News: ASOS hit by cyberattack, UK finance eyes tokenisation, and can open banking help tackle credit exclusion?

Ross Gallagher (0:04)

This is Fintech Insider News. This week, community finance and open banking could help the UK's credit invisibles. Lloyds survey shows that 71 percent of UK financial institutions back tokenization, and NG Cash raises $15 million to widen credit access in Brazil.

We will be tackling all of this and more on today's new show, so please don't go anywhere.

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Ross Gallagher (1:10)

Hello, and welcome to episode 1106 of Fintech Insider News, brought to you by 11FS, the sixth time consultancy of the year that works with financial providers, big and small, to build the next generation of financial services.

I'm Ross Gallagher, the head of consulting here at 11FS, and to help me unpack the biggest and most interesting shows from Fintech and financial services from the past week, I'm joined by a really brilliant panel of guests. First up, we have a welcome back to the show for Alex Marsh, the CEO of Salad Group. Alex, it's always a pleasure. Welcome back to the show. Maybe you can just do a quick reintroduction, both of yourself and Salad Group just for our listeners.

Alex Marsh (1:51)

Yeah, sure. Great to be back. I think this is my fourth time.

So I'm literally probably in eight-year period, so I'm glad to be back, Ross. Yeah, so I'm Alex, lead the Salad Group. Our mission at the Salad Group, we're a UK fintech, is to use technology and data to unlock access to fair and affordable credit for consumers who are typically locked out of mainstream financial services. So a real financial inclusion plan. I'm really happy to talk about that today.

Ross Gallagher (2:19)

Yeah, excellent. We'll be getting into it. I know in a little bit more detail as well, Alex. So thank you for coming on and telling us all about it.

We also have a very warm welcome back to the show for Veronica Glab, fractional go-to-market consultant. Veronica, it's always a pleasure. How are things going? And again, maybe you can just do a quick reintroduction, not that it's necessarily needed, but maybe for our newer listeners.

Veronica Glab (2:47)

Yeah, of course. It's been a little bit crazy lately because I literally just got out of Fintech Meetup Europe about an hour ago.

So we'll jump in from one nerdy conversation straight into another, which is always a good day. But yeah, Veronica Glab. So I work with early stage startups on their go-to-market and partnership strategy. Currently also head of partnerships at Juice Ventures, an SME lender in the UK, and just really looking forward to being back.

Ross Gallagher (3:17)

Excellent. Veronica, we'll always have you in our nerdy conversation. So thank you. Thank you for jumping in.

Certainly last but not least, we have another welcome back to the show for Alex Gluckowski from Matter Labs, the CEO. So Alex, great to see you. Welcome back. Again, maybe you wouldn't mind just giving a quick reintroduction for our listeners.

Alex Gluchowski (3:39)

Thank you, Ross. Excited to be here. I'm the founder and CEO of Matter Labs, which you might know as the company that created the ZK Sync protocol for scaling Ethereum with zero knowledge proofs. And for the last two years, we've had been focusing heavily on the institutional space, building the platform called PreVidio, which is a fully integrated platform for financial institutions to manage their digital assets with full stack.

Happy to unpack the topics.

Ross Gallagher (4:10)

Excellent. And looking ahead to some of our stories, Alex, I think we'll be leaning on your expertise quite heavily. So, yeah, really glad that you're here and sharing some of your perspectives.

Roy, well, I promised you a brilliant panel. I certainly don't think that disappoints. So let's get going. And we are starting with a huge story this week. This one comes from Finextra with a headline. Community finance and open banking could help the UK's credit invisibles. Around 10% of UK consumers have little or no credit history, leaving millions of people potentially credit invisible and struggling to access mainstream financial products. Salad Finance, a CDFI that uses open banking data rather than relying solely on traditional credit histories to assess whether customers can afford to repay a loan. Customers consent to sharing between 3 and 18 months of transaction data, allowing Salad to assess factors including income, expenditure, and existing financial commitments. Salad says it has analyzed more than 9 billion bank transactions and can make lending decisions in around 30 seconds. The company says around 70 percent of its customers are renters, while only 30 percent are on the electoral roll, factors which can make it harder to build a traditional credit profile.