Building fintech for frontier markets, with Elizabeth Rossiello

**Tony Clark** (0:03)
This is the London Fintech Podcast, bringing you practical insights and approaches, stories and inspiration from the innovators who are building the new world of financial services.
This podcast is brought to you by NextWave, strategy specialists and solutions for financial institutions. Welcome to London Fintech Podcast. I'm here today with Elizabeth Rossiello to talk about payments and entrepreneurship in frontier markets. Elizabeth is the CEO and founder of AZA Finance. They're a global fintech specializing in Africa that was founded in Nairobi in 2013 And they're the go-to partner for businesses needing foreign exchange, treasury payments, and settlement in markets all across Africa and probably elsewhere. I've noticed they've actually helped customers in 180 countries, maybe have a bit more of a global span. Elizabeth will tell us some more. Elizabeth, great to see you.

**Elizabeth Rossiello** (0:53)
Thanks for having me.

**Tony Clark** (0:55)
How's your week been so far?

**Elizabeth Rossiello** (0:57)
Pretty hectic. We have big announcements and exciting times for the company.

**Tony Clark** (1:03)
Well, I'm sure we're going to hear some more about that. Where are you speaking from today? Where's HQ for you?

**Elizabeth Rossiello** (1:09)
I'm currently in London. We started the company in Nairobi. We moved over to Lagos and Dakar and then up to London. We've got seven offices globally, so I'm always kind of floating in between.

**Tony Clark** (1:19)
And have you always been based in Africa or are you based in Africa for some of that time? I guess it'd be interesting to know how much of a rotation you have between those various locations.

**Elizabeth Rossiello** (1:29)
Well, I was about eight years in Kenya and then a year in Lagos, and then a few years, three years in Senegal before moving up to London just after COVID. And I think it was important when we started to sit with the team, sit in the first market. And then once that market got launched, I moved to Nigeria to launch that market. And that was steady. We moved on to Senegal and Francophone. I meet some founders who are not in market and in the early days, and I think that's a must. But as the company scales, I also think it's important for the founder and, you know, I'm on the board as well to be near investors, to be near key clients and things like that. And I was traveling a lot to London. This is where a lot of the clients fly through, and half our clients are non-African paying into Africa. So this is a good base so far for the last couple of years.

**Tony Clark** (2:20)
Where did you grow up? Where are you from originally and what's the Africa link?

**Elizabeth Rossiello** (2:25)
I'm from New York. I'm from Queens, which is the county in the US that has the most languages spoken. It's one of the most diverse places I find on planet Earth, Queens, New York. So I started there and I studied languages and politics. And so I traveled abroad. And after I got my graduate degree in finance and I was working in investment banking in Europe, I was really just fed up with the same old thing. And I was reading a lot about microfinance. And that was the year Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize. So I was like, how can I use my skills in finance and my love of, you know, different cultures and different countries and different economies? And I applied for a job with one of his joint ventures, Planet Finance, which was between Jekyll and Paris and Muhammad Yunus. And they gave me a job in Kenya. So sight unseen, I went from Europe. I was living in Zurich at the time in Switzerland, down to Nairobi and started this crazy adventure. And I worked five years in the field all across Sub-Saharan Africa. I headed the office in Nairobi and once a month, I went to a new country, Malawi, Togo, Benin, Guinea-Conakry, DRC, everywhere doing these ratings, talking to regulators, governments, banks. Just got my first real education, honestly. Forget Ivy League School. That was much more educating. And then after that five years of work, I founded the company.

**Tony Clark** (3:50)
Wow. I mean, that really is... So I was going to ask you what the definition of frontier market meant, but you mentioned the Democratic Republic of the Congo there and sort of this is five years before you started the company. So that I guess that was really was on the frontier.

**Elizabeth Rossiello** (4:05)
Well, we were always joking where I lived in Nairobi. Nairobi is one of the UN hubs globally. So a lot of my friends work for international organizations and we're on the front lines with refugee work or vaccine work or security work. And I was just visiting banks in these places. So yes, to somebody sitting in London, the Democratic Republic of Congo sounds crazy, but I was still sitting in a bank office, going through loan files or talking to the IT guy at the bank. Yes, it was in Lubumbashi and we had great food at night. And the airports are a little different. But I'm not in a container or a tent. So I think we have to just remember that the African content is not just what you see in movies. I'd be sitting in a boring bank lobby like anywhere else.