Ep. 122 - LHV Bank presents Match Made in Fintech, featuring Wise Platform, hosted by The Payments Shed Podcast

SPEAKER_1 (0:06)

So, as Tom says, we are hosting a live edition of The Payments Shed Podcast, panel style tonight. So without further ado, I want to just introduce the topic and our guests. So focus today is today's banking infrastructure. Are we ready for what comes next?

And we are joined by Roisin Levine, Head of UK & Europe Bank Partnerships at Wise Platform, and Tom Ronayne, Director of Banking Services at LHV Bank. Guys, we always start just asking the question about how you ended up in the wonderful world of fintech and payments. So Roisin, I'll start with yourself to kick off. What's your origin story?

Roisin Levine (0:37)

So I actually worked at a comparison site, which some of you might know as a USwitch, which is do energy switching. And then I was approached by a fintech that was looking at loan comparison. So that was my segue into fintech. So previous I was working in tech, always doing enterprise sales and partnerships.

And that was my first foray into fintech. Now I've been in fintech for many, many years. So bit of SME lending, some kind of more retail banking, kind of digital receipt business, and then more recently, wise for the last five years. So cross border payments. But yeah, that's my story.

SPEAKER_1 (1:10)

And Tom, yourself for the second time today?

Tom Ronayne (1:13)

Yes, so I started my career in fintech at American Express, working in the international payments business.

Beyond that, worked at token and open banking for a couple of years. And yeah, I've been at LHV over the last two years. So like everyone, I've fallen into payments by accident.

SPEAKER_1 (1:33)

The amount of times we hear that on the podcast, yeah. Did anyone actually get into payments deliberately? Any show of hands today? No?

SPEAKER_4 (1:39)

None? There's no degree, right?

SPEAKER_1 (1:40)

One down the front there, maybe.

So we'll kick off just with a bit of a kind of arc story. So fintech to EMI is the subject of our first segment this evening. And Roisin, I'm just going to kick off with yourself. Most fintechs start out on someone else's infrastructure rails traditionally. At what point does that start holding growth back?

Roisin Levine (2:02)

So it's an interesting question. If I use Wise as the obvious example here of when we set up the company many years ago now, there was definitely more reliance perhaps on other providers and infrastructure from others. I think what tends to happen is a bit of a similar story to what we saw, which is you lean into something that you're particularly good at. So you find that niche and that's become really your product and the thing then that for Wise is cross border. So for us, the important part of cross border has been actually going about and actually getting direct access wherever we could around the world so that we have as much, I guess, visibility and control over the rails ultimately.

Obviously, we've been very successful at doing that. We've done that for a number of reasons. One, because we would mostly because we think it provides the best customer experience for cross border payments. Yes, of course, it's taken us many years. We had to get licenses, work with central banks, not an easy task. But we believe this is the right thing for our business. However, saying that doesn't mean that we don't still rely on providers or other banks' infrastructure to do many other things in our business, or to still help us enter new markets. So it's still a bit of both, and I don't think it's necessarily it harms growth either way. It's more about doing what you're good at and still using partners, I guess, when it's right.

SPEAKER_1 (3:16)

Tom, coming to you, can you talk us through how LHV Bank take a customer on the journey from inception to maturity in regards to that?

Tom Ronayne (3:25)

Yeah. So our customer base is always a regulated entity.

But in some ways, that's segregated in early starters, as in companies who are obtaining FCA or EMI licenses in Europe, and perhaps more mature companies within the Fintech ecosystem who are essentially building a new use case or perhaps a new customer proposition. So on that basis, I suppose in terms of companies, emerging companies or new startups, there is often that immaturity around moving from an EMD or agency license to working with a bank. And it's always positioned perhaps as a partnership, which is of course what we're here to discuss tonight. But often there's an assertion of the roles and responsibilities have to be defined. Working with a bank obviously has different implications in terms of the responsibilities as a licensed bank. I mean, within banks, people can actually go to jail. So risk appetite is a critical feature which has to be solved for. So I think on the other side, although there's a significant delta generally in terms of the features or the responsibilities and the use cases, like when you break it down, it comes to actually really showing the customer journey to the prospect.