366. Insights: The Future of UK Fintech

**David Brear** (0:10)
What's up, ladies and gentlemen, and wicked? Welcome to a very special episode of Fintech Insider. My name is David Brear, and we're recording alive here at the Barbican Cinema at the premiere of our very own film, 11 Years, the Rise of Fintech.
Can I get a hello from the audience?
Just to prove that it's alive, awesome. All right. We just told the story of how you created an ecosystem that is the envy of the world. We've heard from the leaders who shape the policy, Funded firms changed the course of incumbent banks and founded challenger banks and fintechs that are now becoming household names. Next, we'd like to talk about what happens in the next 11 years. Financial services is the UK, and more globally, has come so far since 2008 But what does the future look like from here onwards? So to drive this forward and look into their crystal balls, we're bringing onto stage Eric Van der Kleij, who is the CEO and founder of Frontier Network, as well as the founder of Tech City, and now Tech Nation, and Level 39 How's it going, Eric?

**Eric Van der Kleij** (1:09)
Terrific, thank you. Great to be here. Congratulations. Amazing film. One more round of applause.

**David Brear** (1:20)
I know, I've got some smart people here. I've been lucky if I can get a word in edgeways, so we'll go.
Next up, we have Ashok Vaswani, who is the Global Head of Consumer Banking and Payments at Barclays and former APAC CEO at Citi Bank. So, you know, back in the day of the crisis, we know where you were, Ashok.

**Ashok Vaswani** (1:35)
I was enjoying myself.

**Anne Boden** (1:38)
That's honest.

**David Brear** (1:42)
This is going to be fun. All right, next up we have Anne Boden, who is the CEO and founder of Starling Bank and former COO of AIB.
How's it going, Anne?

**Anne Boden** (1:51)
Very well indeed. I really enjoyed that. Well done, Laura.

**David Brear** (1:58)
Specific shout out there for producer Laura. Well done, Laura. All right, and last but definitely no means least, we have Nick Ogden who is founder of the brand new RTGS.Global as well as founder of ClearBank WorldPay and he tells me the father of e-commerce as well. So pretty busy guy.
I mean, you paid me nicely to say that, Nick. So, but yeah, thanks for joining us, Nick. How's it going?

**Nick Ogden** (2:21)
It's going well, thank you. Great audience.

**David Brear** (2:24)
It's been good. It's been good fun, I have to say. There's been a very decent vibe going on. So what we're going to be doing is diving into a little bit about what you guys think the next 11 years is going to really sort of look like. So I guess sort of starting with, I mean, what's your key takeaways from the film? How has this gone? Are we just getting started or is it sort of, are we mid cycle? What do you think?

**Eric Van der Kleij** (2:47)
Well, you said, go ahead.

**Anne Boden** (2:49)
I'm so excited. I listened to that and the first sort of quarter and hour or so were reminiscent of what really happened. And it was scary and it was sad and then we have to make all those sort of mistakes.
But the last 20 minutes, you know, it's all going to happen. We're looking forward. It's very positive. We in London have changed an industry and we're up there and we have the start of this journey, not the end.

**David Brear** (3:17)
I agree, yeah.
So, I mean, Eric and Ashok, we heard from you in the movie. Nick, I tried to get you in. I think you were flying around the world doing various things, but I mean, where were you 11 years ago?

**Nick Ogden** (3:26)
Interestingly, I was in Iceland. Somebody had to be there.

**David Brear** (3:34)
What, the supermarket or?

**Nick Ogden** (3:38)
The little rock where they invented this thing called iSave, which cost a lot of UK investors a lot of money. And I'd gone up there, we flew up on the Sunday for a meeting with Visa in Iceland and we were on a plane with a lot of journalists and a lot of cameras and a lot of people speculating as to what was going to happen. And the next morning we went and started our meeting and during the course of the morning the Icelandic people were being fed post-it notes during the course of what was clearly a lot of challenges going on outside the meeting. And we had some lunch and they said, look guys, I'm sorry, we've got to wrap up this meeting.