DigFin VOX Jame DiBiasio

Wise’s SK Saraogi talks platforms versus remittances, new products, and new competition in Asia.

Sebastien Gaudin is founder of The CareVoice, an insurtech that has evolved to design apps for insurance companies to build a relationship with their policyholders.

The business just completed a $10 million Series B fund raise, a notable achievement in an environment that has been difficult for insurtech startups to secure investment.

Gaudin speaks with DigFin‘s Jame DiBiasio about why insurance companies are eager to develop “super-apps” combining insurance and related services, and how they are trying to go about it.

Timecodes:
0:00 – Sebastien Gaudin and TheCareVoice
2:40 – Insurers want direct engagement with customers
7:20 – How they do this within an app
13:31 – And without upsetting agents
16:37 – The competition
18:13 – What’s a “super-app” in the insurance context?
22:07 – The latest fund raise and use of proceeds
26:20 – How ordinary people discover insurance apps
28:12 – Retaining customers, or finding new ones?

Kalidas Ghose is co-founder and chairman of UNO Digital Bank, one of six purely digital banks licensed to operate in the Philippines. UNO’s parent company just raised $32.1 million in additional venture-capital funding.

Ghose speaks with DigFin‘s Jame DiBiasio about the opportunities for digital banking in the Philippines, the question of deposit size versus customer numbers, the challenges of non-performing loans, and expected innovations around digital identity and open banking.

He also compares the Philippines’ fintech environment to that of Vietnam, where for many years he ran one of Vietnam’s leading digital lenders.

Timecodes:
0:00 – Kalidas Ghose, UNO Digital Bank
1:40 – UNO’s competitive offering
4:58 – Tiny deposit size versus growing user numbers
8:50 – Onboarding the unbanked
10:00 – Incentives to attract customers
11:15 – The funding model
12:31 – The challenge of high non-performing loan ratios
16:03 – UNO’s strategy as a pure startup
19:00 – Partnering with GCash
22:01 – Kali’s experience in Vietnam
24:58 – Central bank initiatives and open banking
28:18 – New business services for small businesses

Laurent Ischi is director at fixed-income technology vendor Tradeweb, and Singapore-based director of AiEx, Tradeweb’s toolkit for workflows to automate trading and execution.

He speaks with DigFin‘s Jame DiBiasio about trends in automating Asia’s markets for bonds, swaps, and FX, and how the region’s asset managers are using technology to create new ways to trade and to measure dealer performance.

Timecodes:
0:00 – Laurence Ischi and introducing Tradeweb
2.35 – impetus for asset owners to go electronic in fixed income
4:20 – products seeing most adoption of automated execution
7:30 – who’s driving automation in Asia, the sell side or the buy side?
9:10 – where’s the biggest change taking place in Asia Pacific?
11:32 – the knock-on effects of automating a market
14:06 – what kind of people and skills do firms seek?
16:00 – advantages to being an early adopter of automation, particularly interest rate swaps
18:38 – global trends such as benchmarks and T+1
21:51 – data value-adds and measuring dealer performance
25:11 – taking advantage of market idiosyncrasies
26:48 – where to find liquidity in APAC fixed income

Two co-founders of regtech companies discuss upcoming trends in regulatory technology for financial institutions – which on the one hand is an evergreen need, but on the other remains a challenge for fintechs trying to become established partners to banks, insurers and asset managers.

DigFin‘s Jame DiBiasio is joined by Jacqueline Pang, co-founder of Singapore-based Artius Global, and by Claus Christensen, co-founder of Know Your Customer, based in Hong Kong and Dublin. Artius helps institutions automate disclosures and other reporting, while Know Your Customer helps with customer identity and onboarding.

Pang and Christensen provide an overview of how banks use their technology and their services, how to become a trusted player, what ares of finance face the greatest demand for regtech solutions, and their funding and long-term business goals.

Timecodes:
0:00 – Jacqueline Pang and Claus Christensen
2:00 – Introducing Artius Global and Know Your Customer, RegTech overview
5:20 – Changing needs versus evergreen demand among financial institutions
9:57 – How startups work with big institutions, breaking into the top tier
15:01 – Digitization, Covid’s impact, and tech agendas among financial institutions
17:30 – Fintech business models and finding growth
20:46 – The impact of generative AI
26:48 – RegTech developments in 2024
32:02 – Funding and exits

Tim Ying joined Octopus in mid-2023 as CEO, after building a career in banking, payments and technology. His tenure began as Octopus was celebrating its 25th anniversary – making it the “OG” of fintech in Hong Kong.

Octopus has a pioneering history, inventing the stored-value card that was embedded in the Hong Kong subway system, a model later copied by London’s Oyster and others.

But that’s old news. What’s Octopus doing now to transcend its primary role as contactless payments in transportation?

Ying talks about his outlook for the company, new customer problems to solve, and new services to move into, including cross-border payments, e-commerce, fintech, and – to the relief of interviewer Jame DiBiasio – the Hong Kong taxi fleets.

Timecodes:
0:00 – Tim Ying, Octopus
1:49 – A trip down memory lane: the Octopus origin story
6:01 – The Covid factor in merchant acquiring
7:48 – Contactless payments versus QR code-based systems
10:52 – The agenda today, “we’re not in the payments business”, e-commerce, personal wealth management
16:25 – Partnerships and open versus closed payment rails
19:33 – Solving Hong Kong’s taxi payments problem
23:43 – Opening the Octopus network, in Hong Kong and abroad
27:09 – Connecting to ASEAN’s domestic payment networks and moving users from cards and chips to mobile phones