Fintech Takes

The Rules for Self-Driving Money

Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by two of my favorite repeat guests: Steve Boms [https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenboms/] (Executive Director of FDATA North America) and Dan Murphy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljmurphy01/] (Founder of Sunset Park Advisors; formerly CFPB). We set aside Section 1033 for an hour to talk about agentic finance; what happens when AI agents don't just read your financial data, but act on it. First up, the question any skeptical consumer would ask: robo-advisors already exist, so what's new here? Dan's answer took the conversation back further than I expected, to a pre-fintech era of credit counselors, financial advisors, and deposit brokers who worked the phones shopping a client's savings around for a better CD rate. Then, Dan and Steve walk me through a framework from FDATA's forthcoming white paper splitting agentic finance into three layers: read, instruct, and transact. We get into what each layer actually requires on liability, consent, and fiduciary duty, and what the UK, Australia, and Brazil have already built in this space that the US hasn't. We also dig into the use cases that could change someone's day, like an "anti-inertia" tool that moves your savings the moment your bank stops paying a competitive rate. Tune in for a conversation about what it means to give an AI permission to spend your money, and why the rulebook we already have may be more ready for this than anyone expects. FDATA North America published a white paper [https://mcusercontent.com/d62b8c1570b4b45285fbb8f4b/files/e46f523e-ebad-451f-c7de-f5e1b429b5f3/FDATA_Access_to_Action_White_Paper.pdf?hashed_user=8940d6f6521f880a7ba148c1439fbb49] on this exact topic, which you should read here: https://bit.ly/4wiB0a4 [https://bit.ly/4wiB0a4]  --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.  Every small business is different — but most lenders only see a snapshot. Ocrolus gives SMB lenders the cash flow analytics, borrower behavior and peer context to fund more, faster, with confidence. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ [https://www.ocrolus.com/] for more.  --- Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ [https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/] And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos]. --- Follow Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenboms/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenboms/] Follow Dan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljmurphy01/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljmurphy01/]   Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson] X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson [https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson]

Fintech Takes x TruStage presents Lending, Unbundled Ep 3: Revenue at Stake

Welcome to Lending, Unbundled, a new series from Fintech Takes, sponsored by our friends at TruStage. The series traces how consumer lending went from a single institution that handled everything to a modular value chain of specialized providers, each owning one piece of the loan, and asks what lending, unbundled, has cost the industry along the way. In Episode 3, my cohost Bjoern Nordmann [https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoernnordmann/] (VP of New Market Development at TruStage) and I sit down with Aditya Khandekar [https://www.linkedin.com/in/adityakhandekar/], CRO of Corridor Platforms, to explore what happens when lending goes modular, but accountability still needs to be end-to-end (not just owned at one point in the loan lifecycle). When a borrower hits hardship, the originator, servicer, and funding source may all have different incentives. But the borrower doesn’t care who technically owns the loan; they blame the brand they can see. That’s why governance can’t sit at the end of the process, waiting to validate what already happened. Aditya’s argument is that governed decisioning can become the connective tissue: a shared evidence layer across acquisition, servicing, delinquency management, compliance, and customer management. Credit risk can move downstream. Reputation risk cannot. --- This episode is brought to you by TruStage. TruStage is a financially strong insurance and financial services provider, built on the philosophy of people helping people, meeting the needs of middle-market consumers and the businesses that serve them since day one.  We believe a brighter financial future should be accessible to everyone, and our products and solutions help people confidently make financial decisions that work for them at every stage of life. Visit https://trustage.com [https://trustage.com/] for more information. --- Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ [https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/] And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos]. Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson] Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson [https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson] --- Follow Bjoern: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoernnordmann/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoernnordmann/] Follow Aditya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adityakhandekar/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/adityakhandekar/]

Retuning the Math of Life

Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I'm your host, Alex Johnson, and today one of our favorite guests is back: Frank Rotman, founding partner of 37Maru and co-founder and partner emeritus at QED Investors. First, we chat about what happens to an entire industry once its customers have concluded the game is rigged, which is why financial nihilism now shows up everywhere from ETFs built on sports bets to DeFi products costumed as savings accounts. Frank has a theory he calls p(win)=0; once someone concludes their probability of winning is zero, walking away from the game is rational.  From there, we separate the AI use cases ready for prime time from the ones that aren’t. Back office work like AML documentation and exception processing is ripe for automation. A bank chatbot delivering flawless, compliant financial advice is a different proposition. In financial services, 98% accuracy can still equal zero. Finally, we close on student lending, an area where Frank has firsthand experience (having built a student lending company before QED), and firsthand ideas (having spent the better part of a year making the case for reform to the Department of Education and the IRS). His proposal for how the government could build a “truth file" on which degrees pay off is one of the more concrete policy ideas we discuss. Expect a wide-ranging conversation. Frank has a gift for making financial nihilism, AI, and student loan policy sound like one continuous argument, and by the end, I’m convinced that it is. --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.  Every small business is different — but most lenders only see a snapshot. Ocrolus gives SMB lenders the cash flow analytics, borrower behavior and peer context to fund more, faster, with confidence. Visit ⁠https://www.ocrolus.com/⁠ [https://www.ocrolus.com/] for more.  --- Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday:⁠ https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/⁠ [https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/] And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my⁠ YouTube page⁠ [https://www.youtube.com/@FintechTakes]. --- Follow Frank: LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-rotman/⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-rotman/] X: ⁠https://x.com/fintechjunkie⁠ [https://x.com/fintechjunkie]   Follow Alex:  YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@FintechTakes⁠ [https://www.youtube.com/@FintechTakes] LinkedIn:⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson] X:⁠ https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson⁠ [https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson]

Fintech Takes x TruStage presents Lending, Unbundled Ep 2: The Confidence Gap

Welcome to Lending, Unbundled, a new series from Fintech Takes, sponsored by our friends at TruStage. The series traces how consumer lending went from a single institution that handled everything to a modular value chain of specialized providers, each owning one piece of the loan, and asks what lending, unbundled, has cost the industry along the way. In Episode 2, my cohost Bjoern Nordmann (VP of New Market Development at TruStage) and I sit down with Taylor Nelms [https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-nelms/], VP of Research & Insights at the Financial Health Network to untangle why consumer confidence is sitting about as low as it's ever been on record, Financial health challenges show up across the income spectrum, driven by volatility on both sides of the household ledger: 7 in 10 households report a significant unexpected expense each year, and recent labor market research shows unpredictable income is now the norm for most workers (not just those with unpredictable hours).  As Taylor puts it, the job of a lender isn't just extending credit. It's selling certainty against volatility. — This episode is brought to you by TruStage. TruStage is a financially strong insurance and financial services provider, built on the philosophy of people helping people, meeting the needs of middle-market consumers and the businesses that serve them since day one.  We believe a brighter financial future should be accessible to everyone, and our products and solutions help people confidently make financial decisions that work for them at every stage of life. Visit ⁠https://trustage.com⁠ [https://trustage.com/] for more information. --- Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday:⁠ https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/⁠ [https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/] And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my⁠ YouTube page⁠ [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos]. --- Follow Bjoern on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoernnordmann/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoernnordmann/] Follow Taylor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-nelms/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-nelms/]  Follow Alex:  YouTube:⁠ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos⁠ [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos] LinkedIn:⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson] Twitter:⁠ https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson [https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson]

Not Fintech Investment Advice: Primitive, Exponent, Prime Intellect, Coverd

Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I do what we do best: talk about companies we're absolutely not giving investment advice on. First up is Primitive, an agent control plane for large financial institutions trying to figure out what to do with AI agents. We get into why regulated institutions need infrastructure that sits above any one model provider, token budgets, and why AI labs deploying engineers into financial institutions should be treated less like a gift and more like a Trojan horse. Next is Exponent, a finance platform for franchisees. Franchises are one of the most reliable (and overlooked) paths to wealth building. We talk about why franchisees are hard to underwrite, how SBA lending fits in, and why a platform that helps both the borrower and lender could become the financial operating system for multi-location franchise entrepreneurs. Then there's Prime Intellect, which helps companies train, deploy, evaluate, and improve their own models. This leads us into one of our favorite nerd corridors: what happens when you train transformer models on financial events instead of language? Financial data may have its own syntax, and the models that understand it may be far more useful than the ones that chat well. We close with Covered, a gamified credit card that uses variable rewards and sweepstakes to make cash back feel like a chance to win big. Customer acquisition is brutal, top-of-wallet even harder, and in a casino economy, nudging people toward something marginally better is at least honest about the stakes. Plus, the most important question in the episode: is Anna or Elsa the real protagonist of Frozen? --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.  Every small business is different — but most lenders only see a snapshot. Ocrolus gives SMB lenders the cash flow analytics, borrower behavior and peer context to fund more, faster, with confidence. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ [https://www.ocrolus.com/] for more.  --- Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ [https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/] And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos]. Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson] Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson [https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson] Follow Simon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/] Substack: https://sytaylor.substack.com [https://sytaylor.substack.com] --- Companies featured: https://primitive.com/ [https://primitive.com/] https://exponentfi.com/ [https://exponentfi.com/] https://www.primeintellect.ai/ [https://www.primeintellect.ai/] https://www.coverd.us/ [https://www.coverd.us/]