From Dinosaurs to Dynamos

In the Hot Seat

Can banks do what needs to be done to stay alive? How can the legacy players stave off the next ice age? Leda Glyptis, recovering banker and author, and Monika Liikamaa Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Enfuce burn up the hot seat with a no-holds-barred discussion on how parasitic relationships, hedging bets, and corporate FOMO killed off countless fintechs with great potential! And, just wait till they dish on why banks need to start moving away from in-house builds and into partnerships to truly succeed in a customer-driven world!

Key Takeaways.

• [0:0] Denise Johansson puts Leda Glyptis, fintech executive and former banker, and Monika Liikamaa, co-CEO and co-Founder of Enfuce, in the hot seat.
• [3:39] Leda and Monika agree. Because of dinosaur mindsets and structures, the banking industry has changed a lot but not enough at all in the current landscape.
• [6:20] Some problems take care of themselves! Although Monika underscores a possible challenge with upcoming mass retirements.
• [8:05] Regulators exert external pressure on banks and they are moving in the right direction. Leda explains what is still missing.
• [11:49] The cost/benefit of digitization is something banks don’t quite understand. Leda argues that this inflationary period is critical to decision-making if banks want to remain alive.
• [12:56] Is innovation really a fridge that runs its own Kubernetes cluster? Monika and Leda offer that true innovation is a little boring and not very sexy.
• [15:40] Have VC’s ruined innovation with zombie parasitic relationships? Monika and Leda roll out a scathing indictment of the fintech petting zoo.
• [18:44] Money is not a dirty word was Leda’s keynote title and where the money comes from (the right money) is important, Enfuce is a testament to that.
• [29:18] Liking and trusting are two very different things. Some fintechs have confused the two and the human ability to forget about past mistakes is driving recurring failures that undermine trust.
• [31:03] Regulators will lead the financial sector into the future. Leda shares some specifics of where the future is taking us, from deepfakes to migration tooling and AML.
• [33:58] Taking your time with real time!
• [36:40] What Leda’s new book has in store.
• [39:49] Denise signs out until the next time she puts an industry leader in the hot seat.

People.

• Guest Leda Glyptis, Strategic Advisor, Board Member, fintech executive, and former banker.
• Guest Monika Liikamaa, co-CEO and co-Founder of Enfuce, a female-founded fintech helping drive business growth, solve customer challenges, and extend financial inclusion.
• Host Denise Johansson, co-CEO and co-Founder of Enfuce, a female-founded fintech helping drive business growth, solve customer challenges, and extend financial inclusion.

Links.

• Enfuce

Guest Quotes (edited).

• When it comes to banking, The unsexy is where it’s at, both in terms of customer adoption and in terms of long-term profitability. So where is true innovation? Where you can't see it. — Leda Glyptis, InTheHotSeat
• Innovation isn’t spending money on visible things when your API infrastructure is balanced on top of something that plugs into a mainframe from the 60s. — Leda Glyptis, InTheHotSeat
• So where is true innovation? It's the adoption of scaled technologies to solve customer problems in a way that improves choice, transparency, and stability, and reduces cost. — Leda Glyptis, InTheHotSeat
• Have banks changed a lot? Yes. Have they changed enough? No. What I think banks haven't done is realise that the world around us is on an irreversible path that is changing much faster than the industry. — Leda Glyptis, InTheHotSeat
• The bank’s lease-on-life and breathing space of today’s high interest rates should be the time to make decisions. But it won't be for a lot of them. — Leda Glyptis, InTheHotSeat
• You should talk about your business model before you take money from an investor or a partnership. Most of the relationships I saw at the time in accelerators were zombie parasitic relationships that would never go to market. — Leda Glyptis, InTheHotSeat
• One of the questions I'm looking into is: What money do you take, and can the money kill you? The answer is yes. But it is hard to do. When you're trying to build something, saying “No” to a check in front of you is extremely hard. — Leda Glyptis, InTheHotSeat
• To everyone listening, if you're a banker, don't try to build it yourself. Seriously, just partner. Partner, partner, partner! — Leda Glyptis, InTheHotSeat
• The good news is that the problems in the financial sector will die, or retire. The challenge is that the culture will prevail if the hierarchy is too rigidly systematic. It will be a mindset thing at the incumbent level also. — Monika Liikamaa, Enfuce, InTheHotSeat
• The words innovation and disruption should be changed to adoption and transformation. For banks, now is the time not to die. — Monika Liikamaa, Enfuce, InTheHotSeat
• VCs have been pouring money into weird-ass companies offering some weirdo niche products for free and as such, are skewing the real cost of building fintech products. — Monika Liikamaa, Enfuce, InTheHotSeat
• Being owned by a bank is not a good way to be if you're a tech company. . — Monika Liikamaa, Enfuce, InTheHotSeat

Denise Quotes (edited).

• Maybe I can try to defend the banks… Despite everything, we love banks! We love and trust banks. Trust is something that many fintechs have yet to crack. — Denise Johansson, Enfuce, InTheHotSeat
• Building successfully in the fintech space entails a lot of failure, and you need to have been around the block. Some day we will share all of ours openly. Maybe post IPO or exit, when we aren’t so connected to it and you have to Google us to see what we did back then. — Denise Johansson, Enfuce, InTheHotSeat