The Impact Team Gulf
Join CEO Mark Rothwell-Brooks from Dubai discuss the inside track on all matters Digital and AI transformation.
The Impact Team Gulf
The Rest is Fintech - Finbridge Global with Barbara Gottardi
In this episode, we are joined by Barbara Gottardi, CEO of Finbridge Global. We talk about how Financial Institutions strangle Fintechs during the process of identifying and onboarding them and how there's a better way for both parties to succeed.
Barbara talks about her ambition that Finbridge Global becomes the worlds leading Fintech Credential platform and muses what was going through her mind to leave the (relative) safety of a corporate career as CIO at one of the the worlds largest Banks to embrace the life of an entrepreneur and CEO of her own start-up.
In a break from our normal cadence of podcast releases, I'm joined briefly by Barbara Cotardi of CEO of Finbridge Global. Barbara has had a stellar career in some of the world's largest financial institutions. Twenty plus years as CAO in retail, wholesale and private banking has seen us suffer, if that's the right word, as organisations kill fintechs in the process of working out what they do, how they do it, how they can be on board and usefully delivering the value they claim to have. In her experience, the whole process is dysfunctional, too lengthy, and certainly not agile, which is something that the whole industry's been advocating over the last ten years. So disappointed what she was by our industry's wonderful ability to break fintechs in the process and stifle innovation, she's left the comfort, again, if that's the right word, of corporate life, and she's started her own organisation. We talk about the vision for Finbridge, the expansion plan she's executing, and why she's decided to focus the platform in MENA around RegTech and payments. So I give you Barbara Gattardi. So welcome Barbara. Um do you want to tell our um listeners a little bit about yourself, for those that don't know you and or who've been following what you've been doing?
SPEAKER_01:Hey Mark, so I am an Italian 100%, right? Grew up in Italy, but left Italy after university. Um had a quick stint of a couple of years in Dublin and then been in London ever since. Ended up marrying a Brit and stuck here for a bit, or trying to make the most of um Italy and Britain. Um, I think all the good reasons why I came to England have quickly are disappearing. Um when I moved here, Italian politics was rubbish and UK was very irrespectful. Now it looks like we've gone the other way. But um, but yeah, so I spent most of my career at HSBC. I was there for 16 years, uh, covered different roles, uh, mainly across tech. Um, and lately I was the CIO for Retail Business Banking and Channel. I then left to become the CIO for Vanguard Europe. Um, and then I did a year at Admiral Money, and then stupidly I decided to become an entrepreneur, and I founded a company called Finbridge Global.
SPEAKER_00:So that's a great segue into why leave the relative comfort, if that is the right word, of corporate life to go start uh your own endeavour. So, why did you start Finbridge Global? And what was the problem that you saw that needed fixing, I guess, is the hardest question.
SPEAKER_01:So the the why is still a really good question, which I do kind of wonder why was that stupid idea to leave whatever comfort of a guaranteed monthly salary to move to this. But the key thing is there is a problem. There's a lot of people saying that they support and they want FinTech to succeed, and actually innovation is the focus of growth. But most of the people talking about that never worked in tech or never worked in finance. And I think there is still a big problem in financial institutions being able to truly leverage and exploit what the advantages of the fintech bring to financial institutions. I think the the processes are too long, they're cumbersome, there's a lot of excuses on why it takes so long. And I think now, especially with AI and with the speed of technology, this is no longer sustainable. So people have to be able to quickly make decisions, quickly be able to identify the best match for their for what they're looking for. And what we're trying to do with the platform is really we want to become the FinTech credential platform. So allow FinTech to create, maintain, and update their information in one place and also be guided to what they really need to have up front. I think a lot of solutions are failing because the partnerships are not set up right, and also because people are rushing to build something that looks like a product, but it's not built properly. Um, and then they're trying to retrofit things that just doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I mean I certainly resonates with me. I mean, I I remember when I was doing some work in larger organizations, in fact, obviously, uh as you know, we worked in the same one. The the the time it took to onboard, well, to identify identification of who you think you might want to work with is one thing. Turning the organization towards an onboarding experience that's anything less than six, eight, nine months is is something else, and by which time your requirements are usually different. Um, and if the if the fin if you've not killed the fintech in the process, very terminally ill by the time you do get them on board. So I know I'm I I can certainly resonate with that. I guess my understanding of the platform, having worked with you, is that it it's not about what's the best fintech for a financial institution, it's what's it's the best match, not necessarily the best product. Um, and it as I understand, it it you have a fintech community on the platform, but you've also got financial institutions on the platform and they're searching for whatever it is they're searching for. Give me all the fintechs in this location that does AML, for example, and I'll pick a pop, and it will then display on a level playing field the relative strengths and weaknesses across specific specified domains. Um, because as part of the onboarding process, the fintech do it once as opposed to doing it seven 17 different times for 17 different financial institutions. What other use cases are you seeing from the financial institution and the fintech that the the platform is being used for? Because there's I I can see there are multiple use cases.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, no, you're right, Matt. And I think for me it is uh there are plenty of Microsoft forms or application process or Word document or Excel spreadsheet, they all ask the same things in a different format, and people have become incredibly good at copy and paste, or now ChatGBT just for you know fills it up. But is that what you really need on the other side? And then I think speaking by experience, what's on the other side sometimes is literally a tick box exercise, and nobody actually ever looks at the answers, which is disgraceful. So if you talk about use case, the first one is RFI, request for information. Um you are a financial institution where you are looking for a new solution, or the FCA has mandated you to improve your process by looking for a new tech or implementing a new tech. The default answer in many organizations is it will take at least three months to run an RFI process. I think that's out of the aid. I think if you really know what you're looking for and you know what your guardrails are, and what uh what I mean by guardrails is you know what your risk appetite, your credential that needs to be there, and so forth, then you should be able to design minutes. You should be able to go somewhere, and this would be Finbridge Global, where you can actually see the FinTech out there, understand their risk posture, their assessment, their readiness, and be able to narrow down that list. Then you can go down and and and go into the deeper questions. But I think three to six months RFI process is really no longer necessary. Um then, I mean, for us, we've kind of evolved and created um evidence room where people can actually upload their key documents again. That's quite useful. Uh, and was requested by a group of our financial institutions. It's no longer kind of secure and safe to keep sending documents via email, and also you never remember what version of the document you send. So having something somewhere in one place where you give permission and you're in control on who can see what, I think is very helpful. And then the other things which um we're trying to push for is the third-party risk management. Many financial institutions have got a huge team, um, sometime offshore, where you do regularly, kinda means once every six months or every year, you send out this huge Excel award questionnaire where you're asking FinTech to revalidate their credential. And again, I think we should move the same way we move to kind of continuous improvement, it should be continuous monitoring. So if the fintech do maintain their information updated, then that process becomes a continuous check, not a kind of reactive because the regulator has asked you to check.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, that that that certainly speaks to the sort of improved vendor management experience. If you're both the FI and the and the FinTech itself, I I guess. I mean, the ability to come across a a number of financial institutions who are who are trying to keep tabs on their stable of uh emerging or or actual vendors that they're using, but to keep on top of their product development. And it's typical that the way that they keep on top of that is a series of sexal spreadsheets and outdated PowerPoint presentations which gives the product information. Obviously, the product is evolving because it's largely, you know, uh degrees of maturity in its own.
SPEAKER_01:Successful fintech will want to ensure they focus on a solid and robust product, and that's where they want to invest their people and uh time and resources. So if you then remove all the need for spreadsheet monkeys and kind of title there, then you probably also reduce the cost of running a fintech and focus much more on building a secure product.
SPEAKER_00:You've launched it recently in the Gulf. Um, and the focus uh for that particular region is RegTex and payments. Any particular reason why you're pushing the regtech and the payments aspects?
SPEAKER_01:So one of the things we said about a platform is we we've built it for the industry and with the industry. And that means that the same way we build the product, the original product in the UK, it was partly based on our experience, but also we brought together a very different group of financial institutions from asset management, wealth management, insurance, bank, building society, because on paper they claimed they were very different. And by actually getting people together in a room and talking through the process, you understand they all do the same things in a different way. They just call things differently. So that was really helpful for us to get to build the platform as we build. And, you know, even how we do next feature, we kind of suggest what we think is useful. And when we ask people to vote, we're often surprised that it's not what we thought. So we kind of turn based on what the clients need. So when we went to the Middle East, we tried to replicate the same process that we did in the UK and get together a group of financial institutions explaining what we wanted to do. And their feedback was that don't try and go out too broad to begin with, but they're really 2026 focus, budget, investment, and stuff is on reg tech and payment. So that's why we've it's we didn't make it up, we did ask for feedback, and that's what organizations have told us. Now I think is it is still a broad term because I think some people think that reg tech is no longer a fintech, which for us, any tech vendor selling to financial institutions is a type of fintech, and then you've got different capabilities. Um but yeah, that that's where the decision is coming from. It's it's just the beginning, and then hopefully from there we we can expand to other uh sectors.
SPEAKER_00:It's certainly the case. Obviously, we've been in the Gulf, um, we opened up in the Gulf this year. Um, we're certainly seeing uh uh quite a lot of activity by the regulators in the region. I guess that's a reflection of the maturity of the particular market as well. But also um the AI drive is very, very strong. Digital transformation is more or less done, I think. That was my view. AI transformation is probably the next thing that everyone is worrying about, and that also feeds into the Reg the Reg tech theme that I think that you're addressing. So I think it's certainly very, very appropriate that you've that's the level of focus immediately in the in the goal, certainly for 2026.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and we're actually launching based on the feedback, we're about to launch what we call the AI badge. So again, um I might be a bit sounds a bit cynical, but I think there's a lot of organizations that just put in AI in front of their product description just because that's where the investment is going. But if you look deep, they're not doing anything transformational or AI. So what we've created is almost a quick assessment that asks some clever questions, or not very clever, but like basic question to understand the level of AI that a product has. And that as well helps saving 20% effort on people when they're trying to select a fintech. They don't have time to do an NDA and spend time in a meeting, but they can quickly understand if that's the kind of AI solution they're looking for and provide feedback quickly as well.
SPEAKER_00:Interesting. So, how do people learn more about the platform? Where do they go? How do they enroll if you're fintech or FI or an investor or indeed an investor? Because we've not really talked about the investment angle, but there's an investment use case as well, obviously.
SPEAKER_01:Um, there is an investment, there's a live investment case now. So we've partnered with a company called Lexan Partners, they're looking for FinTech uh with SCIS and um assurance. So if you're looking for that, please do get in touch. Um, you can find us through our West website, uh Finbridge Global.com. You can find us through LinkedIn, and uh you know you can email us, you can email uh me directly. If you're a fintech, the sign up is digitally, and you can just sign up with your ID, and the journey is pretty simple. And once you're in the platform, you get connected with the growing community and ecosystem, and you can also see the financial institution and the investor and the platform, and you can come to our event. We have a monthly innovation board. Um, and every quarter we try to do what we call dragon stand. So you have the opportunity to come and pitch to financial institution or investors.
SPEAKER_00:And that the one in MENA for that is in January, I understand.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Excellent. So if you are a RegTech Payment FinTech in MENA, please enrol and you can then come to the event and get introduced to a lot of financial institutions that might um be interested in what you do. Um that's really useful. So we'll answer some quick five questions. So, what what is the story that bridge? Now you mentioned you're from Italy. Um, I think there's a bridge reference, but what what what is that?
SPEAKER_01:So I grew up um about 50 kilometers north of Venice. I did go to university in Venice, and my dad's side of the family were from Venice. My grandparents used to own a pharmacy on Rialto Bridge. And so that's the bridge. So excellent.
SPEAKER_00:And and and I think I answered, I think I know the answer to this question because you sort of intimated right the right at this right at the beginning. Why have you chosen London when you could live in Italy or Dubai or Abu Dhabi or anywhere in the world? What what made you choose London?
SPEAKER_01:I know, I know, that's uh so the true story was that actually London was closing too easily when I moved from Dublin, so it was on the way back.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_01:But I kind of got stuck here. But you know, kids are one kid is a uni, the other one will be shortly, so then we might have more freedom to travel across the countries.
SPEAKER_00:Excellent, excellent. And finally, right, right, so running your own company, I've I'll be interested in your view on this because I I I certainly have a view because I I've been there. But is running your own company just as rewarding as running a global IT organization? I mean, some of the organizations that you yeah, but every 100,000 people that worked in organizations that you've been responsible for from an IT perspective, I mean, it's that's a far cry from running your own organization.
SPEAKER_01:So if the question is rewarding, I think the good days in running your own company are way more rewarding. But you need to be prepared that the bad days are freaking hard. So resilience is my middle name. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Someone said to me once when I was starting my own stuff that it's the most it's the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life, but it's also the most rewarding. And I think I've I I I certainly think that that's true.
SPEAKER_01:I agree. I mean, if you you know, any free therapy or you want to really know about yourself, I think go and set up your own company.
SPEAKER_00:Excellent. All right, Barbara. Well, thank you for that. That's great. Um, we'll put all your details in the notes um of how people can get hold of uh you on the platform. And um, yes, thank you, Vit. Thank you very much. Speak to you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you very much.