70: 86400, Robert Bell

In Ep70 of the Fintech Australia Podcast Dexter Cousins is joined by Robert Bell CEO of 86400.

86400 is Australia's first smart bank.

Launched in September 2019 with an unrestricted banking license, the smartphone-only bank has been the trailblazer for Aussie neobanks launching home loans, energy switching, joint accounts, and budgeting tools with new feature releases on an almost weekly basis.

Backed by Cuscal and Chaired by Anthony Thomson (founder of Metro and Atom Bank in the UK) 86 400 partners with many Aussie Fintech including Zip, Uno, Data Action. And with the proposed sale to NAB, Tier One People believe this is a landmark day for Australian Fintech innovation.

About Robert Bell:

Rob's committment to helping Australians take control of their finances is the driving force behind the 100+ strong team at 86 400. 

Prior to 86 400 he held Executive and CEO roles at Cuscal, Australian Unity Bank and ANZ including CEO positions at both ANZ Japan and ANZ Fiji.

Find out more about 86 400

Follow Robert of Linked in

68: Trade Ledger, Martin McCann

Fintech Australia Podcast #68 Dexter Cousins is joined by Martin McCann CEO and Co-Founder of Trade Ledger.

Trade Ledger is the world’s first open digital banking platform that gives banks the ability to assess business lending risk in real-time. Tune in as Dexter and Martin discuss the Fintech landscape and how Trade Ledger has evolved since launching four years ago.

As an avid technologist, business leader, investor, academic researcher, and public speaker Martin is passionate about the digitisation of business.

Prior to founding Trade Ledger, he accrued 20 years’ experience creating, growing, mentoring, and investing in innovative global technology companies worldwide. He has been CEO of Global Innovation Ventures, GM of SAP's Cloud Solutions Division overseeing a period of extraordinary growth, and CEO and Research Director of software consultancy, Inn-vision.

Follow Martin on Linkedin

Find out more about Trade Ledger

Listen to more episodes of the Fintech Australia Podcast

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About Tier One People

Founded by Dexter Cousins in 2016, Tier One People is on a mission to help Australia become the world leader in Fintech innovation.

Tier One People helps companies like Revolut, TrueLayer and 10x build founding teams for launch in Australia. 

And series A+ / ASX Listed Aussie Fintech like Lendi, Afterpay and 86 400 hire executive talent capable of delivering growth and scale. If you are building a world-class Fintech venture and need help in hiring tier-one people contact us

Launch of Fintech Advisor service

Tier One People launch Fintech advisor service to give founders the support they need, when they need it most. 

Getting the wrong people on board can be fatal for any startup.

Access to the right people, investors and partners is the biggest challenge facing any founder.

And hiring is also the one challenge most founders are least equipped for. 

When we interviewed 300 plus founders, less than 1% have a background in HR, talent or recruitment.

And of the 300 plus Fintech we have assessed, fewer than 10% have any HR expertise in their business sub 30 people.

Yet over 90% of founders stated finding the right people was their number one challenge. And more than 50% said bad hiring decisions had set the business back.

Recruitment agencies aren't set up for startups.

The traditional recruitment model is too expensive for startups. We've seen so many startups waste valuable capital on recruiter fees.

The results of using a recruiter are mostly underwhelming and we only ever advise clients to use specialist recruiters for specialist roles. We believe startups should do as much hiring as they can themselves.

Here's the big problem though. Hiring is complex, yet most founders think it is easy, until it's too late and they have made some really bad hiring decisions.

It only takes one bad hire to ruin the culture.

The reverse is also true. On rockstar hire can be the catalyst to hiring an all-star team, without getting a recruiter involved.

We believe the solution to helping founders scale doesn't lie in us filling jobs, but in offering our support, expertise and guidance throughout the growth journey.

So, due to demand from the Fintech community we offer a far more affordable solution to using recruitment firms with the launch of our Advisory Service.

How much faster could you grow your business if you had access to the right people?

Tier One People's Fintech advisor service gives founders the support they need, when they need it most. 

It's been designed to help founders navigate the early stages of growth, from seed round to series B.

On an affordable monthly subscription model, founders get access to all of the experience and expertise we've built in helping FIntech scale effectively. 

Clients also get to tap into one of the most comprehensive networks in Fintech. We'll connect you in to the right partners, advisors and investors.

Plus we'll promote your business on the the FinTech Australia Podcast that is listened to by execs from banks, financial institutions and investors from Australia, UK, US and Asia.

One client recently saved $150,000 with just a 30-minute phone call!

Schedule an initial chat and find out how we can help you scale affordably.

Rebrand for Fintech executive search leaders

We've changed!

Have you noticed the new Tier One People logo and branding?

When we launched in 2016 we really didn’t know if the business would be a success or if Fintech would even become a viable industry. 

Tier One People is now firmly established as leaders in Fintech executive search. 

And Fintech is here to stay, entering into an exciting new era. So now’s the time for us to ditch the question mark logo! 

In its place is a logo and brand we feel better reflects everything we stand for.

The new logo represents our community and network.

The triangle is symbolic of the calibre of our network. The pinnacle or top 'Tier' of talent and companies in Fintech.

The circle represents 'one' 

And the circle and square together resemble a ‘stand-out’ or unique person.

We went with different shapes to represent the diversity of 'people' in the TOP community.

Great people come in all shapes and sizes!

And the look?

The new colours are persian indigo and byzantine (or blue and pink.)

Pink features prominently in the logo and on the new website as 43% of hires we've made so far are females.

We wanted to portray simplicity and precision - as that is how we like to go about business.

There's also a subtle retro 80's silicon valley homage.

This is deliberate, as we feel Fintech is at the beginning of something huge. A period of unprecedented innovation and change similar to Silicon Valley in the 1980's.

We sincerely hope the new brand resonates with you.

You can check out our new website www.tieronepeople.com

Gareth Gumbley - Frollo

"I just sat there one day back in 2015, with a piece of paper at the dining room table and thought there has to be a better way of doing this. There has to be a more fun way of getting people engaged in finances. From this Frollo was born"

Gareth Gumbley, CEO of Frollo is behind the quest to help Australians feel good about money. Using the power of technology and community, Frollo enables clients to build their own unique customer journeys and value propositions.

As the first FinTech in Australia to become an accredited data recipient in open banking, Follo is leading the way towards a more transparent financial sector for all Australians.

Could you share more about what Frollo do? 

Frollo is a purpose driven FinTech on a quest to help people feel good about money. We’ve built a really simple to implement technology to help businesses, their customers and employees to turn around their finances. We do all this using their own bank data. 

Frollo as a business, is essentially two parts. We have a consumer app, with over 110,000 consumers, where we test and learn with our technology. In addition we work with Neo banks, traditional banks, fintechs, lenders, or employers to leverage our b2b SaaS platform and open banking solutions. 

This is where they use white label apps or choose to integrate our API's into their existing mobile apps/lending processes. We help them fast track new solutions to improve people's financial well being or innovate banking experiences.

Could you tell us about your recent achievements in CDR? 

Frollo were the first Australian FinTech to become accredited under the CDR at the unrestricted level. In layman's terms, this means we can use bank, utility and telco data. On Saturday 27th June 2020 at 5.35pm we officially provided a consumer provided consent which allowed us to collect bank data from one of the big four banks. It felt like being the first FinTech on the moon!

Everybody has been sitting on the sidelines waiting with bated breath for CDR to really get rolling and it was amazing to see it in action. It's pretty exciting for the team to finally get there. There has been a tremendous effort with ACCC and Data 61 to navigate rules and standards to get us to where we are today, it's been a phenomenal journey.

It is pretty critical in the process to make sure we uphold to protect consumer data above all else. A lot of time and energy has gone into making sure that the app is adhering to ACCC standards. This includes the screens and the language we use to get consent, making sure the consumer is aware of what they are agreeing to. Once the data is inside our environment we needed to make sure it was safe. From here we can then gain insights and give the consumer a better picture of their finances. The new app is now live and consumers will see the immediate benefit. 

“I think I've probably made all my mistakes along the way, as I've matured”

What do you see as the opportunities for Frollo as CDR goes live? 

We've been working in the space of helping consumers feel good about money for the last three years. Frollo has three key journeys we want to take our consumers on. Firstly, helping people identify ways they can save their money. The second is to debt reduction, especially in today’s credit driven society. Lastly, purely a case of tracking our expenses so we can become more literate in managing our daily money. 

The beauty of CDR is being able to link product API data with consumer transaction data. We're able to see how they're using the financial products and whether it's best suited for them, or whether there are better deals out there.

How did you get the idea for Frollo?

With 15 years working in payments and consumer finance, I’m an old dog in the land of FinTech. I became interested in understanding how consumers manage their finances, including moving money and making payments. I felt there was an opportunity to help people borrow money in a better way. Whilst lending people money to fix an unforeseen problem, like a broken down car, might seem like a solution in the short term, it is really just a quick fix. It doesn’t go to the heart of the problem. We need to engage people in their finances earlier. 

There was nothing there, like a Fitbit or Strava for finance to help people understand ways they could be in a better financial position. PSD2 was on the radar, open banking was a conversation, the whole world of digital payments was happening, but there was nothing that really filled the void. 

I just sat there one day back in 2015, with a piece of paper at the dining room table and thought there has to be a better way of doing this. There has to be a more fun way of getting people engaged in finances.  Frollo was born out of this.

Could you give me a snapshot of Frollo today, and what are the plans for next few years?

We've got just over 30 people in the business made up of developers, product management, sales and data scientists. Data is probably the biggest skill set explosion in our team. The business is consistently growing our revenues year on year for the last three years, over 300% revenue growth in the last couple of years. Frollo was initially self-funded. Since then we’ve completed three small, private funding rounds. 

Our focus for now is Australia, but we are constantly exploring partnership opportunities to open up new markets. Our current partnerships include Virgin Money and Volt Bank. We are noticing an increasing number of Neo lenders, Tier 2 banks and some FinTechs are starting to engage our services. I feel our success is partly down to bringing capital in from people we like and know.  We are focused on building a business that is sustainable for the long haul.

What is your approach to the culture you're building at Frollo?

I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to run a number of other small businesses that accelerated and scaled really quickly. The benefit being I could decide what was important when I designed my blueprint for Frollo.

One of the key things was making sure the business had a really strong purpose. Being clear about what were we trying to achieve.  Authenticity in how we engage and interact with staff and our partners. So, everyone who meets Frollo believes we're purpose driven, we care and we want to make a difference. 

Frollo as a business is very innovative and passionate, this plays a big part in helping attract talent. We were lucky to onboard high performing talent with energy who we already knew. They set the benchmark and in turn brought their friends and their friends brought their friends. We've really done pretty well at bringing together a nucleus of staff who helped build a solid culture. We’ve managed to maintain this as we’ve grown and navigated Covid.

We've been fortunate to hire some incredible software developers.  We’ve got 15 or 16 nationalities across our staff of thirty. Our willingness to onboard an app developer who worked on the number one app in Nepal, absolutely gives them the credibility to be working on an app in Australia. I guess the enthusiasm to bring talent in and bring good people in, has enabled us to build a pretty high performing team.

What are your tips to find other ways of bringing in good people when the market is constantly decrying “there is no talent”?

Be brave and have courage in both the people you're hiring and yourself. We took a risk by taking people who had experience in other markets, but not in Australia. We looked for people in other disciplines or industries and see if they were able to apply their skills to our organisation. Our part was to provide the coaching, support, onboarding and nurturing. We gave them time to come up to speed, which is not something companies give these days.  Our patience paid off and we started to see the benefits our teams really flourished. 

‘The average Australian today probably spends $1,000 a year in the lazy tax”

Gareth Gumbley Frollo

What does the next 12 months look like for Frollo? 

Our focus is going to be helping other organisations develop use cases around CDR. We've purposely built our apps and our API's to enable others to fast track on to CDR. You can apply to become an ADR today and then immediately outsource most of the technical and process capabilities and components to Frollo.

We can really accelerate the number of organisations that get accredited in ADR and are able to leverage CDR data. This is really where we want to see our focus over the next 12 months. 

How do you think the average consumer will benefit from CDR? 

We’re hoping our consumer app will enables us to prove out those use cases to show ACCC, Government and industry there are ways and opportunities to help consumers. They may never know they're using CDR or open banking, but what they do know is there is a better way of looking after, moving their money and a better way to experience financial products. They're just not aware they could be on better deals or products more suited to their lifestyle. There's a tremendous opportunity to build financial literacy and well being. If we know where our money goes, how much we've got and that we've got enough to pay the bills it considerably eases our stress levels.

How quickly do you think we’ll see the interaction with CDR here is Australia?

I think we'll continue to enjoy CDR and the benefits it brings. I think all of us are frustrated its not quite moving fast enough. The UK is a good example. They witnessed a tenfold increase in the number of API requests over the last 12 months. These things take time to build out, it's incredibly complex but I think the next few months will be exciting. Then we'll start to see innovations really come into the market as we go into 2021.

When Should A Fintech Hire A Banker?

“The Revolut Country CEO search took six months. The brief changed 4 times as the company grew from 700 to almost 2000 staff during this time. Customer numbers went from 4m to almost 10m. When a company is growing that fast in a highly regulated sector like Banking, it creates a lot of complexity, meaning hiring becomes complex.” 

dexter cousins - tier one people

Are You Startup Ready?

Often the “Fin” in Fintech would denote a heavy hitter from a bank being a winning hire, right?

In the fast paced environment of Fintech, we have noticed caution on the part of our clients in making such a decision.

The hesitation is bound in stereotypes. Banking is often viewed as a mired in red-tape, compliance (or lack of, in Australia), too many chiefs, too many meetings and nothing getting done. Huge amounts of resources and dollars are thrown at projects that never come to fruition. Whilst their Fintech competitors move with stealth and agility, innovating at much greater speed with minimal resources.

The role of an Executive Search Consultant is to challenge stereotypes and get clients to view each candidate on their merits. The view of not being a team player and rolling up your sleeves is often a misconception in banking, but there are plenty who refuse to conform to the stereotype of a banker. 

Tier One People is bolstering our position as the leading Australian Fintech Executive Search firm. Australia's growing FinTech sector has seen a rise in the search for C-suite and leadership talent. Counting Revolut, TrueLayer, 10x, Klarna and Transferwise as some of the many companies seeking our assistance.

How bankers can take control of their job search.

A more proactive approach job seekers can take is to look at where your big banking skills can have an impact. Assessing whether a company is at start-up or scale up stage will also aid you in making a successful move to Fintech. Read this article on Fintech Career Advice to gain a better understanding at which stage of growth you are best suited to.

Before embarking on the search it is crucial to take a step back and ask yourself; 

“How would I cope moving from a structured and heavily supported environment to a one of a specialist generalist”

The best advice we can give candidates looking to join a Fintech. 

"Focus on impact. How many years you have worked somewhere doesn’t excite a founder, showing a founder how you can make/save the company millions of $$ does."

Showcasing your skills in 2020 also requires more savvy than ever before. Looking good on paper doesn’t get cut through anymore. If you are in the market looking to join a Fintech you need to have a plan in place and a goal in sight. You need to utilise all of the tools available, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Podcasts. These are all channels where you get direct access to decision makers, people who can hire you.

You can showcase your skills and achievements, bringing them to life and not being blocked by gatekeepers and recruiters.

Does FinTech Need Your Banking Experience?

Dexter Cousins, the CEO and Founder of Tier One People, has interviewed more than 300 FinTech leaders on the subject of hiring. He firmly believes hirers should consider the lifecycle of a Fintech to assess where the best candidate fit is. 

It's very difficult for anyone to move from a corporate job to an early stage startup. But with the rapid growth of tech companies, a startup can become an enterprise in 5 years. Examples include Stripe, Revolut and Australia's Afterpay.

It’s a difficult process identifying the right time for a banker to join a Fintech. The right person can definitely make a significant contribution as the company scales. Often times the right hire is made but at the wrong time, which ultimately means the hire is wrong.

Fintech careers special podcast

We get inundated with calls on a daily basis from candidates seeking a move to the shiny new world of ‘FinTech’. However, opening your pitch with "hey, I've got 20 years experience in banking, I want to work in FinTech" might not be the best way to impress people. 

It's also important to make the distinction between a Finance business and a Software business. Are bankers better suited to a NeoBank or a platform provider. Fintech covers a wide range of businesses and making this distinction can really increase your chances of securing a move.

Judo Bank, Xinja, 86 400 and Revolut in Australia have all hired highly experienced bankers early in their growth. Judo and Xinja are both founded by highly experienced bankers who were driven to change the industry.

FinTech’s are at the cutting edge of innovation with far fewer resources than any bank. The reality is no founder or investor gets excited by somebody with twenty years experience in banking unless they can demonstrate previous success in a startup and they have skills currently not in the business which are mission-critical to success. 

When Founders need help with hiring.

The recruitment process to join a Fintech can be almost as intense as the job itself. If you can't handle the intensity of the interview process, it's highly unlikely you will succeed in the job.

The thing to remember is that FinTech founders themselves may not have the breadth of experience in HR or Talent to make critical hiring decisions. Hiring for a startup is often a make or break decision. We’ve watched some companies flourish and others flounder because of it. 

For a founder looking to hire, specialist FinTech recruiters are more easily able to identify those candidates who are the ”right cultural fit.” Assessing if someone will relish the challenge of working in a FinTech environment is very difficult using traditional interview techniques. And a specialist recruiter can provide far greater access to Talent than an ad campaign and direct networks, especially in talent short markets. 

But to achieve these results a client needs to invite us 'into the tent'.

The key to success is communication

Being attuned to the changing demands of the business is vital to ensure success when hiring. 

“The Revolut Country CEO search took six months. The brief changed 4 times as the company grew from 700 staff to almost 2000 during this time. Customer numbers went from 4m to almost 10m. When a company is growing that fast in a highly regulated sector like Fintech, it creates a lot of complexity. Hiring becomes even more complex.” commented Dexter Cousins.

There is a need for the modern executive search consultant to set realistic expectations with their clients. Being transparent and honest (even though clients may not want to hear what you have to say) is the only way to achieve lasting success. This approach is core to the values at Tier One People. The search for the “blue eyed unicorn" is never a realistic one and usually wastes significant time and business opportunities. 

Tim Cameron - Transferwise

"We hire people who have shown a true affinity for their customers in previous roles. Talking about the profit you’ve delivered without sharing the customer problems you've solved is not really the way to get your foot in the door."

Tim Cameron - Transferwise

Tim Cameron is Australia New Zealand Country Manager for Transferwise. Transferwise launched in 2011 with the vision of making international money transfers cheap, fair and simple. They now have over 7 million customers and process over US $5 billion per month in international transactions. With investors including Sir Richard Branson, and PayPal founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, Transferwise is one of the world's most successful and profitable FinTech. 

Tier One People’s Dexter Cousins chats to Tim about his own journey with the business and their plans for Australia.

You have quite a few years of history with the Transferwise business. Could you share a little bit more about what Transferwise does?

Transferwise is a global technology company. We're building the best way to move money around the world. We make it possible for our customers to send, spend and receive money internationally at the real exchange rate. 

The business started about 10 years ago. Our founders Taavet (Hinrikus) and Kristo (Käärmann) are two friends from Estonia. Working in London, being paid in one currency but having expenses in another whilst honouring commitments back home made them realise how much money they were being charged each month.  They quickly worked out a reciprocal agreement to help make money transfers amongst themself in the currencies they needed, using Reuters exchange rate online to figure out the fairest exchange rates. 

When their friends heard about it, the idea snowballed. It was a lightbulb moment as they realised this was a problem for millions of people globally. A discovery more than a decade ago led to Transferwise’s existence. 

How did an Aussie living in Melbourne end up joining Transferwise in the UK?

While I was living in Melbourne I saw an ad for the role in the UK. I took advantage of the great visa arrangements between Australia and the UK, applied and the rest is history.

During my first years with the business I worked on the unit economics model, built with the express purpose of helping us to understand how to price and how to invest in marketing. My role then naturally started to gravitate more to the data. This was key in helping to understand, fix or build new parts of the business. 

In a software company, this means working with engineers, without them nothing gets changed or fixed. Understanding problems, coming up with new product ideas, and then implementing them for the benefit of our customers is what led to my role as a product manager. At Transferwise our teams are structured around the Product Manager as the central node.  I operated a full stack team tasked with launching Transferwise in new markets and optimising existing markets. 

I was lucky enough to launch Transferwise in 10 countries in my role as a product manager, before I returned to Australia as the Country Manager.

What were the challenges you faced launching the Transferwise product in all of these locations?

We're often the first to do something in a market or country. For example, the first online money transfer, making transfers instant, or introducing electronic verification. These challenges might be technical, regulatory or commercial and when you're the first company to do it, it can be very resource intensive. 

We've set the global standard of what a good customer experience looks like in the UK and Europe. We know what we need, what the end product looks like. Singapore is a great example of bringing a global standard to a new market. Four years ago customers in Singapore had to be verified in person, there was no way to verify them online. 

We set up a tiny office in the centre of Singapore with one employee just to carry out ID verification to people to use Transferwise. Fast forward to today and we fully integrate with Singapore's national identity database to make it seamless for Singaporean customers to get onboarded.

We’re really proud  we’ve now made it possible for any new business in Singapore, to utilise this new global standard.

The values and philosophy of the business have been echoed in your hiring process. Could you tell us more about how Transferwise have managed to find talent?

We hire people who have shown a true affinity for their customers in previous roles. Talking about the profit you’ve delivered without sharing the customer problems you've solved is not really the way to get your foot in the door. 

We want people who can identify the opportunities within the business as it grows. For them to discover what they are good at and really focus on fixing problems. 

Kristo, our co-founder and CEO cares a lot about the mission. He wants to be able to say  Transferwise is setting the new global standard in bringing transparency to international money transfer.

 

What have you learned on your journey of Product Manager to Country Manager.

The role of a Product Manager role is an integral one to any software business. I'm not a huge fan of the saying a Product Manager is the mini CEO. What's great about the role is being the lead, being on the front line and at the centre of the battle of ideas.  It's all about making sure you're building towards the company's goals. Transferwise has a very clear company mission and a platform for product managers to really shine.

Moving back to Australia and taking up the role of Country Manager was a huge decision. I’ve moved from HQ of a large growing company to the most remote outpost. The Product Manager is much more of an internal role working across teams. My role now requires lots more external facing. 

This includes working with banking partners, negotiating and being the point of escalation for improvements. I am now the face to Transferwise in Australia for regulators and at public events. Whilst I didn’t have the most experience in these areas, I felt confident taking the role knowing Transferwise had the resources to support me on the journey.

How have you managed to take the essence of the culture of the business and move it to Australia with you?

We've done a great job embedding the Transferwise culture of autonomous teams and putting customers first, here in Australia. I have been lucky enough to enlist some old timers to move from London to Australia to help seed culture. 

We are all about empowering employees to do what's best for our customers. It was a wise decision by Transferwise founders Kristo and Taavet to allow our employees to figure out what's best for our customers. 

We're doing this across time zones and managing different communication styles. At the same time Transferwise does have full stack support and operational support coming from Singapore which is not too different time wise. This has resulted in us thriving. 

"We hire people who have shown a true affinity for their customers"

Tim Cameron Transferwise

How long has Transferwise been operational in Australia?

We launched our “send money” product in Australia in 2015.  We now have offices Melbourne and Sydney with risk/compliance, marketing and comms teams here and support coming from Singapore.

Globally we're processing over 7 billion Australian dollars for customers every month. I think the number we're most proud of is we're saving our customers, over $1.5 billion Australian dollars a year or $5 million AUD a day compared to using their bank. Globally, a quarter of our international money transfers are delivered instantly. The transaction happens in less than 20 seconds while the customer is still on the Transferwise app. 

You've got some really interesting partnerships. Have you got any other exciting partnerships lined up? 

We're about to roll out Transferwise for banks product and we have partnered with Up Bank here in Australia. This allows banks who want to integrate with Transferwise to power international money transfers for their customers. We're also exploring a lot of partnerships around our business product. Globally, we onboard about 10,000 new businesses every month. 

Some of the partnerships we've built are, GoCardless, so people can settle the direct debits they've received internationally. We have integration feeds with Xero and QuickBooks. Anyone using the accounting software can avoid doing any manual entry. We also have a project with Xero going on in the UK which allows Xero customers to use Transferwise to pay their bills. 

What does the future hold for Transferwise? 

2020 Has been a big half year for us. We've announced an integration with Alipay for customer sending money to China. We launched the UAE's first fully online money transfer service. Our customers are currently holding £2 billion in Transferwise’s multi currency accounts. We've just released a feature  allows our customers to send money to each other across borders instantly using just the mobile number. 

We're hoping to continue this same momentum in the second half of the year. Our real push here in Australia is to make money transfer as cheap as possible for customers especially as we actually pay the highest prices for money transfers of any developed country in the world. Australian banks can get away with charging big markups and hidden markups, we want to change that.

Many people don’t realise they're not getting the rate they see on Google. The result is the majority of people paying far above the odds to send money overseas. We're working with the ACCC and other regulators to show solutions we use in Europe and how they could be applied in Australia. We know how big a problem it is and Transferwise has the ability to solve it.

Bianca Bates - Cuscal

Bianca Bates is Chief Client Officer at Cuscal, Australia's largest independent provider of payment solutions.

Cuscal has a rich history of technology innovation in Australia and is the main investor behind Neo bank 86 400. They were the first provider to go live on the new payments platform, switching on 30 clients simultaneously on one day.

Tier One People’s Dexter Cousins talks to Bianca about the next evolution for Cuscal as we enter the open banking era.

Could you tell us a little bit more about Cuscal.

Cuscal is Australia's leading provider of payment solutions. We are an ADI (Authorised Deposit taking Institution) and have all the same licencing and payment capabilities as the major banks in Australia. However, we provide our services on a wholesale basis operating in the business to business space. What it means in essence is, we provide the back office functions for mutuals, credit unions and Fintech’s.

Cuscal have been operating in Australia since the 1960’s, formed by the mutual sector as an industry body. Our origins in the mutual sector mean culturally we have always had our members best interests at heart.  Cuscal’s strong focus on the customer experience and  passion to "do the right thing" is at the core of our values.

Could you share with us some of the work Cuscal has completed, in particular your involvement in the new payments platform?

We have been heavily involved in financial technology innovation from our inception. Back in 1977 we launched Australia's first ATM in collaboration with Queensland Teachers Credit Union. In 1982 we were the first to issue a scheme debit card in Australia. Fast forward to 2018, which was a huge year for Cuscal, we had the NPP launch.

Cuscal enabled 50% of those financial institutions to go live. Later that same year we simultaneously launched over 30 clients going live with the three global digital wallets, Apple, Google and Samsung. It was an immensely proud year for us.

We built on our success the following year when we launched the first digitally issued card for one of our clients in Western Australia.

You’re the main investors in 86 400, the digital bank, could you provide us some insight into how you became involved.

Our journey towards a digital bank started many years ago.  We saw digital banking as the future of banking. The real opportunity for us lay in our end to end payment expertise and a long history of working with banking clients.

In August 2017 business case approval was granted and we started work. From the beginning we made a conscious choice to establish an independent organisation with its own leadership team, premises and board to allow the organisation its independence and autonomy.

This ensured the right focus to achieve the vision, and last September 86 400 was born. We're so proud of the innovative, mobile only banking experience now being offered to Australians through 86400.

As the founding shareholder, our licence agreement with 86 400 effectively enables Cuscal to be the sole distribution partner for all of the digital capabilities we have built. Our goal was to allow Cuscal the ability to launch those capabilities to other clients, which is our plan in the coming year.

What are some of the opportunities you're seeing for Cuscal?

We have a very broad base of clients who are predominantly based in Australia, with a couple of US clients. These include large and small financial institutions, Acquiring Clients, Fintechs, Corporates and Payment facilitators.  We’re focusing on how we can deliver the solutions our current clients need in the most optimised manner.

We are also doing what we do best, being the source of thought leadership to our clients. Being a scout for what is coming down the pipeline in terms of investing their money, as well as providing some perspective and prioritisation.

Open banking is a big area for us. The 86 400 white label licence services also provide us the opportunity to utilise some of the digital capabilities for our clients that we built for 86 400. COVID-19 has highlighted the need to have a really clear digital strategy and a digital engagement programme. We are planning a roll out of some of these services for our existing clients in the year ahead.

 

How have you been able to change the mindset of the business to go on this tech journey with you?

It's certainly been a journey. The positive decision to change and diversify was made approximately 10 years ago. New products require capability from technology. It required a rethink in the way we delivered programmes of work. From this came the need to bring in people who have successfully managed similar programmes to drive change.

The NPP programme was probably our biggest learning platform. When we started the build of NPP, waterfall practices were our go to method.  We quickly moved to an agile way of delivery which again meant new people to drive the upskilling we needed. Many FinTech startups go through a growing pain process and the NPP was our experience with those pains.

Pushing to have 30 clients go live in one day also gave us the confidence to recognise we are a nimble organisation with less complexity than the major banks.

What is the culture you're trying to create within Cuscal?

Cuscal have always been; a) client focused, with an emphasis on doing the right thing and b) providing a great employee experience. This has become even more focussed in recent years.

There's four main areas we look for in our people. Top of this list is energy. We want people who are looking to make a difference and getting stuff done. 

The second is people who will work as one team, people who think only of their own success and reward tend not to work for us.

Thirdly we want people who are accountable in all aspects of their work, process, product, service whatever it may be.

Finally being outcome focused. Having a really clear strategy to make sure everything they're doing is driving towards executing their strategy.

How have you gone about attracting the calibre of individuals to allow you to go on this big transformation?

We’ve had a few challenges, one of these is competing with the Neo banks. People are naturally attracted to the hottest startups who get a lot of press. Our strength is Cuscal being a bank. It comes with financial security, regulation, certainty. Startups can be exciting but they also come with a lot of risk.

We are well networked from an industry perspective. Our people sit on most of the working groups, boards, committees and forums in Australia from a payments perspective. All of the benefits that come with working for a bank. Our dual pronged approach is that we are also a FinTech. We work on innovative and transformative products and services. But we offer an environment where our people have the resources to deliver. We’re essentially the best of both worlds.

We're also a small organisation who encourage our people to sit in on forums with leadership, board members and their direct reports . Our people have a voice and provide invaluable feedback.

Do you find that the relentless focus Cuscal places on its customers has helped you in attracting the right people?

Our heritage in the mutual space has seeped through to our organisation. Cuscal has an ethos of doing the right thing for our customers. Our way of operating is in complete contrast to other organisations where they are KPI driven. The benefit for our people is the opportunity for them to stand up and really differentiate themselves in the market to their end customers.

Cuscal is really enabling competition in the Australian market and we're really proud to be able to support this thinking.

What is the big vision for Cuscal?

Data is at the heart of driving a tailored customer experience. Mobile being the first way in which consumers are looking to engage. Our beliefs form our strategy which I summarise as four pillars.

Firstly, Our clients need to get to market as quickly and cheaply as possible. We’re making everything really modular, plug and play to enable this.

The second pillar is around expanding our client reach to ensure we can scale to deliver much more competitive pricing for our customers. We've made significant investments in NPP, as well as digital capabilities and our fraud solutions. We're really looking to scale those solutions and reach as many customers as possible.

"Cuscal has an ethos of doing the right thing for our customers"

bianca bates

The third area is increasing the relevance of our payment solutions. Many products we have been delivering since inception. We need to continually focus on using the right systems and tech stack to deliver those products. An example of our focus here is with our fraud platform which we replaced when we introduced NPP’s new payments stream. We now have a new platform using machine learning and artificial intelligence for fraud monitoring services to customers.

The fourth area is making strategic investments in innovation. We really see this as essential in maintaining our position of leadership and relevance whilst capturing emerging markets.

Our big focus here is really on open banking, hence our investment in bringing 86 400 to life. We're really clear on our strategy. We're into the second year of our five year plan.

Forbes recently launched their list of the world's top banks based on factors including ethics and customer centricity. Of the twenty Australian banks that featured, I’m proud to say seven are clients of Cuscal.

Mark Tarring - Tilda Travel

Tier One People Founder, Dexter Cousins speaks exclusively with Mark Tarring, Founder and CEO of Tilda Travel, a game changing platform bringing the worlds of online Travel and FinTech together.

I’ve known Mark for ten years starting back when he was Co-MD of Virgin Money Australia. We caught up recently to talk about the launch of Tilda Travel, how he plans to revolutionise the online travel industry and why he chose Hobart as HQ.

What’s Tilda Travel?

Tilda Travel is an Australian first, an API platform bringing to market a truly family friendly travel and travel money business. It makes booking holidays and organising holiday money and insurance so much easier.

The travel industry is not geared for modern families. There is an increasing trend for grandparents, brothers, sisters and even pets to go on holiday together. Trying to book a holiday for a family online is hard and time consuming, which is why traditional travel agencies still exist. You literally have to sit with an ‘expert’ for at least an hour to sort everything out.

Booking a family holiday online from Australia can be confusing and require multiple different platforms and online booking engines to compare prices, book flights, confirm accommodation, buy travel insurance and order currency.

TildaTravel is a technology platform that solves this problem by delivering a seamless customer experience. It’s a one-stop shop that allows customers to book every element of their holiday easily.

TildaTravel’s proprietary technology is the first platform to efficiently aggregate multiple travel and financial services to provide a seamless, frictionless family holiday planning and booking user experience.

How does it work?

We start with inspiration, then guide the user through planning and execute with bookings. We add in all the extra details that make a holiday really smooth, like insurance, foreign exchange, travel data and lounge passes.

Like all great technology, TildaTravel’s unique platform takes a traditional experience - in this case the experience of working with a world class, truly expert travel agent - automates it, adds scale and an overlay of digital data analysis and AI and delivers a user experience that is better, faster and more economical.

When the new platform comes live, users will input their data once, and then find it automatically pre-filled as they work through the whole process of planning a holiday. TildaTravel’s platform uses the first piece of booking data, the accommodation, and matches that data to the full spectrum of family holiday needs, finding and recommending the best flights, travel insurance and other products, services and experiences.

TildaTravel’s proprietary technology is the first platform to efficiently aggregate multiple travel and financial services to provide a seamless, frictionless family holiday planning and booking user experience.

Is Tilda Travel a FinTech, a travel business or both?

TildaTravel is something completely new, we call it TravelTech. It is a family traveller consumer centric business that partners with fintech, tech and travel firms. As an API-based platform we are able to seamlessly plug in partners and third parties who match our mission of making family holidays safe, fun and easy and allow us to offer our customers unique holiday experiences.

We were delighted to launch to market with a crop of the world’s top global travel brands already on board as partners including HomeAway (Stayz), Hertz, Travelex, Cruise1st, Collinson (Priority Pass) and Telna. For example, as part of the TildaTravel platform customers will be able to book a family friendly villa from HomeAway’s beautiful properties in Australia and around the world.

As TildaTravel evolves we are constantly adding to our suite of integrated businesses, sourcing and securing travel and technology partners who augment our customers’ experience. As well as the core offerings, we are seeking innovation; for example we are currently exploring a relationship with a unique startup which uses technology to track your luggage location - great for dads like me who need to know where it is at all time and of course an incredible tool for locating lost luggage!

Our focus is on making holidays easy, safe and fun through technology - but at the same time allowing our customers access to a myriad of options that allow them to hyper personalise their unique tailored family experience.

You spent a number of years at Virgin Money. Has working with the brand inspired your approach to Tilda Travel?

Sir Richard Branson is one of the greatest entrepreneurs and pioneers in history. The Virgin brand is recognised around the world for delivering an incredible customer experience, looking after their people and always seeking to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. The Virgin business model was arguably the genesis of the platform / marketplace model that is so successful globally today. Absolutely I was inspired by my experience at Virgin and hope to bring the ethos of excellence to everything we do at TildaTravel today.

TildaTravel is a new generation innovative, unique and ultimately disruptive model. Integrating the travel and financial services industries in a consumer-centric user experience is a world first, and one we are very proud to pioneer.

Can you tell me a bit more about your FinTech partnerships?

We have partnered with a number of innovative fintechs and continue to seek out the best new people to work with. We are currently working with Insured By Us to develop a unique travel insurance product, which we believe will be the best in the market. Kids go free and policy holders get a free travel SIM to help avoid overseas bill shock. Car hire excess coverage can also be added if you’re hiring a car for the family holiday.  

In 2019 we’ll launch an innovative prepaid travel money wearable system, where one family account or travel money card can be linked to multiple payment wearables. Customers can give their kids wristbands pre loaded with a set level of cash so that they can buy their own ice creams!

We believe that by partnering with fintechs who share our values, we can offer Australian holiday makers an experience they have never had before. If you are going to be successful as a consumer focused business, you have to own, control and deliver a first class customer relationship.

How did TildaTravel come about?

The name comes from my daughter, Matilda. The inspiration for the Tilda Travel platform comes from holidaying with a six year old.  From the anticipation of ‘how many sleeps left?’ to the pure joy of arriving at your destination and exploring with a huge sense of wonder and excitement which I think is It’s something I think we lose as we get older. That really inspired me to take what I have learnt at Thomas Cook Money and create something new and different.

TildaTravel is based in Hobart, Tasmania. It isn’t renowned as a tech startup hub. What made you choose Hobart as your HQ?

My family and I were searching for a better lifestyle and found that Tasmania fitted the bill. Once  here, we fell in love with the place. Tasmania is booming and it’s become one of Australia’s main holiday destinations with tourism and travel being a large part of the Tasmanian economy. We also want to make a contribution to the community, help create jobs and hopefully put Tasmania on the map as a viable place to launch a tech startup.

There was always the question of where and how we would find the talent. But we've had no problem in attracting the right skills and caliber of people you need to get a startup off the ground and running.

There’s a great work / life balance in the office, with five full time employees – it’s cosy! Most of the team have spent their careers in banking and tech firms in places like London and Sydney. We are a tech business, which means we're global and we can work from anywhere, but we all tend to work from the office in Hobart. It takes me nine minutes to get to work!

What are the plans for TildaTravel?

New Zealand is next, planned for the second half of 2019. And early 2020 we plan to launch in Hong Kong and Singapore.

We see huge opportunities across Asia for TildaTravel. If you look at China, consumers expect instant, seamless, highly personalised experiences. We are looking at Asia as a significant market opportunity but also a place for innovation. We are not out to compete in the travel or financial services market; our intention is to create a whole new type of business model – our own market!.

There are great examples of businesses such as AfterPay that have achieved success by targeting the millennial market with a unique and compelling value proposition. For TildaTravel and the team, this is what excites us: technology platforms and access to huge amounts of data enable startups to create entirely new business models specially targeted to specific customers.

Martin McCann - Trade Ledger

2019 was a breakthrough year for Trade Ledger. 2020 promises to be even bigger as open banking creates the perfect set of conditions for the Trade Ledger platform to take off.

Dexter Cousins of Tier One People caught up with CEO and Co-Founder Martin McCann in Sydney recently to talk open banking and Lending as a Service.

What kind of FinTech is Trade Ledger?

Trade Ledger is a banking platform technology designed to help banks and large non-bank lenders provide any type of credit to businesses and corporations around the world.

We have built a global platform, technology which can be instantly deployed in any country. Matt Born (co-founder) and I come from Enterprise Technology backgrounds. Trade Ledger came into being because we both wanted build what we call a ‘true platform’. We see a lot of FinTech’s claiming to provide platforms which in our view are nothing more than technology stacks for a specific product. These are not true industry platforms.

Enterprise Software, which is essentially what we do, is one of the most complex and difficult markets in business. We’ve been building Trade Ledger for a market which didn't even exist when we set up the company. Globally the market we operate in is estimated as a $4 Trillion opportunity. Just the undersupply of credit for businesses globally is $2 trillion. That is the extent to which businesses are underserved with lending and capital. We call it ‘Lending as a Service.’ Nobody used the term when we set the business up two-and-half years ago.

Can you tell me how LaaS works?

Essentially LaaS is the outsourcing of the IT and operational requirements for the bank when it comes to lending. Typically, for a business to apply to a bank anywhere in the world for a line credit the average time to process the application is 90 days.

There’s about 30 hours of manual work for the customer plus 300 emails and 500 calls involved.

Trade Ledger eliminates the manual processes using API’s and accessing the banks data, completing the whole process in four minutes without a single document filled out.

What do you attribute to your success so far?

Matt and I followed our own path when we started the business. Trade ledger was incorporated in August 2016 and we were supremely confident we were building the right solution at the right time for the right market. Joining forces is the first thing we got right. What Matt, the team and I are doing is really, really hard and you need at least two co-founders to tackle all of the challenges ahead.

The combination of us working together has proven to be a real positive for the company and our personal lives. Matt and I both have extensive experience in enterprise software. We both worked at SAP and we witnessed software disruption in other sectors, it was only a matter of time before the same would happen in banking.

The blueprint was already there from other industries, it was just a case of applying the strategy to the right niche. Forming our partnership, our timing and product-market fit are the keys to our success so far.

Can you tell me more about the Trade Ledger business?

The business is now over 20 people, evenly split between London and Sydney. We've almost doubled the size of the company in the last three to four months. We are delighted with the ‘firepower’ we have hired into the business.

Firstly, we managed to find really high calibre senior engineers, the kind of people we think are potential game changers. In London, we’ve hired a CFO who is highly respected in the VC community. He will help turbo charge the growth of the business. We are embarking on Series A funding, having a CFO of the calibre we have is essential.

All this adds to the great talent we already have.

We don’t want a development center, and operational offices, we're trying to keep uniformity across the offices. Fundamentally I believe three things will give Trade Ledger long-term differentiation, in the market-place.

The people in the organisation

The culture of the organisation

And what I call the velocity, are we moving fast enough in the right direction?

I don't know if we are moving fast enough in the right direction yet, but we are accelerating.

What makes the culture of Trade Ledger unique?

The culture is very important to us. Matt and I have almost identical values and business ethics. Transparency is key to us, in terms of our business relationships and our people. We firmly believe when you're trying to grow something this new, this quickly, you are going to break things, frequently.

It's what you do when you realise you're going in the wrong direction, or you've broken something which counts. And recognising which things you can break and what you absolutely have to get right.

Living by this ethos creates a culture of high performance which is the edge for a company like ours. Frankly, the banks struggle to attract the kind of people required for a high growth, exciting tech startup like Trade Ledger.

So, banks will have to partner with Fintech’s to access the talent, innovation and execution required for this next paradigm of business we are entering. Big organisations just cannot achieve the velocity required to keep up with the pace of innovation today.

What do you look for in the people you hire?

Primarily values and attitude. We don't focus on people's experience or their background, we focus on whether or not they would fit well with the team or will they be disruptive in the team. We love diversity. It does cause some challenges. The nature of diversity means it's harder to evaluate how someone will fit, in the context of values and ethics.

And then the other thing we look for is high potential or high propensity for success. What we've found is interesting. People who are under-experienced, properly motivated and show high potential are a much better fit for this organisation than people who've got proven experience.

People with high potential fit our culture and the way we work. They want to get ahead quickly, they appreciate the opportunity to be able to contribute and to learn. And they understand the value it creates for them as an asset that differentiates them in the market.

What prompted your move to London?

A good question. Can I say, it's really nice to be back in Sydney in the heat. From our perspective, Sydney is a great place to start a company. There's a lot of benefits to be found in the FinTech ecosystem but there are limitations.

The market itself is relatively small, compared to other markets globally. With our ambition to be a global software company, we don’t see significant market penetration in Australia. Banks in Europe and North America don’t see Australia as a market with enough scale, so it is difficult to get credibility as a global player being based from Sydney.

Why choose London? After some consideration and research, the legislative changes in Europe and open banking in the UK made London the ideal launch pad for the Trade Ledger platform.

There's massive investment from the banking sector in open banking technology, which from our perspective, is just API-based platform technology. The most innovative global bank transformation programs are happening in London. Lloyds alone has five transformation programs running, which, have a multi-year program budget of over 2.5 billion pounds. That's the scale of transformation technology that's happening in Europe and it's hard to find anything comparable happening anywhere in Australia.

If we want to be a global company, we have to win the European market and more specifically the London market. Open banking, GDPR and other legislative changes have created a seismic shift to data-driven lending in the business bank and SME funding market-place.

The UK is now 12 months into open banking. What are the potential opportunities here in Australia?

The UK market has been really interesting, and for us, it's great to have a ring-side seat to the first real implementation of open banking.

Year one was all about fixing the problems with the original scope, specification and approach to open banking. It went live late and there were a couple of issues with the implementation.

The challenge is shifting a heavily regulated market to a technology-driven business model in a record amount of time, it's never been done before. All of the interested parties are struggling to keep up.

The regulators are finding it particularly difficult to figure out what to do when things go wrong. Liability, specifically the daisy-chaining of liability and how to manage it, is turning out to be a significant problem. I think everyone has underestimated how big a shift this was going to be.

What can Australia learn from UK Open Banking?

Australia being number two into open banking is perfectly positioned to come up with the best capability in the world. It is a highly ambitious plan to implement open data across all industries. Conceptually this is where the market needs to go to.

The Australian market has perhaps underestimated the difficulty of implementation challenges. Something of this scale needs a very strong governance process. It needs to have a very, very high degree of consultation with all of the stakeholder groups.

My fear is the original scope could be thwarted, and open data never actually achieves the ambition outlined in the original agenda. Specifically creating competition in banking.

I wrote an article outlining my fears, published in the AFR. From the feedback I received, maybe people misunderstood my intention. I do not advocate any particular solution, Trade Ledger will prosper regardless of what Open Banking journey Australia chooses. I feel strongly that we need to have the right discussion about the national interest, because this is a once-in-a-generational opportunity Australia can’t afford to get wrong.

If Australia gets open banking right, it is my firm belief we can export financial services to other countries on a scale rivalling the mining industry. And if we get it wrong, then the opposite is true. Digital financial services does not observe national borders. Regulation, which once protected national markets has now become a grey area.

What does the future hold for Trade Ledger?

We are in advanced discussions with significant global banks. It is a distinct change in strategy for us. There is a much higher risk involved and a lot more investment up front.

If Trade Ledger is to become what we intended from day one, a global top three in the category, then it’s the direction we need to go in. We don't shy away from risk or challenges, we embrace them, and we work harder, faster, and smarter to try and move in the direction we want to go.