IBS Intelligence Podcasts

EP941: How New-Age Lending Aims to Outrun the NPA Trap

Mahesh Shukla, Founder & CEO, PayMe [http://paymeindia.in/] India’s digital lending space is shifting toward trust, compliance, and responsible growth. Puja Sharma speaks with Mahesh Shukla, Founder and CEO of PayMe, on building a sustainable, AI-enabled lending model for Bharat. The conversation unpacks instant credit access, data-driven underwriting beyond CIBIL, and what responsible FinTech scale looks like in 2025.

EP940: Securing Bharat’s Financial Future: Digital Inclusion in Life Insurance

Casparus Kromhout, Managing Director & CEO, Shriram Life Insurance Life insurance in India is undergoing a pivotal shift from traditional, agent-driven models to digitally enabled, inclusion-led experiences. Rural and emerging India, once underserved, has now become the next frontier for financial protection and long-term security.  In this episode, Vriti Gothi sits down with Casparus Kromhout, MD & CEO at Shriram Life Insurance, to explore how the industry is evolving with technology, simplified onboarding, and trust-driven distribution. They discuss the unique needs of rural India, the rise of digital channels, the role of AI in risk evaluation and customer engagement, and Shriram Life’s approach to building accessible financial protection for every Indian household.

EP939: How to stay competitive in today’s changing payments landscape

Buddhadeb Das Gupta, EVP & Global Head of Payments & Digital Solutions, Yethi Consulting [https://yethi.in/] Increasing architectural complexity and ever-changing regulatory demands have left the global payments ecosystem at a critical inflection point. Transformation and compliance are now a matter of business survival. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence talks to Buddhadeb ‘Deb’ Das Gupta of Yethi Consulting about the economics of competitive positioning and how to build sustainable competitive advantage.

EP938: Looking to the real time future of payments

Mike Walters, Chief Executive Officer, Form3 [https://www.form3.tech/] Form3 offers a cloud-native, real-time account-to-account payment platform. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence discusses the recent introduction of verification of payee with Mike Walters, CEO of Form3. What do the new requirements mean for payment services providers (PSPs) and banks, and what does the future hold for FinTechs in payments processing? We also discuss Nationwide’s recent ‘strategic’ investment in Form3 and what it will enable the company to do.

EP937: How lending to SMBs is being disrupted in the US by embedded finance

Kunal Bhasin, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, 1West [https://www.1west.com/] Small businesses in the US now have more choice in financing but closing the lending gap comes at a price. Small loans don’t make economic sense to the banks, At the same time bank loans are still taking too long to arrange.  Addressing both those issues allows alternative lenders to carve out a profitable niche and provides SMBs with solutions to their funding needs. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence talks to Kunal Bhasin, Founder and CEO of platform provider 1West.