Podcasts about digital asset holdings

A Future of Finance interview with Nadine Chakar at DTCC.With the acquisition in October 2023 of Securrency, a FinTech that specialises in the development of blockchain technology for regulated financial institutions, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) signalled the end of the experimental phase of its engagement with digital assets. That phase dated back to at least December 2015, when DTCC joined the Linux Foundation Hyperledger project. That was quickly followed by participation in the US$60 million Series A fundraising by Digital Asset Holdings in January 2016, and publication the same month of a white paper on blockchain that warned of the potential “generational disruptive force” of blockchain. DTCC has maintained its interest in blockchain ever since, notably via the launch in November 2021 of DSM, an infrastructure to support the tokenisation of privately managed assets. But the Securrency acquisition gives the clearing and settlement infrastructure the tools it needs to move beyond narrow asset classes and Proofs of Concept (PoCs) and Pilot Tests and actually build an open tokenisation infrastructure for the whole of the American capital markets: a blockchain platform, a tokenisation engine, a smart contract engine, a digital asset custody service, programmable token capabilities, off-chain storage of ledger data and digital identity information, and a set of tools to ensure assets remain compliant as they travel across the digital asset eco-system. The Securrency acquisition also brought to DTCC Nadine Chakar, a senior and experienced securities services executive with an attested appetite for innovation who had joined the firm as CEO only nine months earlier from State Street, where she was Head of Digital. Her appointment as Global Head of DTCC Digital Assets is a boost for those who believe that the key to unlocking the potential of tokenised assets is open infrastructure. To find out if those hopes are justified, read, listen or watch Future of Finance Co-founder Dominic Hobson interviewing Nadine Chakar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

30th Nov: Crypto & Coffee at 8

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, 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. 

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 (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.

G Sass is back in London for a second week in a row to join Simon for this week's recap of the top Blockchain news - and what a week of news it was. Bitcoin futures are now available for trading through CBOE. So what's a future, what's the significance of having a bitcoin future, and what was the impact when these futures launched? Next, why your grandmother should not be buying bitcoin, despite how easily some platforms are making it. The guys discuss the importance of investors' understanding of the market and risk. And if you do want to get up to speed on bitcoin, Colin gives his thoughts on the essential reading, and where to look for more information. Why are we so preoccupied with the energy consumption of bitcoin mining? And how might this impact the debate on energy use and climate change? Let us know why you think we're so attached to the energy narrative around bitcoin @BchainInsider. Digital Asset Holdings has been selected by Australian Stock Exchange, making it the first exchange to commercialise DLT. France will allow blockchain technology for trading unlisted securities (those not on the main exchange). So what will be the impact on startups and the listings market? And, MAMA has launched! That is, the Multichain Asset Management Association, an industry trade body for asset management startups. Plus, news that UBS is to launch a live Ethereum platform with Barclays, Credit Suisse and others. Next up, why has an ICO been halted after the SEC raised concerns over registration? And what does this say about the prospects for ICOs in the USA? And this week we also bring you an interview with Jamie Burke, founder and CEO at Outlier Ventures. Simon and Colin hear about Jamie's experience as an angel investor, the next phase of the web and the importance of decentralisation. They also discuss tokenomics and IOTA - why is it different to other DLTs and what's on their road map? That's it for this week. Don't forget, this episode is sponsored by ZILLA, a new ICO marketplace app. Browse ICOs, upvote or downvote so the good ones rise to the top and, if you like an ICO, participate with one-click! Pre-register for the limited ZILLA beta app at ZLA.io/bi (https://www.zla.io/bi). We hope you enjoy the show and, as ever, don't forget to subscribe. Missing out on the conversation? Tweet the show @bchaininsider or to read more about the news stories and have your say visit fintechinsidernews.com (https://fintechinsidernews.com/). Special Guest: Jamie Burke.

This week Bitcoin has gone the the moon! So what's the story behind its new all time high price? And how might the long courtship between Wall Street and Bitcoin have played a part in the story? The guys take a look at the JP Morgan messaging on Bitcoin, including Jamie Dimon's views. We cover news from both Swell and Sibos, the pseudonymous nature of Bitcoin and how SWIFT intend to respond to the changing payments landscape. PLus, how is IBM using cryptocurrency in cross-border payments? Colin explains why open blockchains might be the canary in the coalmine and, while the People's Bank of China Digital Currency Director calls for a centralised state cryptocurrency, Simon asks whether it's really possible to have a true cryptocurrency that's centralised. Plus, what can all this mean for a possible CryptoRuble? We return to the story of the legal battle between R3 and Ripple to find out who's in the ascendancy, and the guys discuss how Digital Asset Holdings intend to use the $40m series B funding they raised recently. And of course, we also revisit Segwit2x for an update on its progress, and discuss Ethereum's own Byznatium fork. Plus, interviews with Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of the Hyperledger Project (https://www.hyperledger.org/) within the Linux Foundation, and Paul Worrall, founder of Zonafide (https://www.zonafide.net/). We hope you enjoy the show - don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode! Want to join the conversation on all the topics discussed? Tweet the show @bchaininsider or read more about the news stories and add your own thoughts at fintechinsidernews.com (https://fintechinsidernews.com/). And if you really love the show, why not leave us a review on iTunes? Special Guests: Brian Behlendorf and Paul Worrall.

Maria Gotsch. She’s the president and CEO at the Partnership Fund for New York City, which is the investment arm of the Partnership for New York City. In addition to leading the funds operations, Maria has spearheaded the creation and operation of a number of fund strategic initiatives including The Fintech Innovation Lab. Prior to joining the fund in 1999, Maria was a managing director at a company that is now part of Deutsche Bank, providing strategic and financial advice related to mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and the development of business strategies. Maria worked for LaSalle Partners in the New York area and Merrill Lynch Capital Markets, in both New York and London. She graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Wellesley College. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – “A book on the Iranian negotiations with the US around the treaty” What CEO do you follow? – Henry Kravis Favorite online tool? — MyCity Bike app How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 and a half If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Be bold, be bold, be bold!”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:11 – Nathan introduces Maria to the show 02:15 – Partnership Fund is the corporate sector at the table that is trying to grow the NYC economy 02:21 – Henry Kravis of KKR has raised funds in the late 90s and raised from major corporations and individuals, in NYC 02:32 – The investor list is the “who’s who" of the private equity 02:36 – Partnership Fund was structured as an evergreen fund 02:48 – “We can do things that are a little bit riskier and take a little bit longer than a traditional private sector investor” 03:02 – “We often work with government, but we’re privately funded” 03:13 – Partnership Fund is like an interest-free loan for 45 years 03:33 – All of Partnership Fund’s gains just go back to their funds and they reinvest it 03:41 – “We have the investors’ money for 45 years and if we make returns, it comes back to us to fund new projects” 03:58 – The Fintech Lab is currently in their 7th year and has 75 graduates 04:08 – It is an elite program and takes 68 companies a year 04:18 – It is structured as a civic program 04:32 – The goal of the program is to help reduce the pain and agony of a small emerging company trying to get into and get attention from large financial institutions 05:06 – “Because it is competitive to get in, it’s a shark tank to get in, but once you’re in, it’s a dolphin tank” 05:18 – They get 150-160 applications a year 05:28 – Companies are selected by their financial institution partners 05:34 – A company’s technology has to rise to the level of addressing a major pain point for major financial institutions 06:10 – In some cases, it’s not about an acquisition, it’s about using 06:15 – The fact that they are a non-profit civic organization is important 06:29 – CTOs and CIOs will come to the table as a civic program, partly to help grow the fintech community in NYC, to create jobs 07:23 – They invest in some of the graduates’ post programs 07:30 – The lab is laser-focused in solving problems 07:41 – They are not doing any direct-to-consumer programs 08:20 – The big 3: data, security and risk management have been on the top of the CIOs list from the beginning 08:43 – However, new things are coming 08:47 – Disruptive talent management has been added as a new category 08:58 – Blockchain has gone through an interesting cycle 09:14 – This year, there’s much less interest in blockchain and distributed ledger 09:52 – Maria predicts that in 2 years, there will be an increase of interest in enabling technologies that fit around the distributed ledger 10:31 – In data, Digital Reasoning came into the program with an interesting technology that is able to read unstructured data, and they’re working for the government 11:03 – They were advised to focus on compliance 12:04 – In security, Centripetal Networks has a perimeter defense technology and they’re gaining traction from people who have a lot of retail locations 12:34 – In risk management, Quarule automates some of the processing of regulatory tracking and flagging operations against the regulations 13:23 – In blockchain, Digital Asset Holdings has raised a significant amount of money and has been involved in some major projects 13:50 – Maria shares how they are telling companies to create more jobs in NYC 14:02 – The companies will also realize that they need to have people on the ground in NYC 14:20 – Some have moved to their headquarters in NYC 14:46 – “We’ve not raised money since the late 90s” 14:50 – The initial fund size was $120M 15:46 – New York is starting to be seen as a center for fintech 16:34 – There are some smaller companies that are trying to go after pieces and as they scale, the acquisition cost is increasingly expensive 17:05 – LearnVest is a good example 17:40 – The small business lenders come to a market that the banks aren’t servicing 18:00 – There are companies who are an exception to the rule 18:17 – Most of the companies end up partnering with large institutions 18:54 – What the large financial institutions have is expertise and compliance 20:10 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: The trend in the fintech space is constantly changing. Creating more jobs in New York City means more opportunities for companies and for the people of New York. Be BOLD—don’t shrink, don’t hesitate—just go for it.   Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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!

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!

Today on episode 41 of the Cloud Stories podcast I’m talking with Jessica Ellerm who is the Partner Development Manager for Tyro, Australia’s nextgen bank. She is responsible for the rollout of Tyro’s deposit account with Xero and Tyro’s first growth funding solution, launching mid-year. Jessica is also an active commentator in the Fintech space, writing regularly for her own blog jessicaellerm.com and international blog Daily Fintech. She also guest reports for global Fintech podcast Breaking Banks and is an online broadcast journalist for the Finance News Network, where she presents the Monday and Friday Market Outlook. Tyro Payments, Australia’s first independent EFTPOS provider, has been granted a general banking authority by the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority that allows the company to take money on deposit and to advance money to Australian businesses. This is the first time a challenger has been authorised to compete head-on with the banking establishment. Today Tyro has close to 16,000 EFTPOS customers and processes nearly $8 billion dollars annually. Subscribe to Episode 41 of Cloud Stories on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/cloud-stories-heather-smith/id908333807 Today’s episode is kindly sponsored by Spotlight Reporting. Scroll to the bottom to download your free white paper The Perfect Advisory Relationship. In this episode I talk to Jessica about: Jessica maintain’s her own blog at jessicaellerm.com. It’s focused on growth hacking, fintech, banking and payments – topics that are of interest to her. It contains medium to long form articles. Jess shares the benefits of publishing her own blog. This included connecting with people all over the world, and recognising topics people engaged with. Jessica has worked in FinTech before they even used the terminology FinTech! A good way to explain what you do – when no-one really understand what you do - is turn it into a story and relate it back to a person’s life and how it affects them. Breaking Banks is a global podcast run by Brett King a futurist who is focused on disruption in Financial Services and the emerging FinTech sector. Jessica shared what’s happening across the world, in terms of peer to peer and peer to consumer, Challenger and Tandem banks. The next areas of disruption will be around regulation and insurance. #RegTech #InsurTech. UK and US leading the way in this area. UK is embracing Fintech. Blythe Masters CEO of Digital Asset Holdings(ex JP Morgan) has just made a significant investment in partnership with the ASX around blockchain technology. She has pointed out that FinTech has been able to flourish because the banks are so focused on cleaning up the mess after 2008. Innovation is happening outside of the banks essentially. Malcolm Turnball our Australian Prime Minister has a strong banking background and has established the FinTech Advisory panel – one of the goals is to make finance more accessible to small business. Malcolm Turnball and Scott Morrison have come out and openly stated that they want Australia to lead FinTech in Asia Pacific region. They will probably be pretty aggressive about making that agenda happen. Jessica is also broadcast journalist with the Finance News Network an online TV show. We talk about different publishing platforms and how people are monetising it. People hardly watch real TV shows. Working in blogs, podcasting and visual mediums Jessica thinks blogging has the most impact – because you can read it on the train! Jessica thinks we need to re-look at old school marketing – such as direct mail outs and simply having a chat on the phone. If someone wants to seed a story with Jessica email her directly or approach her by twitter. Tyro built a new payments infrastructure they built a bank solution from ground up – on the cloud. It integrates with POS – which is a big differentiator. Tyro Payments, has been granted a general banking authority by the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) that allows the company to take money on deposit and to advance money to Australian businesses. The bank account offers two-way integration with Xero. The money goes in and can be pushed out. This concept is focused on batch payments. The whole batch is sent through to Tyro bank account, and the Tyro user taps an app on their phone to approve the payment. With Tyro bank there is a clear separation of responsibilities. The administrator person can do all of the admin and back end processing. The small business owner has full control over payments out of the business bank account. He or she is sitting on his yacht in the Bahamas and see the notification come through. He can think I know a payment is coming out today, and click to approve the payment. For this model to suit your business - you have to have enough supplier invoices to benefit from batch payments. Ideal Tyro client is a business who (1) needs a physical EFTPOS device: Retail, Hospitality, Medical, (2) using Xero (3) an iPhone. It takes about 7 – 10 days to set up Tyro. Xero Advisors can train and educate clients around batching, integrating with other add-ons in the eco-space like Receipt Bank. Climb a few hills rather than climb Mt Everest slowly roll out solution improvements for clients. Jessica thinks more Challenger banks like Tyro will emerge. Overcoming trusting people and business online. Initiatives around technology and transparency to help address the culture problem in banking. In Netherlands bankers take a Hippocratic oath. Gender balance in FinTech. FemtechLeaders is a global meetup group for female in this space. Jessica loves small business, technology and finance – it’s all about helping people at the end of the day.   Ideal Tyro client is a business who (1) needs a physical EFTPOS device: Retail, Hospitality, Medical, (2) using Xero (3) an iPhone. With Tyro bank there is a clear separation of responsibilities. From publishing her own #Fintech blog @JessicaEllerm has connected with people across the world. Today’s episode is kindly sponsored by Spotlight Reporting. Scroll to the bottom to download your free white paper The Perfect Advisory Relationship. Resources mentioned in this interview include Tyro Receipt Bank Connect with Jessica Ellerm @JessicaEllerm http://jessicaellerm.com/ Tyro  Thanks for listening! What’s been your biggest learning from today’s episode? Share in the comments below. Don’t miss an episode! Please subscribe and if you love Cloud Stories the Podcast please take a minute to leave a review.  

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.