Application in Asia and the UK’

as being for people who could not find a better job. It is was either a second or even last choice.

However, the world has change. In London, the best graduating students do not want to go to banks and do not want to go to consultancy. They want to set up their own business and run their own companies. Organisations are finding it difficult to hire the best students from universities because they want to be entrepreneurs now. The world has changed to some extent. It always makes sense to work and learn in large company but you have to be brave enough to leave and do your own thing. Well, these are basically the stakeholders in a fintech ecosystem.

The media has got an important role to play, to highlight the successes and celebrate them.

You founded Fintech Circle and currently its CEO, what is it about?

Fintech Circle does three things. The first thing is that we invest in fintech start-ups. We are a group of 80 investors and we invest in early stage fintech companies, the first time they look for money.

The second thing we do is that we focus on fintech education. This is why I am here in Nigeria, to bring fintech education designed by Fintech Circle to Nigeria. We have got a partnership in Nigeria with the Africa Fintech Network and with Segun Aina, president of the Fintech Association of Nigeria and chairman of the African Fintech Network to bring fintech education to Nigeria and to Africa.

This is the partnership we signed at the Africa Fintech Festival. We have written three books already about fintech: The Fintech Book; The Wealth Tech Book and Insure Tech Book. All these three books are published by Wiley publishing house and have become global bestsellers. This is because everybody wants to learn about fintech.

We also offer courses. We offered our first fintech master class in Africa to the board members of Accion Micro Finance Bank.

We educate the board and C-level executives of large banks to understand what fintech means to them and how to develop a strategy for their banks to be competitive in the future of finance. This is our education focus through books and courses. We also have online courses that last for as short as an hour or two for individuals who want to up-skill and learn.

The third thing Fintech Circle does is that we work with banks implementing enterprise innovation projects. For example we are working with a bank in France. We are basically accelerating internal start-ups. It is a very interesting innovation model.

The bank said they have a lot of talented and creative employees that it wanted to help come up with fintech ideas. These employees takes six months off their day jobs but work on a fintech start-up and during those six months they still get paid by the bank. But they have got six months to launch a fintech internally, after the six months, they could either return to their jobs or continue developing the start-up if it has become so successful and the company supports them. This is a way of changing the culture internally to make your employees in the bank more agile and fintech experts. And they may hopefully come up with interesting business models and new products.

So, we basically advise banks on how to innovate internally and what innovation methods are there internally.

How would you describe fintech as it is known today: disruptive or innovative?

The way I describe it is applying technology to finance, any type of technology applied to the financial sector. When you look at financial services there is retail banking, corporate banking, asset management, payments and insurance. These financial services are all touched by fintech. And there various business models too business to business (B2B), business to customer (B2C), business to government (B2G) or a platform or peer to peer (P2P). Uber, the car hailing company is an example of P2P business model.

The third dimension is the nature of technology applied: artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and big data analytics. In summary it means, innovation, new business models and technology applied to financial services. This is what fintech is all about. Let me draw you a picture of what this looks like on paper. And she did in less than five minutes.

How do you see fintech development in Nigeria?

I think there is a lot happening in Nigeria. There are fintech products that have been developed in Nigeria, which have application in Asia or the U.K. In the U.K. there are about 4 million unbanked adults. So, Nigerian fintech entrepreneurs have a large market to export their fintech ideas and products to.

How is fintech regulated in Europe and what can Nigeria learn?

The fintech sector is only regulated when it becomes a finance business. For as long as you are a software business, which most fintech companies are, they are not regulated by the financial regulator because they are software businesses selling to banks. You are regulated when you sell to the public. If you are fintech company that sells to the end-user, then you have to make sure you protect the investors and customers, then regulation becomes important. When you become a public financial services provider, then you have to be regulated. But if you are just a software provider, you do not need to be.

Another thing the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the U.K. does is they use the proportionality principle. Proportionality principle means if you are a start-up with five employees and you want to create a service for end customers, the regulation will apply to you when you launch. But it will be softer than if you were a bank with 5, 000 members of staff. So, it is about the impact you could cause.

The FCA created a regulatory sandbox and has opened up to speak to and help fintech companies to understand regulation better and free of charge. This is really important because fintech start-ups have no money and many of them are still bootstrapping. A start-up has no money for a lawyer that can help it understand regulations. It is then important that the regulator gives them free advice. The FCA has got an innovation unit which helps startups to get access to advice on which regulation is important to them.

Back to the regulatory sandbox, this means that a start-up can experiment with business models in a controlled environment. This helps the regulator to also learn about new technologies. People in regulation have got a difficult job nowadays because it is all change around them. How should regulators regulate areas they do not understand yet? This is very difficult because you do not want to stop innovation by over regulating it. The best way, is for regulators and fintech companies to work closely together. This is very important in Nigeria too; the regulators need to support fintech start-ups.

You were recently appointed non-executive director at the Crown Agents Bank, what does the bank do?

The Crown Agents Bank is a bank which goes back 200 years to the U.K. Royal Family. Now, the big focus of the bank is Africa and may be other emerging markets in Asia and Latin America.

Our customers are central banks in most countries. We work with World Bank and International Monetary Fund to help the central banks have enough foreign exchange liquidity reserves and do forex payments.

For example, if there is money payment coming in from a large charity and the money is in US dollars and in Ethiopia they need it in the local currency. In a situation such as this, Crown Agents Bank will convert US dollars into the local currency and allow people to be paid in the local currency. This is what we do at the bank. We also have very strong focus on social inclusion. We want to make sure all African countries have got access to the right currency and people can pay to Africa and also repatriate funds out of Africa.

Telecommunication companies will soon start playing in Nigeria’s financial services sector, providing payments solutions. What lessons can we learn from Safaricom’s mobile money product, mpesa in Kenya?

For us in Europe and the U.K. we always talk about mpesa as a big success story in Africa. Everyone is saying they invented mobile money and I have not heard of anything which did not work, to be honest. The telcos have clearly found a niche in the market where banks were not active. It is the case that lots of people who have no bank accounts have mobile phones. Your mobile phone might become your bank. Being able to provide your financial services on a mobile phone is very important for anybody’s survival.

People do not want to go to a branch necessarily, may be the older generation like it. They want to talk to the bank manager but most people want to do everything on the phone. Fintech does not mean it should be complicated for the customer. It should be very convenient and simple, even when it took two years of hard work to develop the product.

How much of coding among citizens does a country need to thrive in a knowledge economy driven by digital technology such as fintech?

I think it is something lots of people should learn. You should encourage girls, boys in school already to take up coding lessons and establish coding clubs in secondary schools. From 10 years onwards, children should be exposed to computer, just as they are exposed to other human languages. Coding teaches you how to talk to a machine, a computer. In the future everybody needs to understand machine language.

Coders will not be the only ones needed. Creative designers who might understand coding will also be in high demand. These people can design new products and customer experience solutions. You also need people who are empathetic, who can see the world from the customers’ point of view. An empathetic person understands how people who live in the villages or outside of nowhere feel and what problems they want solved.

In terms of education, I think everybody should be given a chance to learn coding. But if it is not their strength, you can still become a very successful person in fintech. You could become a marketing man- ager, operations or human resource personnel at a fintech company. Fintech has got lots of jobs to offer.

I will recommend the government makes coding part of the secondary school curriculum. What we do in the U.K. is that everybody has access to coding classes.

You have so much drive in you. Where is this from, what drives you?

I think it comes down to having a happy childhood. A happy childhood is important; having loving parents. In Austria we say, happy childhood lasts a lifetime. This is true because if you had a happy childhood, you will be doing okay for the rest of your life, normally.

I also love to build bridges among companies, countries and other people. Diversity for me is very important. There is so much we can share together. We will organise the first Fintech Bridge conference in London between the U.K. and Asia. Many China companies will come to London to attend. This is social inclusion, financial inclusion and fintech inclusion.

Fintech is a global industry. Fintech unites us all. Technology unites us all.

Tell us about Fintech Circles coming master classes for Nigerian financial institutions.

Here in Nigeria the fintech master classes for banks are in the offing. There will be three to five days seminars for the board and leadership teams of banks. We teach banks to prepare themselves for the financial future and digital transformation. These master classes we organise them in partnership with Lagos-based Fintech Associates Limited and Fintech Institute here in Lagos. It is part of the African Fintech Network. We will come back in 2019