Funding Circle CTO on Software Engineers, AI Native Org, £17bn Lending Engine

Funding Circle CTO on Software Engineers, AI Native Org, £17bn Lending Engine

Today's guest is Greig McEwan, Chief Technology Officer at Funding Circle, the UK's leading SME finance platform, which has extended over £17bn in credit to more than 125,000 small businesses.  Greig has led technology at scale across very different worlds, from CTO of Paddy Power Betfair operating across 100 countries, to advising WorldRemit on payment strategy, and now building the engine that decides who gets lent to, and how fast. What makes his story unusual is where it started. He took a non-technical degree in Glasgow, covering politics, economics, a bit of psychology and sociology, and got into tech as a trainee programmer with no real experience, just an aptitude for learning.  This conversation moves from that early career into the machinery underneath Funding Circle: how a lending decision actually gets made in seconds, what it really means to become an AI-native organisation, and why he believes the role of an engineer is being redefined in real time. In the full episode, we cover: What happens in the 9 seconds between "apply" and "approved," powered by a 9th-generation decision engine How 15 years of lending data gives Funding Circle a 3x risk edge over bureau-only scoring Why a customer interaction every 38 seconds keeps feeding the model Why he hires product engineers, not software engineers, now that code is being commoditised The difference between AI-native and AI-first, and why Funding Circle chose one Why he is "not at all sceptical" about AI, against the industry grain How one engineer did three years of work in three days with Claude Code How Funding Circle keeps bias out of lending decisions, with humans still in the loop Why cybersecurity went from strategic to board-level imperative His advice for anyone starting out: just start, and ignore the limits you assume Check out our website [https://workinfintech.com/ ] and subscribe to our mailing list to hear more about opportunities in fintech and web3. Follow our socials Linkedin [https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global/], Twitter [https://twitter.com/WorkinFintech], Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw] https://workinfintech.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global https://www.twitter.com/workinfintech https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw

He left a top banking job to build his own bank | Mark Mullen, Co-founder Atom Bank

Today's guest is Mark Mullen, co-founder and CEO of Atom Bank, the UK's first app-based bank and the first digital challenger to win a full UK banking licence.  Mark is a self-described accidental banker who read history at university, spent 24 years inside HSBC Group, and ran First Direct, one of the most innovative banks of its era.  Then, in his mid-40s, he walked away from a comfortable seat at the top of the industry to build a bank from scratch in the Northeast of England, not London.  He has watched telephone banking, internet banking and mobile banking come and go, and now sits inside the AI wave trying to work out what it actually changes and what it does not.  This conversation goes past the technology and into the things that endure: trust, people, and why the UK banking sector is still far less disrupted than everyone assumes. In the full episode, we cover: - Why banking was "made to be digitalised", and who wins because of it - How Atom uses Gemini, Claude, and other AI tools in their workflow - Why AI could cut a third of operating costs in three to five years - Why the same banks still dominate UK mortgages a decade on - Why Atom runs a four-day week, and why Mark keeps defending it - The one trait Mark values most when hiring young people - His advice for anyone starting out in the AI era A masterclass in building for the long term, from someone who has done it without the hype. Worth your time whether you are in fintech or not. Connect with Mark Mullen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mullen-5330458a  Matthew Cheung (Host & Founder Work in Fintech): https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewcheung50/ Check out our website [https://workinfintech.com/ ] and subscribe to our mailing list to hear more about opportunities in fintech and web3. Follow our socials Linkedin [https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global/], Twitter [https://twitter.com/WorkinFintech], Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw] https://workinfintech.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global https://www.twitter.com/workinfintech https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw

He backed PayPal and built Tether but will not invest in AI | William Quigley

Today's guest is William Quigley, one of the few venture investors who has operated at the centre of multiple technological inflection points. William was one of the first institutional investors in PayPal, co-founded Tether, the world's first and largest fiat-backed stablecoin, and founded WAX, one of the most active NFT blockchains globally. He saw the consumer internet emerge, watched payments transform, helped shape crypto infrastructure, and now sits at the edge of the AI wave. This is our third conversation with William, and a lot has changed since we last spoke 18 months ago. This time we go beyond the cycles and into the structural future: who owns the rails, how capital actually flows, and where the durable infrastructure is forming beneath the hype. In the full episode, we cover: - Why AI is the opposite of the early internet and early crypto, and why that should worry you - Why the economics of today's AI companies are inverted, and how long they can really last - Why he backed PayPal and built Tether but will not invest a dollar in AI - How VCs boycotting semiconductors for 25 years accidentally created NVIDIA - Why OpenAI and Anthropic may go public and still struggle as public companies - The trillion-dollar currency conversion tax that tokenised money could erase - Why NFTs are not dead, just rebranded, and where the real use cases are growing - The one trait William looks for in every founder and CEO, and why he thinks you are born with it - How young people should position themselves while it is still early If you are a fintech founder, an investor trying to read the AI cycle, or anyone working out where the durable opportunities are forming beneath the hype, this one is worth your time. Check out our website [https://workinfintech.com/ ] and subscribe to our mailing list to hear more about opportunities in fintech and web3. Follow our socials Linkedin [https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global/], Twitter [https://twitter.com/WorkinFintech], Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw] https://workinfintech.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global https://www.twitter.com/workinfintech https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw

How Crypto Will Replace the Banking System in the Next 10 Years | WIF Podcast

Today's guest is Xen Baynham-Herd, Director of Growth at Base and Global Builder Ecosystem lead at Coinbase, working at the centre of where crypto, AI agents, and the future of finance collide. Before Coinbase, Xen spent eight years as a fixed income trader at UBS, where he championed an internal stablecoin project that eventually spun out into Finality, backed by UBS, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and Santander. He then made the leap into crypto, rising to COO at blockchain.com, before stepping off the corporate ladder to work with Balaji Srinivasan on the Network State. He went on to found his own startup, Roam XYZ, which was later acquired by Coinbase. In the full episode, we cover: - Why the UK's financial system is broken and how blockchain actually fixes it - How crypto networks like Base are becoming the closest thing we have to network states today - Why every major bank — JPMorgan, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, UBS — is now quietly moving on-chain - What x402 is and why AI agents are already paying each other on-chain - Why agentic activity will be the primary use of crypto networks within a few years - The highest-leverage opportunities for builders in the next 3 years - The mindset and traits Xen looks for when hiring builders and backing founders If you're a fintech founder, a builder thinking about where to place your bets next, or anyone trying to understand how crypto and AI agents are about to reshape the financial system, this one is essential listening. Check out our website [https://workinfintech.com/ ] and subscribe to our mailing list to hear more about opportunities in fintech and web3. Follow our socials Linkedin [https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global/], Twitter [https://twitter.com/WorkinFintech], Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw] https://workinfintech.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global https://www.twitter.com/workinfintech https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw

GPT-5.5, Codex & AGI: Inside AI Adoption at the World's Biggest Banks | WIF Podcast

Today's guest is Matt Weaver, Head of Solutions Engineering for EMEA at OpenAI, working directly with some of the biggest names in financial services including Revolut, Alicabank, and BBVA. Before OpenAI, Matt spent four years at a pre-ChatGPT AI company helping banks extract data from documents using traditional machine learning. When ChatGPT burst onto the scene and disrupted everything he was working on, he knew there was only one place he needed to be, and he was fortunate enough to get the call from OpenAI, where he's spent the last two years building out the Solutions Engineering team across EMEA from the ground up. In the full episode, we cover: * How AI has moved from pilots to production inside major financial institutions * What GPT-5.5 can do that the models couldn't six months ago * The highest ROI use cases in financial services right now * How OpenAI helps banks navigate regulation, compliance, and data residency * What AI agents actually are, and how long they can now run without human input * Why entry-level employees are outperforming tenured colleagues with AI tools * How to go use ChatGPT to it best of power If you're in fintech, working inside a financial institution, or trying to understand how AI is actually being deployed at scale, this one is essential listening. Connect with Matt Weaver: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrmattweaver/ Matthew Cheung (Host & Founder Work in Fintech): https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewcheung50/ Check out our website [https://workinfintech.com/ ] and subscribe to our mailing list to hear more about opportunities in fintech and web3. Follow our socials Linkedin [https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global/], Twitter [https://twitter.com/WorkinFintech], Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw] https://workinfintech.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global https://www.twitter.com/workinfintech https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw