Ep. 138 - People First: Why Cross-Sector Data Is the Future of Financial Wellbeing, with Horizon Zero

Justin Hanna (0:05)

Welcome back to The Payments Shed live here from Fintech Meetup Europe.

Right now, I'm joined by Heather Xiao, founder and CEO of Horizon Zero. Heather, thank you so much for joining us. Firstly, give us an introduction to yourself and how you got into this industry.

Heather Xiao (0:19)

Oh, yes. Hi. Thank you, Justin, for inviting me. I'm Heather Xiao, the founder and CEO of Horizon Zero.

I actually have been in this industry for quite a long time by participating in different sectors. So I started to work in banks, so in Standard Chartered Bank and other banks in Australia, for example. And then I work in Standard Setting Body, so I was the chief product officer at Open Banking.

Before I started my new company, Horizon Zero, as a fintech company. So all around in the last years.

Justin Hanna (0:57)

Amazing. And what does Horizon Zero do?

Heather Xiao (0:59)

Yeah. So we are an innovation studio, I would say.

We started with the idea that we want to use the success of Open Banking to make it, enlarge it into other sectors. So create a cross-sector data sharing innovation to solve real meaningful problems. And following that, we participated in the Department of Business and Trade in the UK for a Smart Data Challenge prize. And we became a finalist for it. So that was because I decided to create a real solution to trace the research to demonstrate the innovation.

Justin Hanna (1:42)

What does meaningful innovation need to kind of cross sector boundaries rather than stay inside one industry?

Heather Xiao (1:49)

Yeah, that's a really, really good question. Because I believe innovation is about solving problems. So solving problems that people actually need to be solved. And to be able to solve that problems, in many cases, you can do it within one sector, one industry. But with many pressing problems we have today, it's impossible. For example, fight fuel poverty. And you cannot just say this is an energy company problem, or a bank's problem, or your local government problem. Each of the sectors have a problem to solve, but only by joining up those connected support, you will be able to support your customers.

So I think that's why, and there are many other problems as well, for example, like if you look at our lives at a major event, like someone lose their jobs, then who is going to support them? That's not only one sector's problem to solve.

And also, for example, like the food price crisis, it's not only a supermarket problem, but it also links with financial services, with your local government support, and many other aspects in our lives. So, yeah, so I see it's a cross-sector.

Justin Hanna (3:08)

That then links into kind of financial well-being of consumers. What does financial well-being mean to you? I know we know it's always talked about a lot, but what does it mean to you and Horizon Zero?

Heather Xiao (3:18)

Financial well-being. Yes.

Yeah, I think financial well-being means we are safe about our finance, about how, so in a trajectory of being secure with our finance. So that means I, for example, I can pay my council tax bills without problem. I can pay my energy bill without problem. But in the future, if there's some problem with, if it's my life, for example, if I lost a job and I have a new kid and I have to take out my parents, etc. So all this has to be plentiful and to be able to do that, we actually need support from all over our sectors to create a much planned, anticipated support for a few people.

Justin Hanna (4:11)

You mentioned before, actually, a really good point around innovation starts with solving people's challenges, right? What actually changes when you start to solve people's real needs instead of just talking about technology?

Heather Xiao (4:24)

Oh yeah, yeah. I think that's a hugely important consideration to have because if you just only focus on technology, which is great because technology creates possibilities. So with AI, with open finance, embedded finance, there's so much opportunities to create for firms. But often the problem is about customer adoption.

And the problem, the root cause of customer adoption in my view is we are not really looking at from the problem-driven angle, but more from technology-driven angle, trying to find problem to solve. And I think that means to me that we need to really look at the outcome and create the outcome framework to solve problems.

Justin Hanna (5:10)

And which sectors do you think are hardest to bring to the same table?

Heather Xiao (5:15)

Ah, interesting.

I think each sectors have a different maturity in this area. For example, financial services. Banks have been spending a lot of money to mature this. And so they are very mature comparing to many other sectors, for example. Simply because of the investment and the focus.