Podcasts about Blythe Masters

This podcast features Nandan Sheth, CEO at Splitit, a financial technology company that powers the next generation of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) through their merchant-branded Installments-as-a-Service platform. Splitit solves the challenges businesses face with traditional BNPL by unlocking BNPL at the point of sale for card networks, issuers and acquirers - all through a single network API.In this episode, Nandan and Blythe Masters (a Founding Partner at Motive Partners) discuss exactly how Splitit differentiates its offerings from traditional BNPL products and how they are going to continue evolving in this space with support from Motive Partners and their unique and differentiated Investors, Operators, and Innovators model to drive value creation.---The information contained in this podcast is intended for discussion purposes only. It is not a recommendation, offer, or a solicitation for the purchase or sale of a security or any services of Motive Partners. All investing involves risk and there is no guarantee that past performance will be indicative of future results.The views and opinions expressed in the podcast are as of the date of recording, reflect the views and opinions of the persons expressing them, and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Motive Partners. Motive Partners makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy, reliability or completeness of any information provided and undertakes no obligation to update, amend, or clarify the information in the podcast, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Any securities, transactions, or holdings discussed may not represent investments made by Motive Partners. It should not be assumed that securities, transactions, or holdings discussed (if any) were or will be profitable, or that the recommendations or decisions made in the future will be similar or will equal the performance of the securities, transactions, or holdings discussed herein.This podcast may contain forward-looking statements that are based on beliefs, assumptions, current expectations, estimates, and projections about the financial industry, the economy, Motive Partners or Motive Partners' investments.  Nothing in the podcast should be construed or relied upon as investment, legal, accounting, tax or other professional advice or in connection with any offer or sale of securities. 

This series is sponsored by AlixPartners The Disruption Matters special podcast miniseries is back for season three: AI and the future of value creation. This year, leading industry experts will discuss how private markets can best use today's technologies to create value. In this first episode, The digital promise: Threats and opportunities, we set the stage by getting a reality check around what today's AI solutions can and can't do. While AI-related tech has enormous potential, firms need to select their use cases wisely, tailored to the unique needs of a given business. And like any other technology, it's only as good as its implementation, which is still governed by the timeless demands of any change management. But managers don't have the luxury of waiting for others to develop best practices; at the current pace of innovation, there's too great a risk of being left behind. Guests in this episode include Jason McDannold and Hoyoung Pak, partners and managing directors at AlixPartners; David Bonasia, head of value creation for the Americas for Brookfield Asset Management's PE business; Blythe Masters, a founding partner of Motive Partners; Ashish Chandarana, head of portfolio optimisation and partner at Veritas Capital; Luke Chan, a partner with HighVista Strategies; Michael Zeller, head, AI strategy and solutions at Temasek; and Catherine Brien, a partner and managing director at AlixPartners.

A Future of Finance interview with Yuval Rooz, co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset, and Eric Saraniecki, co-founder and head of strategic initiatives at Digital Asset.In October this year, Digital Asset will celebrate the tenth anniversary of its foundation. Under the flamboyant leadership of Blythe Masters, who was CEO from 2015 to 2018, no start-up did more to promote the potential impact of blockchain technology on the capital markets. Over the five years that have passed since she stepped down, Digital Asset has transformed itself from a pioneer of institutional-grade blockchain technology for financial market infrastructures into a provider of tools for building the smart contracts that enable assets to be tokenised, and a sponsor of the public but permissioned Canton Network blockchain network. Above all, it survived unscathed the cancellation of the flagship ASX contract, won in January 2016, to rebuild the post-trade infrastructure of the Australian stock exchange. Though the current strategy can be portrayed as a pivot away from the grand visions of 2016, the company has remained remarkably consistent in its (eponymous) belief that one day all assets will be digital, and that blockchain will provide a secure technological foundation for a network of networks that will encompass tokenised securities, funds, private equity, real estate, privately managed assets, commodities, rights and royalties, and collectibles. Dominic Hobson, co-founder of Future of Finance, spoke to Yuval Rooz, co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset, and Eric Saraniecki, co-founder and head of strategic initiatives at Digital Asset, about the history of the company, its products, the use-cases it has found and exploited, the thinking and the strategy behind the Canton Network, and the challenges the digital asset industry has still to overcome. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Blythe Masters a Founding Partner of Motive Partners, a $6 billion specialist private equity platform that builds, backs, and buys technology companies that enable the financial services industry. Blythe spent 27 years at JP Morgan, starting as a teenager and rising to the firmwide Executive Committee. Her path included roles as the head of global commodities, head of corporate and investment bank regulatory affairs, CFO of the investment bank, head of the global credit portfolio and credit policy and strategy, and head of structured credit. Our conversation covers Blythe's career trajectory at JP Morgan across asset classes, cycles, and crises. We then turn to the investment model at Motive and themes in asset and wealth management. We recorded this conversation on the iConnections Global Alts podcast stage, which explains the occasional wind gusts, airplanes overhead, sirens, and children playing in the background. Learn More Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn Subscribe to the mailing list Access Transcript with Premium Membership

In this episode, Blythe Masters reflects on her career that spans three decades within financial services. She discusses pivotal moments, from navigating through major mergers and market upheavals to becoming a mother at an early age. Addressing the evolving landscape of financial services, she delves into the transformative impact of AI and technology on Motive's investment thesis, portfolio companies and day-to-day operations. Her experiences and observations provide a unique perspective on the industry's past, present, and future, making this podcast a must-listen for finance professionals and enthusiasts alike. About Blythe Masters Blythe Masters joined Motive Partners in 2019 and is a Founding Partner. At Motive, Blythe sources and executes investment opportunities with a focus on strategy and growth for Motive portfolio companies, through her extensive experience as a financial services and technology executive. Blythe is Chair of Motive Ventures, the early-stage investment capability at Motive Partners. Prior to joining Motive, Blythe was the CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, the leading enterprise blockchain fintech company responsible for the Australian Securities Exchange's ground-breaking post-trade infrastructure replacement project. Previously, Blythe was a member of the Corporate and Investment Bank Operating Committee and firmwide Executive Committee at J.P. Morgan. Her J.P. Morgan career spanned 27 years, fulfilling several roles including head of global commodities, head of corporate and investment bank regulatory affairs, CFO of the investment bank, head of global credit portfolio and credit policy and strategy, and head of structured credit. Blythe is a graduate and Senior Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge where she received a B.A. in Economics. About Motive Partners Motive Partners is a specialist private equity firm with offices in New York City, London and Berlin, focusing on growth equity and buyout investments in software and information services companies based in North America and Europe and serving five primary subsectors: Banking & Payments, Capital Markets, Data & Analytics, Investment Management and Insurance. Motive Partners brings differentiated expertise, connectivity and capabilities to create long-term value in financial technology companies. For more information, please visit www.motivepartners.com For more FinTech insights, follow us on WFT Medium: medium.com/wharton-fintech WFT Twitter: twitter.com/whartonfintech WFT Instagram: instagram.com/whartonfintech Rhea's Twitter: @rheaadvani Rhea's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rheaa/

Blythe Masters, founding partner at Motive Partners; Brett Redfearn, founder of Panorama Financial Markets Advisory; Liz Von Habsburg, managing director at Winston Art Group; and Carlos Domingo, CEO of Securitize, join Julia La Roche on episode 38. This episode is a recording of a panel from Art Basel hosted by Securitize called “Art & Equity: Expanding Access to High-Quality Assets from Fine Art to Private Equity.” 0:00 Intros 6:27 Defining tokenization, the blockchain 8:51 Use cases for tokenization 10:14 How blockchain, crypto has disappointed many 13:00 Looking at crypto/blockchain through First Principles 15:00 Real-world use cases 16:20 Opportunity to democratize capital markets with blockchain 19:00 Expanding access to art and PE 22:08 Thoughts on FTX fiasco 25:40 Crypto industry's reaction 28:08 Evolution in art investing through technology 29:20 Short-term pain, long-term gain 30:15 Ownership is an ‘enormous prize' for blockchain technology 34:00 You can't break everything 35:28 Basic fundamental problems that could benefit from digitization 37:15 Don't underestimate what can be done with the existing regulatory framework

In this episode, FIA honors the careers of three distinguished individuals from the cleared derivatives industry who were recently inducted into its Hall of Fame – Chuck Hohman, the "banker of the futures industry" at BMO Harris; Blythe Masters, an accomplished industry executive who played a key role the birth of credit derivatives; and Joanne Medero, who worked in financial services public policy for more than 30 years. (Hosted by FIA President and CEO Walt Lukken)

Blythe Masters, Founding Partner at Motive Partners, talks to Matt Brown, Founder and CEO at CAIS, following the recently announced investment from Motive Partners and Apollo Global Management into the company.CAIS is a leading alternative investment platform for financial advisors who seek improved access to, and education about, alternative investment funds and products. ---The information contained in this podcast is intended for discussion purposes only. It is not a recommendation, offer, or a solicitation for the purchase or sale of a security or any services of Motive Partners. All investing involves risk and there is no guarantee that past performance will be indicative of future results.The views and opinions expressed in the podcast are as of the date of recording, reflect the views and opinions of the persons expressing them, and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Motive Partners. Motive Partners makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy, reliability or completeness of any information provided and undertakes no obligation to update, amend, or clarify the information in the podcast, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Any securities, transactions, or holdings discussed may not represent investments made by Motive Partners. It should not be assumed that securities, transactions, or holdings discussed (if any) were or will be profitable, or that the recommendations or decisions made in the future will be similar or will equal the performance of the securities, transactions, or holdings discussed herein.This podcast may contain forward-looking statements that are based on beliefs, assumptions, current expectations, estimates, and projections about the financial industry, the economy, Motive Partners or Motive Partners' investments.  Nothing in the podcast should be construed or relied upon as investment, legal, accounting, tax or other professional advice or in connection with any offer or sale of securities. 

Kelly Rodriques, CEO at Forge, joins the podcast after announcing the SPAC merger with Motive Capital Corp (“MOTV”) led by Blythe Masters, Industry Partner and CEO of MOTV. Forge is a leading global private securities marketplace.Kelly shares some unique insights on the high growth private markets, why companies choose to stay private longer and what the competition looks like.Forge powers an accessible, liquid and transparent private equity marketplace, serving the increasingly complex needs of the private market ecosystem by forging new connections through technology, data and expertise. The business, now in its seventh year of operations, is backed by a number of top Silicon Valley investors and global institutions including Deutsche Börse, Temasek, Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, Financial Technology Partners / FT Partners, Draper Associates, The Thiel Foundation and Munich Re Ventures.---The information contained in this podcast is intended for discussion purposes only. It is not a recommendation, offer, or a solicitation for the purchase or sale of a security or any services of Motive Partners. All investing involves risk and there is no guarantee that past performance will be indicative of future results.The views and opinions expressed in the podcast are as of the date of recording, reflect the views and opinions of the persons expressing them, and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Motive Partners. Motive Partners makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy, reliability or completeness of any information provided and undertakes no obligation to update, amend, or clarify the information in the podcast, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Any securities, transactions, or holdings discussed may not represent investments made by Motive Partners. It should not be assumed that securities, transactions, or holdings discussed (if any) were or will be profitable, or that the recommendations or decisions made in the future will be similar or will equal the performance of the securities, transactions, or holdings discussed herein.This podcast may contain forward-looking statements that are based on beliefs, assumptions, current expectations, estimates, and projections about the financial industry, the economy, Motive Partners or Motive Partners' investments.  Nothing in the podcast should be construed or relied upon as investment, legal, accounting, tax or other professional advice or in connection with any offer or sale of securities. 

Blythe Masters, Industry Partner at Motive Partners and former CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, describes her journey through 27 years at JP Morgan and shares her observations on the digital transformation over the last decade.---The information contained in this podcast is intended for discussion purposes only. It is not a recommendation, offer, or a solicitation for the purchase or sale of a security or any services of Motive Partners. All investing involves risk and there is no guarantee that past performance will be indicative of future results.The views and opinions expressed in the podcast are as of the date of recording, reflect the views and opinions of the persons expressing them, and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Motive Partners. Motive Partners makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy, reliability or completeness of any information provided and undertakes no obligation to update, amend, or clarify the information in the podcast, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Any securities, transactions, or holdings discussed may not represent investments made by Motive Partners. It should not be assumed that securities, transactions, or holdings discussed (if any) were or will be profitable, or that the recommendations or decisions made in the future will be similar or will equal the performance of the securities, transactions, or holdings discussed herein.This podcast may contain forward-looking statements that are based on beliefs, assumptions, current expectations, estimates, and projections about the financial industry, the economy, Motive Partners or Motive Partners' investments.  Nothing in the podcast should be construed or relied upon as investment, legal, accounting, tax or other professional advice or in connection with any offer or sale of securities. 

In this 121st episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Daniel P. Simon, Author of the book The Money Hackers. Daniel P. Simon talks about the different founders and companies that have changed the finance world in the last 10 years. Episode Highlights: ● 00:55 – Daniel P. Simon introduces himself. ● 01:47 – How did his book The Money Hackers come to be? ● 03:44 – What was the biggest surprise Daniel came across while writing the book? ● 06:18 – What made his interview subjects different? ● 10:00 – Teaching financial literacy is a difficult thing. ● 14:21 – What was the craziest story he came across while writing the book? ● 16:48 – Daniel talks about the founders of the robo advisors. ● 23:42 – What are the two types of competition according to Daniel? ● 26:14 – Where will the robo movement most likely lead us? ● 27:23 – Daniel tells the story of Green Dot Banking. ● 32:55 – He shares stories about Margaret Keane from Synchrony and Blythe Masters from JPMorgan. ● 36:00 – What would Daniel P. Simon change in his business or industry? ● 40:05 – Was there a commonality to the people he interviewed that they faced a common challenge? ● 44:57 – What kept Daniel P. Simon excited about working on his book every day? 3 Key Points 1. Over 150 entrepreneurs were interviewed for the book The Money Hackers. 2. Typically, if you don’t implement the learnings of financial literacy within a couple months, it is as if you didn’t learn them at all. 3. Steve Streit, the founder of Green Dot Banking, coined the music genre ‘Soft Rock.’ Tweetable Quotes: ● “I’ve spent most of my career on Wall Street. So, I’m a communications guy. I advise, obviously, some of the largest banks and asset managers and trading companies and technology firms in the world.” – Daniel P. Simon ● “If you add up all of the assets of the robo advisors, they are not even 1% of Vanguard.” – Daniel P. Simon ● “More people in this country (USA) own a cellphone than a bank account, and we don’t see it every day. But a vast amount of this population is woefully underserved by the traditional financial industry.” – Daniel P. Simon Resources Mentioned: ● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook ● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn ● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact ● JasonPereira.ca – Sign up for Jason Pereira’s newsletter ● DanielPSimon.com – Website for Daniel P Simon ● Linkedin – Daniel P. Simon’s Linkedin ● The Money Hackers – The book The Money Hackers See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It's been three months since Yuval Rooz stepped into his new role at Digital Asset as CEO. Rooz, a cofounder of the firm, had a goal of making the firm - which was best known for partnering with large financial institutions on blockchain project - more open. On this episode of The Scoop, Rooz joins Frank Chapparo and Ryan Todd to discuss his transition into the CEO suit, what it's been like to take the reins after the exit of Blythe Masters. We also dove into blockchain strategies across cloud providers like Amazon and the success of Digital Asset's partnership with the Australian Securities Exchange. Show transcript and notes available on The Block.

Cryptoryptocurrency and blockchain news for December 19, 2018. Blythe Masters Quits Digital Asset Holdings, LLC. HMRC Publishes Crypto Guide for Individuals. Bram Cohen Spins up Chia; Wait For It!

Simon and Sara are in the studio with Hugh Karp, Founder of Nexus Mutual. First up, Fidelity launches company to facilitate crypto trading. Fidelity has launched a company to facilitate cryptocurrency trading for hedge funds, endowments and family offices. The Boston-based investment giant said it would offer institutional investors access to “enterprise-quality custody and trade execution services” for cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin or ethereum, as a first step towards creating a full platform for the nascent industry. Why crypto traders are so worried about Tether. Blockchain isn't about democracy and decentralisation – it's about greed. A controversial article by Nouriel Roubini. SpankChain loses $40k in hack due to smart contract bug. A cryptocurrency project focused on the adult industry, has suffered a breach that saw almost $40,000 in ethereum (ETH) stolen. The intrusion, which the post said was made possible by a bug in the network's payment channel smart contract, also caused $4,000 in SpankChain's BOOTY token to be frozen. Barclays halts work on cryptocurrency trading project. The investment bank put together a senior team earlier this year to look at how it could incorporate the trading of digital assets into its markets business. The initiative, however, has been put “on ice”. Chris Tyrer, the bank’s former head of energy trading, moved into a full time role leading the so-called ‘digital assets project’ earlier this year but left the bank in September after the decision was taken to shelve the cryptocurrency trading project. Liquid Goes Live: Blockstream's first Bitcoin sidechain has finally arrived. Three years in the making, bitcoin's first sidechain "Liquid" is now live. Liquid is arguably the most advanced implementation of a technology called sidechains that's long been a holy grail for bitcoin coders (though what's being launched today may be a watered-down version of the original "trustless" vision). Liquid will now be used to carry large volumes of transactions at a higher speed for several of bitcoin's largest companies. CFTC Chair Giancarlo says institutional investors will help crypto 'mature'. An influx of institutional investors to the cryptocurrency markets may help the space "mature," U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair J. Christopher Giancarlo said last week. We also have a great Tweet of the Week from 'Elon Musk'. Hmm.. Tying up the show, we have a great fireside chat with Blythe Masters from Blockchain Live. All this and so much more on this week's episode of Blockchain Insider. And if you enjoyed our tweet of the week why not send us your best tweets? See if you can get a shout out on the show! We hope you enjoy the show and, as ever, don't forget to subscribe! Want to join the conversation on all the topics discussed? Tweet the show @bchaininsider and if you really love the show, please leave us a review on iTunes. This week's episode of Blockchain Insider was produced by Laura Watkins and Petrit Berisha. Edited by Michael Bailey. Special Guests: Blythe Masters and Hugh Karp.

Digital Asset is ready to spread wings and fly — the startup’s CEO Blythe Masters tells CoinDesk about the project’s new ambitions.-AND-Economist and investor Tuur Demeester doesn’t expect bitcoin to soar in 2018.-DON’T MISS-CoinDesk’s Annaliese Milano joins host Pete Rizzo to discuss smartdrops, a potentially better method to distribute tokens that’s gaining steam.Recorded August 6, 2018 in New York, NY.Thanks to our sponsors!Said Business School, University of OxfordOxford Fintech ProgrammeOxford Blockchain Strategy ProgrammeLate Confirmation is a CoinDesk production made in collaboration with The Podglomerate.For more information, visit www.CoinDesk.com

Simon and Sara (no Colin this week) tackle the week's news stories Kicking off with the biggest story: France and Germany's crackdown on crypto. France and Germany have put it to the G20 that the time has come to regulate IPOs and bitcoin. In a join statement they say they are aiming to: Build a common understanding on the nature of tokens Monitor the implications on market stability Find better protections for non professional investors Adopt a common approach on anti money laundering Simon and Sara share their views on this one. The second story this week covers JPMorgan Chase's report that, despite Jamie Dimon's infamous comments to the contrary, states that crypto is unlikely to disappear. Our third biggest story is Binance's denial of their hack, despite claims and particularly tweets from John McAfee. This brings the team to discuss the impact of sentimentality and drama on the market's volatility. Even if a hack isn't real, if headlines are written claiming it has been, it still has an impact. Sara and Simon also take on Ledger Nano's vulnerability to cyber attacks; Russians arrested for mining bitcoin, the Winkelvoss' latest bitcoin predictions, Litecoin's release of LitePay, Venezuela's backing of Petro, and bitcoin's popularity on the dark web. Simon also speaks to Blythe Masters, all about Digital Asset Holdings, the differences between assets and currencies and how to get involved in the digital asset market. We hope you enjoy the show and, as ever, don't forget to subscribe. Want to join the conversation on all the topics discussed? Tweet the show @bchaininsider and if you really love the show, why not leave us a review on iTunes? Special Guests: Blythe Masters and Sara Feenan.

This episode is incredibly special, in two ways. First, Lyn Farrell is not only my former colleague, but one of my very best friends. We had such fun recording this at my apartment in Boston one weekend late last year. In many ways, it’s just a slice of a long conversation we’ve been having more or less continuously for years, including over countless meals on the road together, in the consulting life we used to share Second, I love it when our podcast discussions are actual brainstorming sessions. This one hit the jackpot on that front. In our back and forth, Lyn came up with an insight that neither of us had when we started, and both of us have found it reshaping our thinking ever since. It comes late in the episode -- you’ll know it when you hear it. I hope you find it as powerful as we did.   Lyn Farrell is former Managing Director, and now Advisory Board Member, at Treliant Risk Advisors.  She is arguably the foremost expert in the United States on regulatory compliance matters regarding consumer financial protection. As we note in our discussion, she literally “wrote the book” on compliance as the author, for more than twenty years, of the Reference Guide to Regulatory Compliance, published by the American Bankers Association as the foundation material that candidates must master in order to become Certified Regulatory Compliance Managers. Lyn is an attorney, in-demand public speaker, prolific writer, and consultant who has worked with every imaginable regulatory challenge, from the world’s largest banks to small community institutions and fintech startups, and from positive, proactive clients to cleaning up grizzly enforcement problems. She has, simply, seen everything. Fortunately for us, she has opinions about it all and shares them with bracing candor in our talk. She describes what’s failing in our current regulatory regime and explains what everybody is getting right and getting wrong, from Congress and regulators to bank CEO’s to compliance and risk professionals to IT departments, to her fellow lawyers, to fintech innovators. She offers a cogent indictment, from the inside, of the weaknesses of what we’ve built -- the disclosures no one reads, the high costs of compliance, and the tragic mismatch between where we expend resources versus what consumers actually need. She’s also expert in bank IT operations. It’s an open secret that most banks have antiquated IT, often accumulated through decades of mergers and acquisitions in which older systems were never integrated but rather, as Lyn puts it, stuck together with “bailing wire.” (We explored solving some of this through blockchain technology in my earlier Podcast with Blythe Masters of Digital Asset Holdings.) These old systems are a hotbed of compliance errors, for reasons she describes. It’s another area where startups have a counterintuitive advantage over banks, thanks to having no creaky legacy IT. In our discussion, Lyn explores the regulatory present and past (it’s been a long time since I’ve heard anyone mention Regulation Q!), but she’s most thought-provoking about the future.  She works extensively with innovators and has a vision for how we should be using new data and technology to do better. I always urge people interested in innovation to break out of their work silos and reach across disparate realms.  Lyn does this better than anyone I know. If it weren’t for her, I would never have attended a LEAN seminar, or done free-writing exercises to inspire creative thinking, or read Deep Work by Cal Newport, or watched the Amy Cuddy Ted Talk on “presence.” Since we made our recording, Lyn has stepped back from her full time role at Treliant to serve on its advisory board, spend more time in the beautiful house she and her husband Brian are building in Colorado Springs, and lead the Treliant Institute for Strategic Compliance Leadership, her brainchild.  Lyn asked me to speak at it, which inspired me to create a dinner talk I call “Heroic Compliance.”  It’s about the need for compliance officers -- even though they often seem more like Clark Kent than Superman -- to save their banks, customers, and industry by leading them into the high-tech innovation age. No one embodies that leadership more than Lyn, and I’m titling this episode with the same name -- Heroic Compliance. The same day we recorded this episode, Lyn told me she’s launching her own podcast show, aimed at compliance professionals. She said my dinner speech prompted her to give it the name, “Compliance Heroes.” You’ll find it on ITunes and the Android Market. Here are two more titles in Lyn’s recommended reading: Emotional Intelligence 2.0  by Travis Bradberry Presence by Amy Cuddy     And here is more on her background…. Kathlyn L. Farrell, CRCM, CAMS, AMLP Senior Advisory Board Member Lyn Farrell is an experienced Regulatory Compliance executive, with over 35 years of experience in banking law and compliance. She is a Senior Advisory Board Member at Treliant Risk Advisors, LLC. Lyn has led many diverse and complex compliance projects for large financial institutions, including: Developing a regulatory compliance strategic plan for a financial institution that primarily operates in the Fintech space; Assisting the CCO of a top 10 U.S. bank to make the regulatory compliance program more proactive, strategic and integrated with the businesses and other risk management disciplines within the organization; Designing and building a comprehensive Unfair, Deceptive, or Abusive Acts or Practices (UDAAP) audit program for the internal audit division of a top 10 U.S. financial institution, including developing the annual audit plan, scoping the individual audits, and writing the audit scripts; Assisting a top 20 bank implement all aspects of the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure Rule (TRID), including revamping business processes, enhancing risk controls, writing policies and procedures and creating job aids to assist first line staff to implement this complex regulation; Developing the “UDAAP University” training program for the compliance departments at three of the top 20 financial institutions and for the internal audit departments at 3 of the top 20 US banks; Overhauled the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) program for a top 20 US financial institution, including writing a new program document, reviewing its assessment areas and investments, and implementing a shift in the critical focus of its nationwide community development staff; Reviewing the potential acquisition by a top 20 U.S. bank of a large non-bank financial organization and provided advice on limiting the company’s regulatory risk by integrating and expanding the current compliance function and making it more strategic in its execution. Lyn has a passion for leadership development and has designed the Treliant Institute for Strategic Compliance Leadership, a leadership program exclusively for compliance professionals in financial institutions She is a frequent speaker at banking events and regularly publishes articles on a variety of banking-related topics. Her recent publications include: “Strengthening the First Line of Defense” in ABA Bank Compliance magazine, September-October 2016“TRID: A Checklist for Successful Compliance” in Mortgage Banking magazine, March 2016 Reference Guide to Regulatory Compliance, published by the American Bankers Association, the official study guide to the CRCM examination “Is this UDAAP or Not?” in  ABA Bank Compliance magazine, July-August 2015 “FCRA: A Sleeping Regulation Awakes” in Banking Exchange, August 2015 “Effectively Managing UDAAP Compliance in Mortgage Servicing” in Mortgage Banking magazine, April 2015 “Managing UDAAP Compliance Risks in Financial Institutions” in Journal of Taxation and Regulation of Financial Institutions, Nov/Dec, 2013 She received her undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University and her JD from the University of Houston.  Lyn is a Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager (CRCM), and an attorney, licensed in the state of Texas.   Lyn was the 2012 recipient of the ABA’s Distinguished Service Award. More for our listeners: I'll hope to see you all this week at FinXTech Summit in New York and of course CFSI’s Emerge in June. Remember to review Barefoot Innovation on ITunes, and please sign up to get emails on new podcasts and my newsletter and blog posts at  jsbarefoot.com.   Also go to jsbarefoot.com to send in your “buck a show” to keep Barefoot Innovation going. Please also join my facebook fan page, and follow me on twitter. Support our Podcast - Send "a buck a show" I’m just back from London -- more on that later -- but one highlight is I recorded an episode with the one and only Brett King. Coming soon! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

In this episode Blythe Masters spent 27 years at JP Morgan in a variety of roles, including running the global commodities business, working in structured credit and fixed income markets, and serving as CFO of JP Morgan's global investment bank. After leaving in 2014, she planned on taking a year off, but then blockchain caught her eye and she joined Digital Asset, where she's CEO. In this interview, Blythe describes their technology as blockchain-inspired, explains what this means, and shares what Digital Asset is working on. “This is a once in a generation opportunity to fundamentally change the way the financial market infrastructure works,” Blythe says, “and that is for the greater good of everybody.” Like this episode? Please tell a friend about FinTech Insider, and leave us a review on iTunes. This helps people discover us. The post Ep220 – Blythe Masters on Blockchain's Once in a Generation Opportunity appeared first on 11:FS.

In this episode Blythe Masters spent 27 years at JP Morgan in a variety of roles, including running the global commodities business, working in structured credit and fixed income markets, and serving as CFO of JP Morgan’s global investment bank. After leaving in 2014, she planned on taking a year off, but then blockchain caught her eye and she joined Digital Asset, where she’s CEO. In this interview, Blythe describes their technology as blockchain-inspired, explains what this means, and shares what Digital Asset is working on. “This is a once in a generation opportunity to fundamentally change the way the financial market infrastructure works,” Blythe says, “and that is for the greater good of everybody.” Like this episode? Please tell a friend about FinTech Insider, and leave us a review on iTunes. This helps people discover us. The post Ep220 – Blythe Masters on Blockchain’s Once in a Generation Opportunity appeared first on 11:FS.

On this episode of Tech Talk podcast, Blythe Masters, Digital Asset CEO, discusses Distributed Ledger Technology.

Barefoot Innovation usually explores technology that touches financial consumers - new products and new ways of managing money. Today's episode pivots 180 degrees and looks internally, inside financial companies, at the equally transformative change underway in how financial products are made and delivered. My conversation is with Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, and our topic is the blockchain -- distributed ledger technology, or DLT. Most of our listeners know that the blockchain, created by the inventors of Bitcoin, is expanding far beyond digital currency and has revolutionary potential for changing how society operates.  Any complex system that keeps records or involves chains of transactions - payments, contracts, titles, tickets, warranties, exchanges of all kinds, government records, medical information, purchasing systems - anything -- can potentially be managed through distributed ledgers that can eliminate most of the current costs as well as errors, uncertainty, and fraud. DLT can also enable trustable transactions among parties who don't know each other, without need for a trusted intermediary. That's because safeguards are built into the technology itself, by making all the records and transactions transparent to all parties and preventing duplication or fabrication of information. Blythe Masters says she began as a skeptic because, like many people, she equated the blockchain with Bitcoin and, given Bitcoin's colorful developments, dismissed both. However, after leaving her long career as a senior executive at JPMorgan Chase, she took a closer look and became a convert. Today she's leading one of the most exciting and best-financed firms in the field, Digital Asset Holdings in New York. We had a chance to sit down together at the 2016 Fintech Forum of Women in Housing and Finance in Washington, where she shared her vision for the power of DLT to transform the internal operations of banks. Note that DLT systems can be either open-access and "permissionless," moving information on the open internet as with digital currency, or can be closed and "permissioned" within a single organization or a gatekeeping group that shares a common need. (For more on open systems and digital currency, see our episode with Jeremy Allaire of Circle.) Large banks are actively exploring use of closed DLT systems to streamline their internal operations to cut out expense, mistakes, and the slowness caused by the need for reconciliation of records. These efforts will bring enormous cost savings, for three reasons. First, the DLT system is simply cheaper to operate. Second, it eliminates many kinds of errors - and preventing, detecting and correcting errors is a massive source of expense in every financial company. And third, reducing delay will also reduce the need to hold capital against the risks that attend pending transactions. I would add that DLT will, over time, open up the opportunity to modernize and streamline regulation itself, through use of "reg-tech" relies on automated data in many areas that are now subject to expensive traditional examination. Blythe thinks DLT is coming to banking much faster than people think - that these solutions will be in commercial deployment in just two years! One reason is that banks can modularize them, dropping DLT into functions that need it and then connecting them up with the other, older systems. She makes another interesting argument, which is that those notoriously outdated old systems are going to have to be replaced soon anyway. Many are about thirty years old use computer languages no longer taught in college. The industry will have to invest in new technology, and DLT solutions will fortunately be ready at just the right time to permit a real leap forward in efficiency and effectiveness. Blythe also says regulators are thinking right about these challenges and have the right tools to manage them. Her company is focused on banks' non-consumer activities, but think about the impact of these changes for everyone. Smart phones are demolishing the cost structure of delivering financial services, worldwide. Simultaneously, DLT is demolishing the cost of manufacturing and servicing them. The combination will bring vastly more efficient, affordable and accessible services. Blythe Masters is a fascinating person. She was previously a senior executive at J.P. Morgan, where she started as an intern and spent 27 years. In 2007 she was named head of Global Commodities, and left the firm in 2014 upon the unit's successful sale. She had also been responsible for the Corporate & Investment Bank's Regulatory Affairs, and was a member of the J.P. Morgan Corporate & Investment Bank Operating Committee and previously the firm's Executive Committee. From 2004 to 2007, she was Chief Financial Officer of the Investment Bank. Previously she headed the Global Credit Portfolio and Credit Policy and Strategy. Earlier positions included head of North American Structured Credit Products, co-head of Asset Backed Securitization and head of Global Credit Derivatives Marketing. From 2012 to 2014, Blythe was chair of the Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA). From 2008-2010 she was chair of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). She currently chairs the board of Santander Consumer USA Holdings and serves on the boards the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the Global Fund for Women. She is an avid amateur equestrian. Her efforts have long generated interest and buzz, including this feature story in Bloomberg, others in Fortune and CNBC, and a Financial Times story on her company's blockchain test with Chase. In our discussion I quoted from an invaluable report on DLT by the Bank of England. Here is the quote I cited in our conversation - the report's opening lines:               "The progress of mankind is marked by the rise of new technologies and the human ingenuity they unlock. In distributed ledger technology, we may be witnessing one of those potential explosions of creative potential that catalyse exceptional levels of innovation....that could prove to have the capacity to deliver a new kind of trust to a wide range of services." Please enjoy this thought-provoking conversation with Blythe Masters.   Support the podcasts - A buck a show! I've decided to distill a lesson from the popular podcast series Hardcore History, by emulating their habit of asking everyone to send them "a buck a show." Some years ago, the show's host Dan Carlin realized the podcast was taking over his life - much as Barefoot Innovation has been doing with mine! He hit on the idea of asking listeners for "a buck a show," and eventually reached the point where he can devote himself to producing the series. Barefoot Innovation is produced part-time by me and two young, very talented helpers. One of them has a day job and the other is a full-time graduate student. If all our listeners will chip in a buck a show, we'll be able to expand our interviews, accelerate our pace (believe it or not, we currently run at a four- to five-month backlog from recording date to posting!), and be able to do some fun new things we have in mind for you. We'll appreciate any and all help to keep the show going, and growing! And remember to post a review on iTunes. Support the Podcast Subscribe to Our Mailing List Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

In addition to our podcast, please take a look at Raul's keynote at the EMERGE Forum. I am constantly amazed by the fascinating and unpredictable course of our conversations on Barefoot Innovation - and what a fun one I had with Raul Vazquez, CEO of Oportun. I always like to ask my guests to tell us how they, themselves, keep up with technology. With Raul, I asked this just as I thought we were wrapping up, and the question launched us on a whole new conversation. He's definitely my first guest to bring up potential uses of virtual reality in financial services, not to mention the first to describe virtually interacting with bison.  He thinks we're heading to a "transformative" ability for "anyone, regardless of their incomes" to be able to immerse themselves in a virtual world to try out products and experiences. As sometimes happens as I get to know great innovators, this is a second podcast with the same company -- click here to listen to our prior discussion with Luz Urrutia, Global Head of Retail. Oportun is based in Silicon Valley and was formerly called Progresso Financiero. It leverages advanced data analytics and technology to provide affordable, credit-building loans to U.S. Hispanics and others with limited or no credit history. The company's proprietary platform risk-scores loan applicants, calculates each one's ability to repay, approves the loans it believes can be paid back, and sets loan amounts and terms to fit individual budgets. Customer accounts are also reported to credit bureaus to help establish credit history. The goal is to combine a highly personal experience with back-office efficiency. Between 2006 and 2015, Oportun helped more than 689,000 customers, disbursing more than $2.2 billion through more than 1.3 million small dollar loans. Raul joined Oportun in 2012 after nine years in senior leadership roles at Walmart, including as EVP and President of Walmart West, President and CEO of Walmart.com, and EVP of Global eCommerce for developed markets. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Staples, Inc. and is a member of the Federal Reserve Board's Community Advisory Council. He's a graduate of Stanford University with BS and MS degrees in industrial engineering, and also earned an MBA at the University of Pennsylvania. This is one of those fun episodes where we could have kept talking for hours if we hadn't run out of time. So...enjoy my conversation with Raul Vazquez! To learn more about Oportun Financial, click here. Click here to Opor-tune in to Raul's presentation at last year's EMERGE conference about Oportun's four key learnings so far. To register for this year's indispensable Emerge in June in New Orleans, click here. And here's my favorite Wired article on voice technology: "We're on the Brink of a Revolution in Crazy-Smart Digital Assistants" A note on the podcasts - A buck a show! I've decided to distill a lesson from the popular podcast series Hardcore History, by emulating their habit of asking everyone to send them "a buck a show." Some years ago, the show's host Dan Carlin realized the podcast was taking over his life - much as Barefoot Innovatoin has been doing with mine! He hit on the idea of asking listeners for "a buck a show," and eventually reached the point where he can devote himself to producing the series. Barefoot Innovation is produced part-time by me and two young, very talented helpers. One of them has a day job and the other is a full-time graduate student. If all our listeners will chip in a buck a show, we'll be able to expand our interviews, accelerate our pace (believe it or not, we currently run at a four- to five-month backlog from recording date to posting!), and be able to do some fun new things we have in mind for you. We'll appreciate any and all help to keep the show going, and growing! And remember to post a review on ITunes. Support the Podcast A note on my Regulation Innovation videos and the most important writing I've ever done Also click here to watch the new Regulation Innovation videos we've posted and read the new articles. These are currently a free sample but will soon become limited to subscribers. Every month, I'm creating a short video briefing and then backing it up with a deep article that shares what I've been learning about financial innovation, and also shares my hard-earned secrets about how I've been learning it. The articles are rich with links to resources -- everything from news reports and white papers to statistical trends to my very favorite Ted Talks. My goal is to use this pairing of videos and deep articles to repackage my consulting advice, so it can reach a wide audience affordably. In essence, I'm searching the fintech world and curating the best insights for you. As a series, it's a journey through this changing landscape, finding the keys to thriving on disruption with me as your guide. I've done a huge amount of writing over the years - I've published hundreds of articles. These are the most important, valuable writings I've ever done. Again, these are currently free - I hope everyone will try them out.   Upcoming shows We have terrific shows come up - the amazing Blythe Masters, the very innovative founders of Bee, and much more.  Join me then! Subscribe To Our Mailing LIst Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

This episode updates one of the very first ones we did in our Barefoot Innovation series, last year. Episode Two featured the two co-founders of Simple, Josh Reich and Shamir Karkal. A year later, we all found ourselves back at the same conference where we'd recorded that program. Shamir has now taken on a new role, leading the open platform innovation of the very innovative bank that bought Simple, BBVA.  Josh, though, is still CEO of Simple (a fact that he says tends to surprise people). So on a very rainy afternoon in Southern California, he and I found a place where we could duck out of the weather (you may hear the deluge in the background), and talked about how Simple has progressed in the year just past. So...very few people are more fun to talk with than Josh Reich, but I think my favorite thing about this episode might not be the podcast, fascinating as it is, but rather something the podcast led me to. In our conversation, Josh talks about a customer whose dog chewed her debit card - twice! Simple sent her a customer appreciation package with the second card, and she was so grateful that she made a YouTube video about getting it. Every banker in the world should watch this:  customer appreciation reaction video   I won't update the full show notes here - please look at Episode 2 for the basics on Simple which, again, is now part of BBVA bank.  And if you missed it, be sure to listen also to my podcast with Manolo Sanchez, the CEO of BBVA Compass, who I think may be the most innovative bank president anywhere. BBVA is all-in on fintech innovation. Also, Josh and I did not get to a key update, which is the big move Simple made last year to eliminate ALL its checking account fees. I'm linking to his blog post here explaining what they did and why.  Remember, Barefoot Innovation is a search for better solutions for financial consumers through all kinds of innovation. BBVA and Simple are making this search in a great many interesting ways. So enjoy hearing Josh's insights, ranging from how to succeed when a big banks buys a small innovator, to the make-or-break power of a bank's culture, to the incredible efficiencies of growing a bank without branches - he shares some numbers -- to his advice for regulators. And watch for fantastic episodes coming up: Oportun CEO Raul Vazquez; Betterment CEO Jon Stein; two of the country's top compliance officers, together; and Blythe Masters of Digital Asset Holdings - to name a few.   Regulation Innovation Video Series: Briefing One - The Five Tech Trends Driving Financial Transformation The Five Tech Trends - the latest video in the Regulation Innovation Video series. Meanwhile be sure to sign up for our new video series, Regulation Innovation - Thriving on Disruption. These are short briefings - 10 to 15 minutes each - designed to be the single easiest way to understand the huge issues raised by fintech, in both technology and regulation, and how best to address them. Since fintech is far more about "tech" than "fin," we're starting the series with The Five Tech trends transforming finance. Plus we have a lighthearted little extra, straight from my own kitchen, on how I was inspired to some thoughts about innovation by a very unusual gadget. The briefings are designed share in meetings and training sessions, from board rooms to business and compliance teams. They come with access to a subscriber-only website with resources and advice. We have group pricing available - just contact us! Please sign up for them, and also to get my podcasts by email. And be sure to leave reviews on ITunes. Please consider a donation to support our efforts to bring the best thought leaders in the financial innovation world to you. A dollar a show is all we ask. Support the Podcast Subscribe to Our Mailing List Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

The O'Reilly Radar Podcast: The maturing payments battleground, bitcoin and blockchain, and insurance innovation.In this week's episode, Hannah Grenade, a tech entrepreneur and former partner at McKinsey, chats with Matt Harris, managing director at Bain Capital Ventures. They talk about the most interesting areas in fintech innovation, taking a look at some hits and misses, and potential untapped areas of opportunity. Harris also talks about why the merchants payment battleground is no longer a great space for startups and why insurance is poised to be the final frontier for fintech innovation.Here are some highlights from their chat: Elephants in the dance hall Many of those [payments] battles are kind of reaching a conclusion, and that the entry of players like Facebook, and perhaps most notably Apple, have signaled that perhaps this merchants payments battleground is not the best place for startups to be choosing as the market opportunity, that there's a maturity happening, and there's also really a sort of expectation of ubiquity that companies like Apple and the other major technology players have a chance to offer, though, notably, Google certainly failed every time they've tried in payments. So, even if you are already ubiquitous and global and dominant doesn't mean you can introduce a new payment type. I'm seeing less and less in the way of new startups in the merchant payment space. I think there's an acknowledgement that the elephants have entered the dance hall. Behavior change opportunity The only company that's really demonstrated large-scale behavior change is Starbucks, and I'm not sure that that's an example that can be followed by too many other players, retailers or other. Starbucks has this incredibly advantageous position, where the customers go once a day or multiple times a day, so it really lends itself to habit formation. They have 95% gross margin, so they can offer, in effect, a discount of 6% or 7% for their loyalty program, and they've got an early smartphone-using, wealthy demographic who are sophisticated and adaptive; I don't know of anyone else who has that same set of characteristics, so I think Starbucks is a little bit of a false positive. ... We've now seen a number of other retailers: Walmart, first, followed by Target, followed, oddly, by Kohls, launch their own eponymous payment method: Walmart Pay, Target Pay, etc. In general, I think there's a couple things that work that could give you reason for optimism. In the case of Walmart, they actually serve millions of underbanked people, so this is the opposite approach, the opposite opportunity of Starbucks. Solving problems of infrastructure There's a lot [of companies interested in tackling infrastructure problems]. This really has become the thrust of the bitcoin movement these days, with entrepreneurs like Blythe Masters, who's a fabulously talented executive, with a 20-year career at JP Morgan and now runs Digital Asset Holdings, and she and a couple dozen other companies tackling this opportunity of financial markets, and banking and payments infrastructure, leveraging the distributed ledger idea, the distributed ledger architecture that underpins bitcoin and/or the bitcoin blockchain itself, as ways to think about real-time, fault-tolerant, secure architectures for moving money around. I think it's a very much an "of the moment" kind of idea. It's one that's really hard. I mean, it is one that frequently requires more than one financial institution, many times a dozen or more financial institutions, to kind of sign off because you're talking about counter-parties, and you're talking about, fundamentally, transactions that involve, inherently involve, multiple parties. Those are really difficult social problems layered on top of really difficult technology problems. While it's clearly a popular problem set right now, it's one that I don't think you're going to see any quick wins in, although in the long term you may see some really big companies built. Reaching maturity I think that this sort of maturity phase of fintech has pretty firmly kicked in, and that more and more of these one-time [simple bank] renegades are not knuckling under to the realities of our actual financial services world, but rather, I think, maturing to the fact that if they want to truly have scalable impact they've got to have deeper relationships with incumbent financial institutions. Innovative insurance If you really want to innovate [in insurance], I think you have to be a carrier. I think the sort of gussied-up brokers...that opportunity existed in corporate insurance, but I don't think there's a breakout opportunity in auto, or a breakout opportunity in life, just for kind of a tech-enabled broker, per se. We have a company called Justworks that is growing very quickly, that is also competing, effectively, with Zenefits, but we think solving a more fundamental problem, which is that for employers who have 50—actually, as of the end of the year, 99 employees or fewer—they're technically "small group," which means they end up getting very bad prices for health insurance. Large group, on a per employee basis, can be 30 or 40 times less expensive than small group. Justworks is what's called a PEO, meaning they effectively bundle the lives of a bunch of small employers. Now they have thousands of lives, and they've grown 5X this year over last year. They can get large group pricing for small groups, tying everyone together through a really elegant technology and risk management process to make sure that they're taking on risk prudently. That's the kind of thing where, and again, it's a young company, but we feel like if they can execute, there's a value proposition for smaller companies there; on the insurance side, that is a fundamental disruption, that nobody offering...however you polish a small group policy, it's going to be 40% more expensive than what Justworks can get you, and we think, ultimately, that's the kind of innovation that can attract a large part of the market. B2B opportunities It sounds like a funny thing to be passionate about, but I am quite passionate about B2B payments. The statistic that shocks most people and still shocks me is that 62% of business to business payments in the U.S. are made by paper check. That to me is like, "How can that be?" It's totally a solved problem in most other countries, and in this country, in terms of retail payments, checks have effectively gone away. I think that this doesn't get enough attention. It gets a lot of my attention, and I think that if you look at the cost and risk, and just lack of modernity that is implicit in that statistic, I think it tells you all you need to know. That is going to change. It may take five years, it may take 10 years, but it's going to change, and in doing so save a lot of people a lot of time and money, and that's the kind of dynamic I want to be on the right side of.

The O'Reilly Radar Podcast: The maturing payments battleground, bitcoin and blockchain, and insurance innovation.In this week's episode, Hannah Grenade, a tech entrepreneur and former partner at McKinsey, chats with Matt Harris, managing director at Bain Capital Ventures. They talk about the most interesting areas in fintech innovation, taking a look at some hits and misses, and potential untapped areas of opportunity. Harris also talks about why the merchants payment battleground is no longer a great space for startups and why insurance is poised to be the final frontier for fintech innovation.Here are some highlights from their chat: Elephants in the dance hall Many of those [payments] battles are kind of reaching a conclusion, and that the entry of players like Facebook, and perhaps most notably Apple, have signaled that perhaps this merchants payments battleground is not the best place for startups to be choosing as the market opportunity, that there's a maturity happening, and there's also really a sort of expectation of ubiquity that companies like Apple and the other major technology players have a chance to offer, though, notably, Google certainly failed every time they've tried in payments. So, even if you are already ubiquitous and global and dominant doesn't mean you can introduce a new payment type. I'm seeing less and less in the way of new startups in the merchant payment space. I think there's an acknowledgement that the elephants have entered the dance hall. Behavior change opportunity The only company that's really demonstrated large-scale behavior change is Starbucks, and I'm not sure that that's an example that can be followed by too many other players, retailers or other. Starbucks has this incredibly advantageous position, where the customers go once a day or multiple times a day, so it really lends itself to habit formation. They have 95% gross margin, so they can offer, in effect, a discount of 6% or 7% for their loyalty program, and they've got an early smartphone-using, wealthy demographic who are sophisticated and adaptive; I don't know of anyone else who has that same set of characteristics, so I think Starbucks is a little bit of a false positive. ... We've now seen a number of other retailers: Walmart, first, followed by Target, followed, oddly, by Kohls, launch their own eponymous payment method: Walmart Pay, Target Pay, etc. In general, I think there's a couple things that work that could give you reason for optimism. In the case of Walmart, they actually serve millions of underbanked people, so this is the opposite approach, the opposite opportunity of Starbucks. Solving problems of infrastructure There's a lot [of companies interested in tackling infrastructure problems]. This really has become the thrust of the bitcoin movement these days, with entrepreneurs like Blythe Masters, who's a fabulously talented executive, with a 20-year career at JP Morgan and now runs Digital Asset Holdings, and she and a couple dozen other companies tackling this opportunity of financial markets, and banking and payments infrastructure, leveraging the distributed ledger idea, the distributed ledger architecture that underpins bitcoin and/or the bitcoin blockchain itself, as ways to think about real-time, fault-tolerant, secure architectures for moving money around. I think it's a very much an "of the moment" kind of idea. It's one that's really hard. I mean, it is one that frequently requires more than one financial institution, many times a dozen or more financial institutions, to kind of sign off because you're talking about counter-parties, and you're talking about, fundamentally, transactions that involve, inherently involve, multiple parties. Those are really difficult social problems layered on top of really difficult technology problems. While it's clearly a popular problem set right now, it's one that I don't think you're going to see any quick wins in, although in the long term you may see some really big companies built. Reaching maturity I think that this sort of maturity phase of fintech has pretty firmly kicked in, and that more and more of these one-time [simple bank] renegades are not knuckling under to the realities of our actual financial services world, but rather, I think, maturing to the fact that if they want to truly have scalable impact they've got to have deeper relationships with incumbent financial institutions. Innovative insurance If you really want to innovate [in insurance], I think you have to be a carrier. I think the sort of gussied-up brokers...that opportunity existed in corporate insurance, but I don't think there's a breakout opportunity in auto, or a breakout opportunity in life, just for kind of a tech-enabled broker, per se. We have a company called Justworks that is growing very quickly, that is also competing, effectively, with Zenefits, but we think solving a more fundamental problem, which is that for employers who have 50—actually, as of the end of the year, 99 employees or fewer—they're technically "small group," which means they end up getting very bad prices for health insurance. Large group, on a per employee basis, can be 30 or 40 times less expensive than small group. Justworks is what's called a PEO, meaning they effectively bundle the lives of a bunch of small employers. Now they have thousands of lives, and they've grown 5X this year over last year. They can get large group pricing for small groups, tying everyone together through a really elegant technology and risk management process to make sure that they're taking on risk prudently. That's the kind of thing where, and again, it's a young company, but we feel like if they can execute, there's a value proposition for smaller companies there; on the insurance side, that is a fundamental disruption, that nobody offering...however you polish a small group policy, it's going to be 40% more expensive than what Justworks can get you, and we think, ultimately, that's the kind of innovation that can attract a large part of the market. B2B opportunities It sounds like a funny thing to be passionate about, but I am quite passionate about B2B payments. The statistic that shocks most people and still shocks me is that 62% of business to business payments in the U.S. are made by paper check. That to me is like, "How can that be?" It's totally a solved problem in most other countries, and in this country, in terms of retail payments, checks have effectively gone away. I think that this doesn't get enough attention. It gets a lot of my attention, and I think that if you look at the cost and risk, and just lack of modernity that is implicit in that statistic, I think it tells you all you need to know. That is going to change. It may take five years, it may take 10 years, but it's going to change, and in doing so save a lot of people a lot of time and money, and that's the kind of dynamic I want to be on the right side of.