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A podcast to lift the veil on the so-called FinTech industry. Technology and Banking together building digital propositions - the people, the tea, the warstories and the lessons with a sprinkling of sass from the makers of People AND Tech and #EmotionalBanking.
In today's episode, I'm joined by Nasir Zubare. His name is synonymous with the startup scene in Europe nowadays, But few know that he has started many, many moons ago in areas of finance that were maybe not as sexy as that. But if you listen to this episode, you'll hear about his journey and about the fundamentals that have made Fintech what it is today. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Tales from the Fintech Crypt. I have a dear friend today whom has been by our side building Fintech for gods the better part of 50 years, it feels like.
Duena Blomstrom:Hello, Nasir. How are you?
Nasir Zuibairi:I'm great, Duena. Great to be with you.
Duena Blomstrom:Thank you for accepting my invite. Shall we start with all the way back at the beginning? We must have met GOTS 11, 12 years ago. And what was the London Fintech scene back in the day like when we did?
Nasir Zuibairi:Well, it was just really beginning to ignite. Right? I mean, the word Fintech didn't even exist at that time. I remember that we were trying to get together these small group of companies that were sort of the seeds of what is now known as fintech, the likes of Wise or TransferWise as they were at the time, you know, and some of the other firms that were beginning to rise from the ashes of the, of the, financial services crisis. And, actually, I remember that we were specifically trying to actually give them a categorization, and we were trying to call it new finance.
Nasir Zuibairi:Right? Because from a marketing perspective, you want to be with the new rather than the old. But then this Fintech word took hold, and to this day, I still absolutely detest that word. It's caused more problems than I think it's helped over the years.
Duena Blomstrom:I like that. All of our conversations seem to start in that, exact point of what what what is when is the first time that you've ever heard Fintech and whether or not it's still a they should have stuck or not. So thanks for the opportunity. New finance, that could have that could have worked. But, you know, whether or not it's stuck, there's there's a couple of stories that people have as to what were the first definitions of it that were hilarious.
Duena Blomstrom:There's one from Nektarios that someone thought it was finished technology, which, you know, they couldn't say it that way. But, yes, very true. We and that's maybe a point that I'd like you to, make more clear to my listeners who are, I suspect, a lot younger than we are and may not have been there at the time, which is when it all started happening, it was right at the tail end of the financial crisis, wasn't it?
Nasir Zuibairi:Yes. Exactly. I think, to me, it really started kicking off around early 2011, actually. So a year or so after because we were seeing in the aftermath of the financial crisis still. I still remember some of the headlines because they actually spurred me to set up my first business.
Nasir Zuibairi:You know, headlines in the press around, SME lending, SME services, retail banking services. We had the 99%, percent movement, you know, where people were camping out in opposite outside of the London Stock Exchange. And and people started saying, well, we can do finance better. Right? I don't think finance had ever made, like, the front page headlines of the tabloid press in particular, and everyone started getting interested in it.
Nasir Zuibairi:And then, you know, we started you know, people even from outside the industry with no financial services background were asking, surely we can do this better. And that's really where it kicked off, I think.
Duena Blomstrom:I like that. It was, those moments of of ecstasy in terms of where it's going next did start on the back of the crisis really, and it's important to to have that context properly. So when it comes to your, first ideas, why don't you walk us through what your first forays into the idea of of of of of getting different types of technology out there and and a little bit of your lessons along the way, please?
Nasir Zuibairi:Yeah. I mean, again, it's very similar to to the story I've just told. I I had just spent I'd been at business school, I quit my job, I was head of the high frequency trading desk at World Bank of Scotland up until 2,008. There was a merger with AB and AMRO, and for my own reasons, actually nothing to do with the financial crisis itself, because it was only just sort of the seeds and the the the information was about to spread. We'd just taken over ABN AMRO and, yeah, I I couldn't see where the market was going.
Nasir Zuibairi:I'd been deeply entrenched and involved in driving a lot of change around the foreign exchange market in particular, And I wanted to go and learn again. I I wasn't learning anymore, so I applied to business schools. I quit my job in June 2008, and best decision I ever made because, RBS obviously blew up around September that year.
Duena Blomstrom:Right.
Nasir Zuibairi:I went to business school for a year, which I greatly enjoyed, and coming out of that, you know, the financial services sector was a complete mess. I hadn't really thought about what I was gonna do after business school because I really just enjoyed the learning. And when I looked around and saw the mess, you know, and started thinking, what am I gonna do? My my wife at the time suggested, well, things are really messy. Why don't we go off to Bali and, spend some time out there and let things cool down and relax.
Nasir Zuibairi:So that's exactly what we did. I got bored in Bali after about 6 months and came back to London, stuck up my hand, and said, look. I'm back. What can I do? And set myself up as a consultant, and did some consulting work for a few firms around distressed debt, and then found my way into HSBC, writing their global foreign exchange strategy.
Nasir Zuibairi:And it was while I was at HSBC where, again, I saw all these headlines coming out in the press and through an investment structure I was part of, I was exposed to, invoice financing.
Duena Blomstrom:K.
Nasir Zuibairi:And, let me just switch off my WhatsApp. It's ping in a way. I think it's my son asking about his car. Thank you. My son passed test of 2 weeks ago, and I I bought him a car, and I need to fulfill on that.
Nasir Zuibairi:So I I was exposed to invoice financing and this thing which seemed to me like an asset. And why it just the thought crossed my mind. Why isn't this traded as an asset? Because then I was exposed to how, you know, how it works with SME invoice financing and, factoring. And to cut a long story short, I just thought that there was an opportunity here.
Nasir Zuibairi:I saw in the US the the invoice exchange, the trade trade finance exchange had been set up, and I said, why don't we have something like that in London or in Europe? And so I, you know, finished my term as a consultant and then went about setting up that solution. And that went surprisingly quite well, which may not have boded well for where what happened next to me because even before we really launched it to market, we got an offer from the Dutch government to purchase the track the the the technology and solution, and we sold it, not for ridiculous sums of money, but for a nice tidy sum. And then I ended up with the Currency Cloud for a little while for about a year sort of as an interim, head of director of marketing there because a lot of the people involved there were sort of people that I knew from the old world of capital markets. Then I continued on with sort of setting up a few other businesses, and to be quite frank, they they all blew up.
Nasir Zuibairi:I, you know, I got I got, I guess, a bit lusty and overconfident as a result of pre of what had happened, the first two successes, and ended up sort of through a lot of these failures, lost a lot of money, and then ended up in Berlin setting up Finleap with the gang out there and Ramon and the team. And, you know, I really like that model with Finley, but the ability to set up and sort of ignite a whole host of different ideas within a very short space of time. Obviously, Solaris Bank was the sort of culmination of a and the real flag bearer of all the companies we set up, block.debilfront. So my invoice financing business came back in another guise, which was billfront, which is specifically invoice finance for for the, on digital marketing exchanges. So broad range of experience, a lot of screw ups along the way.
Nasir Zuibairi:The screw ups teach you the most valuable lessons and allow you to learn and to hopefully do better the next time. So You got
Duena Blomstrom:that. That's quite that's quite a
Nasir Zuibairi:fast as well.
Duena Blomstrom:Right. It's quite a fast zap through your history. And and I think what's what's really unique in in your case as compared to almost many other people that are in in the industry is the fact that you've been there and lived through being an actual entrepreneur through the good and the bad way, where I know that we both share a couple of successes as well as as you very well say, those are the ones that probably we learn most of. But, it's super interesting to for people listening to hear that it isn't just retail banking and digital banking that kind of Fintech was coming to, but really every other aspect of the, the financial realm in terms of, like, you very well pointed out, there's, you know, there's there's money to be discussed in terms of exchange. There's money to be discussed in terms of, very dry products from derivatives to to currencies.
Duena Blomstrom:And all of those are are the the fabric of what was making a need for technology happen. And it's still happening today. Would you say fast forwarding a 1000000000 years that those are still the areas that are asking for innovation in in financial technology these days?
Nasir Zuibairi:Yeah. I mean, look. The the size of the pie is huge. Right? There's about 13,000,000,000,000 plus in terms of revenues available within the whole financial services industry.
Nasir Zuibairi:And if you can get a tiny piece of that, there's plenty to be made. Right? You know, financial services as a whole still to this day is way, way behind the innovation curve relative to other industries. Right? Right.
Nasir Zuibairi:The innovation curve relative to other industries. Right? Right. You know, when if you look back now, Duena, look back 10 years, has it really changed that much? No.
Nasir Zuibairi:It actually hasn't. I mean, yes, we've got some massive new challenges like Revolut. But is there anything innovative in terms of the product that they're delivering? There's nothing patentable in there. Right?
Nasir Zuibairi:They're just doing it better than the banks were doing it. Right? So there's process innovation, if anything more, which is still very low lying innovation. So there's still massive scope for change to occur. Look at what we AI is bringing to the table.
Nasir Zuibairi:I mean, the fact that, you know, I was doing machine learning algorithms on the trading desk, you know, 15, 16 years ago, but yet it hasn't in any way sort of encroached beyond that until firms are beginning to look at it now. And they're still lost when it comes to what it can deliver in terms of productivity and enhanced profit. The shift I'm seeing you know, payments always astonishes me because when I think there can't be anything new, you always see new funding rounds, new innovations constantly in the payment sector, and is by far the flag bearer for all of Fintech over the years. Right? A lot of the initial successes of start ups were driven by people that don't come from the finance sector.
Nasir Zuibairi:Okay? But for obvious solutions because they were touched by them in terms of SME Banking and Retail Banking solutions. Where I and, you know, the capital markets arena and the asset management arena, that was still a bit of a, you know, black box for most people where arguably, and as is the case, you need to have some level of know how and knowledge in those areas to be able to build a successful start up. But that's where I think the new opportunities are, looking at the capital market side of the business, looking at the asset management arena, wealth management, insurance services. I mean, life insurance, you know, I mean, the the potential for innovation there.
Nasir Zuibairi:Capital markets, we're seeing some very clever things around, leverage a blockchain for so that you don't need to move assets around, for example, in securities lending market or in the repo market. These things are still so, so inefficient. Clearing is still so inefficient. Right. The fact that, you know, it still takes, you know, I could send this mug to Singapore, pretty certain it will arrive tomorrow, know exactly how much it will cost, know exactly where it is in the process of that transfer to Singapore, and pretty much guaranteed deliver delivery.
Nasir Zuibairi:Whereas I can't send if I try and send euros to Sing dollars, it may arrive 2 to 5 days from now. It has about a 25% chance of being lost along the way. I don't know exactly how much it will cost because we don't know how many correspondent banks it will go through. I mean, this is insane when we're talking about digital, right? So there's still much huge scope for innovation.
Nasir Zuibairi:I mean, the problem here is is we've now got onto a stage where regulation is also causing massive barriers to entry for a lot of start ups. Right? Because when you wanna touch on the high value areas of financial services, capital markets, cap investment banking, insurance, etcetera, you have this regulatory ring fence around it, and the barriers to entry are very, very high. But I'm hoping that over time, you know, even some of the banks will be able to innovate within that space and drive a lot of the change, and new entrances will be able to come in and make finance what it really should be. Right?
Duena Blomstrom:I like that, and that's very hopeful. And I think it's important for anyone that hasn't taken my advice to check your profile before listening to us. I doubt there are many people who don't know who you are, but for anyone who's new, Nazir has seen a good few thousand people and companies, I would say, startups in particularly in the space, and he is today an an an an an important cog in the ecosystem of of keeping startups still innovative and still in the game of attempting to chip at these bits whether they can or not. So he's not just, saying so or looking at innovation from a very faraway lens but from a very hands on role. So how would you say your journey of of handholding various propositions has has gone?
Nasir Zuibairi:You know, I think it's I'd like to think it goes well, you know. I think with my experience of seeing what has worked, what hasn't worked, both from knowing businesses but also through what I've done myself, having you know, being an investor in businesses as well. You know, touch wood, I think we we're generally pretty good at identifying what's gonna go well and what isn't, and it's not rocket science, ultimately. You know, you need a good team and a team that understands product market fit and a team that has agility, a team that's going to listen and learn, and I think that's one of my key criteria when I even look at firms to invest in. But, you know, if I've got a 25 or 20 something year old or even a 30 something year old in front of me who thinks they know everything and that they're not willing to listen to a bit of experience, be it my own or experts that I may put them into contact with, I'm gonna be slightly weary of that because everyone can learn every single day, and that's what life is.
Nasir Zuibairi:And the lessons we learn along the way will only make us better. You know, it's again, it's we've been quite good at identifying good companies in Luxembourg where we're based. You know, the it's it's a fairly straightforward formula. We understand the industry. We're very much focused on b two b here.
Nasir Zuibairi:I do very much like boring because boring makes money quite easily in the long run. It might not get all the headlines, but infrastructure, compliance, compliance is the killer for all institutions at the moment. So if you have good compliance solutions, regtech, I mean, there's lots of opportunity around this. Right? Sales cycle might be known, but ultimately, once you get a few institutions, you're onto a winner.
Nasir Zuibairi:And so we try and work you know, we understand the product market fit in Luxembourg. We understand the challenges the institutions have. We understand what they're looking for, and we're able to marry up good companies that come to us that wanna set up in Luxembourg, be it domestic, you know, and organic within the market or coming from abroad. So we know what works, and we're very brutally honest with firms we don't think should look at other or shouldn't be in Luxembourg or look at other countries. Right?
Duena Blomstrom:I'd like that.
Nasir Zuibairi:I take the honest approach with firms, quite frankly. I don't want them to waste their time and I don't want to waste our time.
Duena Blomstrom:Right. Right. But in terms of the structure that like, I I was asking earlier in terms of what you guys do at Loft, I know intimately because we've worked before together, and I know we've done some amazing things for our partners that were able to go through through those rigorous help processes. But did you wanna kind of walk anyone listening to what happens if you're a startup that comes to either an accelerator or an incubator or a place of matching with the industry and kind of what should they be expecting and what what would people be what should they look for, really?
Nasir Zuibairi:Again, I can only say it from the actions we take. Right? So we started running we looked at acceleration programs 7, 8 years ago. And, again, from what I witnessed and seen in acceleration, I thought there was a lemons issue in that good companies don't have time to spend on a 5 to 6 month acceleration program. There's little value that can be accrued through that.
Nasir Zuibairi:So but we still wanted to connect and see if we could create some value for good companies or companies that we felt would scale ultimately and could create value for Luxembourg in various different sectors. So we set up a program which we call which we branded Catapult, and it's a one maximum 2 week boot camp. Right? Very intensive, all expenses paid. We cover all the costs.
Nasir Zuibairi:Why should start ups have to cover this? You know, we're looking for value out of it as well. So we cover all the costs, flights, hotel accommodation in Luxembourg, around specific thematics, but the large part of the program is not about trying to teach them how to build a business. There are some elements, but kind of on the on the qualitative side, you know, about leadership. We're not teaching them how to do accounting or marketing.
Nasir Zuibairi:We give them tips on leadership and how to structure your finances, etcetera, raise money. A large part of the program is about connectivity to the Luxembourg ecosystem. The firms that are selected to participate in the programs, we know are so going to solve problems or have the ability to solve problems for a multitude of institutions in Luxembourg. And therefore, we these firms are also interested in meeting with them. So a lot of the program is about connectivity and meeting with people, with firms.
Nasir Zuibairi:We usually structure it around a large scale event in Luxembourg as well, so they get huge networking opportunities. And then one week's over, they they're gone. And if they then choose to come back and set up business in Luxembourg, which a lot of them do, great. You know, and that, ultimately, what we see is that we've helped them. We've helped the industry in Luxembourg with solutions, so everyone's a winner.
Nasir Zuibairi:I think what's critical I mean, what do start ups need? Start ups need capital and customers. That's the most important thing. And so try and facilitate access to both customers. You know, that's really our comparative advantage, because the accessibility to the, to the institutional segment in Luxembourg, that's that's the the beauty of Luxembourg.
Nasir Zuibairi:It's small but incredibly powerful in financial services. Okay. So you can get to meet CEOs or banks very, very easily.
Duena Blomstrom:Well, I think we we tend to forget, in particular, these days that not every part of the world is created equal, and there are incredible ecosystems in in places. And Luxembourg is an an extremely amazing example of it from my research back in the day in Fintech. But I what I really like about your approach is that there is genuine matching. And a lot of people say that. A lot of people promise this.
Duena Blomstrom:These days, you're gonna, you know, see a lot of AI driven text that, promises those matches. But whether or not someone has the capability of understanding what your startup does and at the same time immediately recall where that gap is in the existing market and have the ability to to to get you into that gap is invaluable. So I'm I'm really appreciative of how much specialized knowledge and and heart you guys are putting into into the process. And one of the reasons I wanted to to chat is because not everyone has managed the same thing. And there's a lot of, wouldn't you say, PR in the industry.
Duena Blomstrom:It's hard for people to know how to weed through it.
Nasir Zuibairi:I think it's a lot better than it used to be or maybe, you know, in my old age, I'm I'm starting to zone a lot out. I mean, for I mean, Duena, you you and I you and I both remember that 12 years ago, we were Twitter. All of us were Twitter mapped. Right? It was all about Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.
Nasir Zuibairi:I barely look at x these days. Right? I haven't the time nor the energy. I mean, to me, it's more real business and business PR, Fintech PR for me has concentrated more onto LinkedIn, but therein, again, you can filter out what's rubbish and what isn't. You know, we we support all of our members.
Nasir Zuibairi:So I have 80 6 companies in my facility, and we have many, many others that are members of our ecosystem. So I think total is around 2 20, 2 50 companies. And we support them with that PR activity. But again, we tell them what's newsworthy and what isn't. We're not gonna write that PR for them, but, you know, we can help distribute it as we have good connections with the media, both in Luxembourg and abroad.
Nasir Zuibairi:But if they give us rubbish, we're gonna tell them it's rubbish, right? You know, sometimes if you've hired a really high profile guy, that is news, but just hiring a new business development guy who's a nobody, I mean, no offense. That's not news. Right? You know, you've gotta understand what what the industry or PR wants.
Nasir Zuibairi:So we try and educate on that side of things as to what is newsworthy and what isn't. But, yes, you're right. There's still I mean, but isn't there BS in just about everything these days? You know, everyone's everyone has their own news station and PR PR machine with all these channels that we have. So, I mean, we just have to
Duena Blomstrom:No. No, no industries BS free at all, but, it's not anymore in Fintech necessary than other places. And that's a good point. I think going back, on our on our, memory lane thing where the conversation existed back in the day. And I think maybe we touched on this in previous episodes, was concentrated around Twitter.
Duena Blomstrom:There was a very focused conversation. There were maybe I would have thought no more than 50, 60 of us in that conversation at first and then kind of that grew and exploded at some point. When when I last looked at my tens of thousands of followers, there must have been tens of thousands of people trying to have a conversation. But equally as the industry has diversified and changed, that didn't necessarily, as you say, translated to value. It translated to a lot of noise.
Duena Blomstrom:And I'm sure it's daunting to people coming into the industry these days to kind of figure out what what who are, the the voices that that they should be listening to. It was a lot clearer back in the day. There were maybe 10 pundits you had to chat to so that you got yourself being one of them, I'm sure. Would you say that social media is still or is going to come back into being a driving force for innovation in
Nasir Zuibairi:our industry at all? Driving force? I don't think it's a driving force. I never did. I thought it was a support tool and a personal In our day, quite frankly, Joanna, it was a personal branding tool.
Nasir Zuibairi:Let's face it. You, I, and many of the others that we know, the slightly older generation, we got famous because of what what we did on Twitter. Right? A lot of
Duena Blomstrom:famous. Let's not exaggerate.
Nasir Zuibairi:Yeah. A lot of our sort of the fact that we became somewhat recognizable figures came because we were the guys on Twitter. Right? You know, you can name we we know all the names. Right?
Nasir Zuibairi:You mentioned Nektarios, I mean, Matteo. You know, I've got Pascal Bouvier here in my facility. I mean, he but we've all gone quiet now. I mean, which one of us apart from maybe Spyros, you know, is that active on,
Duena Blomstrom:With all due respect, Spyros is very new. He's not, exactly initial.
Nasir Zuibairi:Wasn't quite our generation, but, you know, he was there. But there's not many from that time that are anywhere near as active as we used to be. Because I think, you know, once we got all the followers, etcetera, you know, we said, okay. We're done now. It's fine.
Nasir Zuibairi:Haven't got the time. Because it is it's a full time job to some degree being on Twitter, monitoring it, etcetera. Right. I just don't have time to do it anymore.
Duena Blomstrom:I don't know if it was necessarily just a branding tool. I think at one point, the reason I say driving force is because let's face it, there were these very initial moments, 2,010, 2009, 2011, and 12, where the conversation was intensely about the technology moments. So I don't know if you remember, but we we used to, live tweet Finovates. Even some sometimes we would be in Europe and looking at the ones in America and still be in that same conversation. I think a lot of the good ideas came from those hashtag conversations, which you don't have that moment anymore by the very unsynchronous character of LinkedIn these days.
Duena Blomstrom:So that's why I'm saying it maybe drove some of the things that happened.
Nasir Zuibairi:I think I think it's, firstly, become much more diluted because there's many, many conversations now. There's, you know, Fintech and and the boom it's it's had over the years. It's there's a lot going on. So what do you follow? Who do you follow?
Nasir Zuibairi:What event do you attend? You know, it's so much happening. But then, secondly, I think there's a level of, you know, in not inertia. Inertia is not the wrong word, but, you know, it's you've seen what's the word I'm looking for? Where you're kind of a level of apathy that's creeping in as well if you've been around in this sector a long time.
Nasir Zuibairi:I know just simply because of the focus, be it, but I understand the core trends that I think that are going on and the direction things need to be moving. I'm not as good as I used to be at keeping up with what are the latest greatest companies as I used to be. Right? Whereas we knew them all. There were less of them at that time as well.
Nasir Zuibairi:Right? But it was easier to track. I mean, I I was looking at some, you know, hit list of the top Fintech firms in Switzerland or Germany yesterday, and I didn't know any of the names, quite frankly. I really didn't recognize them. So things have changed, right, and focus changes.
Nasir Zuibairi:But there's still plenty of value that we create. I hope I still deliver to the market that, you know, that can still be seized by by new companies. I, you know, I would never give up on Fintech. Oh, I use that word Fintech. I really hate that word.
Nasir Zuibairi:In fact, technology, there's still massive amounts of value that can be snagged. But So in in to
Duena Blomstrom:to interrupt you. Sorry about that. But I got I got excited about asking you a hard hitting horrible question, maybe. But where are we on changing that spaghetti back end of banks? I have not asked anyone that.
Duena Blomstrom:I'm asking you for
Nasir Zuibairi:That's still the the core, constraint on innovation. It's a mess still. I don't know if you know any banks that have recently tried to do a migration. I know 1 or 2 banks that have tried to do a migration, the cost of it, and the complete and utter mess it ends up in a never ending project. It's it's one of the biggest issues.
Nasir Zuibairi:Quite frankly, what I propose to many institutions is, you know, you why not build the entire stack in parallel and then switch it out? Because then it's a data migration issue. It's not what they do today, which is trying to integrate new pieces into a complete mess. Right? And why not just rebuild it all from scratch, new, knowing that it's gonna continuously change because that's also a key element in terms of framing.
Nasir Zuibairi:I think the framing has always historically been wrong, that people build technologies in finance and think this is the most robust thing, this will work forever. It's not. Right? It doesn't happen. It's too rigid, and then they can't change and evolve over time.
Nasir Zuibairi:But I would suggest that you build everything from scratch and then do the data migration rather than try and fix what's already there because it is a complete and utter mess, right, right from the core banking system. The fact that banks there are banks, I know there are, I've seen them, banks that are still using versions of certain back core banking systems that date back to the eighties says a lot. Right? They can't even upgrade within the particular solution because it's become so messy. Right?
Duena Blomstrom:Right. Now I know what you mean, and I I remember being staunchly against the idea of building it on the outside in in the dark and on a Friday so that the the the because in my mind, banks should have been a lot more honest and and simply do the the good cleaning that was hygienic. But realistically, and having, gotten off my youth high horse, I realized it's it's, it's not necessarily the better idea because the only ones that have gotten ahead are the ones that have done this shadow cabinet sort of, lack of tech debt and human debt, other structure, and then brought that in house. Unfortunately, this is in my mind all coming back to this idea of a human debt. That's that's the the thing that kicked me out of financial technology when I realized it because I I knew that this is a bigger problem than just in banks, and indeed it exists in most nongenerative big enterprises.
Duena Blomstrom:But in banking, it is it is sorely felt, in terms of being able to just look at their ticket whatsoever. So and it's kind of bringing me to my next question. Where do you think things have changed if the if the back end hasn't really and the tech debt obviously is accumulating by the second? Is this, at the end of the day, obviously, a cultural problem? And and and what are bigger institutions doing at all to to look at who they are and how they innovate and how how prepared they are in terms of inner DNA of their culture to to respond to this?
Nasir Zuibairi:So I'm quite brutal on this. I don't think it has changed. In fact, I'm seeing the mistakes being made today that were ice I even I made way back when in finance, when I worked in the front office. Banks, they know how to do innovation. Banks will appoint a head of innovation very often somebody from within their ranks who is a dilettante in actually having the experience of doing and having built something in an agile method, really customer centric, experimenting, hypothesis testing, to be able to deliver the right product by constantly evolving and iterating the solution that they have.
Nasir Zuibairi:Banks still work in a waterfall methodology, ultimately. Right? They do a business case, you know, and a new new, what's it called, NPAC, you know, new product, assessment, I can't remember what it stands for, program proposal. That's it. And they they work through it in still a very structured way.
Nasir Zuibairi:They don't look at things from a programmatic perspective where, you know, you look at the returns potentially on a portfolio so that you can then allocate some some resource to experimenting and playing. You know, some of the best things that come just come from trial and error, and they don't get that. And I'm seeing the arrogance that I I know, and I shook my head to throw it off once I got out of it, because I wasn't like this initially, but this arrogance from within the banking sector that they think they know what the customer wants. They don't. They don't go and really work with customers, really talk to customers, observe the customer, right, to iterate and get the solution right.
Nasir Zuibairi:They think because they are smart, they've been dealing with customers, we know what the customer wants. So it's an internal push product development as opposed to a demand pull product development. Right? And I'm seeing more and more of that within banks, you know. Then you see the same problems also of a strategy that some banks have of trying to absorb or partner with or even ultimately buy startups, right, and then there's a massive culture clash.
Nasir Zuibairi:Massive, because then, I mean, what are the key assets and resources of a of a startup? It's the people. Right? And so if you can't retain the people within the business because they're not happy with the cultural issues and merging and the politics of a financial institution. They're gonna go, and then you're left with a shell.
Nasir Zuibairi:You might have a nice technology, but you're then gonna destroy it. We've seen this now recently time and time again. Right? Look at what's going on with moneys and other solutions dating back from our time. I mean, the cultural element is still the core, and when I talk to CEOs of banks about this, they say, oh, no.
Nasir Zuibairi:We're highly regulated. We can't have a fun, you know, innovative, energizing, inspiring culture. And I said, well, that's nonsense. You know, you're just finding excuses. You've got to try and find a way around it.
Nasir Zuibairi:And I actually give the example of the health care industry because I think the health care industry, which is more regulated than the financial sector, I mean, they're beginning to bring in, like, you know, ex Google guys to sit on the boards of the big Swiss, health techs, health care companies. They realize the role technology is gonna play. What bank do you know that has a CIO or a CTO that sits on the board? Even at the strategic level, it's not happening. It's still seen as a enabler as opposed to being core to strategy and growth.
Nasir Zuibairi:And that shows a lot, you know? You rarely see people from startups or successful startups being brought into institutions. If I set up when I was we were setting up companies in Germany under Findlay, we would look for the experts from financial services who had the knowledge that we needed and the experience that we needed, marry those grey hairs with the young, innovative, you know, go getters from the tech world to build the right solutions. You don't see banks doing this. Banks still think they know better.
Nasir Zuibairi:And I think that's sadly gonna be largely their downfall because they don't because they still are gonna talk to customers. Stop.
Duena Blomstrom:They're both heartwarming that we we knew this for so long ago and and very, very disappointing. At the end of the day, I was looking the other day that, at at the CEO that said, I've seen that you've published something called emotional banking. And I thought to myself, have they really just noticed it 5 years later? And more importantly, why do they still care? And then I went back to kind of check the statistics that had important me to write it way back when, which was the fact that absolutely no one was genuinely conducting any honest checks as to what were the money moments that people were were were having with their money, but really coming from this place of I know best that you've described.
Duena Blomstrom:And I've noticed that nothing much has happened. In fact, there's there's a there's a curious and very sad lack of of human centered design remaining in banking. There seem to have been a swell right before the pandemic, and that has dramatically disappeared even if you look at the ecosystem around it. There's a lot of of really worrying signs. And like you very well put it, the idea of innovation being heard by capability that has to do with courage, that has to do with with, agility, that has to do with the the the honesty of what all is my tech and human debt, and how do I build from here on just like they do in Silicon Valley does not exist in banking much at all.
Duena Blomstrom:It's still really scary. But to your example, and I think anyone listening to this should really take a good look at it. The health industry, which is something we've worked with extensively with my start up with People in OTEC, is in a very different space. They have understood and and comprehended that, one, people is are their capital, and that's the only way they're gonna move forward. And secondly, that the way that they can they can their capability in the future are are are contingent on their their understanding of what all is needed to continuously move in innovation, which unfortunately is not something that has moved in banking.
Duena Blomstrom:So I like to believe that that's the biggest opportunity in banking, changing culture and and changing processes from the inside out and receive. Alright. I hope that if we talk about this in, I don't know, 5 years, although hopefully by then we would have long been retired and the new generation can can better this, things would have changed by then. What would you say is the time frame? And that's possibly my my last question.
Duena Blomstrom:What we were hoping for 15 years ago versus when we want banking to be, how far away from that are we?
Nasir Zuibairi:I mean, the aggressive stance I was taking, I have been taking recently, is that we're gonna see noticeable change in the next 5 years, but I'll hedge my bets and say 10. I gave a speech about 4 years ago where this the type of the title of the speech was meant to be or I was asked speak about, at that time, banking 2025. So 5 years forward, what will it look like? And I said, well, it's gonna look exactly the same as when we look back 5 or 10 years, it looks pretty much exactly the same. But I do think AI is gonna fundamentally change things.
Nasir Zuibairi:I think it's gonna change the dynamics of financial services. Again, it's been around forever. I used to do predictive AI, and ironically, although everyone's jumping up and down about generative AI, generative AI has some use cases in financial services, but it's actually the application of predictive AI, the old school AI that could drive so much value, like, fraud detection, for example. I mean, I still see firms that employ a person, if not 2 people, be it you can't do it in retail transactions, but in the asset management industry, looking at spreadsheets of subscriptions and redemptions of funds to identify anomalies in transaction.
Duena Blomstrom:I mean, what the hell?
Nasir Zuibairi:I mean, an AI is just rip that apart and do that in 5 seconds, but there's so much scope for predictive AI, better understanding of the customer. You know, still to this day, even in retail banking. You know, you can tell everything about a person from the transactions they do. Transactions are like the holy grail. It's what Google, Facebook would love to be able to see.
Nasir Zuibairi:Banks have all that data, yet they are not using it in any predictive way to be able to cross sell to us. For example, when they could tell when we're about to have a child, when we're about to get married, when we're moving country, when we, you know, start our retirement planning, they could proactively sell these products to us, but they don't. You know, there's so much scope for value. I it frustrates me, but it's still also very, very exciting. And I do think 5 to 10 years, we will see a dynamic change in the financial services market and industry.
Duena Blomstrom:That's hopeful. And, we're going to have to leave people with that because they they have to look ahead with a smile, looking backwards with a different kind of smile. And hopefully, we're gonna sit here and be able to tell them I told you so. I'd love to have you back, Nasir, when you have the time. We have a lot more stories to tell people.
Duena Blomstrom:And thank you so much for today.
Nasir Zuibairi:Thank you, Joanna. Lovely to speak with.