315. News: Tech for Tech’s Sake

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315. News: Tech for Tech’s Sake

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Sarah and Simon are joined by Freddy Kelly, Ben Gleisner and Simon Vans-Colina to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days. Including: US lenders prepare for a recession; Halifax gets slammed for looking a little too like Monzo and Starling in their rebrand and Facebook call time on UK P2P payments.

This week we have some great stories for you as Sarah and Simon are joined by a couple of great guests:

  • Freddy Kelly, CEO and co-founder at Credit Kudos
  • Ben Gleisner, CEO and Co-founder at CoGo
  • Simon Vans-Colina, Engineer at Monzo

We kick off the episode by taking a look at US lenders preparing for a recession. U.S. online lenders such as LendingClub Corp, Kabbage Inc and Avant LLC are scrutinizing loan quality, securing long-term financing and cutting costs, as executives prepare for what they fear could be the sector’s first economic downturn. We hear from our Americas MD, Sam Maule for a US perspective (:).

Next up, we talk about RBS challenging the challengers with Bo. Despite buying NatWest almost 20 years ago RBS still uses different IT systems at the two banks. Bó, their new digital-only consumer bank in contrast, has been built in a little over a year on a completely new cloud-based system. It will launch to the public later this year. Sarah and Simon VC remark that if Bo are happy to be a companion bank account, the data can't be fully representatives of their customers' finances. Simon T thinks that profitability is at least a five year journey - is the importance of profit early on misguided? (:).

Other stories include:

  • N26 in trouble with German regulators over hypergrowth
  • 86400 sign a partnership to offer home loans
  • Halifax rebrand gets slammed for copying Monzo and Starling
  • Ant Financial take on the Chinese healthcare market
  • Derek White waves goodbye to BBVA
  • Facebook calls time on P2P payments
  • And finally, Joe Lycett Impersonates RBS Boss to Get £8,000 Back to Scammed Customer

All this and so much more on today's show.

Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode, leave a review on iTunes and let us know your thoughts on the stories @FintechInsiders on Twitter where you can also ask the hosts questions, or email podcasts@11fs.com

This week's episode was produced by Laura Watkins and edited by Alex Woodhouse.

Special Guests: Ben Gleisner, Freddy Kelly, and Simon Vans-Colina.

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