Holti Banka

Banka helps lead the World Bank’s initiative to make payments interoperable and fast. In this episode, he discusses the launch of Project FASTT, the principles that make fast payments work and how to meet key financial inclusion goals.

Banka helps lead the World Bank’s initiative to make payments interoperable and fast. In this episode, he discusses the launch of Project FASTT, the principles that make fast payments work and how to meet key financial inclusion goals.

Making Payments FASTT: The World Bank’s Holti Banka

Hand, the Director of Financial Fairness Advocacy at Consumer Reports, leads the magazine’s initiative to evaluate new fintech products to give customers greater awareness of the rapidly changing financial services market. The ratings system could be a game-changer for pricing and product development.

Hand, the Director of Financial Fairness Advocacy at Consumer Reports, leads the magazine’s initiative to evaluate new fintech products to give customers greater awareness of the rapidly changing financial services market. The ratings system could be a game-changer for pricing and product development.

How Delicia Reynolds Hand Works to Empower Fintech Consumers

It has been quite a ride since our first episode in 2015. Over more than eight years, this show helped mark AIR’s founding, unpacked what the pandemic and other events meant for financial regulation, and hosted so many enlightening discussions about disruptive technology.

It has been quite a ride since our first episode in 2015. Over more than eight years, this show helped mark AIR’s founding, unpacked what the pandemic and other events meant for financial regulation, and hosted so many enlightening discussions about disruptive technology.

Barefoot Innovation Podcast Hits 200-Episode Milestone

In this episode, Jo Ann interviews the most famous generative AI. The chat is “unsmart” but it gave responses to complex questions that were accurate and displayed the ability to grasp subtle issues.

In this episode, Jo Ann interviews the most famous generative AI. The chat is “unsmart” but it gave responses to complex questions that were accurate and displayed the ability to grasp subtle issues.

Brave New World: A Conversation with ChatGPT

Cecilia Skingsley

The head of the Bank for International Settlements’ innovation initiative offers insight on ways that central banks and other regulatory organizations can boldly explore technological change.

The head of the Bank for International Settlements’ innovation initiative offers insight on ways that central banks and other regulatory organizations can boldly explore technological change.

Cecilia Skingsley on How BIS Innovation Hub Showcases ‘Art of the Possible’

Tomicah Tillemann

Tillemann, Chief Policy Officer of Haun Ventures, shares his views about the crypto winter and how the confluence of blockchain, open source and digital tokens could solve stubborn problems.

Tillemann, Chief Policy Officer of Haun Ventures, shares his views about the crypto winter and how the confluence of blockchain, open source and digital tokens could solve stubborn problems.

Demystifying DeFi and Web3 with Tomicah Tillemann

The Bank for International Settlements, which ensures payment systems work, has prioritized technology. Tara Rice, who heads the BIS Secretariat of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures, discusses CPMI’s stablecoin guidance and more.

The Bank for International Settlements, which ensures payment systems work, has prioritized technology. Tara Rice, who heads the BIS Secretariat of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures, discusses CPMI’s stablecoin guidance and more.

BIS Executive Tara Rice on Need for Global Standards in New Payments Era

Kyle Hauptman

Kyle Hauptman, vice chairman of the National Credit Union Administration, comes on the show to discuss how his agency encourages credit unions to take steps to stay relevant in the digital era.

Kyle Hauptman, vice chairman of the National Credit Union Administration, comes on the show to discuss how his agency encourages credit unions to take steps to stay relevant in the digital era.

‘There Were Zero Plane Crashes Before We Had Planes’: Kyle Hauptman

Cleve Mesidor

The question of how to expand access and ensure fairness for people of color deals with finding the right balance of regulation, technology and traditional finance. Two leaders on this issue speak with Jo Ann about finding the best answers.

The question of how to expand access and ensure fairness for people of color deals with finding the right balance of regulation, technology and traditional finance. Two leaders on this issue speak with Jo Ann about finding the best answers.

Delicia Hand, Cleve Mesidor on Rethinking Consumer Protection Paradigm

In this episode, Jo Ann speaks with innovation leaders at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Haimera Workie and Alex Khachaturian, about a new tool to help transform financial regulation and compliance.

In this episode, Jo Ann speaks with innovation leaders at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Haimera Workie and Alex Khachaturian, about a new tool to help transform financial regulation and compliance.

Machines that Read Regulations: FINRA's Goal Could Soon Be Reality

Jo Ann Barefoot discusses disrupting innovation in the financial services sector and beyond.

Great podcast. Well produced. Impressive guests. Jo Ann manages the conversations so well. Must listen for anyone dealing with financial regulation, regtech and fintech.

Great content

I&#39;m not even in Fintech / Regtech and I find the topics and discussion fascinating. Lots to think about with each episode, especially about the future of tech and how it can be applied to some tough challenges.

Fascinating topics & excellent discussion

Barefoot Innovation Podcast

Greg Kidd

It’s always extra fun when we have a show where the guest talks about the days when Jack Dorsey hacked him and lived in his backyard. For today’s conversation, I’m joined by my friend Greg Kidd, Co-founder and CEO of globaliD. I’m predicting right now that this one is going to be a Barefoot Innovation fan-favorite. Greg has an unusual background. He was involved from the early days of Ripple, Twitter, and Square. Unlike most Silicon Valley innovators, though, he’s also been a banking consultant and worked for the Fed Reserve Board. He is famously a big thinker (I like to tell him that people sometimes have no idea what he’s talking about, although I promise that doesn’t happen in this show).  I remember the first time I met him -- we walked into a party at the same time one night in San Francisco, and were still talking, barely inside the door, two hours later. This is actually the longest episode we’ve ever done, because he’s just fascinating to listen to -- I couldn’t tear myself away. We recorded it this spring in globaliD’s space at the Digital Garage in San Francisco, where Greg shared his vision of what’s ahead in finance, commerce, and technology. We talked about the magnitude of the shifts he sees, and his passionate belief that new technology should be used to empower people, not control them. The secret to that, Greg says, is decentralization. He thinks blockchains and distributed ledgers are as revolutionary as the internet was. And he thinks, above all, that we should decentralize control over people’s identities. As he says, government-issued identities are inherently insecure -- they create huge centralized “honeypots” of data that attract hackers -- and they can invite misuse by government itself. Greg's firm globaliD is building an alternative. Its software can be downloaded to the phone to create an individual token of identity that can attach a unique name, which then can collect identity proofs, or “attestations,” based on the person’s electronic footprint and relationships. The individual can customize how to share identity information for different purposes, shielding sensitive information for some uses and revealing it in others, in order to protect privacy. Because the underlying information lives in the individual’s device, not a government or corporate database, it’s relatively secure from cyber-attack. As mobile phones approach ubiquity worldwide, this kind of system can also expand financial inclusion by authenticating millions of people who lack traditional credentials and therefore can’t enter the mainstream financial system. We've done other shows on this (I suggest re-listening to the one on the India stack and Aadhaar card with  Sanjay Jain). Governments throughout the world are working on this, especially in countries where much of the population (often, especially, women) lack documents and therefore can’t satisfy the bank Know-Your-Customer regulations. A few years ago I ran into Greg in Fiji at the annual summit of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion. He was speaking there on how to use mobile phone-based data to help refugees identify themselves to authorities, to make it easier to screen people even in the midst of mass migrations and humanitarian crises. The US needs updated identity methods too. Our analog-era systems like social security numbers are no longer secure -- too often buyable on the dark web. Digital solutions will be coming here soon. Greg also gets excited about making innovation work with regulation. He says we don’t have to end up in George Orwell’s world, nor in Mad Max’s, as he argued in this memorable  piece. I promise this episode will leave you with some new ideas. Links  Link to Episode Transcription www.hardyaka.com  Podcast with Anne Boden More on Greg Kidd Greg Kidd is the CEO of globaliD and the former chief risk officer at Ripple. His work taking his own startup public (Dispatch Management Services) on the Nasdaq is book-ended by time at Booz Allen, Promontory, and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. He was an initial investor and advisor for both Twitter and Square, and his investment firm Hard Yaka continues to back many fintech and regtech companies. His leadership pursuits include work at Outward Bound and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). More for our listeners We have many more great podcasts in the queue. We have a wonderful episode with the California banking commissioner, Jan Owen (which is extra exciting because we recorded it outside with lightning and thunder through the whole thing). We’ll also have other regtech firms, including Compliance.ai, which is creating machine-readable regulations, and Alloy, which has high-tech solutions for meeting the Know-Your-Customer rules in AML. And we have one with the co-founders of Earnup. There are many more in the works. The fall events schedule is filling up. Some of the places I’ll be speaking are:    Finovate Fall, September 26, 2018, New York, NY    NFCC Connect, October 2, 2018, Dallas, TX   P20 Conference, October 10, Atlanta, GA   American Banker Regtech Conference, October 15-16, New York, NY   Money 2020, October 21-24, Las Vegas, NV   Singapore Fintech Festival, November 12-16, Singapore   LendIt Europe, November 19-20, 2018 in London   ABA/ABA Financial Crimes Conference, December 2-4,  Washington, DC   Regtech Rising, December 3-5, London   If you listen to Barefoot Innovation on  iTunes, please leave a five star rating on the show to help us continue to grow. Come to jsbarefoot.com for today’s show notes and to join our email list, so you’ll get the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts. As always, please follow me on  Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. support our podcast Meanwhile, keep innovating!   Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates.  Email Address  Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

It’s always extra fun when we have a show where the guest talks about the days when Jack Dorsey hacked him and lived in his backyard. For today’s conversation, I’m joined by my friend Greg Kidd, Co-founder and CEO of <a href="http://www.globalid.net" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">globaliD</a>. I’m predicting right now that this one is going to be a Barefoot Innovation fan-favorite. Greg has an unusual background. He was involved from the early days of Ripple, Twitter, and Square. Unlike most Silicon Valley innovators, though, he’s also been a banking consultant and worked for the Fed Reserve Board. He is famously a big thinker (I like to tell him that people sometimes have no idea what he’s talking about, although I promise that doesn’t happen in this show).  I remember the first time I met him -- we walked into a party at the same time one night in San Francisco, and were still talking, barely inside the door, two hours later. This is actually the longest episode we’ve ever done, because he’s just fascinating to listen to -- I couldn’t tear myself away. We recorded it this spring in globaliD’s space at the Digital Garage in San Francisco, where Greg shared his vision of what’s ahead in finance, commerce, and technology. We talked about the magnitude of the shifts he sees, and his passionate belief that new technology should be used to empower people, not control them. The secret to that, Greg says, is decentralization. He thinks blockchains and distributed ledgers are as revolutionary as the internet was. And he thinks, above all, that we should decentralize control over people’s identities. As he says, government-issued identities are inherently insecure -- they create huge centralized “honeypots” of data that attract hackers -- and they can invite misuse by government itself. Greg's firm globaliD is building an alternative. Its software can be downloaded to the phone to create an individual token of identity that can attach a unique name, which then can collect identity proofs, or “attestations,” based on the person’s electronic footprint and relationships. The individual can customize how to share identity information for different purposes, shielding sensitive information for some uses and revealing it in others, in order to protect privacy. Because the underlying information lives in the individual’s device, not a government or corporate database, it’s relatively secure from cyber-attack. As mobile phones approach ubiquity worldwide, this kind of system can also expand financial inclusion by authenticating millions of people who lack traditional credentials and therefore can’t enter the mainstream financial system. We've done other shows on this (I suggest re-listening to the one on the India stack and Aadhaar card with <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/8/23/access-for-all-ciies-sanjay-jain-and-the-india-stack?rq=sanjay" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Sanjay Jain</a>). Governments throughout the world are working on this, especially in countries where much of the population (often, especially, women) lack documents and therefore can’t satisfy the bank Know-Your-Customer regulations. A few years ago I ran into Greg in Fiji at the annual summit of the <a href="https://www.afi-global.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Alliance for Financial Inclusion</a>. He was speaking there on how to use mobile phone-based data to help refugees identify themselves to authorities, to make it easier to screen people even in the midst of mass migrations and humanitarian crises. The US needs updated identity methods too. Our analog-era systems like social security numbers are no longer secure -- too often buyable on the dark web. Digital solutions will be coming here soon. Greg also gets excited about making innovation work with regulation. He says we don’t have to end up in George Orwell’s world, nor in Mad Max’s, as he argued in this memorable <a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/news/neither-mad-max-nor-orwell-id-startup-walks-a-fine-line" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> piece</a>. I promise this episode will leave you with some new ideas. Links <a href="https://drive.google.com/a/jbarefoot.com/file/d/16YteihhD2lbCnVfFm-71VSqlCHBTItnt/view?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Link to Episode Transcription</a> <a href="http://www.hardyaka.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.hardyaka.com</a> <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2018/3/18/digitally-native-finance-starling-bank-ceo-anne-boden" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Podcast with Anne Boden</a> More on Greg Kidd Greg Kidd is the CEO of globaliD and the former chief risk officer at Ripple. His work taking his own startup public (Dispatch Management Services) on the Nasdaq is book-ended by time at Booz Allen, Promontory, and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. He was an initial investor and advisor for both Twitter and Square, and his investment firm Hard Yaka continues to back many fintech and regtech companies. His leadership pursuits include work at Outward Bound and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). More for our listeners We have many more great podcasts in the queue. We have a wonderful episode with the California banking commissioner, Jan Owen (which is extra exciting because we recorded it outside with lightning and thunder through the whole thing). We’ll also have other regtech firms, including <a href="http://Compliance.ai" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Compliance.ai</a>, which is creating machine-readable regulations, and Alloy, which has high-tech solutions for meeting the Know-Your-Customer rules in AML. And we have one with the co-founders of Earnup. There are many more in the works. The fall events schedule is filling up. Some of the places I’ll be speaking are: <ul> <li> <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/upcoming-speeches/2018/9/26/finovate-fall" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Finovate Fall,</a> September 26, 2018, New York, NY </li> <li> <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/upcoming-speeches/2018/10/2/nfcc-connect-conference" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> NFCC Connect,</a> October 2, 2018, Dallas, TX </li> <li> <a href="https://payments20.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">P20 Conference</a>, October 10, Atlanta, GA </li> <li> <a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/conference/regtech-2018" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">American Banker Regtech Conference</a>, October 15-16, New York, NY </li> <li> <a href="https://us.money2020.com/speakers" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Money 2020</a>, October 21-24, Las Vegas, NV </li> <li> <a href="http://fintechfestival.sg/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Singapore Fintech Festival</a>, November 12-16, Singapore </li> <li> <a href="http://www.lendit.com/europe/2018" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LendIt Europe</a>, November 19-20, 2018 in London </li> <li> <a href="https://www.aba.com/Training/Conferences/Pages/FCE.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ABA/ABA Financial Crimes Conference</a>, December 2-4,  Washington, DC </li> <li> <a href="https://finance.knect365.com/regtech-rising/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Regtech Rising</a>, December 3-5, London </li> </ul> If you listen to Barefoot Innovation on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/barefoot-innovation-podcast/id982863019?mt=2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> iTunes</a>, please leave a five star rating on the show to help us continue to grow. Come to <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jsbarefoot.com</a> for today’s show notes and to join our email list, so you’ll get the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts. As always, please follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/JoAnnBarefoot?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbarefoot/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>, and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/barefootinnovationgroup/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a>. support our podcast Meanwhile, keep innovating! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Transforming Identity: GlobaliD CEO Greg Kidd

Daniel Gorfine

Some organizations are so interesting that we come back to them more than once. Among US regulatory agencies, the most fascinating may be the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Last July we ran a  podcast conversation with the Commission’s Chairman, Christopher Giancarlo, which goes into greater depth about the role of the CFTC and it also contains Chairman Giancarlo’s thought-provoking statement that the top priority facing every regulatory body is to convert the rule book from analog to digital design. The CFTC is at the forefront of regulatory innovation in part because its leader is so passionate about the importance of it. In that spirit, they recruited the perfect person to lead the LabCFTC innovation project -- today’s guest, Daniel Gorfine. Luckily for us, the CFTC was able to attract Dan into government from the fintech sector – I first met him when he was at OnDeck – and he’s been bringing an innovator’s mindset and working models to this venerable government agency. This episode has three very meaty topics, each of which could have been a whole show. First, Dan talks about the vision and work of LabCFTC, sharing insights about how it’s organized that I know other regulators will find helpful. He talks about how they track and facilitate innovation in the financial markets, including a “primer” they issued on rules applying to cryptocurrency. He also explains how they explore new technology for use by the agency, itself -- they call that CFTC 2.0 -- as well as “Digital Reg,” an internal think tank for rapid learning and sharing of tech insight. Second, Dan talks with me about an exciting initiative they’ve just launched, issuing the first-ever  CFTC Science Prize Competition Act challenge. They discovered this law empowering agencies to run competitions to solve regulatory problems in science and technology, and they decided to crowdsource ideas on both the problems to tackle and the process to use. Public comments are due July 24. In our conversation, Dan throws out some of the ideas he and his colleagues have thought of -- maybe regulatory data visualization tools, or machine-learning for market surveillance, or machine-readable and machine-executable regulation -- but they want to hear from you. Our listeners are among the most thoughtful people anywhere on regulation innovation, so please comment. You could even become CFTC Innovator of the Year! Our third topic is one that rarely surfaces in the innovation dialogue, and solely needs discussion: the legal and procedural obstacles to government agencies that want to embrace innovation. We could call the topic, government modernization. Think about it. If you were a federal agency wanting to keep up with technology innovation, you would want to be able to do a few things. You would want to be able to try out new technologies, hands-on. If the innovation was something you might adopt for your own agency, you would want to test it before you had to commit to a major procurement budget and procedure. You would also want to be able to brainstorm with a wide range of people, learning from them, thinking through ideas with them. All of this is stunted today by well-intentioned rules that were designed long ago -- for good reason -- to prevent inappropriate influence, backroom deals, and the like. Dan talks in particular about the Anti-Deficiency Act, which restricts procurement activities and prevents the CFTC from being able to try out new kinds of tools. Another issue is the procurement process itself. I met a few months ago with people from a different agency, showing them some innovative technology that could make their regulatory work easier, and one of them said, “If we decided today that we should adopt this, we would have it in seven years.” I’ve talked with other agencies that cite the Federal Advisory Committee Act, with its restrictions on meetings, and the Administrative Procedure Act, which structures the rule-making process and, at some stages, limits interactive dialogue. Agencies have raised concerns about various “government in the sunshine” rules, which again make it difficult to talk informally. Some can’t readily attend a breakfast or lunch event. They have to ask about the value of the meal being served and if it’s more than, I think it’s $15, they can’t eat it, or they have to go through paperwork to pay for it. And of course, there are complex approval processes for participating in various kinds of forums. More than any show we’ve done, this one puts you in the shoes of the regulatory agency and shows how their hands are tied by procedural prohibitions and requirements. I’d love to see someone do a study, maybe a graduate thesis, on how rules that were written in an older, slower era may now undermine the ability of regulators to keep up with exponential change in technology. We could use suggestions on updating them for the digital age. And remember, it’s an issue much broader than finance. I’ve been in and around Washington for decades and can remember the bad old days before some of these rules were created -- indeed, I remember some of the bad old practices that led to them. Still, we don’t need to straightjacket our regulators. Other countries have a much more fluid discussion between agencies and industry, and also have the ability to try things. One model is the Bank of England’s Fintech Accelerator, which explores new technology for the bank itself. And Dan and I both participated in London last month in the amazing AML Tech Sprint run by the UK Financial Conduct Authority -- which is a stunning model of innovative regulatory process. Its leaders were my guests on the  last podcast we posted (which my friend Peter Renton of LendAcademy and LendIt called the “most fascinating discussion he’s ever heard on the future of financial regulation” -- if you missed it, check it out). Meanwhile, here’s some great news. Just a few days ago, Congressman Austin Scott (R-GA)  introduced the CFTC Research and Development Modernization Act, H.R. 6121. Dan refers to it in our talk – it’s bipartisan legislation to address some of these hurdles at the CFTC. We’ll link to it in the show notes. The bill would permit the Commission to collaborate on projects with fintech developers. It would also allow it to receive “gifts” for R&amp;D purposes, including software to try out, subject to common sense safeguards. The bill echoes work by Congressman Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who has sought to facilitate innovation by all the financial regulatory agencies. And the US agencies, themselves, are all moving ahead, too. The CFPB’s Acting Director, Mick Mulvaney, plans to launch a regulatory sandbox. The FDIC held a tremendously impressive technology forum. Five US agencies attended the UK tech sprint. Regulation innovation is coming, and no one is more thoughtful about it than Dan Gorfine. More links  Our  Podcast with Christopher Woolard of the UK Financial Conduct Authority Our  Podcast with Nick Cook, the FCA’s head of regtech FinRegLab, which is leading regulatory innovation in the US  Link to transcription of this episode (Note that transcripts may sometimes contain errors and that transcript timing notations do not match the posted podcast)  More on Dan Gorfine Daniel Gorfine is Chief Innovation Officer and Director, LabCFTC at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. LabCFTC is dedicated to facilitating market-enhancing financial technology (FinTech) innovation, fair market competition, and proactive regulatory excellence and understanding of emerging technologies. Daniel is also an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center where he teaches a course on ‘FinTech Law &amp; Policy.’ Daniel was most recently Vice President, External Affairs &amp; Associate General Counsel at OnDeck, and previously served as director of financial markets policy and legal counsel at the Milken Institute think tank where he focused on technology-driven financial innovation, capital access, and financial market policy. Earlier in his career, Gorfine worked at the international law firm Covington &amp; Burling LLP and served a clerkship with U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake in the District of Maryland. A graduate of Brown University (A.B.), Daniel holds a J.D. from George Washington University Law School and an M.A. from the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. More for our listeners We have many more great podcasts in the queue. We’ll talk with another community bank CEO, Mike Butler of Radius Bank.  We’ll have two more episodes that we recorded this year at LendIt. One is a discussion of new research by LendUp and Experian, on credit reporting, and the other is with Greg Kidd, Founder of Global ID.  We also recorded two episodes at last month’s Comply 2018 conference in New York, with two regtech firms -- Compliance.ai, which offers machine-readable regulatory compliance, and Alloy, which has high-tech solutions for meeting the Know-Your-Customer rules in AML. Speaking of LendIt,  I was a guest last week on  Lend Academy podcast, and Peter Renton will be on our show soon as well, so watch for those. I’m also excited we’ll have several leading members of Congress on the show in the coming weeks. So, stay tuned! The summer conference slowdown is nearly upon us, but I hope to see you at upcoming speeches and events including:    American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, June 26, Nashville, TN   Money 2020, October in Las Vegas. Among other things, I’ll be speaking on the Revolution Stage about the regulation revolution   Also, watch for upcoming information on my collaboration with Brett King on his new book on the future of finance -- we’ll have a show and events on that as well. If you listen to Barefoot Innovation on  iTunes, please leave a five-star rating on the show to help us build it. Also please remember to send in your “buck a show” to keep it going, and come to jsbarefoot.com for today’s show notes and to join our email list, so you’ll get the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts. As always, please follow me on  Twitter and Facebook. Support our Podcast And tell me what you’re thinking about digitizing regulation. Let’s widen this dialogue to more people and more and more ideas!     Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates.  Email Address  Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Some organizations are so interesting that we come back to them more than once. Among US regulatory agencies, the most fascinating may be the <a href="https://www.cftc.gov/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Commodity Futures Trading Commission</a>. Last July we ran a <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/7/18/from-analog-to-digital-regulation-cftc-acting-chairman-christopher-giancarlo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> podcast conversation</a> with the Commission’s Chairman, Christopher Giancarlo, which goes into greater depth about the role of the CFTC and it also contains Chairman Giancarlo’s thought-provoking statement that the top priority facing every regulatory body is to convert the rule book from analog to digital design. The CFTC is at the forefront of regulatory innovation in part because its leader is so passionate about the importance of it. In that spirit, they recruited the perfect person to lead the LabCFTC innovation project -- today’s guest, Daniel Gorfine. Luckily for us, the CFTC was able to attract Dan into government from the fintech sector – I first met him when he was at OnDeck – and he’s been bringing an innovator’s mindset and working models to this venerable government agency. This episode has three very meaty topics, each of which could have been a whole show. First, Dan talks about the vision and work of <a href="https://www.cftc.gov/LabCFTC/Overview/index.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LabCFTC</a>, sharing insights about how it’s organized that I know other regulators will find helpful. He talks about how they track and facilitate innovation in the financial markets, including a “primer” they issued on rules applying to cryptocurrency. He also explains how they explore new technology for use by the agency, itself -- they call that CFTC 2.0 -- as well as “Digital Reg,” an internal think tank for rapid learning and sharing of tech insight. Second, Dan talks with me about an exciting initiative they’ve just launched, issuing the first-ever <a href="https://comments.cftc.gov/PublicComments/CommentForm.aspx?id=2873" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> CFTC Science Prize Competition Act challenge</a>. They discovered this law empowering agencies to run competitions to solve regulatory problems in science and technology, and they decided to crowdsource ideas on both the problems to tackle and the process to use. Public comments are due July 24. In our conversation, Dan throws out some of the ideas he and his colleagues have thought of -- maybe regulatory data visualization tools, or machine-learning for market surveillance, or machine-readable and machine-executable regulation -- but they want to hear from you. Our listeners are among the most thoughtful people anywhere on regulation innovation, so please comment. You could even become CFTC Innovator of the Year! Our third topic is one that rarely surfaces in the innovation dialogue, and solely needs discussion: the legal and procedural obstacles to government agencies that want to embrace innovation. We could call the topic, government modernization. Think about it. If you were a federal agency wanting to keep up with technology innovation, you would want to be able to do a few things. You would want to be able to try out new technologies, hands-on. If the innovation was something you might adopt for your own agency, you would want to test it before you had to commit to a major procurement budget and procedure. You would also want to be able to brainstorm with a wide range of people, learning from them, thinking through ideas with them. All of this is stunted today by well-intentioned rules that were designed long ago -- for good reason -- to prevent inappropriate influence, backroom deals, and the like. Dan talks in particular about the Anti-Deficiency Act, which restricts procurement activities and prevents the CFTC from being able to try out new kinds of tools. Another issue is the procurement process itself. I met a few months ago with people from a different agency, showing them some innovative technology that could make their regulatory work easier, and one of them said, “If we decided today that we should adopt this, we would have it in seven years.” I’ve talked with other agencies that cite the Federal Advisory Committee Act, with its restrictions on meetings, and the Administrative Procedure Act, which structures the rule-making process and, at some stages, limits interactive dialogue. Agencies have raised concerns about various “government in the sunshine” rules, which again make it difficult to talk informally. Some can’t readily attend a breakfast or lunch event. They have to ask about the value of the meal being served and if it’s more than, I think it’s $15, they can’t eat it, or they have to go through paperwork to pay for it. And of course, there are complex approval processes for participating in various kinds of forums. More than any show we’ve done, this one puts you in the shoes of the regulatory agency and shows how their hands are tied by procedural prohibitions and requirements. I’d love to see someone do a study, maybe a graduate thesis, on how rules that were written in an older, slower era may now undermine the ability of regulators to keep up with exponential change in technology. We could use suggestions on updating them for the digital age. And remember, it’s an issue much broader than finance. I’ve been in and around Washington for decades and can remember the bad old days before some of these rules were created -- indeed, I remember some of the bad old practices that led to them. Still, we don’t need to straightjacket our regulators. Other countries have a much more fluid discussion between agencies and industry, and also have the ability to try things. One model is the <a href="https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/fintech" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bank of England’s Fintech Accelerator</a>, which explores new technology for the bank itself. And Dan and I both participated in London last month in the amazing AML Tech Sprint run by the UK Financial Conduct Authority -- which is a stunning model of innovative regulatory process. Its leaders were my guests on the <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2018/6/9/regulation-revolution-the-financial-conduct-authority-and-digitally-native-regulatory-design" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> last podcast we posted</a> (which my friend Peter Renton of LendAcademy and LendIt called the “most fascinating discussion he’s ever heard on the future of financial regulation” -- if you missed it, check it out). Meanwhile, here’s some great news. Just a few days ago, Congressman Austin Scott (R-GA) <a href="https://austinscott.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-austin-scott-introduces-bipartisan-bill-modernize-commodity-futures" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> introduced</a> the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6121?r=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CFTC Research and Development Modernization Act, H.R. 6121</a>. Dan refers to it in our talk – it’s bipartisan legislation to address some of these hurdles at the CFTC. We’ll link to it in the show notes. The bill would permit the Commission to collaborate on projects with fintech developers. It would also allow it to receive “gifts” for R&amp;D purposes, including software to try out, subject to common sense safeguards. The bill echoes work by <a href="https://mchenry.house.gov/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Congressman Patrick McHenry</a> (R-NC), who has sought to facilitate innovation by all the financial regulatory agencies. And the US agencies, themselves, are all moving ahead, too. The CFPB’s Acting Director, Mick Mulvaney, <a href="https://www.bna.com/cfpb-exploring-regulatory-n57982093011/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">plans to launch</a> a regulatory sandbox. The FDIC held a tremendously impressive <a href="https://www.fdic.gov/news/conferences/techforum/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">technology forum</a>. Five US agencies attended the UK tech sprint. Regulation innovation is coming, and no one is more thoughtful about it than Dan Gorfine. More links <ul> <li>Our <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/12/10/regulation-innovation-the-fcas-christopher-woolard" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Podcast with Christopher Woolard</a> of the UK Financial Conduct Authority</li> <li>Our <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2018/1/8/the-future-of-regulation-the-fcas-reg-tech-leader-nick-cook" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Podcast with Nick Cook</a>, the FCA’s head of regtech</li> <li><a href="https://finreglab.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">FinRegLab</a>, which is leading regulatory innovation in the US</li> <li><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mynV8WNHgDV17EfIU86peCB1kMIb52P0b3uRF43bIPc/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Link to transcription</a> of this episode (Note that transcripts may sometimes contain errors and that transcript timing notations do not match the posted podcast)</li> </ul> More on Dan Gorfine Daniel Gorfine is Chief Innovation Officer and Director, LabCFTC at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. LabCFTC is dedicated to facilitating market-enhancing financial technology (FinTech) innovation, fair market competition, and proactive regulatory excellence and understanding of emerging technologies. Daniel is also an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center where he teaches a course on ‘FinTech Law &amp; Policy.’ Daniel was most recently Vice President, External Affairs &amp; Associate General Counsel at OnDeck, and previously served as director of financial markets policy and legal counsel at the Milken Institute think tank where he focused on technology-driven financial innovation, capital access, and financial market policy. Earlier in his career, Gorfine worked at the international law firm Covington &amp; Burling LLP and served a clerkship with U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake in the District of Maryland. A graduate of Brown University (A.B.), Daniel holds a J.D. from George Washington University Law School and an M.A. from the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. More for our listeners We have many more great podcasts in the queue. We’ll talk with another community bank CEO, Mike Butler of Radius Bank.  We’ll have two more episodes that we recorded this year at <a href="http://www.lendit.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LendIt</a>. One is a discussion of new research by LendUp and Experian, on credit reporting, and the other is with Greg Kidd, Founder of Global ID.  We also recorded two episodes at last month’s <a href="https://comply2018.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Comply 2018</a> conference in New York, with two regtech firms -- <a href="http://Compliance.ai" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Compliance.ai</a>, which offers machine-readable regulatory compliance, and Alloy, which has high-tech solutions for meeting the Know-Your-Customer rules in AML. Speaking of LendIt, <a href="https://www.lendacademy.com/podcast-155-jo-ann-barefoot-of-barefoot-innovation-group/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> I was a guest last week</a> on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/lend-academy-podcast/id766693555?mt=2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Lend Academy podcast</a>, and Peter Renton will be on our show soon as well, so watch for those. I’m also excited we’ll have several leading members of Congress on the show in the coming weeks. So, stay tuned! The summer conference slowdown is nearly upon us, but I hope to see you at upcoming speeches and events including: <ul> <li> <a href="https://jsbarefoot.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9eed997b93ffaa6dab1952deb&amp;id=66673164f3&amp;e=a14054880f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference,</a> June 26, Nashville, TN </li> <li> <a href="https://us.money2020.com/speakers" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Money 2020</a>, October in Las Vegas. Among other things, I’ll be speaking on the Revolution Stage about the regulation revolution </li> </ul> Also, watch for upcoming information on my collaboration with <a href="http://brettking.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Brett King</a> on his new book on the future of finance -- we’ll have a show and events on that as well. If you listen to Barefoot Innovation on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/barefoot-innovation-podcast/id982863019?mt=2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> iTunes</a>, please leave a five-star rating on the show to help us build it. Also please remember to send in your “buck a show” to keep it going, and come to <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jsbarefoot.com</a> for today’s show notes and to join our email list, so you’ll get the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts. As always, please follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/JoAnnBarefoot?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/barefootinnovationgroup/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a>. Support our Podcast And tell me what you’re thinking about digitizing regulation. Let’s widen this dialogue to more people and more and more ideas! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Regulatory Challenger: LabCFTC and Daniel Gorfine

Nick Cook

Francesca Hopwood

I think this is my all-time favorite episode of Barefoot Innovation. We have two guests. Nick Cook has been on the show  twice before in his former role as head of regtech at the UK Financial Conduct Authority. He now leads the FCA’s newly-created division-level unit on innovation. I believe  this model is unique in the world-- a financial regulatory agency establishing a high-level unit that, when staffed out, will have 200 people. Reporting to Nick are two groups. One is the group called Innovate, which includes the FCA’s famous regulatory sandbox. The second is the group on regtech and advanced analytics that Nick used to head, himself. And my second guest is his successor in leading that regtech group -- Francesca Hopwood Road. If you’re interested in regulatory innovation, today’s show may be the single most valuable source you can find on how to do it. Every minute is packed with both fresh information and rare insight about how regulators, themselves, will have to change to keep pace with changing technology.

I think this is my all-time favorite episode of Barefoot Innovation. We have two guests. Nick Cook has been on the show <a href="https://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2018/1/8/the-future-of-regulation-the-fcas-reg-tech-leader-nick-cook" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> twice before</a> in his former role as head of regtech at the <a href="https://www.fca.org.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">UK Financial Conduct Authority</a>. He now leads the FCA’s newly-created division-level unit on innovation. I believe <a href="https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/fca-sets-out-progress-and-next-steps-promoting-innovation-financial-services" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> this model</a> is unique in the world-- a financial regulatory agency establishing a high-level unit that, when staffed out, will have 200 people. Reporting to Nick are two groups. One is the group called Innovate, which includes the FCA’s famous regulatory sandbox. The second is the group on regtech and advanced analytics that Nick used to head, himself. And my second guest is his successor in leading that regtech group -- Francesca Hopwood Road. If you’re interested in regulatory innovation, today’s show may be the single most valuable source you can find on how to do it. Every minute is packed with both fresh information and rare insight about how regulators, themselves, will have to change to keep pace with changing technology.

Reaching New Heights: The FCA’s Nick Cook and Francesca Hopwood Road

Bill Gates famously said, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.” That gets quoted often these days, because it so well captures the times we live in. In that vein, it was a special pleasure to be invited recently to a roundtable aimed at envisioning the financial system of 2030. The event was the second in a series hosted by Prince Michael of Liechtenstein, a three day conversation with incredibly thoughtful people drawn from banks, fintech companies, cryptocurrency, global NGOs, technologists, and regulators, from all over the world. It was organized by Dr. Thomas Puschmann, Director of the Swiss FinTech Innovation Lab at the University of Zurich.

Bill Gates famously said, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.” That gets quoted often these days, because it so well captures the times we live in. In that vein, it was a special pleasure to be invited recently to a roundtable aimed at envisioning the financial system of 2030. The event was the second in a series hosted by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-von-liechtenstein-1715b74b/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Prince Michael</a> of Liechtenstein, a three day conversation with incredibly thoughtful people drawn from banks, fintech companies, cryptocurrency, global NGOs, technologists, and regulators, from all over the world. It was organized by Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaspuschmann/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Thomas Puschmann</a>, Director of the <a href="https://www.fintech.uzh.ch/en.html" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Swiss FinTech Innovation Lab</a> at the University of Zurich.

Prince Michael of Liechtenstein: Imagining Finance in 2030

Paul Watkins

Today’s show is a bonus episode that we added to the schedule because it has a deadline connected with it. My guest is Paul Watkins, Assistant Director of the Consumer Federal Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Director of its new Office of Innovation. And the deadline is February 11, which is the last day that the CFPB will be accepting public comment letters on its proposals for organizing a Product Sandbox and for issuing No-Action Letters on innovative products and practices. The Bureau is very interested in hearing from as many people as possible, and I really encourage all our listeners to submit input.

Today’s show is a bonus episode that we added to the schedule because it has a deadline connected with it. My guest is Paul Watkins, Assistant Director of the Consumer Federal Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Director of its new Office of Innovation. And the deadline is February 11, which is the last day that the CFPB will be <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/policy-compliance/notice-opportunities-comment/open-notices/policy-no-action-letters-and-bcfp-product-sandbox/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">accepting public comment letters</a> on its proposals for organizing a Product Sandbox and for issuing No-Action Letters on innovative products and practices. The Bureau is very interested in hearing from as many people as possible, and I really encourage all our listeners to submit input.

The CFPB Innovation Director Paul Watkins

Brian Brooks

I have a real treat for you today. Brian Brooks is the Chief Legal Officer of Coinbase and is also one of the smartest and most thoughtful people anywhere in the financial world. His past roles include being General Counsel at Fannie Mae and Vice Chairman of OneWest Bank, where he worked with both now-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and now-Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting. If his name seems familiar, it may be because was in headlines a while back as a short-list candidate to be Deputy Treasury Secretary, or Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or White House Counsel.

I have a real treat for you today. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-brooks-bb14b648/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Brian Brooks</a> is the Chief Legal Officer of <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Coinbase</a> and is also one of the smartest and most thoughtful people anywhere in the financial world. His past roles include being General Counsel at Fannie Mae and Vice Chairman of OneWest Bank, where he worked with both now-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and now-Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting. If his name seems familiar, it may be because was in headlines a while back as a short-list candidate to be Deputy Treasury Secretary, or Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or White House Counsel.

Talking Cryptocurrency with Brian Brooks of Coinbase

Lynn Owen

I am especially thrilled about today’s guest -- California DBO Commissioner Jan Owen -- because this episode has been years in the making. I’ve known Jan for a long time, and as anyone who knows her will attest, she’s a breath of fresh air in the regulatory world. She’s candid, she’s outspoken, she’s thought provoking, and she's fearless in tackling thorny issues. We’ve been looking for a good chance to sit down and talk, and we finally found one this summer. As it happens, it turned out to be one of Barefoot Innovation’s most fun settings ever (and we’ve had some great ones, including  beachside in Fiji at the AFI conference). Jan and I were both in Santa Fe in July for a conference and we decided to record our talk on an outdoor balcony, as a thunder storm approached. It was extremely windy, and we could smell the ozone and coming rain, and you’ll be able to hear the thunder booming, sometimes startlingly well-timed to punctuate Jan’s more pointed comments. We took our chances with the weather, staying outside as the sky darkened and dozens of lightning strikes forked down out of the clouds onto the mountains behind Jan -- I wish I’d gotten a photo of that.  In the end, we had to run for it as the rain began, first with big drops spattering the deck and then, ten seconds later, deluge! So the episode ends a little abruptly! Jan Lynn Owen is one of the most important financial regulators in the US because she heads the California Department of Business Oversight (DBO). Since California arguably leads the world in financial innovation, the DBO is at the forefront in addressing emerging regulatory issues around fintech. Importantly, state regulators, unlike most of the federal ones, oversee both banks and nonbanks. The US federal regulators dominate financial policy, but they don't directly supervise nonbank startups. That means they’re not in close touch with the cutting edge of innovation, which is not in the banks -- it’s in the nonbank startups. So having a regulator like Jan who understands both banking and fintech is invaluable. In our conversation, she shares her diverse background, including having been a banker and regulator. She describes the scope of the DBO, which is breathtaking -- 368,000 licensees, over 4,000 small business and small dollar lenders, over 300 payday lenders, over 400 nondepository mortgage companies - you get the picture. As you would expect, we had a lively discussion about the proposal by the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to create a fintech charter. Jan is famously opposed to it and I have been an outspoken advocate for it - we’ll link in the show notes to my debate on that topic with John Ryan, CEO of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS). Jan is of course a leader in CSBS and in our talk, she describes their efforts to modernize and streamline the state regulatory systems and licensing system in ways that she believes can meet the needs of the fintech sector without the OCC establishing a new type of federal charter. (Note that my discussion with Jan was recorded in mid-July, and so predated the OCC’s July 31 announcement that it is going ahead with the new fintech charter.) Jan points out that the fintech world has transitioned from seeking to avoid regulation to embracing it, in the realization that it helps their business model. She says this shift is putting healthy pressure on government to figure out how to regulate these novel companies, and she’s candid in saying that many of our financial laws and rules are old and out of date. In our talk, she invites input from anyone and everyone on how to fix them. The OCC fintech charter was not the only issue on which Jan and I disagree.  If you read the news, you probably already know that she’s been outspoken in her skepticism about regulatory sandboxes -- and our regular listeners know that I think regulators really need them. Much of the issue comes down to how they’re designed, and we had a good conversation about the dos and don'ts of sandboxes, reglabs, and innovation hubs. The key is to give regulators a safe space to do easy experimentation, mainly to accelerate their own learning, while still assuring full consumer protection. (Since Jan and I spoke, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection also announced that it will launch a regulatory sandbox.) Before we fled the rainstorm, I asked Jan to talk about a speech she’s been giving titled “Sex, Drugs, and Skinny Jeans” (a perfect example of her style). The “sex” topic is the #MeToo movement, including Jan’s personal experience with workplace sexual misconduct. The “drugs” issue is, of course, how to regulate the financial issues raised by legal marijuana in states like California, since federal law still bars banks from opening accounts for these cash-rich businesses. And “skinny jeans” is about the culture clash between traditional, suit-and-tie finance and the jeans-and-tee-shirt worldview of Silicon Valley. We’re going to have to bridge that divide, if we want to optimize the technology change coming to the financial world. Enjoy this thunderous episode with Jan Lynn Owen. Links LINK TO FULL TRANSCRIPTION Podcast with John Ryan - Conference of State Bank Bank Supervisors President Recent Speech at Lendit  More on Jan Lynn Owen Jan Lynn Owen was appointed the first-ever Commissioner of the California Department of Business Oversight by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. on July 1, 2013, following a merger of the departments of Corporations and Financial Institutions. Previously, Ms. Owen served as Commissioner of Corporations.  Prior to becoming Commissioner, Ms. Owen was the principal at The Jan Owen Group; a strategic initiatives manager at Apple Inc.; vice president of government affairs at JP Morgan Chase; state director of government and industry affairs at Washington Mutual Inc.; and executive director of the California Mortgage Bankers Association.  From 1999 to 2000, Ms. Owen was acting commissioner of the Department of Financial Institutions, following on her role as deputy commissioner from 1996 to 1999. She also served for several years as a consultant to the state Senate Banking Committee.  Ms. Owen is an alumna of California State University, Fresno, where she earned her degree in Economics. More for our listeners We have great podcasts in the queue. We have a series focused on global developments in fintech and regtech, including Harish Natarajan of the World Bank and Anju Padwardhan of CreditEase and Stanford University, who talks about fintech developments in China. From London, we’ll have a talk with P.J. DiGiamarino of JWG and the Regtech Council. We’ll also have a really thought-provoking show with Peter Renton, who leads LendAcademy and the LendIt conference series. We have a regtech firm coming up, Alloy, which has high-tech solutions for meeting the Know-Your-Customer rules in AML. And we’ll have a show with the co-founders of Earnup. So, lots to look forward to! The fall conference circuit is exciting. Some of the places I’ll be speaking are:   Finovate Fall,  September 26, 2018, New York, NY   NFCC Connect, October 2, 2018, Dallas, TX   Online Lending Policy Institute, October 9, Washington, DC   P20 Conference, October 10, Atlanta, GA   American Banker RegTech, October 15-16, New York, NY   Money 2020, October 21-24, Las Vegas, NV   Singapore Fintech Festival, November 12-16, Singapore   LendIt Europe, November 19-20, 2018 in London   ABA/ABA Financial Crimes Conference, December 2-4, Washington, DC   Regtech Rising, December 3-5, London   I’ll also be speaking at several events hosted by US regulators this fall. It’s great to see so many of them really digging into the issues surrounding fintech and regtech. Also, watch for upcoming information on my collaboration with Brett King on his new book on the future of finance -- we’ll have a show and events on that as well. If you listen to Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, please leave a five star rating and also remember to send in your “buck a show” to keep it going. Come to jsbarefoot.com for today’s show notes and to join our email list, so you’ll get the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts. As always, please follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Support our podcast   Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates.  Email Address  Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

I am especially thrilled about today’s guest -- California DBO Commissioner Jan Owen -- because this episode has been years in the making. I’ve known Jan for a long time, and as anyone who knows her will attest, she’s a breath of fresh air in the regulatory world. She’s candid, she’s outspoken, she’s thought provoking, and she's fearless in tackling thorny issues. We’ve been looking for a good chance to sit down and talk, and we finally found one this summer. As it happens, it turned out to be one of Barefoot Innovation’s most fun settings ever (and we’ve had some great ones, including <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/5/28/fiat-currency-can-be-virtual-too-jonathan-dharmapalan-ceo-of-e-currency" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> beachsid</a><a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/5/28/fiat-currency-can-be-virtual-too-jonathan-dharmapalan-ceo-of-e-currency" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">e in Fi</a><a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/5/28/fiat-currency-can-be-virtual-too-jonathan-dharmapalan-ceo-of-e-currency" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ji</a> at the <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/4/4/matthummingbirdco" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">AFI conference</a>). Jan and I were both in Santa Fe in July for a conference and we decided to record our talk on an outdoor balcony, as a thunder storm approached. It was extremely windy, and we could smell the ozone and coming rain, and you’ll be able to hear the thunder booming, sometimes startlingly well-timed to punctuate Jan’s more pointed comments. We took our chances with the weather, staying outside as the sky darkened and dozens of lightning strikes forked down out of the clouds onto the mountains behind Jan -- I wish I’d gotten a photo of that.  In the end, we had to run for it as the rain began, first with big drops spattering the deck and then, ten seconds later, deluge! So the episode ends a little abruptly! Jan Lynn Owen is one of the most important financial regulators in the US because she heads the <a href="http://www.dbo.ca.gov/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">California Department of Business Oversight</a> (DBO). Since California arguably leads the world in financial innovation, the DBO is at the forefront in addressing emerging regulatory issues around fintech. Importantly, state regulators, unlike most of the federal ones, oversee both banks and nonbanks. The US federal regulators dominate financial policy, but they don't directly supervise nonbank startups. That means they’re not in close touch with the cutting edge of innovation, which is not in the banks -- it’s in the nonbank startups. So having a regulator like Jan who understands both banking and fintech is invaluable. In our conversation, she shares her diverse background, including having been a banker and regulator. She describes the scope of the DBO, which is breathtaking -- 368,000 licensees, over 4,000 small business and small dollar lenders, over 300 payday lenders, over 400 nondepository mortgage companies - you get the picture. As you would expect, we had a lively discussion about the proposal by the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to create a fintech charter. Jan is famously opposed to it and I have been an outspoken advocate for it - we’ll link in the show notes to my debate on that topic with John Ryan, CEO of the <a href="https://www.csbs.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Conference of State Bank Supervisors</a> (CSBS). Jan is of course a leader in CSBS and in our talk, she describes their efforts to modernize and streamline the state regulatory systems and licensing system in ways that she believes can meet the needs of the fintech sector without the OCC establishing a new type of federal charter. (Note that my discussion with Jan was recorded in mid-July, and so predated the OCC’s July 31 announcement that it is going ahead with the new fintech charter.) Jan points out that the fintech world has transitioned from seeking to avoid regulation to embracing it, in the realization that it helps their business model. She says this shift is putting healthy pressure on government to figure out how to regulate these novel companies, and she’s candid in saying that many of our financial laws and rules are old and out of date. In our talk, she invites input from anyone and everyone on how to fix them. The OCC fintech charter was not the only issue on which Jan and I disagree. <a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/news/sandboxes-make-me-nervous-10-questions-for-california-bank-commish" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> I</a><a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/news/sandboxes-make-me-nervous-10-questions-for-california-bank-commish" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">f you read the news</a>, you probably already know that she’s been outspoken in her skepticism about regulatory sandboxes -- and our regular listeners know that I think regulators really need them. Much of the issue comes down to how they’re designed, and we had a good conversation about the dos and don'ts of sandboxes, reglabs, and innovation hubs. The key is to give regulators a safe space to do easy experimentation, mainly to accelerate their own learning, while still assuring full consumer protection. (Since Jan and I spoke, the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/cfpb-wants-to-help-launch-new-fintech-products-1531953587" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection also announced that it will launch a regulatory sandbox</a>.) Before we fled the rainstorm, I asked Jan to talk about a speech she’s been giving titled “Sex, Drugs, and Skinny Jeans” (a perfect example of her style). The “sex” topic is the #MeToo movement, including Jan’s personal experience with workplace sexual misconduct. The “drugs” issue is, of course, how to regulate the financial issues raised by legal marijuana in states like California, since federal law still bars banks from opening accounts for these cash-rich businesses. And “skinny jeans” is about the culture clash between traditional, suit-and-tie finance and the jeans-and-tee-shirt worldview of Silicon Valley. We’re going to have to bridge that divide, if we want to optimize the technology change coming to the financial world. Enjoy this thunderous episode with Jan Lynn Owen. Links <a href="https://drive.google.com/a/jbarefoot.com/file/d/1uNcetVFiCvNnL4TlwGwEw3X1srpKbCet/view?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LINK TO FULL TRANSCRIPTION</a> <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/8/7/banks-and-community-csbs-president-john-ryan" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Podcast with John Ryan</a> - Conference of State Bank Bank Supervisors President <a href="http://www.lendit.com/usa/2018/podcasts/sex-drugs-and-skinny-jeans" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Recent Speech at Lendit</a> More on Jan Lynn Owen Jan Lynn Owen was appointed the first-ever Commissioner of the California Department of Business Oversight by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. on July 1, 2013, following a merger of the departments of Corporations and Financial Institutions. Previously, Ms. Owen served as Commissioner of Corporations. Prior to becoming Commissioner, Ms. Owen was the principal at The Jan Owen Group; a strategic initiatives manager at Apple Inc.; vice president of government affairs at JP Morgan Chase; state director of government and industry affairs at Washington Mutual Inc.; and executive director of the California Mortgage Bankers Association. From 1999 to 2000, Ms. Owen was acting commissioner of the Department of Financial Institutions, following on her role as deputy commissioner from 1996 to 1999. She also served for several years as a consultant to the state Senate Banking Committee. Ms. Owen is an alumna of California State University, Fresno, where she earned her degree in Economics. More for our listeners We have great podcasts in the queue. We have a series focused on global developments in fintech and regtech, including Harish Natarajan of the World Bank and Anju Padwardhan of CreditEase and Stanford University, who talks about fintech developments in China. From London, we’ll have a talk with P.J. DiGiamarino of JWG and the Regtech Council. We’ll also have a really thought-provoking show with Peter Renton, who leads LendAcademy and the LendIt conference series. We have a regtech firm coming up, Alloy, which has high-tech solutions for meeting the Know-Your-Customer rules in AML. And we’ll have a show with the co-founders of Earnup. So, lots to look forward to! The fall conference circuit is exciting. Some of the places I’ll be speaking are: <ul> <li> <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/upcoming-speeches/2018/9/26/finovate-fall" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Finovate Fall,</a> <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/upcoming-speeches/2018/9/26/finovate-fall" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> </a>September 26, 2018, New York, NY </li> <li> <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/upcoming-speeches/2018/10/2/nfcc-connect-conference" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">NFCC Connect</a><a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/upcoming-speeches/2018/10/2/nfcc-connect-conference" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">,</a> October 2, 2018, Dallas, TX </li> <li> <a href="https://www.onlinelendingpolicysummit.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Online Lending Policy Institute</a>, October 9, Washington, DC </li> <li> <a href="https://payments20.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">P20 Conference</a>, October 10, Atlanta, GA </li> <li> <a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/conference/regtech-2018" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">American Banker RegTech</a>, October 15-16, New York, NY </li> <li> <a href="https://us.money2020.com/speakers" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Money 2020</a>, October 21-24, Las Vegas, NV </li> <li> <a href="https://fintechfestival.sg/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Singapore Fintech Festival</a>, November 12-16, Singapore </li> <li> <a href="http://www.lendit.com/europe/2018" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LendIt Europe</a>, November 19-20, 2018 in London </li> <li> <a href="https://www.aba.com/Training/Conferences/Pages/FCE.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ABA/ABA Financial Crimes Conference,</a> December 2-4, Washington, DC </li> <li> <a href="https://finance.knect365.com/regtech-rising/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Regtech Rising</a>, December 3-5, London </li> </ul> I’ll also be speaking at several events hosted by US regulators this fall. It’s great to see so many of them really digging into the issues surrounding fintech and regtech. Also, watch for upcoming information on my collaboration with <a href="http://brettking.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Brett King</a> on his new book on the future of finance -- we’ll have a show and events on that as well. If you listen to Barefoot Innovation on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/barefoot-innovation-podcast/id982863019?mt=2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">iTunes</a>, please leave a five star rating and also remember to send in your “buck a show” to keep it going. Come to <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jsbarefoot.com</a> for today’s show notes and to join our email list, so you’ll get the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts. As always, please follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/JoAnnBarefoot?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbarefoot/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>, and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/barefootinnovationgroup/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a>. Support our podcast Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Talking Through the Storm with Jan Lynn Owen

Gilles Gade

Cross River

My guest today is pioneering a crucial innovation within the innovation landscape in finance -- by providing banking services to fintechs through a platform-based financial services model known as the sponsor bank, or partner bank. In today’s episode, Gilles Gade tells the story of founding and building one of the leading sponsor banks, Cross River. Most fintech companies are licensed by their states, but are not banks. That means that every one of them has to find a bank through which to clear payments and connect to the payments system (which only banks can do). That’s not easy -- many fintechs struggle with this because banks are required by their regulators to set up complex systems for due diligence and risk management in dealing with any kind of third party that could affect the bank’s soundness or its customers’ wellbeing. Over the last decade or so, this challenge, combined with the enormous potential of the fintech market, prompted a number of banks to focus on meeting this need -- Gilles points to Webbank as leading the way. These banks have to meet a range of specialized needs including, crucially, taking responsibility for the partner fintechs’ compliance with regulatory requirements. Gilles describes founding Cross River in 2008, when the financial crisis had curtailed many kinds of consumer and small business credit, and talks about how new companies emerged to fill the gap, with either new kinds of products, or new ways of creating access to old products. He points to fintech lenders -- like Affirm, Lending Club, and Sofi -- and also to payments-focused companies like Coinbase, Transferwise and  ActiveHours, as innovators that are opening up more inclusive finance. Gilles is especially thoughtful on regulatory issues, which he calls “by far” the biggest challenge for the fintech world. He emphasizes that the single biggest difficulty is sheer uncertainty, as technology change outstrips traditional regulatory change mechanisms. Gilles cites the  Madden v. Midland litigation, with its controversy over national versus state interest rates, and the “valid when made” doctrine, as issues that need clarity so that lenders can build stable business models. Gilles also has thoughts on the Comptroller of the Currency’s proposal for creating a  special fintech charter (note that we recorded this discussion during the tenure of  Keith Noreika as Acting Comptroller of the Currency). Gilles laments that we have no fewer than 12 federal regulators involved in these issues (I myself have actually counted twice that many, directly and indirectly involved). Like me, he’s optimistic about the innovation efforts of the regulatory agencies -- he mentions the OCC in particular -- and of congressional leaders like Congressmen Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and Gregory Meeks (D-NY) -- both of whom, I’m delighted to say, are going to be guests on our show. Cross River’s emphasis on policy issues has led it to a number of leadership initiatives, including creating the Online Lending Policy Institute, which sponsors an outstanding Online Lending Policy Summit in Washington each fall, and also sponsoring the policy programming at the LendIt conference, which is coming up next month -- I’ll be there, by the way, and I hope you will too! More on Cross River and Gilles Gade  Video about the bank Gille Gade: Gilles Gade is a founder of Cross River Bank (CRB) and has served as its Chairman, President and CEO since its inception in 2008 as an innovation-driven state-chartered bank and a provider of fully compliant financial solutions to the marketplace lending and payments sectors. Gilles has over 20 years of experience in investment banking and venture capital including as Co-Founder and Managing Director of Chela Technology Partners and Chela Internet Ventures, a boutique investment bank and venture fund focusing on emerging technologies and telecommunications; technology investment banker at Barclays Capital; and FIG investment banker at Bear Stearns. He started his career in 1990 at Citicorp Venture Capital, after graduating from the MBA Institute IMIP (Groupe IPESUP) in Paris with an MS in International Management. More for our listeners Our upcoming shows will include Nerd Wallet CEO Tim Chen; Michael Wiegand, who heads the Gates Foundation’s work on financial services for the poor; and the CEO’s of both Eastern Bank and Radius Bank. As I mentioned we’ll also have shows soon with two members of Congress, one a Republican and one a Democrat, and some other very special guests. I hope to see you at upcoming events including:   Lendit Fintech USA, April 9-11, San Francisco, CA   Bank Director, The Reality of Regtech, April 18, New York, NY   Texas Bankers Association Annual Conference, May 3, Houston, TX   Women Corporate Directors Global Institute, May 10, New York, NY    Comply 2018, May 16, New York   CFSI’s EMERGE, June 6-8, Los Angeles, CA    American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, June 26, Nashville -- I’ll be moderating a general session panel on regulation and AI, and also teaming up again with the ABA for some special podcasts.   Support our Podcast As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Again, follow me on  twitter and  facebook.  And please send in your “buck a show” to keep Barefoot Innovation going!     Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates.  Email Address  Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

My guest today is pioneering a crucial innovation within the innovation landscape in finance -- by providing banking services to fintechs through a platform-based financial services model known as the sponsor bank, or partner bank. In today’s episode, Gilles Gade tells the story of founding and building one of the leading sponsor banks, <a href="https://www.crossriverbank.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Cross River</a>. Most fintech companies are licensed by their states, but are not banks. That means that every one of them has to find a bank through which to clear payments and connect to the payments system (which only banks can do). That’s not easy -- many fintechs struggle with this because banks are required by their regulators to set up complex systems for due diligence and risk management in dealing with any kind of third party that could affect the bank’s soundness or its customers’ wellbeing. Over the last decade or so, this challenge, combined with the enormous potential of the fintech market, prompted a number of banks to focus on meeting this need -- Gilles points to <a href="http://www.webbank.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Webbank</a> as leading the way. These banks have to meet a range of specialized needs including, crucially, taking responsibility for the partner fintechs’ compliance with regulatory requirements. Gilles describes founding Cross River in 2008, when the financial crisis had curtailed many kinds of consumer and small business credit, and talks about how new companies emerged to fill the gap, with either new kinds of products, or new ways of creating access to old products. He points to fintech lenders -- like <a href="https://www.affirm.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Affirm</a>, <a href="https://www.lendingclub.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lending Club</a>, and <a href="https://www.sofi.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sofi</a> -- and also to payments-focused companies like <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Coinbase</a>, <a href="https://transferwise.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Transferwise</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/09/21/activehours-ceo-we-have-a-strong-pay-it-forward-culture.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> ActiveHours</a>, as innovators that are opening up more inclusive finance. Gilles is especially thoughtful on regulatory issues, which he calls “by far” the biggest challenge for the fintech world. He emphasizes that the single biggest difficulty is sheer uncertainty, as technology change outstrips traditional regulatory change mechanisms. Gilles cites the <a href="https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5e08c5da-0fab-4e6c-afc6-cf17d52a3bac" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Madden v. Midland litigation</a>, with its controversy over national versus state interest rates, and the “valid when made” doctrine, as issues that need clarity so that lenders can build stable business models. Gilles also has thoughts on the Comptroller of the Currency’s proposal for creating a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/fintech-charter-is-still-in-play-new-comptroller-says-1513798286" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> special fintech charter</a> (note that we recorded this discussion during the tenure of <a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/news/otting-takes-reins-from-noreika-at-occ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Keith Noreika as Acting Comptroller of the Currency</a>). Gilles laments that we have no fewer than 12 federal regulators involved in these issues (I myself have actually counted twice that many, directly and indirectly involved). Like me, he’s optimistic about the innovation efforts of the regulatory agencies -- he mentions the OCC in particular -- and of congressional leaders like Congressmen <a href="https://mchenry.house.gov/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Patrick McHenry</a> (R-NC) and <a href="https://meeks.house.gov/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gregory Meeks</a> (D-NY) -- both of whom, I’m delighted to say, are going to be guests on our show. Cross River’s emphasis on policy issues has led it to a number of leadership initiatives, including creating the <a href="https://olpi.info/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Online Lending Policy Institute</a>, which sponsors an outstanding <a href="http://www.onlinelendingpolicysummit.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Online Lending Policy Summit</a> in Washington each fall, and also sponsoring the policy programming at the <a href="http://www.lendit.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LendIt</a> conference, which is coming up next month -- I’ll be there, by the way, and I hope you will too! More on Cross River and Gilles Gade <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/10IhO4gwk7wQMmlkcIwHnBh53269JgIPI/view" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Video</a> about the bank Gille Gade: Gilles Gade is a founder of Cross River Bank (CRB) and has served as its Chairman, President and CEO since its inception in 2008 as an innovation-driven state-chartered bank and a provider of fully compliant financial solutions to the marketplace lending and payments sectors. Gilles has over 20 years of experience in investment banking and venture capital including as Co-Founder and Managing Director of Chela Technology Partners and Chela Internet Ventures, a boutique investment bank and venture fund focusing on emerging technologies and telecommunications; technology investment banker at Barclays Capital; and FIG investment banker at Bear Stearns. He started his career in 1990 at Citicorp Venture Capital, after graduating from the MBA Institute IMIP (Groupe IPESUP) in Paris with an MS in International Management. More for our listeners Our upcoming shows will include Nerd Wallet CEO Tim Chen; Michael Wiegand, who heads the Gates Foundation’s work on financial services for the poor; and the CEO’s of both Eastern Bank and Radius Bank. As I mentioned we’ll also have shows soon with two members of Congress, one a Republican and one a Democrat, and some other very special guests. I hope to see you at upcoming events including: <ul> <li> <a href="http://www.lendit.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lendit Fintech USA</a>, April 9-11, San Francisco, CA </li> <li> Bank Director, <a href="https://www.bankdirector.com/conferences/reality-regtech-2018/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Reality of Regtech</a>, April 18, New York, NY </li> <li> Texas Bankers Association Annual Conference, May 3, Houston, TX </li> <li> Women Corporate Directors Global Institute, May 10, New York, NY </li> <li> <a href="https://jsbarefoot.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9eed997b93ffaa6dab1952deb&amp;id=eff46bc95d&amp;e=443524c575" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Comply 2018</a>, May 16, New York </li> <li> CFSI’s <a href="http://emerge.cfsinnovation.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">EMERGE</a>, June 6-8, Los Angeles, CA </li> <li> <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/upcoming-speeches/2018/6/26/american-bankers-association-regulatory-compliance-conference" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference</a>, June 26, Nashville -- I’ll be moderating a general session panel on regulation and AI, and also teaming up again with the ABA for some special podcasts. </li> </ul> Support our Podcast As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jsbarefoot.com</a>. Again, follow me on <a href="http://jsbarefoot.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9eed997b93ffaa6dab1952deb&amp;id=41e79f4d83&amp;e=443524c575" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> twitter</a> and <a href="http://jsbarefoot.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9eed997b93ffaa6dab1952deb&amp;id=7b3ec9b957&amp;e=443524c575" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> facebook</a>.  And please send in your “buck a show” to keep Barefoot Innovation going! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Sponsor Bank: Cross River Bank’s CEO Gilles Gade

Jim Richards

We’re moving into a new era of regulation and compliance that will be driven by new technology. Most of our listeners know I’ve co-founded a regtech firm, Hummingbird, to help bring this new model, first, to anti-money laundering, which is widely seen as the arena where the old compliance model is most broken, and where new technology could go the farthest, fastest, to solve everyone’s problems -- by both improving outcomes and cutting costs. There is a growing global “regtech” community, in both the public and private sectors, aiming to transform financial regulation and compliance, and specifically to make them both digitally-native, with all the power of digitization to make everything better, faster, and cheaper, all at once. Executing this transformation will take imagination, vision, wisdom and even courage, which is why I invited today’s guest to join us.  He is Jim Richards, founder of the new firm, RegTech Consulting, and I think he used the word “courage” six times, in our talk.  We sat down together at this year’s LendIt conference in San Francisco, just a few days after Jim had retired from his position as the Bank Secrecy Act Officer and Global Head of Financial Crimes Risk management at Wells Fargo, a job he held for more than twelve years. He’s also an attorney and a deep expert in financial crime. Jim is famously outspoken. He’s also funny (he says the  book he wrote on transnational financial crime sold more copies in Russian than in English. Most of all, though, he’s frustrated. He thinks we can do better in fighting financial crime. I do too. According to the United Nations, there’s about $2 trillion in global financial crime each year, and we’re catching less than 1 percent of it. To achieve these paltry results, the financial industry spends around $50 billion a year. In other words, launderers can fund terrorism and amass wealth by trafficking in drugs, weapons, and human beings, with very little risk of getting caught. No wonder financial crime is a growing global business. Jim says that the heart of this problem is that incentives are misaligned, which means resources are too. He thinks we’ve built a regulatory system that does not reward effectiveness but instead prizes compliance “hygiene.” The theory of the system, of course, is that banks’ careful compliance with the AML regulations should lead to high levels of effectiveness in helping law enforcement stop financial crime. Possibly, in an earlier era, it did. Today, though, there is a massive mismatch between the compliance activities required by our regulations and the desired outcomes -- partly because the technology of both money laundering, and anti-money laundering, has shifted under our feet. And today’s methods can’t scale up. Like many people in the AML world -- including me -- Jim envisions a better system in which, mostly through newer technology, we could take some of the thousands of people and billions of dollars devoted to this effort and redirect them to drive better results, and cut the costs, too. He has lots of ideas. They include updating the rules on Currency Transaction Reports; fixing the Know Your Customer process through more information standardization, prescreening, and data sharing; addressing the new beneficial ownership requirements (which he calls a tsunami hitting banks and their small business customers; and resolving what he calls “The Clash of the Titles” -- the four titles of the US Code that govern financial crime. He suggests getting law enforcement input into financial regulators’ enforcement efforts. He has thoughts on how AML and fraud detection overlap and differ. He says there’s a lot to learn from how fintech companies do AML since they generally have good data and new systems. Like our  previous Barefoot Innovation guest, Ripple’s Chris Larsen, Jim sees a useful model in how global trade was transformed by the advent of standardized shipping containers, as explained in Marc Levinson’s book,  The Box. A key issue is transaction monitoring (although Jim vigorously argues that term is obsolete). The law requires banks to monitor their customers’ activity and report suspicious patterns.  Today, this process, systemwide, produces huge over-reporting of meaningless alerts that drown both bank personnel and law enforcement in low-value information they don’t have the tools to analyze. It’s a perfect use case for AI, which Jim says Wells Fargo began using in AML as early as 2008 and is now building further under his successor, Graham Bailey (whom Jim calls a genius, the best AML technologist in the industry). Jim says that banks like Wells Fargo devote less than ten percent of their AML compliance people to working on sophisticated, complex crime, while the other 90+ percent do regulatory compliance, just “crunching through the volumes.”  This is at a time when the crime itself is getting more and more sophisticated because the worst criminals are adopting new tech and are building global networks, most of which we can’t find with current methods. He makes the case that it would be good to flip that and deck the 90 percent against the big problems. We already have the technology to do that, both in process and analytics. We just need to enable the system to adopt it, for both government and industry. The original AML law in the United States, the  Bank Secrecy Act, is approaching the half-century mark. It’s been modernized and automated along the way -- FinCEN has brought in a lot of automation -- but the system doesn’t yet leverage the newest technology. It needs to shift to digitally-native design, probably with open source technology that can enable new, efficient, effective approaches, system-wide. A few weeks after we recorded this episode, I hosted a roundtable in Washington where experts from across the AML ecosystem -- large and small banks, fintechs, regtechs, bank regulators, trade groups, Congressional staff, academics and, crucially, law enforcement -- spent a day together thinking through next-generation AML. The new  Comptroller of the Currency, Joseph Otting, has made AML modernization a top priority. Change is coming. And it’s attracting great people, including great tech people, into solving these problems, including many who, a year ago, would surely have laughed to hear Jim Richards say, as he did to me, that BSA Officer is “the most fascinating job you can have in banking.”  People think compliance is boring. They’re wrong. It’s fascinating, and it’s important. Jim has founded his new firm, RegTech Advisors, to, as he puts it, “develop the next generation of professionals, technologies, programs, and regimes and really make a difference.” He thinks doing that will take courage... including the courage to make some mistakes. That’s a type of courage that doesn’t come easily to the regulatory sector, but we’re going to have to develop it. More on Jim Richards  James R. Richards, B.Comm., JD, CAMS Principal and Founder, RegTech Consulting, LLC www.regtechconsulting.net Richards@ThinkRTC.net (925) 818-6612 Author, “Transnational Criminal Organizations, Cybercrime, and Money Laundering” (CRC Press, New York, London, Boca Raton, ISBN 0-8493-2806-3)  Jim Richards is Principal and Founder of RegTech Consulting, LLC, a private consultancy aimed at developing the next generation of BSA/AML and financial crimes professionals, technologies, and programs. Services include BSA Officer coaching, program reviews, crisis management, director support, non-financial institution development and awareness, and FinTech due diligence. From 2005 to April 2018 Jim was BSA Officer, Global Head of Financial Crimes Risk Management, Wells Fargo &amp; Co., where he was responsible for governance and program oversight of Bank Secrecy Act and AML for Wells Fargo’s global operations, including quarterly reporting to the Board of Directors. As Director of the Global Financial Crimes Risk Management group, Jim oversaw governance and program execution of BSA, AML, External Fraud, Global Sanctions, Financial Crimes Analytics, and High-Risk Customer Due Diligence. He was a member of the Wells Fargo Management Committee and Enterprise Risk Management Committee, and he represented Wells Fargo with the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group (BSAAG) of the US Department of the Treasury. Jim previously held AML and financial intelligence positions at Bank of America and FleetBoston. He was also an Assistant District Attorney, Special Investigations Unit, Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, in Cambridge, MA, investigating and prosecuting cases involving narcotics, organized crime, white-collar crime, and economic crime in the largest county in Massachusetts.  Investigations and prosecutions included felony embezzlement, attorney fraud, public corruption, computer-based larceny, gambling, money laundering, and organized gambling cases. He was Supervisor of the SIU’s Narcotics Forfeiture Group, with carriage of and supervision over the Group’s civil and criminal forfeiture caseload. Jim has prior experience in private legal practice at Choate, Hall &amp; Stewart in Boston, as a Barrister in Ontario, Canada, and as Special Constable, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, E Division (British Columbia). More for our listeners   Article I co-authored with Hummingbird Cofounder Matt Van Buskirk on how to fight human trafficking My podcast on the India Stack with  Sanjay Jain  The Box, by Marc Levinson Thank You For Being Late, by Thomas Friedman  We have great shows in the queue. We’ll talk with the CEO’s of two community banks -- Bob Rivers of Eastern Bank and Mike Butler of Radius Bank, both of which are leading the way in innovation by smaller institutions. We’ll also have two more I recorded at LendIt. One is a discussion of new research undertaken jointly by LendUp and Experian, on how to improve financial access through credit reporting. The other is with my friend Greg Kidd of Global ID.  I’m pleased to say we also will have several members of Congress in the coming weeks, and also several guests I’ll record at the upcoming, global AML tech sprint being run by the UK Financial Conduct Authority. I hope to see you at upcoming events including:    Comply 2018, May 16, New York, NY   FCA TechSprint, May 22-25, London, UK (By invitation only)    American Bankers Association Payments Forum, June 1, Washington, DC    CFSI’s Emerge, June 6, Los Angeles, CA    North Dakota Bankers Convention, June 11-12, Fargo. ND    American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference, June 26, Nashville, TN   Money 2020, October in Las Vegas where, among other things, I’ll be speaking on the Revolution Stage about the revolution in...what else?  Regulation.   As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Again, follow me on twitter and facebook.   Support the Podcast And please send in your “buck a show” to keep Barefoot Innovation going!     Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates.  Email Address  Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

We’re moving into a new era of regulation and compliance that will be driven by new technology. Most of our listeners know I’ve co-founded a regtech firm, Hummingbird, to help bring this new model, first, to anti-money laundering, which is widely seen as the arena where the old compliance model is most broken, and where new technology could go the farthest, fastest, to solve everyone’s problems -- by both improving outcomes and cutting costs. There is a growing global “regtech” community, in both the public and private sectors, aiming to transform financial regulation and compliance, and specifically to make them both digitally-native, with all the power of digitization to make everything better, faster, and cheaper, all at once. Executing this transformation will take imagination, vision, wisdom and even courage, which is why I invited today’s guest to join us.  He is Jim Richards, founder of the new firm, <a href="http://regtechconsulting.net/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">RegTech Consulting</a>, and I think he used the word “courage” six times, in our talk.  We sat down together at this year’s <a href="http://www.lendit.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LendIt</a> conference in San Francisco, just a few days after Jim had retired from his position as the Bank Secrecy Act Officer and Global Head of Financial Crimes Risk management at <a href="https://www.wellsfargo.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wells Fargo</a>, a job he held for more than twelve years. He’s also an attorney and a deep expert in financial crime. Jim is famously outspoken. He’s also funny (he says the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Transnational-Criminal-Organizations-Cybercrime-Laundering/dp/0849328063" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> book</a> he wrote on transnational financial crime sold more copies in Russian than in English. Most of all, though, he’s frustrated. He thinks we can do better in fighting financial crime. I do too. According to the United Nations, there’s about $2 trillion in global financial crime each year, and we’re catching less than 1 percent of it. To achieve these paltry results, the financial industry spends around $50 billion a year. In other words, launderers can fund terrorism and amass wealth by trafficking in drugs, weapons, and human beings, with very little risk of getting caught. No wonder financial crime is a growing global business. Jim says that the heart of this problem is that incentives are misaligned, which means resources are too. He thinks we’ve built a regulatory system that does not reward effectiveness but instead prizes compliance “hygiene.” The theory of the system, of course, is that banks’ careful compliance with the AML regulations should lead to high levels of effectiveness in helping law enforcement stop financial crime. Possibly, in an earlier era, it did. Today, though, there is a massive mismatch between the compliance activities required by our regulations and the desired outcomes -- partly because the technology of both money laundering, and anti-money laundering, has shifted under our feet. And today’s methods can’t scale up. Like many people in the AML world -- including me -- Jim envisions a better system in which, mostly through newer technology, we could take some of the thousands of people and billions of dollars devoted to this effort and redirect them to drive better results, and cut the costs, too. He has lots of ideas. They include updating the rules on Currency Transaction Reports; fixing the Know Your Customer process through more information standardization, prescreening, and data sharing; addressing the new beneficial ownership requirements (which he calls a tsunami hitting banks and their small business customers; and resolving what he calls “The Clash of the Titles” -- the four titles of the US Code that govern financial crime. He suggests getting law enforcement input into financial regulators’ enforcement efforts. He has thoughts on how AML and fraud detection overlap and differ. He says there’s a lot to learn from how fintech companies do AML since they generally have good data and new systems. Like our <a href="https://player.fm/series/barefoot-innovation-podcast/chris-larsen-ceo-of-ripple" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> previous Barefoot Innovation guest, Ripple’s Chris Larsen</a>, Jim sees a useful model in how global trade was transformed by the advent of standardized shipping containers, as explained in Marc Levinson’s book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy/dp/0691136408" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> The Box</a>. A key issue is transaction monitoring (although Jim vigorously argues that term is obsolete). The law requires banks to monitor their customers’ activity and report suspicious patterns.  Today, this process, systemwide, produces huge over-reporting of meaningless alerts that drown both bank personnel and law enforcement in low-value information they don’t have the tools to analyze. It’s a perfect use case for AI, which Jim says Wells Fargo began using in AML as early as 2008 and is now building further under his successor, <a href="https://www.financialcrimeconference.com/speaker/bailey-graham/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Graham Bailey</a> (whom Jim calls a genius, the best AML technologist in the industry). Jim says that banks like Wells Fargo devote less than ten percent of their AML compliance people to working on sophisticated, complex crime, while the other 90+ percent do regulatory compliance, just “crunching through the volumes.”  This is at a time when the crime itself is getting more and more sophisticated because the worst criminals are adopting new tech and are building global networks, most of which we can’t find with current methods. He makes the case that it would be good to flip that and deck the 90 percent against the big problems. We already have the technology to do that, both in process and analytics. We just need to enable the system to adopt it, for both government and industry. The original AML law in the United States, the <a href="https://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/compliance-bsa/bsa/index-bsa.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Bank Secrecy Act</a>, is approaching the half-century mark. It’s been modernized and automated along the way -- FinCEN has brought in a lot of automation -- but the system doesn’t yet leverage the newest technology. It needs to shift to digitally-native design, probably with open source technology that can enable new, efficient, effective approaches, system-wide. A few weeks after we recorded this episode, I hosted a roundtable in Washington where experts from across the AML ecosystem -- large and small banks, fintechs, regtechs, bank regulators, trade groups, Congressional staff, academics and, crucially, law enforcement -- spent a day together thinking through next-generation AML. The new <a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/news/5-items-on-occ-chiefs-reg-relief-to-do-list" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Comptroller of the Currency, Joseph Otting, has made AML modernization a top priority</a>. Change is coming. And it’s attracting great people, including great tech people, into solving these problems, including many who, a year ago, would surely have laughed to hear Jim Richards say, as he did to me, that BSA Officer is “the most fascinating job you can have in banking.”  People think compliance is boring. They’re wrong. It’s fascinating, and it’s important. Jim has founded his new firm, RegTech Advisors, to, as he puts it, “develop the next generation of professionals, technologies, programs, and regimes and really make a difference.” He thinks doing that will take courage... including the courage to make some mistakes. That’s a type of courage that doesn’t come easily to the regulatory sector, but we’re going to have to develop it. More on Jim Richards <ul> <li>James R. Richards, B.Comm., JD, CAMS</li> <li>Principal and Founder, RegTech Consulting, LLC</li> <li><a href="http://www.regtechconsulting.net" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.regtechconsulting.net</a></li> <li><a href="mailto:Richards@ThinkRTC.net">Richards@ThinkRTC.net</a></li> <li>(925) 818-6612</li> <li>Author, “Transnational Criminal Organizations, Cybercrime, and Money Laundering” (CRC Press, New York, London, Boca Raton, ISBN 0-8493-2806-3)</li> </ul> Jim Richards is Principal and Founder of RegTech Consulting, LLC, a private consultancy aimed at developing the next generation of BSA/AML and financial crimes professionals, technologies, and programs. Services include BSA Officer coaching, program reviews, crisis management, director support, non-financial institution development and awareness, and FinTech due diligence. From 2005 to April 2018 Jim was BSA Officer, Global Head of Financial Crimes Risk Management, Wells Fargo &amp; Co., where he was responsible for governance and program oversight of Bank Secrecy Act and AML for Wells Fargo’s global operations, including quarterly reporting to the Board of Directors. As Director of the Global Financial Crimes Risk Management group, Jim oversaw governance and program execution of BSA, AML, External Fraud, Global Sanctions, Financial Crimes Analytics, and High-Risk Customer Due Diligence. He was a member of the Wells Fargo Management Committee and Enterprise Risk Management Committee, and he represented Wells Fargo with the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group (BSAAG) of the US Department of the Treasury. Jim previously held AML and financial intelligence positions at Bank of America and FleetBoston. He was also an Assistant District Attorney, Special Investigations Unit, Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, in Cambridge, MA, investigating and prosecuting cases involving narcotics, organized crime, white-collar crime, and economic crime in the largest county in Massachusetts.  Investigations and prosecutions included felony embezzlement, attorney fraud, public corruption, computer-based larceny, gambling, money laundering, and organized gambling cases. He was Supervisor of the SIU’s Narcotics Forfeiture Group, with carriage of and supervision over the Group’s civil and criminal forfeiture caseload. Jim has prior experience in private legal practice at Choate, Hall &amp; Stewart in Boston, as a Barrister in Ontario, Canada, and as Special Constable, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, E Division (British Columbia). More for our listeners <ul> <li><a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/regtech-could-help-stop-human-trafficking" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Article</a> I co-authored with Hummingbird Cofounder Matt Van Buskirk on how to fight human trafficking</li> <li>My podcast on the India Stack with <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/8/23/access-for-all-ciies-sanjay-jain-and-the-india-stack" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Sanjay Jain</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy/dp/0691136408" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> The Box, by Marc Levinson</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/thank-you-for-being-late/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Thank You For Being Late, by Thomas Friedman</a></li> </ul> We have great shows in the queue. We’ll talk with the CEO’s of two community banks -- Bob Rivers of Eastern Bank and Mike Butler of Radius Bank, both of which are leading the way in innovation by smaller institutions. We’ll also have two more I recorded at LendIt. One is a discussion of new research undertaken jointly by LendUp and Experian, on how to improve financial access through credit reporting. The other is with my friend Greg Kidd of Global ID.  I’m pleased to say we also will have several members of Congress in the coming weeks, and also several guests I’ll record at the upcoming, global AML tech sprint being run by the UK Financial Conduct Authority. I hope to see you at upcoming events including: <ul> <li> <a href="https://jsbarefoot.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9eed997b93ffaa6dab1952deb&amp;id=9e5b3e37cd&amp;e=a14054880f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Comply 2018</a>, May 16, New York, NY </li> <li> FCA TechSprint, May 22-25, London, UK (By invitation only) </li> <li> <a href="https://www.aba.com/Training/Conferences/Pages/paymentsforum.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> American Bankers Association Payments Forum</a>, June 1, Washington, DC </li> <li> <a href="https://jsbarefoot.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9eed997b93ffaa6dab1952deb&amp;id=d475e6f653&amp;e=a14054880f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> CFSI’s Emerge</a>, June 6, Los Angeles, CA </li> <li> <a href="https://jsbarefoot.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9eed997b93ffaa6dab1952deb&amp;id=41b2a59736&amp;e=a14054880f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> North Dakota Bankers Convention</a>, June 11-12, Fargo. ND </li> <li> <a href="https://jsbarefoot.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9eed997b93ffaa6dab1952deb&amp;id=66673164f3&amp;e=a14054880f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference,</a> June 26, Nashville, TN </li> <li> <a href="https://us.money2020.com/speakers" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Money 2020</a>, October in Las Vegas where, among other things, I’ll be speaking on the Revolution Stage about the revolution in...what else?  Regulation. </li> </ul> As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at <a href="http://jsbarefoot.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jsbarefoot.com</a>. Again, follow me on twitter and facebook.   Support the Podcast And please send in your “buck a show” to keep Barefoot Innovation going! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

The Courage to Change: Former Wells Fargo BSA Officer Jim Richards

Vinny Lingham

Today’s show zeroes in on the most foundational question facing us all, not only in financial innovation but in our whole new world of ubiquitous data. That challenge is, how can we gain the benefits of this huge new universe of digital information, and at the same time, prevent it from hurting us. My very thoughtful guest on this dilemma is Vinny Lingham, CEO of Civic Technologies. Vinny’s story is fascinating. A star on Shark Tank South Africa, he immigrated from that country to Silicon Valley about a decade ago. In the US he founded and built successful startups in the payments space, and then launched Civic to develop blockchain solutions for the burgeoning problem of online identity fraud. That effort brought him to focus on new technologies for identity verification, such as zero-knowledge proof. It also brought him to a philosophy about identity and personal data, which is that we need a decentralized system in which our data is controlled not by governments or companies, but by us.

Today’s show zeroes in on the most foundational question facing us all, not only in financial innovation but in our whole new world of ubiquitous data. That challenge is, how can we gain the benefits of this huge new universe of digital information, and at the same time, prevent it from hurting us. My very thoughtful guest on this dilemma is <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinnylingham/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Vinny Lingham</a>, CEO of <a href="https://www.civic.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Civic Technologies</a>. Vinny’s story is fascinating. A star on Shark Tank South Africa, he immigrated from that country to Silicon Valley about a decade ago. In the US he founded and built successful startups in the payments space, and then launched Civic to develop blockchain solutions for the burgeoning problem of online identity fraud. That effort brought him to focus on new technologies for identity verification, such as zero-knowledge proof. It also brought him to a philosophy about identity and personal data, which is that we need a decentralized system in which our data is controlled not by governments or companies, but by us.

Decentralized Identity: Civic CEO Vinny Lingham

Bill Foster

We have the perfect show to kick off the new year and new decade in 2020. This is one of the most interesting conversations we’ve ever had, in our hundred-plus episodes of Barefoot Innovation. My very special guest is Congressman Bill Foster, who represents the 11th District of Illinois. He is a member of the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services, and was appointed by Committee Chair Maxine Waters to lead the special task force she set up to examine how artificial intelligence will transform finance. And, maybe better yet, he is Congress’ one and only PhD physicist (you’ll enjoy hearing his list of credentials). As he explains in today’s show, he went from working on theatrical stage lighting, to high energy particle physics, to politics -- in our talk, he shares the inspiring family story of what prompted him to enter public service. I love talking with people who “cross the lines” -- who transcend the silos and straddle multiple realms of knowledge. Congressman Bill Foster, the scientist politician, is one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking guests we’ve ever had on the show. I know you’ll enjoy our conversation.

We have the perfect show to kick off the new year and new decade in 2020. This is one of the most interesting conversations we’ve ever had, in our hundred-plus episodes of Barefoot Innovation. My very special guest is Congressman Bill Foster, who represents the 11th District of Illinois. He is a member of the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services, and was appointed by Committee Chair Maxine Waters to lead the special task force she set up to examine how artificial intelligence will transform finance. And, maybe better yet, he is Congress’ one and only PhD physicist (you’ll enjoy hearing his list of credentials). As he explains in today’s show, he went from working on theatrical stage lighting, to high energy particle physics, to politics -- in our talk, he shares the inspiring family story of what prompted him to enter public service. I love talking with people who “cross the lines” -- who transcend the silos and straddle multiple realms of knowledge. Congressman Bill Foster, the scientist politician, is one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking guests we’ve ever had on the show. I know you’ll enjoy our conversation.

Congress’ Physicist:  House AI Task Force Chair Rep. Bill Foster

This is the most fun show we’ve done in ages, or maybe ever. My friend Jean-Stephane Gourevitch offered to gather some really interesting people in London to talk about the data economy. We finally sat down last fall, during London’s Regtech Rising conference, and wow, did we talk. Jean-Stephane himself is French, based in London, and works with fintech startups throughout the world. His guests were, first, Edward George, who leads both research and the UK representative office for the pan-African bank, Ecobank. We also had Fiona Ghosh, a top London lawyer in the financial and fintech space -- Fiona is a partner at Addleshaw Goddard. Our other two participants have both founded young fintechs. Lukas Zoerner is CEO of Mespo, a fully independent robo money saver. And Luca Schnettler, from Germany, has founded HealthyHealth, which uses data to change the insurance world and to make people...healthier. We had an incredible conversation. We talked about how Europe’s new data regulations -- PSD2 and the GDPR -- will change banking and fintech (which, by the way, is a revolution that’s being under-discussed in the United States). We covered the opportunities that fintech is opening up in the developing world and especially Africa, where suddenly it’s possible, through the mobile phone, to bring banking to hundreds of millions of people who couldn’t be profitably served before. We talked about the future of cash. We figured out what regulators need to do. For me, probably the most riveting moments were a debate that broke out between the two fintech CEO’s -- both millennials -- who turned out to have strikingly different views about how data should be used, and also about consumers’ responsibility for securing their own wellbeing. I’ve never heard a discussion quite like it. So, we had six people around the table, counting me. It was a yeasty mixture of nationalities, languages, ages, continents, professional expertise, products, and target markets -- and with everyone having a whole lot to say. More about today’s guests Jean-Stephane Gourévitch Jean-Stéphane is an expert of the strategic, public policy and market aspects of digital/mobile payments, mobile money, digital/mobile banking, digital/mobile commerce, fintech, the data economy and innovation ecosystem with over 25 years global experience at senior management levels and a mix of corporate and entrepreneurial experience. He has held senior management positions with International telecom operators including Everything Everywhere Ltd. (EE), Orange, France Telecom, Verizon Business, Colt Technology Services Ltd. He has worked for OFCOM, the UK digital communications regulator. He also has held senior positions with Deloitte Consulting and with strategic marketing and PR/Communications firms.  Jean-Stephane created his own management consulting company 5 years ago, combining strategic, public policy and commercial vision about digital convergence, fintech, insurtech and the data economy. He also has global experience mentoring and advising entrepreneurs and start-ups, in particular very young entrepreneurs.  A frequent speaker on fintech, payments and insurtech, Jean-Stephane has addressed events such as Fintech Connect Live, Pay Expo, and Money2020. He is also an independent conference director, creating programs/content for major conferences such as Fintech Connect Live in London, INPAYCO Digital Payments in Toronto and Paris, Mobile Payments: Regulation, Risks and Opportunities in Berlin and London, the Africa Fintech Forum in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.  As a mentor and advisor to 24 fintech, insurtech and digital technologies startups and to young entrepreneurs in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin and North America, Jean-Stephane’s expertise lies in strategy, business development, regulatory affairs, public policy, Government Relations, stakeholder relationships management, communication and PR. Edward George Twitter @DrTeddGeorge Dr. Edward George is the head of the UK representative office of pan-African bank, Ecobank, as well as being head of group research. Edward oversees the teams in the London office, with a focus on corporate banking, financial institutions/international organisations and research. As head of research he also manages a team of nine analysts based across Middle Africa covering the fixed-income, currencies and commodities space. His specialties include soft commodities and agribusiness, trade and trade finance, and disruptive technology. Edward is also the bank’s specialist on Francophone West Africa and Lusophone Africa. Prior to joining Ecobank in March 2011 he worked for The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) for seven years as a Senior Editor in both the Commodities and Africa Departments. There he was responsible for producing and editing reports on Lusophone and Francophone Africa, as well as on 25 industrial raw materials, food, feedstuffs and beverages. Before joining the EIU, Edward worked as a freelance writer covering the politics and economics of Sub-Saharan Africa. A linguist by training, Edward is fluent in French, Spanish and Portuguese and holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Bristol. His PhD thesis on the Cuban intervention in Angola was published as a book by Routledge in 2005 and as a paperback in December 2012. Luca Schnettler Luca started HealthyHealth  in January 2017 to realize his vision of using digital means to innovate the insurance sector and help customers become healthy individuals. Before having any partners or advisors, Luca was able to persist and focus on the objective, following his goal and passion of building a company that truly changes customers perception on Insurance and helps them to improve their health. Lukas Zoerner Twitter @lczoerner Lukas Zoerner is the Founder and CEO of Mespo, a fully independent robo money saver that detects and executes savings opportunities for consumers. Mespo has established a UK's market first partnership between a FinTech such as Mespo and a Credit Union, My Community Bank. Mespo won the UK's Fintech For All 2017 Financial Inclusion challenge in the category "New Fintechs". Lukas previously worked in Morgan Stanley's investment banking division advising Power &amp; Utility companies across EMEA. He holds a degree in business administration from the University of Mannheim in Germany. Fiona Ghosh Fiona is a Partner in Addleshaw Goddard's Commercial Group, specialising in complex commercial, IS, payment and FinTech arrangements, particularly in the financial services sector where she has focused her practice for more than a decade. Fiona heads the firm’s FinTech Group. Her work has included bringing new payment solutions, including ApplePay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay, to market. She is an appointed expert on the editorial board of the Payments &amp; Fin Tech Lawyer journal. Fiona's expertise also includes outsourcing and other complex commercial arrangements in the investment banking, retail banking, insurance and asset management sectors. She has longstanding experience in strategic advisory work, negotiation and drafting of multijurisdictional business process outsourcings, including back and middle office, platform integration, facilities management and global administration services for multinational corporations, banks, asset managers and global insurers. A leader in her field on advice relating to strategic alliances and joint ventures, Fiona has led several international joint venture arrangements for the provision of pensions, credit cards, loans, mortgages and related insurance products acting for both retailers and for providers. She also specialises in advising in the field of retail payments including payment services and commercial arrangements relating to digital and mobile payment solutions, payment aggregation and merchant acquiry in the UK, US and further afield. Fiona is a regular speaker at international conferences and events on FinTech and payments law including Pay Expo Europe, the Westminster Forum Projects and Digital Payments Intensive. More Links  Ecobank Research portal  Ecobank Twitter account: @ecobankresearch  Edward George: ‘Banks are in danger of becoming utilities’ Africa FICC   It’s the disruption that matters All Hands on Bank: How Mobile Banking is Changing Personal Finance AG Elevate GDPR  PSD2  Sanjay Jain Podcast on Barefoot Innovation AFI Podcast on Barefoot Innovation  More for our listeners Watch for our upcoming shows, including two more from London. One is with the charismatic CEO of Starling Bank, Anne Boden (who was referenced in today’s show with high praise), and the other is with Innovate Finance CEO Charlotte Crosswell. Back in the U.S., we’ll have three fascinating CEO’s -- Financial Services Roundtable head Tim Pawlenty; Nerd Wallet CEO Tim Chen, and Cross River Bank CEO Gilles Gade. We also have an inspiring conversation with Michael Wiegand, who heads the Gates Foundation’s work on financial services for the poor. And we’re going to do a special one in San Francisco with my cofounders of Hummingbird Regtech -- so, stay tuned! I’ll hope to see you at upcoming events where I’ll be speaking:  March 19-20 - Innovate Finance Global Summit - London April 18 - Bank Director,  The Reality of Regtech - New York, NY May 3 - Texas Bankers Association Annual Convention - Houston, TX (and  here’s the cover story I wrote for their magazine, on innovation and community banks) May 16 - Comply 2018 - New York, NY June 26,  American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference - Nashville TN  As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at jsbarefoot.com. Again, follow me on  twitter and  facebook.  And please send in your “buck a show” to keep Barefoot Innovation going. Till next time, keep innovating! Support our Podcast     Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates.  Email Address  Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

This is the most fun show we’ve done in ages, or maybe ever. My friend Jean-Stephane Gourevitch offered to gather some really interesting people in London to talk about the data economy. We finally sat down last fall, during London’s <a href="https://finance.knect365.com/regtech-rising/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Regtech Rising</a> conference, and wow, did we talk. Jean-Stephane himself is French, based in London, and works with fintech startups throughout the world. His guests were, first, Edward George, who leads both research and the UK representative office for the pan-African bank, Ecobank. We also had Fiona Ghosh, a top London lawyer in the financial and fintech space -- Fiona is a partner at Addleshaw Goddard. Our other two participants have both founded young fintechs. Lukas Zoerner is CEO of Mespo, a fully independent robo money saver. And Luca Schnettler, from Germany, has founded HealthyHealth, which uses data to change the insurance world and to make people...healthier. We had an incredible conversation. We talked about how Europe’s new data regulations -- PSD2 and the GDPR -- will change banking and fintech (which, by the way, is a revolution that’s being under-discussed in the United States). We covered the opportunities that fintech is opening up in the developing world and especially Africa, where suddenly it’s possible, through the mobile phone, to bring banking to hundreds of millions of people who couldn’t be profitably served before. We talked about the future of cash. We figured out what regulators need to do. For me, probably the most riveting moments were a debate that broke out between the two fintech CEO’s -- both millennials -- who turned out to have strikingly different views about how data should be used, and also about consumers’ responsibility for securing their own wellbeing. I’ve never heard a discussion quite like it. So, we had six people around the table, counting me. It was a yeasty mixture of nationalities, languages, ages, continents, professional expertise, products, and target markets -- and with everyone having a whole lot to say. More about today’s guests <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanstephanegourevitch/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jean-Stephane Gourévitch</a> Jean-Stéphane is an expert of the strategic, public policy and market aspects of digital/mobile payments, mobile money, digital/mobile banking, digital/mobile commerce, fintech, the data economy and innovation ecosystem with over 25 years global experience at senior management levels and a mix of corporate and entrepreneurial experience. He has held senior management positions with International telecom operators including Everything Everywhere Ltd. (EE), Orange, France Telecom, Verizon Business, Colt Technology Services Ltd. He has worked for OFCOM, the UK digital communications regulator. He also has held senior positions with Deloitte Consulting and with strategic marketing and PR/Communications firms. Jean-Stephane created his own management consulting company 5 years ago, combining strategic, public policy and commercial vision about digital convergence, fintech, insurtech and the data economy. He also has global experience mentoring and advising entrepreneurs and start-ups, in particular very young entrepreneurs. A frequent speaker on fintech, payments and insurtech, Jean-Stephane has addressed events such as Fintech Connect Live, Pay Expo, and Money2020. He is also an independent conference director, creating programs/content for major conferences such as Fintech Connect Live in London, INPAYCO Digital Payments in Toronto and Paris, Mobile Payments: Regulation, Risks and Opportunities in Berlin and London, the Africa Fintech Forum in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. As a mentor and advisor to 24 fintech, insurtech and digital technologies startups and to young entrepreneurs in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin and North America, Jean-Stephane’s expertise lies in strategy, business development, regulatory affairs, public policy, Government Relations, stakeholder relationships management, communication and PR. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-george-5840b17/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Edward George</a> Twitter @DrTeddGeorge Dr. Edward George is the head of the UK representative office of pan-African bank, <a href="https://www.ecobank.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ecobank</a>, as well as being head of group research. Edward oversees the teams in the London office, with a focus on corporate banking, financial institutions/international organisations and research. As head of research he also manages a team of nine analysts based across Middle Africa covering the fixed-income, currencies and commodities space. His specialties include soft commodities and agribusiness, trade and trade finance, and disruptive technology. Edward is also the bank’s specialist on Francophone West Africa and Lusophone Africa. Prior to joining Ecobank in March 2011 he worked for The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) for seven years as a Senior Editor in both the Commodities and Africa Departments. There he was responsible for producing and editing reports on Lusophone and Francophone Africa, as well as on 25 industrial raw materials, food, feedstuffs and beverages. Before joining the EIU, Edward worked as a freelance writer covering the politics and economics of Sub-Saharan Africa. A linguist by training, Edward is fluent in French, Spanish and Portuguese and holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Bristol. His PhD thesis on the Cuban intervention in Angola was published as a book by Routledge in 2005 and as a paperback in December 2012. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucaschnettler/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Luca Schnettler</a> Luca started <a href="http://www.healthyhealth.uk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">HealthyHealth</a>  in January 2017 to realize his vision of using digital means to innovate the insurance sector and help customers become healthy individuals. Before having any partners or advisors, Luca was able to persist and focus on the objective, following his goal and passion of building a company that truly changes customers perception on Insurance and helps them to improve their health. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukaszoerner/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lukas Zoerner</a> Twitter @lczoerner Lukas Zoerner is the Founder and CEO of <a href="https://www.mespo.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mespo</a>, a fully independent robo money saver that detects and executes savings opportunities for consumers. Mespo has established a UK's market first partnership between a FinTech such as Mespo and a Credit Union, My Community Bank. Mespo won the UK's Fintech For All 2017 Financial Inclusion challenge in the category "New Fintechs". Lukas previously worked in Morgan Stanley's investment banking division advising Power &amp; Utility companies across EMEA. He holds a degree in business administration from the University of Mannheim in Germany. <a href="https://www.addleshawgoddard.com/en/our-people/g/fiona-ghosh/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Fiona Ghosh</a> Fiona is a Partner in <a href="https://www.addleshawgoddard.com/en/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Addleshaw Goddard's</a> Commercial Group, specialising in complex commercial, IS, payment and FinTech arrangements, particularly in the financial services sector where she has focused her practice for more than a decade. Fiona heads the firm’s FinTech Group. Her work has included bringing new payment solutions, including ApplePay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay, to market. She is an appointed expert on the editorial board of the Payments &amp; Fin Tech Lawyer journal. Fiona's expertise also includes outsourcing and other complex commercial arrangements in the investment banking, retail banking, insurance and asset management sectors. She has longstanding experience in strategic advisory work, negotiation and drafting of multijurisdictional business process outsourcings, including back and middle office, platform integration, facilities management and global administration services for multinational corporations, banks, asset managers and global insurers. A leader in her field on advice relating to strategic alliances and joint ventures, Fiona has led several international joint venture arrangements for the provision of pensions, credit cards, loans, mortgages and related insurance products acting for both retailers and for providers. She also specialises in advising in the field of retail payments including payment services and commercial arrangements relating to digital and mobile payment solutions, payment aggregation and merchant acquiry in the UK, US and further afield. Fiona is a regular speaker at international conferences and events on FinTech and payments law including Pay Expo Europe, the Westminster Forum Projects and Digital Payments Intensive. More Links <ul> <li><a href="https://ecobank.com/corporate-investment-banking/research" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ecobank Research portal</a></li> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/EcobankResearch?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Ecobank Twitter account: @ecobankresearch</a></li> <li><a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/10/31/edward-george-banks-are-in-danger-of-becoming-utilities/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Edward George: ‘Banks are in danger of becoming utilities’</a></li> <li><a href="https://africaficc.ecobank.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Africa FICC</a> <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/10/31/edward-george-banks-are-in-danger-of-becoming-utilities/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.btpadvisers.com/insights/the-border-post/disruptive-technologies-in-africa" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> It’s the disruption that matters</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/13689/271915" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">All Hands on Bank: How Mobile Banking is Changing Personal Finance</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.addleshawgoddard.com/en/ag-elevate/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">AG Elevate</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.eugdpr.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">GDPR</a></li> <li><a href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/payment-services-psd-2-directive-eu-2015-2366_en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> PSD2</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/8/23/access-for-all-ciies-sanjay-jain-and-the-india-stack" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Sanjay Jain Podcast</a> on Barefoot Innovation</li> <li><a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/4/4/matthummingbirdco" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">AFI Podcast</a> on Barefoot Innovation</li> </ul> More for our listeners Watch for our upcoming shows, including two more from London. One is with the charismatic CEO of Starling Bank, Anne Boden (who was referenced in today’s show with high praise), and the other is with Innovate Finance CEO Charlotte Crosswell. Back in the U.S., we’ll have three fascinating CEO’s -- Financial Services Roundtable head Tim Pawlenty; Nerd Wallet CEO Tim Chen, and Cross River Bank CEO Gilles Gade. We also have an inspiring conversation with Michael Wiegand, who heads the Gates Foundation’s work on financial services for the poor. And we’re going to do a special one in San Francisco with my cofounders of Hummingbird Regtech -- so, stay tuned! I’ll hope to see you at upcoming events where I’ll be speaking: <ul> <li>March 19-20 - <a href="https://ifgs.innovatefinance.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Innovate Finance Global Summit</a> - London</li> <li>April 18 - Bank Director, <a href="https://bankdirector.com/conferences/reality-regtech-2018/agenda/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> The Reality of Regtech</a> - New York, NY</li> <li>May 3 - Texas Bankers Association Annual Convention - Houston, TX (and <a href="https://www.texasbankers.com/docs/digital_editions/Texas-Banking-January-2018/index.html#?page=8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> here’s</a> the cover story I wrote for their magazine, on innovation and community banks)</li> <li>May 16 - <a href="https://comply2018.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Comply 2018</a> - New York, NY</li> <li>June 26, <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/upcoming-speeches/2018/6/26/american-bankers-association-regulatory-compliance-conference" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference</a> - Nashville TN</li> </ul> As always, please remember to review Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, and sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jsbarefoot.com</a>. Again, follow me on <a href="http://jsbarefoot.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9eed997b93ffaa6dab1952deb&amp;id=41e79f4d83&amp;e=443524c575" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> twitter</a> and <a href="http://jsbarefoot.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9eed997b93ffaa6dab1952deb&amp;id=7b3ec9b957&amp;e=443524c575" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> facebook</a>.  And please send in your “buck a show” to keep Barefoot Innovation going. Till next time, keep innovating! Support our Podcast Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

The Data Economy:  A Lively London Debate on Fintech in Europe and Africa

Susan Ehrlich

When we recorded this short episode with Susan Ehrlich, she was head of global credit for Amazon. She oversaw the Amazon Rewards Visa and Amazon Store Card in the U.S., as well as Amazon credit programs in Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan. Most of our conversation focused on this very unique perspective. Susan has since left Amazon to take on a diverse set of roles as a financial services director and investor. One is as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Center for Financial Services Innovation (where I too serve on the board). She is also a director of  BECU, the fourth largest credit union in the United States and largest in Washington State ($12B in assets and over 850,000 members). Susan has a long and remarkable track record as an executive scaling growth and leading turnarounds across a range of businesses in payments, retail, banking, and financial technology. She was President of Financial Services for both H&amp;R Block Inc. and for Sears Holdings Corporation.  At H&amp;R Block, she built the Emerald Card program into Consumer Reports' #2-rated prepaid card in the industry in 2013.  At Sears, she re-launched Kmart layaway—turning it into a $1 billion-plus business--and expanded the company’s credit partnerships, generating $9B+ in annual retail sales on the Sears Card. Her earlier career included developing and delivering payment and credit solutions for JP Morgan Chase, WaMu Card Services (Providian Financial), and Citibank.  American Banker magazine recognized Susan as one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance three years in a row (2009-2011), and the Federal Reserve appointed her to its Consumer Advisory Council in Washington, DC. She holds a B.A. with honors in organizational behavior and management from Brown University and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School. Our photo of Susan duly reflects all this gravitas, but she’s also an avid golfer, traveler, and wine enthusiast -- she founded the Bruce Cass Wine Lab and Ehrlich Vineyards LLC in the San Francisco Bay area. When we sat down to talk it was Superbowl Sunday (long story on why this is posted so late), and she joined me fully bedecked in Seattle Seahawks attire, hat included. We had to cut our conversation short for the kickoff. The episode is only about fifteen minutes, and I think you’ll find it fascinating. One tidbit that intrigues me:  Amazon’s borrowers rate its credit services, publically, on the Amazon site – just like for a pair of shoes or a flat screen TV. Amazon actively learns from that feedback. Such high transparency must be a big motivator to fix issues that cause complaints. Enjoy my quick discussion with Susan Ehrlich!  You can find her at sehrlich23@gmail.com. And please also watch for Episode 5 next week, when our Barefoot Innovation guest will be Renaud LaPlanche, Founder and CEO of Lending Club. Please subscribe to my podcast by opening iTunes or your favorite podcast player and searching for "Jo Ann Barefoot". You can also subscribe to my mailing list on my front page at www.jsbarefoot.com

When we recorded this short episode with Susan Ehrlich, she was head of global credit for Amazon. She oversaw the Amazon Rewards Visa and Amazon Store Card in the U.S., as well as Amazon credit programs in Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan. Most of our conversation focused on this very unique perspective. Susan has since left Amazon to take on a diverse set of roles as a financial services director and investor. One is as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors for the <a href="http://www.csinnovation.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Center for Financial Services Innovation</a> (where I too serve on the board). She is also a director of <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CB4QFjAA&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.becu.org%2F&amp;ei=GcxuVcbSDcjSsAX0l4DwAw&amp;usg=AFQjCNGeBvBS9ixav0XvXpZf8yc7uhOPIw&amp;sig2=MofcrGZWad7sc0XUSUIMAQ&amp;bvm=bv.94911696,d.b2w" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> BECU</a>, the fourth largest credit union in the United States and largest in Washington State ($12B in assets and over 850,000 members). Susan has a long and remarkable track record as an executive scaling growth and leading turnarounds across a range of businesses in payments, retail, banking, and financial technology. She was President of Financial Services for both H&amp;R Block Inc. and for Sears Holdings Corporation.  At H&amp;R Block, she built the Emerald Card program into Consumer Reports' #2-rated prepaid card in the industry in 2013.  At Sears, she re-launched Kmart layaway—turning it into a $1 billion-plus business--and expanded the company’s credit partnerships, generating $9B+ in annual retail sales on the Sears Card. Her earlier career included developing and delivering payment and credit solutions for JP Morgan Chase, WaMu Card Services (Providian Financial), and Citibank.  American Banker magazine recognized Susan as one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance three years in a row (2009-2011), and the Federal Reserve appointed her to its Consumer Advisory Council in Washington, DC. She holds a B.A. with honors in organizational behavior and management from Brown University and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School. Our photo of Susan duly reflects all this gravitas, but she’s also an avid golfer, traveler, and wine enthusiast -- she founded the Bruce Cass Wine Lab and Ehrlich Vineyards LLC in the San Francisco Bay area. When we sat down to talk it was Superbowl Sunday (long story on why this is posted so late), and she joined me fully bedecked in Seattle Seahawks attire, hat included. We had to cut our conversation short for the kickoff. The episode is only about fifteen minutes, and I think you’ll find it fascinating. One tidbit that intrigues me:  Amazon’s borrowers rate its credit services, publically, on the Amazon site – just like for a pair of shoes or a flat screen TV. Amazon actively learns from that feedback. Such high transparency must be a big motivator to fix issues that cause complaints. Enjoy my quick discussion with Susan Ehrlich!  You can find her at <a href="mailto:sehrlich23@gmail.com">sehrlich23@gmail.com</a>. And please also watch for Episode 5 next week, when our Barefoot Innovation guest will be Renaud LaPlanche, Founder and CEO of Lending Club. Please subscribe to my podcast by opening iTunes or your favorite podcast player and searching for "Jo Ann Barefoot". You can also subscribe to my mailing list on my front page at <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.jsbarefoot.com</a>

Episode 4 - Who will Win the Consumer's Trust with Susan Ehrlich

Nadim Homsany

Matthew Cooper

One of the things I love about our Barefoot Innovation conversations -- and about fintech, for that matter -- is the passion you find in so many founders, these people who really believe they can do better for consumers. You hear it in the voices of many of the guests we’ve had on the show, the note of excitement, the sense that they can almost see a better future. They’re often people from the technology world who looked at some traditional, stuck feature of the financial system and said to themselves, I can do better than this. Today’s guests are wonderful examples. They are Matthew Cooper and Nadim Homsany, cofounders of EarnUp.

One of the things I love about our Barefoot Innovation conversations -- and about fintech, for that matter -- is the passion you find in so many founders, these people who really believe they can do better for consumers. You hear it in the voices of many of the guests we’ve had on the show, the note of excitement, the sense that they can almost see a better future. They’re often people from the technology world who looked at some traditional, stuck feature of the financial system and said to themselves, I can do better than this. Today’s guests are wonderful examples. They are Matthew Cooper and Nadim Homsany, cofounders of <a href="http://www.earnup.com" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">EarnUp</a>.

The American Dreamers: Earnup Cofounders Matthew Cooper and Nadim Homsany

I love how technology is bringing new kinds of people into finance. Today’s guest, Lamont Young, is a great example. He started his career in the fashion industry. Today, he is at Citizens Bank, as the Head of Digital and Multi-Channel Marketing.

I love how technology is bringing new kinds of people into finance. Today’s guest, Lamont Young, is a great example. He started his career in the fashion industry. Today, he is at Citizens Bank, as the Head of Digital and Multi-Channel Marketing.

How to Digitize a Bank:  Citizen’s Lamont Young

Greg Becker

Greg Becker has been a champion of the innovation economy since he joined Silicon Valley Bank in 1993 as a banker to fast-growing technology companies. Today, he is the CEO of the world’s only bank dedicated to the innovation sector around the world. Greg is optimistic about tech, including the power of fintech to drive down costs and therefore open financial access to nearly everyone -- he cites the book,  How the Poor Can Save Capitalism by John Hope Bryant. He says adding AI to anything is like putting it on steroids, making everything much more interesting and powerful. At the same time, he shares his thinking on what we should worry about, including the ethics and impacts of AI and medical technology.  

Greg Becker has been a champion of the innovation economy since he joined Silicon Valley Bank in 1993 as a banker to fast-growing technology companies. Today, he is the CEO of the world’s only bank dedicated to the innovation sector around the world. Greg is optimistic about tech, including the power of fintech to drive down costs and therefore open financial access to nearly everyone -- he cites the book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Poor-Can-Save-Capitalism/dp/1626565570" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> How the Poor Can Save Capitalism</a> by John Hope Bryant. He says adding AI to anything is like putting it on steroids, making everything much more interesting and powerful. At the same time, he shares his thinking on what we should worry about, including the ethics and impacts of AI and medical technology.

Banking the Innovators: Silicon Valley Bank CEO Greg Becker

Today’s show brings us two fascinating guests.  Alex Lintner is President of Consumer Information Services for Experian, and Sasha Orloff -- who is a previous guest on Barefoot Innovation -- is founder and CEO of LendUp. They recently joined forces to explore using new kinds of data to widen financial inclusion. We all sat down to discuss it at the LendIt conference this spring in San Francisco. Credit scores are a great tool for evaluating the creditworthiness of many consumers, but as Alex explains, not for all of them. He and Sasha think -- as do I -- that we need a fuller view into what Alex calls the consumer’s financial “reputation.” Experian estimates that 100 million people in America need this kind of broadened evaluation. We know that many consumers with low or no credit scores are actually creditworthy, and in fact could prove it if we had systems that could look closely at their financial behaviors and situations beyond reported credit history. Traditionally, though, we didn’t have efficient ways to get that information because, in the analog age, when the current systems were designed, data was scarce and costly. Today, in contrast, we have massive volumes of digital information we can access and analyze, instantly and efficiently. This creates the ability to do what used to be impossible -- make financial services more inclusive, without sacrificing lending soundness. Toward that goal, LendUp and Experian undertook a joint research project to look at the benefits of capturing data on customers’ performance on single-payment loans. The study produced really striking results -- the overwhelming majority of consumers in the study came out with positive impacts on their credit scores. And as Alex explains, single-payment loans are just one kind of nontraditional data. In today’s digitized world, there are many other factors that we can begin to capture methodically and build into routine credit scores. Experian is now routinely doing this, offering a new score called  Clear Early Risk. In our conversation, Alex and Sasha share insights drawn from their own lives and talk about the many situations in which people have trouble accessing credit when they need it. Some of these consumers are young people or new immigrants with thin or no credit file. Some are facing life changes like a family death or divorce. Some are contending with emergencies like loss of a job or medical bills. Our discussion also tied these kinds of individual challenges into big shifts underway overall in lifestyle and in technology -- the advent of mobile financial services, the rise of the gig economy, and expanding use of artificial intelligence.  In addition, we touched on the future of the Community Reinvestment Act, which is due for much-needed, tech-driven modernization. Using alternative credit risk data has complex implications for fair lending regulation, especially in the US and especially regarding “disparate impact.”  US policy bars use of credit practices that have a disproportionate adverse effect on “protected classes” like women and minorities, unless the lender can demonstrate a business need and show that less-discriminatory alternatives are not available. The criteria for proving this are not clear today, and I’m among the many people who think that clarifying them is essential to expanding financial inclusion by fostering use of new data. Despite having the best of intentions, policymakers have inadvertently made hard-to-score consumers the riskiest market to serve, due to the regulatory risk arising from uncertainty. That chills efforts to address these customers’ needs by many mainstream and high-quality lenders. The CFPB is exploring this issue through its  evaluation of alternative data and issuance of a  “no action letter” for Upstart. A similar effort is underway, also, at the new nonprofit FinRegLab, which is run by Melissa Koide and funded by the Omidyar Network. I chair FinRegLab’s board, and we’re conducting empirical testing of alternative data -- specifically cash flow underwriting -- including how these new methods relate to disparate impact. Today’s show is a glimpse of a promising future, harnessing innovative technology to produce lending that is more inclusive, and also more sound. More Links  Episode Transcription  Podcast with Al Ko - Episode recorded last year with Al Ko of Intuit  LendUp Infograph Alternative Credit Data  trends and reports  Op-Ed by Sasha on innovation in credit scoring More on Sasha and Alex Sasha Orloff is CEO and co-founder of LendUp. LendUp’s mission is to provide anyone with a path to better financial health. The company builds technology, credit products, and educational experiences that haven’t existed before for the emerging middle class -- the 56% of Americans shut out of mainstream banking due to poor credit or income volatility. It has originated more than $1 billion in loans. With offices in San Francisco, CA and Richmond, VA, LendUp is backed by debt and equity financing from venture and social impact investors including Y-Combinator, Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Victory Park Capital and Yuri Milner’s Startfund. In June, both  Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman of QED Investors joined the LendUp board of directors. Prior to founding LendUp, Sasha held roles in risk management, finance, online acquisitions and customer insights on Citi’s consumer credit team, and most recently served as Senior Vice President on Citigroup's Venture Capital team. He previously worked for the Grameen Foundation Technology Center and The World Bank. He has a B.S. in applied math and economics from the University of California, San Diego and an MBA from Georgetown University.  Alex Lintner is President of Experian’s Consumer Information Services, overseeing the company’s US consumer credit bureau and the National Consumer Assistance Centre (NCAC). He’s responsible for all aspects of Experian’s consumer credit activities within the business-to-business marketplace, including delivery and management of value-added credit risk, marketing, and collection products to help clients manage and optimize their customer relationships. Alex was previously CEO and President of Vertafore, a $450+ million revenue insurance industry technology provider. Prior to that he was President of Intuit’s Global Business Division and also Senior Vice President of Strategy, Government Affairs and Corporate Development. He’s also spent 15 years as a consultant, starting as a Business Analyst at Dr. Hoefner &amp; Partners in Munich, Germany and later serving as Vice President of The Boston Consulting Group in their London and San Francisco offices. More for our listeners Our next guest on the show will be another community bank CEO, Mike Butler of Radius Bank in Boston.  Upcoming episodes include a fascinating conversation with Congressman Gregory Meeks on financial innovation and policy; a talk I recorded this year at LendIt with my friend Greg Kidd of Global ID; and three discussions with regtech firms -- JWG in London, Compliance.ai, and Alloy. Speaking of LendIt, I was a guest this month on Peter Renton’s  Lend Academy podcast, and he’ll be on our show soon as well. I was also a guest in June on the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation podcast, CFTC Talks, with Andy Busch. And here are my two podcasts with the CFTC, one with  Chairman Giancarlo and a recent one with innovation head  Dan Gorfine. It’s not too early to register for the fall’s premier fintech event, Money 2020, in October in Las Vegas. I’ll again be MC for the regulatory track, which, remember, is on Sunday -- be sure to plan accordingly!  I’ll also be speaking on the Revolution Stage, which is new this year, about regulation innovation. Also watch for Regtech Rising in December, which I’m helping to plan. We’ll also be posting information on my collaboration with Brett King on his new book on the future of finance -- we’ll have a show and events on that as well, and I’ll be a guest on Brett’s great radio show Breaking Banks this week, on July 5. Please remember to give Barefoot Innovation a five-star rating on iTunes to help us expand the show. I hope you’ll sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at www.jsbarefoot.com.  Follow me on Twitter and our Facebook fan page. And please send in your “buck a show” to keep Barefoot Innovation going! SUPPORT OUR PODCAST Until next time, keep innovating!   Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates.  Email Address  Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Today’s show brings us two fascinating guests.  Alex Lintner is President of Consumer Information Services for <a href="http://www.experian.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Experian</a>, and Sasha Orloff -- who is a previous guest on Barefoot Innovation -- is founder and CEO of <a href="https://www.lendup.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LendUp</a>. They recently joined forces to explore using new kinds of data to widen financial inclusion. We all sat down to discuss it at the <a href="http://www.lendit.com/usa/2018" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LendIt</a> conference this spring in San Francisco. Credit scores are a great tool for evaluating the creditworthiness of many consumers, but as Alex explains, not for all of them. He and Sasha think -- as do I -- that we need a fuller view into what Alex calls the consumer’s financial “reputation.” Experian estimates that 100 million people in America need this kind of broadened evaluation. We know that many consumers with low or no credit scores are actually creditworthy, and in fact could prove it if we had systems that could look closely at their financial behaviors and situations beyond reported credit history. Traditionally, though, we didn’t have efficient ways to get that information because, in the analog age, when the current systems were designed, data was scarce and costly. Today, in contrast, we have massive volumes of digital information we can access and analyze, instantly and efficiently. This creates the ability to do what used to be impossible -- make financial services more inclusive, without sacrificing lending soundness. Toward that goal, LendUp and Experian undertook a joint research project to look at the benefits of capturing data on customers’ performance on single-payment loans. The study produced really striking results -- the overwhelming majority of consumers in the study came out with positive impacts on their credit scores. And as Alex explains, single-payment loans are just one kind of nontraditional data. In today’s digitized world, there are many other factors that we can begin to capture methodically and build into routine credit scores. Experian is now routinely doing this, offering a new score called <a href="http://www.experian.com/assets/consumer-information/product-sheets/PS-clear-early-risk-score.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Clear Early Risk</a>. In our conversation, Alex and Sasha share insights drawn from their own lives and talk about the many situations in which people have trouble accessing credit when they need it. Some of these consumers are young people or new immigrants with thin or no credit file. Some are facing life changes like a family death or divorce. Some are contending with emergencies like loss of a job or medical bills. Our discussion also tied these kinds of individual challenges into big shifts underway overall in lifestyle and in technology -- the advent of mobile financial services, the rise of the gig economy, and expanding use of artificial intelligence.  In addition, we touched on the future of the Community Reinvestment Act, which is due for much-needed, tech-driven modernization. Using alternative credit risk data has complex implications for fair lending regulation, especially in the US and especially regarding “disparate impact.”  US policy bars use of credit practices that have a disproportionate adverse effect on “protected classes” like women and minorities, unless the lender can demonstrate a business need and show that less-discriminatory alternatives are not available. The criteria for proving this are not clear today, and I’m among the many people who think that clarifying them is essential to expanding financial inclusion by fostering use of new data. Despite having the best of intentions, policymakers have inadvertently made hard-to-score consumers the riskiest market to serve, due to the regulatory risk arising from uncertainty. That chills efforts to address these customers’ needs by many mainstream and high-quality lenders. The CFPB is exploring this issue through its <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/policy-compliance/notice-opportunities-comment/archive-closed/request-information-regarding-use-alternative-data-and-modeling-techniques-credit-process/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> evaluation of alternative data</a> and issuance of a <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-announces-first-no-action-letter-upstart-network/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> “no action letter”</a> for Upstart. A similar effort is underway, also, at the new nonprofit <a href="https://finreglab.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">FinRegLab</a>, which is run by Melissa Koide and funded by the <a href="https://www.omidyar.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Omidyar Network</a>. I chair FinRegLab’s board, and we’re conducting empirical testing of alternative data -- specifically cash flow underwriting -- including how these new methods relate to disparate impact. Today’s show is a glimpse of a promising future, harnessing innovative technology to produce lending that is more inclusive, and also more sound. More Links <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ae2UYVETmJkI0xqsFTZvj5yEApOl2MiVF3VJi3I-Lgo/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Episode Transcription</a> <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/6/13/making-it-easy-intuits-al-ko" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Podcast with Al Ko</a> - Episode recorded last year with Al Ko of <a href="https://www.intuit.com/sign-in/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Intuit</a> <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B37il1IgWqt8SEFDRjE3Y3FLaW9IeGlIeU5ZdHdfekc2MzdB/view?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> LendUp Infograph</a> Alternative Credit Data <a href="http://www.experian.com/consumer-information/alternative-data.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> trends and reports</a> <a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/include-short-term-loan-repayment-in-credit-scores" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Op-Ed</a> by Sasha on innovation in credit scoring More on Sasha and Alex Sasha Orloff is CEO and co-founder of LendUp. LendUp’s mission is to provide anyone with a path to better financial health. The company builds technology, credit products, and educational experiences that haven’t existed before for the emerging middle class -- the 56% of Americans shut out of mainstream banking due to poor credit or income volatility. It has originated more than $1 billion in loans. With offices in San Francisco, CA and Richmond, VA, LendUp is backed by debt and equity financing from venture and social impact investors including Y-Combinator, Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Victory Park Capital and Yuri Milner’s Startfund. In June, both <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/06/21/lendup-board-capital-one-cof-san-francisco-fintec.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman of QED Investors</a> joined the LendUp board of directors. Prior to founding LendUp, Sasha held roles in risk management, finance, online acquisitions and customer insights on Citi’s consumer credit team, and most recently served as Senior Vice President on Citigroup's Venture Capital team. He previously worked for the Grameen Foundation Technology Center and The World Bank. He has a B.S. in applied math and economics from the University of California, San Diego and an MBA from Georgetown University. Alex Lintner is President of Experian’s Consumer Information Services, overseeing the company’s US consumer credit bureau and the National Consumer Assistance Centre (NCAC). He’s responsible for all aspects of Experian’s consumer credit activities within the business-to-business marketplace, including delivery and management of value-added credit risk, marketing, and collection products to help clients manage and optimize their customer relationships. Alex was previously CEO and President of Vertafore, a $450+ million revenue insurance industry technology provider. Prior to that he was President of Intuit’s Global Business Division and also Senior Vice President of Strategy, Government Affairs and Corporate Development. He’s also spent 15 years as a consultant, starting as a Business Analyst at Dr. Hoefner &amp; Partners in Munich, Germany and later serving as Vice President of The Boston Consulting Group in their London and San Francisco offices. More for our listeners Our next guest on the show will be another community bank CEO, Mike Butler of Radius Bank in Boston.  Upcoming episodes include a fascinating conversation with Congressman Gregory Meeks on financial innovation and policy; a talk I recorded this year at <a href="http://www.lendit.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LendIt</a> with my friend Greg Kidd of Global ID; and three discussions with regtech firms -- JWG in London, <a href="http://Compliance.ai" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Compliance.ai</a>, and Alloy. Speaking of LendIt, I was a guest this month on Peter Renton’s <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/lend-academy-podcast/id766693555?mt=2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Lend Academy podcast</a>, and he’ll be on our show soon as well. I was also a <a href="https://buff.ly/2IGSgx8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">guest</a> in June on the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation podcast, CFTC Talks, with Andy Busch. And here are my two podcasts with the CFTC, one with <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/7/18/from-analog-to-digital-regulation-cftc-acting-chairman-christopher-giancarlo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Chairman Giancarlo</a> and a recent one with innovation head <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2018/6/17/regulatory-challenger-labcftc-and-daniel-gorfine" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Dan Gorfine</a>. It’s not too early to register for the fall’s premier fintech event, <a href="https://us.money2020.com/speakers" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Money 2020</a>, in October in Las Vegas. I’ll again be MC for the regulatory track, which, remember, is on Sunday -- be sure to plan accordingly!  I’ll also be speaking on the Revolution Stage, which is new this year, about regulation innovation. Also watch for <a href="https://finance.knect365.com/regtech-rising/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Regtech Rising</a> in December, which I’m helping to plan. We’ll also be posting information on my collaboration with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettking" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Brett King</a> on his new book on the future of finance -- we’ll have a show and events on that as well, and I’ll be a guest on Brett’s great radio show <a href="https://breakingbanks.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Breaking Banks</a> this week, on July 5. Please remember to give Barefoot Innovation a five-star rating on iTunes to help us expand the show. I hope you’ll sign up to get emails that bring you the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts, at <a href="http://www.jsbarefoot.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.jsbarefoot.com</a>.  Follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/joannbarefoot?lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/barefootinnovationgroup/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a> fan page. And please send in your “buck a show” to keep Barefoot Innovation going! SUPPORT OUR PODCAST Until next time, keep innovating! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Data that Deepens Financial Access: Experian and Lendup

Lamine Zarrad is the co-founder and CEO of Joust. He began his entrepreneurial journey as a refugee, going on to serve in the U.S. Marines, and then building an expertise around banking regulations and financial services. With Joust, Lamine combines his passion for inclusion with his banking skills to create the nation’s first, all-inclusive banking services app for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and the self-employed.

Lamine Zarrad is the co-founder and CEO of Joust. He began his entrepreneurial journey as a refugee, going on to serve in the U.S. Marines, and then building an expertise around banking regulations and financial services. With Joust, Lamine combines his passion for inclusion with his banking skills to create the nation’s first, all-inclusive banking services app for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and the self-employed.

The Future of Work: Joust CEO Lamine Zarrad

Brett King

Today’s show is a bonus episode, and an extra-special one, because I sat down with my friend, the futurist and financial technology guru Brett King.This is our second show with Brett -- we also had one we recorded over a delightful breakfast in London a while back. We wanted to talk again because he’s put out his new book, Bank  4.0, for which I co-wrote the chapter on financial regulation. We made that chapter 2 of the book, right after the opening, because regulation has become absolutely central to the question of whether technology is going to make banking better, or worse, than what we have today.

Today’s show is a bonus episode, and an extra-special one, because I sat down with my friend, the futurist and financial technology guru Brett King.This is our second show with Brett -- we also had <a href="https://www.jsbarefoot.com/podcasts/2017/7/26/breakfast-with-the-best-brett-king" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">one</a> we recorded over a delightful breakfast in London a while back. We wanted to talk again because he’s put out his new book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bank-4-0-Banking-everywhere-never/dp/9814771767" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Bank</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bank-4-0-Banking-everywhere-never/dp/9814771767" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> 4.0</a>, for which I co-wrote the chapter on financial regulation. We made that chapter 2 of the book, right after the opening, because regulation has become absolutely central to the question of whether technology is going to make banking better, or worse, than what we have today.

Bonus Episode: Futurist Brett King

Rob Frohwein

Kathryn Petralia

In our conversation, Rob and Kathryn tell their story, on how they’ve built a company that has extended $6 billion in credit to 165,000 people in the United States. They explain how they started with e-commerce companies and now service all small businesses.  They describe their gradual realization that their loans can help these businesses manage cash flow -- a critical need. And they share their thinking on the regulatory challenges ahead for the space, including the risk that new regulation will stifle innovation.

In our conversation, Rob and Kathryn tell their story, on how they’ve built a company that has extended $6 billion in credit to 165,000 people in the United States. They explain how they started with e-commerce companies and now service all small businesses.  They describe their gradual realization that their loans can help these businesses manage cash flow -- a critical need. And they share their thinking on the regulatory challenges ahead for the space, including the risk that new regulation will stifle innovation.

Small Business Lending: Rob Frohwein and Kathryn Petralia of Kabbage

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