trip in New Zealand the last two weeks. I'm currently recording this from French Polynesia and we'll go to Western Australia to finish it off. So that's the very short future. And after that, well, I will start working again in Germany and hopefully do more exciting fintech and other technology projects as a principal since I've been promoted, um, while on my move to Australia, and then, yeah, we'll see. I think being almost seven years. Yeah, pretty much seven years in now. If not now, uh, you should really realize that this is not a sprint, but it's a marathon if you want to continue your consulting career. So I don't want to rush things that much anymore. I want to enjoy where I'm at. I want to work on exciting projects with smart colleagues and just do my best, and eventually the promotions will come when they come. Amazing closing words and huge props to you, Annika, because you have that relentless drive that I admire. So I couldn't have done it without you, uh, and without you pushing throughout the whole journey. It's been amazing.

Speaker C: Thank you. I could not imagine the better co host.

Speaker A: That's a wrap on fintech Files. It's been an incredible five seasons in five years.

Speaker B: Thank you for listening. Whether you've been with us for the very first episode or joined us along

Speaker A: the way, if what you've, uh, heard has sparked something and you're ready to discover how you can make an impact in tech, head to bcgplatinian.com careers to discover what's possible from both of us.

Speaker B: Thank you. It has been an immense privilege.