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

Sebastien Gaudin is founder of The CareVoice, an insurtech that has evolved to design apps for insurance companies to build a relationship with their policyholders. The business just completed a $10 million Series B fund raise, a notable achievement in an environment that has been difficult for insurtech startups to secure investment. Gaudin speaks with DigFin‘s Jame DiBiasio about why insurance companies are eager to develop “super-apps” combining insurance and related services, and how they are trying to go about it. Timecodes: 0:00 – Sebastien Gaudin and TheCareVoice 2:40 – Insurers want direct engagement with customers 7:20 – How they do this within an app 13:31 – And without upsetting agents 16:37 – The competition 18:13 – What’s a “super-app” in the insurance context? 22:07 – The latest fund raise and use of proceeds 26:20 – How ordinary people discover insurance apps 28:12 – Retaining customers, or finding new ones?

Kalidas Ghose is co-founder and chairman of UNO Digital Bank, one of six purely digital banks licensed to operate in the Philippines. UNO’s parent company just raised $32.1 million in additional venture-capital funding. Ghose speaks with DigFin‘s Jame DiBiasio about the opportunities for digital banking in the Philippines, the question of deposit size versus customer numbers, the challenges of non-performing loans, and expected innovations around digital identity and open banking. He also compares the Philippines’ fintech environment to that of Vietnam, where for many years he ran one of Vietnam’s leading digital lenders. Timecodes: 0:00 – Kalidas Ghose, UNO Digital Bank 1:40 – UNO’s competitive offering 4:58 – Tiny deposit size versus growing user numbers 8:50 – Onboarding the unbanked 10:00 – Incentives to attract customers 11:15 – The funding model 12:31 – The challenge of high non-performing loan ratios 16:03 – UNO’s strategy as a pure startup 19:00 – Partnering with GCash 22:01 – Kali’s experience in Vietnam 24:58 – Central bank initiatives and open banking 28:18 – New business services for small businesses

Laurent Ischi is director at fixed-income technology vendor Tradeweb, and Singapore-based director of AiEx, Tradeweb’s toolkit for workflows to automate trading and execution. He speaks with DigFin‘s Jame DiBiasio about trends in automating Asia’s markets for bonds, swaps, and FX, and how the region’s asset managers are using technology to create new ways to trade and to measure dealer performance. Timecodes: 0:00 – Laurence Ischi and introducing Tradeweb 2.35 – impetus for asset owners to go electronic in fixed income 4:20 – products seeing most adoption of automated execution 7:30 – who’s driving automation in Asia, the sell side or the buy side? 9:10 – where’s the biggest change taking place in Asia Pacific? 11:32 – the knock-on effects of automating a market 14:06 – what kind of people and skills do firms seek? 16:00 – advantages to being an early adopter of automation, particularly interest rate swaps 18:38 – global trends such as benchmarks and T+1 21:51 – data value-adds and measuring dealer performance 25:11 – taking advantage of market idiosyncrasies 26:48 – where to find liquidity in APAC fixed income

Two co-founders of regtech companies discuss upcoming trends in regulatory technology for financial institutions – which on the one hand is an evergreen need, but on the other remains a challenge for fintechs trying to become established partners to banks, insurers and asset managers. DigFin‘s Jame DiBiasio is joined by Jacqueline Pang, co-founder of Singapore-based Artius Global, and by Claus Christensen, co-founder of Know Your Customer, based in Hong Kong and Dublin. Artius helps institutions automate disclosures and other reporting, while Know Your Customer helps with customer identity and onboarding. Pang and Christensen provide an overview of how banks use their technology and their services, how to become a trusted player, what ares of finance face the greatest demand for regtech solutions, and their funding and long-term business goals. Timecodes: 0:00 – Jacqueline Pang and Claus Christensen 2:00 – Introducing Artius Global and Know Your Customer, RegTech overview 5:20 – Changing needs versus evergreen demand among financial institutions 9:57 – How startups work with big institutions, breaking into the top tier 15:01 – Digitization, Covid’s impact, and tech agendas among financial institutions 17:30 – Fintech business models and finding growth 20:46 – The impact of generative AI 26:48 – RegTech developments in 2024 32:02 – Funding and exits

Tim Ying joined Octopus in mid-2023 as CEO, after building a career in banking, payments and technology. His tenure began as Octopus was celebrating its 25th anniversary – making it the “OG” of fintech in Hong Kong. Octopus has a pioneering history, inventing the stored-value card that was embedded in the Hong Kong subway system, a model later copied by London’s Oyster and others. But that’s old news. What’s Octopus doing now to transcend its primary role as contactless payments in transportation? Ying talks about his outlook for the company, new customer problems to solve, and new services to move into, including cross-border payments, e-commerce, fintech, and – to the relief of interviewer Jame DiBiasio – the Hong Kong taxi fleets. Timecodes: 0:00 – Tim Ying, Octopus 1:49 – A trip down memory lane: the Octopus origin story 6:01 – The Covid factor in merchant acquiring 7:48 – Contactless payments versus QR code-based systems 10:52 – The agenda today, “we’re not in the payments business”, e-commerce, personal wealth management 16:25 – Partnerships and open versus closed payment rails 19:33 – Solving Hong Kong’s taxi payments problem 23:43 – Opening the Octopus network, in Hong Kong and abroad 27:09 – Connecting to ASEAN’s domestic payment networks and moving users from cards and chips to mobile phones

In Episode 71 of DigFin VOX, Adrit Raha of insurtech CoverGo explains the trends driving digitalization among insurance companies today. Raha is managing director for Asia Pacific at CoverGo, an insurtech that launched in Hong Kong but now operates in three markets and is trying to expand to Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. Raha talks about how insurers’ needs are changing, the uses of new technology, and the way that insurtechs are working with large incumbents. He also talks about CoverGo’s funding and outlook for 2024. Timecodes: 0:00 – Adrit Raha, CoverGo 1:34 – His mission to help insurers go digital 3:30 – How are the tech needs of insurance companies changing 5:09 – Are insurers still lagging behind banks in transformation? 8:07 – How durable are the changes wrought by Covid? 9:43 – It’s still all about claims 11:17 – Tensions between fixing small problems versus holistic change 15:50 – Are insurers completing their transformation journeys? 17:42 – Insurtechs navigating through large incumbent enterprises 19:33 – Automation requirements, next-gen tech, and insurtech in the era of generative AI 24:11 – Embedded insurance 27:36 – Funding, scaling internationally, and goals for 2024

In this episode of DigFin VOX, startup founder Julian Anderson talks about how his fintech, Divit, is combining rewards systems and other services for merchants with real-time payments. He tells DigFin‘s Jame DiBiasio that Divit is now working with Citibank to help it grow its merchant acquiring network, and how the bank is helping Divit scale beyond its home market of Hong Kong. Julian shares the story of his career and the origins of Divit, and what to expect in 2024. Timecodes: 0:00 – Julian Anderson, Divit 0:43 – His work digitizing payments for insurance companies – trends in real-time payments 8:13 – Founding Divit 12:46 – Pivoting from consumer payments to merchants 13:58 – Helping merchants manage reward programs 17:03 – And helping merchants with chargebacks and other needs 20:00 – Working with Citi to provide real-time payments to merchants 22:28 – The growth of banks’ merchant acquiring business 23:56 – Linking rewards to merchant acquisition 26:25 – Scaling Divit beyond Hong Kong 29:24 – Funding and 2024 ambitions

Florian Spiegl, founder of Evident Capital, retraces the history of asset tokenization and the ideas behind it through the lens of his career. Spiegl has been pursuing tokenization business models since 2016, first at Finfabrick and now Evident, a wealth platform seeking licenses to issue securities tokens. He speaks with Jame DiBiasio about the value of transitioning many capital-markets activities to blockchain, choices between public and private networks, the role of banks and asset managers, and how to create an ecosystem – as well as Evident’s plans for fundraising. Timecodes: 0:00 – Florian Spiegl, Evident Capital 2:17 – Digitizing banks before blockchain 5:10 – Innovation (or lack thereof) in asset management 8:08 – New winners and losers 9:50 – Is blockchain necessary? 11:38 – Lessons from previous startup Finfabrik 14:10 – The idea behind Evident and seeking licenses 15:44 – Public versus private ledgers 17:00 – Banks’ internal tokenization projects 19:27 – Best strategy for go-to-market: wide or niche? 22:09 – Crypto native versus DLT/TradFi 25:38 – Can banks adjust to this new world? 28:35 – Evident’s fundraising plans

Jessica Liu and Ankit Suri are co-founders of Planto, a Hong Kong-based fintech that began as a personal financial management app. It has since expanded to partner with banks around the region to help them with a variety of digital services. Liu and Suri speak with Jame DiBiasio about how they have evolved the business, identifying customer needs, and trying to build an embedded kind of business in a market that does not have an open-banking culture. They also discuss how they’ve been able to achieve profitability and what that means for their plans for the business. They also share some lessons for other fintech founders. Timecodes: 0:00 – Ankit Suri and Jessica Liu, Planto 1:45 – How Planto got started 4:25 – Consumer pain points and account aggregation 5:33 – Does the app work? 8:15 – Embedded banking without bank open APIs 9:17 – Is there scope for advice? 11:26 – Pivoting to B2B 14:43 – What if open banking fails to take off in Hong Kong? 17:32 – New markets 18:26 – Funding, VCs, and profitability 22:23 – Planto’s future and founder exits 24:30 – Lessons for fintech founders 27:32 – Paths not taken