The Future of Innovation in Personal Finance with Ajen Mothee

In this episode of Codex Futures, Ajen Mothee, Head of Innovation for Personal Finance at Old Mutual, discusses the evolution of banking and insurance in South Africa. He emphasizes the importance of financial inclusion, engagement through storytelling, and the need for innovation within a regulated industry. Ajen shares insights on building a culture of innovation, the role of AI, and the significance of understanding generational shifts in financial engagement. He concludes with key takeaways for financial innovators, highlighting the importance of trust and simplicity in delivering value to customers.

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The views and opinions expressed by the guest on this podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Old Mutual.

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Transcript

The Concept of Financial Inclusion

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We always talk about this concept of financial inclusion, and I think the word inclusion might be the wrong word. You might be invited, but if you can't engage with them, then you're not really included.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Hello and welcome to Codex Futures, a triptych podcast decoding how we'll live, learn, and play in the future. Each episode, we dive into a different industry to uncover the trends, cultural shifts, and powerful forces reshaping it and what those changes mean for the people driving innovation forward. In today's episode, we are thrilled to welcome Ajun Mothi, Head of Innovation for Personal Finance at Old Mutual, one of South Africa's leading financial service groups. Together, we'll explore how banking and insurance is evolving in South Africa, from digital tools and gamification to a stronger focus on financial wellness, opening up new opportunities for empowerment, transparency, and smarter money management. Welcome, Magin. Wonderful to have you.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Hi, Louise. Thank you. Wonderful to be here with you.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Fantastic. So obviously, I've shared your title, but would love to bring to life your role in your words if you could share a little bit more about what that means in reality and what and maybe your journey into that role.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Yeah, sure. So I lead innovation for personal finance, all mutual personal finance. And essentially, this role, it's about turning ideas into real usable products and experiences that helps to improve people's financial lives. My key focus areas are around financial wellness, as you've mentioned, also digital experiences, new business models, and building out capabilities using things like AI and education platforms, data-driven services, and those sort of things. I've had quite a varied background in the world of corporate. And I've worked in product distribution, marketing, digital, customer experience, so various areas. At the end of the day, what ties it together for me is basically it's about the customer. It's about creating the best customer experiences that I can. For me, it's about execution over ideas. Over time, what I've come to realize is that the execution of ideas man it actually matters way more than the amount of ideas that you get. It's all about what do you actually do with it.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Absolutely agree with you. On the ideation or innovation is as much about the execution as it is the idea or more about the execution. Yeah, it's quite easy to stay in that blue sky thinking phase, but actually pulling it through and making it real and actionable within the organization is critical. Would you be able to bring that to life with um, you know, and I know you know you've worked on a bunch of previous brilliant projects, would you be able to bring that to life with um, you know, is that a project you're particularly proud of?

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Well, one of them is Money Versity Plus. It's what we call a

Innovating Personal Finance: The Role of Ajay Nmoti

SPEAKER_00 2:53

financial edutainment platform. So basically, what it is is it's delivering financial education in the form of a streaming entertainment platform. The idea there is that, you know, people are often very anxious about money and not very confident in the decisions that they make, especially when it comes to things like financial planning, budgeting, investing, saving for the future, and so on. So the idea is how do you build something that people experience and that they learn from that experience as opposed to something that would be quite heavy in theory and you know would be complex. And obviously that's been done for many, many years and and you know, it hasn't really achieved the desired outcome. So I think Moneyverse is a platform that's quite unique in that we've curated a whole lot of content in the form of podcasts, videos, articles, games, etc., that that people can engage with. And I'm talking young people from six years old all the way up to retirement, that can engage with, that can learn different financial concepts and actually apply, you know, what they're learning to real life. It's been wildly successful. It's got well over 300,000 users at the moment that are active on that platform and it continues to grow daily, which is very encouraging. And it tells us that the experiences that we've built and the stories that we've built, people can identify with that and they're enjoying learning from that. Is the outcome that we were hoping for, and and and that's the outcome that we're seeing. So from an innovation execution perspective, that is that is as good as it gets.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Yeah, yeah, fantastic. Well, no, congratulations, such a such a fantastic product. Was that a moment? If you think about that money university journey, when did that happen, or is it uh is it an ongoing thing? Like how how did it move from you know concept to actual thing?

SPEAKER_00 5:00

So, so the concept around it, I mean, look, digital tools have existed since, I mean, since the digital age began, right? But what we found is that so people don't engage with finance. They don't engage with things that are that require any form of study. They would do that if they need to achieve some sort of short-term goal and it's over. It's not something that kind of really becomes a habit. What I realized, I think, very early on is that we we gotta move it from boring to to engaging. So it's got to become something that continuously you want to engage with, and it's not something being pushed at you. It's something you choose to engage with. And very interestingly, what happened there was I was observing how people interact with streaming services

Engagement Through Storytelling in Financial Education

SPEAKER_00 5:49

and realized don't do much in terms of marketing or pushing themselves. They may say, you know, we have this or we have that type of content available, and they leave it at that. But people gravitate towards it because they can go in, they can personalize, they can choose what they want, when they want it, they can choose if they want to consume everything or little chunks of the content, and that makes a huge difference in the level of engagement. So I looked at it and thought, well, why not build financial education in a similar way where the user gets to decide what they want to do and they personalize it based on where they are in their life stage. And I think that part, that life stage part for me, became the key to the whole thing because people at different life stages react to things differently and they do things very differently. And in the South African context, I think what's more important is there's no lack of digital tools and those sort of things. A lot of it is out there and it exists. I think what it comes down to is can people not only access it but engage with it in a way that they want to? So, you know, we always talk about this concept, Louise, of financial inclusion. And I think the word inclusion might be the wrong word. Because inclusion kind of implies you've been invited. I've offered you an invitation, therefore you are included. And that's not really how it works because you might be invited, but can you really engage? And that's a whole different question altogether, because you probably can't. So we can give you access to cryptocurrencies and unit trusts and all of these interesting things, you know, that's that financial tools and whatever that's out there. But if you can't engage with them, then you're not really included. You've just been invited to the party, but you're not really included in. The different elements that kind of shaped what the platform has become. It's it's kind of those learnings and those observations over time that led to it being what it is today. And we continue to use those those user insights like daily to improve upon the platform and to deliver content that that people will find relevant and and engaging.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Yeah, no, fantastic. Thank you for for going off topic a little bit. I love that the kind of the push on actually, it's not just about inclusion. You need to truly truly be inclusive, you need to build engagement into it as well. You can't just have it there ready for people to grab. You need to understand and connect with them in a way to create something that they will be engaged with.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Yes. I mean, I seen, for example, once again, in the South African context, it's probably a lot better, or not better, but probably a lot bigger, maybe in in in other parts of the world. Blockchain is a good example. It's been around for a while now, and there's always been a lot of hype about it. It will change industries, it will do this, it will do that. And yes, it has the potential to probably do that. But once again, people have been included into it, as in like there's all this information about it. Nobody knows how to engage with it. Everybody's like, hmm,

Navigating Innovation in a Regulated Industry

SPEAKER_00 9:08

I wonder who's gonna build something useful out of this that the rest of us will actually start to adopt at scale. And we've not seen that actually happen as yet. That's why I also think that there are the few that understand it really well and they can engage with it. But until the masses are at that level, then you're not gonna see a lot come out of it. Because once again, people are included, but not really engaging because that level of knowledge to engage isn't there as I'm sure it will shift over time, definitely, but for now, I mean, that's you know, kind of my observation of how it's sort of playing out. It's a little bit slow.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah, really interesting. And how do you build engagement? How do you get people to that next step? Is it about changing your communications? Is it about changing products or the services?

SPEAKER_00 10:01

So we give you a very kind of a different story to to that point. So my take on this, a lot of your listeners are probably gonna find, well, this guy has some strange, some strange things going on in his head. I was thinking about this and I was thinking, you know, engagement. So if you look at these days, you look at pop music, and I was thinking, what makes artists really great and memorable? And I found that what it comes down to, and this is very interesting. I was watching that Taylor Swift concert with my daughter, and and then I thought about this and I was like, yeah, this is it. It is storytelling. Her music tells a story. Every song is a story. When you listen to what she's saying, you can almost imagine the scene that's going on. Yes. You know? So she's painting a picture in your head through her music. Even if you're not watching the music video, but you are listening to her for the first time, you almost can imagine what's happening. That's classic storytelling. And all the great artists could do that almost naturally. You look at Michael Jackson, Queen, Sting, all of them, they all could do this very, very naturally. Their music told a story. Whether you like the story or not, didn't matter. The fact is there was a story. Then there came a lot of other types of music that were memorable for the tune and nothing else. There was no story. They were just beats that kind of stuck in your head. And those never reached the greatness of the others. So people tend to engage with things where there's a story, and it doesn't matter whether that story applies to them or not, it's just that there is a story. That story is either entertaining or it's personal or it's teaching you something, or it reminds you, it creates some emotion in you, and then you're like, wow, that's a really good story. And I think that for me is is key to how you

Building a Culture of Innovation

SPEAKER_00 12:03

create engagement. It's through stories. So you'll find a lot of the content on the Money Versity platform speaks to that. It's stories. You'll see like there's an accident, and somebody's complaining to somebody, and they should have done this and they should have done that, and it's telling you like the value of being ensured or what the steps are to take. And then you realize, oh no, I don't, if this were to happen to me, I don't know, or I wouldn't know what to do, except freak out at the other person. I wouldn't know what are the logical steps to follow. So it's those kind of things that's giving you those stories, and those stories are the things you will remember, and that is what you would, you would, you know, you would want to engage with. A lot of the stuff in our industry, Louise, is very it's it's full of jargon, it's heavy. So for people outside of the industry, it's always like, shop, that financial services world is just one massive mess. For me, it doesn't have to be that way. It really doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to go and try to simplify every single term or or jargon or concept that's there. What you can do is you can use those things to tell stories that people understand it, but in their own way. And that's perfectly fine. It's a massive step forward, I mean if we can relate to it in some way, as opposed to saying, nope, I just don't want to earn what this, you know, ever again kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that. I mean, that's I mean that was a great, didn't know where you quite were going to go with that, but that's a really, really great point, isn't it? It's um it's it's very fundamental that if you think about the the stories that get passed down through generations, it's this very human thing that equalizes everyone because people remember a story and a narrative and a journey, and people want to engage with that versus just something that's just information. Do you think there's anything around the role of innovation within that context that's different from other industries or categories? Or do you think it's, you know, innovation is a fundamental universal thing?

SPEAKER_00 14:08

So innovation itself is, so I very much believe it's a it's a universal foundational thing. It's something that almost every single industry has to some extent. And most businesses have it to some extent, whether it's whether it's a function by itself or whether it is just the way the business operates, but it's it's there. So it's more of a culture thing, I think. In finance, yeah, but different because finance does not traditionally operate like that. Finance is is meant to be kind of risk-averse and safe and very trustworthy and kind of making sure everything is colored within the lines. And my view is you can do both. You can do that, and you should do that, and you should make make absolutely sure everything is secure and everything is safe and trust is maintained between you and your customers. That's kind of paramount. You don't ever break

The Future of Financial Services: Ecosystems and AI

SPEAKER_00 15:01

that. But having said that, doesn't mean you can't innovate, doesn't mean can't find new ways of doing things and creating engagement and creating value for customers in new and unexpected ways. I think they expect both. They don't expect a financial services company to remain what it's always been. I don't think it's something they would even encourage. It's a case of saying that is first prize. We want the safety and the security. Yeah. And we want you to do keep all your promises. We want you to do that. But at the same time, we want you to surprise us with nice new things. We want you to grow with us. As the world is changing, we want to see you evolving too, and you doing new things to us, and you are making our lives easier, and you are actively following our journeys. I think I think they definitely want that, you know. So in financial services, you definitely need to do to do both. Although, in my view, and I might be a bit biased, but it's way more difficult in financial to be innovative than it is in probably most other industries, because you're not dealing with a commodity, dealing in a heavily regulated environment. And you're dealing with a lot of things that are done in a specific way that's designed to keep things safe and secure and functioning in a certain way. So you've got to be very mindful of that. And you've got to make sure that what you do is done very responsibly. So you can innovate, but you must be quite careful about how you do that.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

And how do you balance, because I think you touched on that, the risk versus the regulated industry? Because there is some element of risk and trying something new, I agree with you, they can happen in a parallel. How do you know when you can take that risk versus when actually we need to have we need to stay within the regulations? Like how do you kind of balance that?

SPEAKER_00 17:00

It's about having the right stakeholders, Louise. I've I've found very interestingly that if you have the right conversations with the right functions, for example, legal compliance, IT, even business. If you have the right conversations around what are the best outcomes for the customer, how do we do things that's going to add value to the business and it's going to make the customer's life X percent better? None of these functions are opposed to any of that. If anything, they totally support that. It's about having the conversations about how do we overcome the obstacles to get there together, as opposed to trying to lead things in a direction where you're leaving other parts of the business behind. Because you say to compliance, for example, we should be doing the

Generational Shifts in Financial Engagement

SPEAKER_00 17:54

following thing. And compliance is, well, we agree with you, but can we tell you or can we give you some advice about how not to get into a lot of trouble by doing it in that way? We can probably give you some other ways to think about, or, you know, to get to the same outcome. You've got to be open to that feedback. You've got to be open to taking that as part of the innovation and saying, how do we take what you're saying and work it into our suburbs?

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

You cannot try to go at it alone. It's a corporate. It's not a um startup where you can just go, you know, sometimes make a lot of decisions quite arbitrarily because it's it's you know, the the the risk is it's it's not that great or the impact is not that great. Here it's huge. The impact can be huge. So you've got to make sure, you know, that that you've done things that your stakeholders are comfortable with and that people will support. But what I've learned is that if you want if you want longevity and if you want to do this in a sustainable way, then you need to keep them involved because you will have the next project and the next project and the next project. And you will need them, and they will need you. And so you cannot go at it alone. Yeah. You know, unless you want to be that one eat one day I was talking about. You can't do that. You've got to be, yeah, you've got to form a relationship where you're going to, you know, you're going to be going through this journey together for for a while. And it's got to be a comfortable journey on a and a journey where you trust each other. Not concerned about, oh God, what is innovation going to pull tomorrow that's going to cause chaos, and we all will need to get, you know, fire extinguishers to sort out whatever trauma they've they've created. You don't want to do that. You want to make sure that people are on board. That doesn't mean that you're going to abandon innovation. No, it just means you're going to work harder to solve for the obstacles that they're going to show you that are there that you don't see. And that's inevitable. That's going to happen. I've seen it happen a lot where I thought this was easy peasy. You know, we should do this. And then I heard, but no, there's regulations that don't allow that, or not in that way. So the conversations are very, very important. I mean, Louise, on Money Versity, for example, for in sort in the South African context, financial education is regulated.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

But the regulator does not allow you to use financial education and to pair that with products. Oh, wow. Okay. Yes. And so can you imagine if I had gone and decided to let's go build this thing and let's do all of this stuff, and then boom, the regulator comes after you and says, like, what are you doing? Because clearly we have a lawyer that says you can't do that.

Key Takeaways for Financial Innovators

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Now you would only know what you can and cannot do if you were stakeholders like legal and compliance and so on were part of the journey. I mean, this demonstrates you can get to that outcome and you've done it in a way that is well within the boundaries of what it should be.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Great point. Innovation is about a collaborative effort, isn't it? Because you need to pull in the different stakeholders to make it better. And I think there's also a link to your execution point. There's a point about, you know, people when they feel part of something or when they feel like they've inputted into something, they feel more ownership and they get behind it a little bit more. So rather than being done to, it's actually join, join me on this journey to make it happen. I think there's something around that. And I think you mentioned the word culture, I think earlier on, which is really interesting because I think you you built, I mean, I imagine you've built a really strong culture around innovation within your teams and you know, not only your team, but kind of within the organization and that being an important part in how to make things happen. Could you talk a little bit more about how do you build a culture of innovation or how do you create the conditions for the right type of innovation to thrive?

SPEAKER_00 21:56

So I think the culture part, Louise, is probably the most. Or has been the most important for me to get that to get that right, to get that to a place where I think it's always a work in progress. It never stops. But to get it to a place where you you've built enough trust that people are very comfortable to join the journey and to be part of it and to support it and to see innovations come to life, to see ideas go through the process and become actual solutions and live in the business. Now, one of the key things for me, I think, is make it safe for people to try. Create a safe environment where all ideas are welcome and all input is welcome. And you give people honest feedback about what their ideas are and what it means and what it could be. Not all of these ideas are going to be viable. And remember, people also have different definitions of an idea. So you're going to find people will give you a lot of operational problems as ideas. And these may not be ideas, these might just be the result of that person did not know who to ask, and so thought that that system or process is a problem. It's actually not a problem, it's just that you misunderstood how it worked. Could be that. Or sometimes it is a problem, but is it an innovation or is it just something that was poorly built, poorly designed, or is just over time something that was probably a little bit neglected and so doesn't work as great as it as it should. And it's important to give people honest feedback about their ideas, where something is an actual idea and it's novel, it's new, it's gonna add value, versus no, no, no. This is something operational that's broken, and there is a specific area or team that deals with fixing operational and broken. Now, those things are very important because you're setting the boundaries for where does innovation play. Otherwise, you're gonna become the catch-all for everything. And you don't want that to happen, and you don't want to create conflict because you then start to interfere with things that's operational and not innovation. And so you get the ops area coming to you and saying, why are you doing this? This is like, you know, something we work on, and that clearly is not an innovation. Anyway, that aside, it's about creating those boundaries and then creating a culture where you say to people, okay, ideas that go through this process that we validate, that we test, that we prototype, most of them will fail. And that is perfect fine. In fact, we're gonna reward you either way. Passes, it fails, there's gonna be some sort of reward, some sort of, you know, some sort of celebration that's going to accompany this. Either way, we're not gonna single anybody out, we're gonna have probably one event or something where it's all shared and discussed and celebrate because hey, we actually went and did stuff that is different. But in there, you've got to celebrate the things that went right. So, for example, if you were able to do a prototype in let's say a month, that's cause for celebration. Nothing gets done in her cooperation. You've got to find those things and say, these are things to be excited about. This proves move at speed. That's a big tick. Let's try to use that for something else now that we plan to do. If you find that you got really a lot of feedback when you tested something, to actually go and say, Well, people are interested. Yes, they gave us bad feedback or they said this thing's an awful idea, but they took the time to tell us that. That means we have an audience that pays attention to what we do. Now I know it sounds a bit weird, but these are positives because you're going to use that for time for when you find the ideas that do work. And when you find the ideas that are going to show value, you're going to go back to those same people and you're going to say, hey, you guys who built the prototype the first time, we need you. We need you. And you're going to use those people, you're going to use those capabilities again in order to move forward and to really build out now, you know, what you what you know are going to be really strongly innovate. What I found is if you get this right once or twice, that is good enough. People want to buy, I think it's a human thing. They want to be associated and they want to be a part of what is showing progress and work on treating value anyway, in the thing anybody's. And so people just want to be involved then. They actively now seek out the innovation area for things. They seek us out for testing ideas, concepts. They come across new technologies or whatever, and they they want to share with us and they're excited about what this could mean for the business. That's really great because because that means that culture is becoming a way of of doing business. It's becoming a thing that's living in the business now. People who feel safe, they feel comfortable to come and have the conversations about what they think the future of the business could look like. That for me is really great. It's an enormous amount of work because it's about also individual feedback. It's about having conversations with people, it's about encouraging people, even when sometimes things, things don't work, to say, we're gonna try again, we're gonna take that idea, we're not going to kill that idea, we're gonna perfect that idea, we're gonna find a way to use that in some way. We're going to, you know, we're we're gonna find a way. And I think that plays a huge role as well, because what I've experienced as well in the past is usually the answer is yes or no. Usually the answer is yes, we're gonna do it, or nope, we're not. And then it's gone, and then nobody cares any longer. We deliberately take these things that we've said no to, and we make the time to revisit them. And we go back to those ideators, sometimes even when they've forgotten this, hey, you know what? We now found a way that we can use that in some other way. Or we now found that we can actually shift that a little bit, and it actually can do the following thing. And that makes a world of difference as well, because it shows, it demonstrates to them as well that your idea might be a little bit ahead of its time, or maybe doesn't really fit with what's happening at the moment. But hey, that could change, and we actively do that. So I think I mean I explained a lot of stuff in there, but I think building the culture, it's really critical for me. I think that speaks so much about it. It it's the most important thing that you've got to get right, is the culture. And it's a continuous work in progress that doing that, and you keep celebrating the smallest things because it matters to the people who submit those ideas.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Yeah, absolutely. Love those principles. I think it's really interesting about I love that you go back to and revisit previous ideas. There's something about a positive learner mindset there. Like I do, I do believe there's very there's no 100% bad idea. If you break down the different components, there will be something that you can learn from it and there will be something that you can take and iterate and turn and improve on. What do you think are the the opportunity areas for innovation? I guess thinking about you know, your your industry and the South African context at the moment, where are the big hotspots or you know, what's exciting you for innovation this year?

SPEAKER_00 29:37

I mean, look, I think across the board, and this is probably happening everywhere, the one that comes out surfaces all the time, almost every single innovation challenge that we run is obviously DI. And I tell you, that one for me is it's very important. Yes, it's a technology that there it's it's evolving super fast, so there's a lot of opportunity. But at the same time, it's something that you've got to be quite mindful of in terms of how you want to execute using AI. And and what is the point of what you're trying to do? Is it is it because it's just something new and novel and you want it to like, oh, we were the first and we used it for something? Or does it actually create some real value and is it actually going to do something that you're gonna be, you know, you can look back on and say, we're really proud of what this has done for our customers and what it's done for our business and probably even for the industry. And that means you've got to take your time about it as well and make sure that your use cases make sense. I see a lot of use cases about chatbots and about assistance and those sort of things. And yes, those are cool and does make sense for some things, but as I say, it's a case of is that all there is, or is that all you wanted to do, or is there more? And if there is more, can we invest in then doing it in a way that that scales and that does not remove the human experience? Because I think I've seen that happen in reverse but a lot, where businesses went headlong and implemented WhatsApp channels, for example, as support channels. And they still do. And it works to some extent. On the other hand, it frustrates customers to an endless degree where they can never get hold of an actual person because there's all this tech that's layers upon layers upon that's preventing me any real human connection. So you've got to be very careful about where you want to use this and how you want to use this. It supports the right experience and and doesn't just create more complexity for your customers that eventually is gonna end up with you, whether you like it or not. So AI, the use cases are there, but I think you've got to be very careful and make sure that you do it in a way that kind of make and it's sustainable. As I said, you know, in the industry, it's it's that's the industry. It's built on that foundation of trust, right? You've got to be, you know, a trustable institute that does what it says and lives up to its promises. But I think that's becoming sort of more currency because people have choice, lots of choice, and it just doesn't stop. You just get more and more choice coming into the market all the time. And people stay or they do business with businesses that they trust. I wouldn't say loyalty. I'm not really a fan of that word. I would say it's more trust. They trust them. They trust that they feel like, yes, you've done what you said. You're always honest. Even if you make a mistake, you tell us. Love that. So I trust you. I'll do business with you. And I think it's very important that we continue to build on that and to keep that active and keep that live. And then the big one for me, and I think Muniversity speaks to this, is the shift from platforms or just core systems to more ecosystems where things are, things are doing more than just one thing, you know. For example, like Money Versity was just videos and articles at one stage, and it's evolved into podcasts, games, and now we've added tools around estate planning and career guidance, you know, those sort of things. So evolving into becoming an ecosystem of related services, one place that you can go and you can find information and tools and and things that that that you can use that sort of makes things very convenient for you. So you don't need to go to multiple sources to get that. And I think there's more and more of that evolving and more that's actually happening as well. And I think people enjoy ecosystems as well because it means everything is in one place and it means there's a sense of personalization that can happen quite easily. What do you want? Yes. How do you want things to work? And you choose, and then it works that way for you. You know? Because there's also that element of control, right? We all also want to be in control of what's happening. That's, I think, is uh is just another human thing.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Yeah, really interesting. And do you think, you know, in building those ecosystems, that means partnering with with more, I guess, brands outside of the sector? Like what where where do you stop the ecosystem? I guess or what are the parameters that might be right for, I guess, an industry like insurance and financial services?

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Sure. I don't think there is, or I wouldn't box it. I wouldn't say that there's a that there's a limit per se. I would say that it's a case of where are the opportunities and where the where does it make sense for both parties? Are we trying to achieve the same things? Do we have the same goals? Do we have sort of the similar values, you know? And then that that alignment can exist. The other reason I wouldn't box it is, I mean, what didn't exist a few weeks ago, suddenly there's ten of them. You know, it changes so fast that there's new products, new services, new industries, new providers, and it's just like it just keeps going. So I think for me, you've got to keep a very open mind to what's happening out there because sometimes other industries and other businesses find ways to solve problems that you've been battling for a very long time. And sometimes they do it by accident. They've solved a problem, and then you're like, wow, okay, that's interesting. That's probably somebody that, you know, or some, you know, someone we should look at and look at look at partnering or look at learning from or creep some sort of of alliance there. I think that's for me is very important.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Yeah, absolutely. And for innovation as well, isn't it? I think you can get so much inspiration from just looking outside of different industries and learning from how others have done it and how we might be able to bring that into your industry. And because I guess people as well, consumers don't see things just through an industry lens. It's you know that you go out and you live your life and you interact with every different industry and form that point of view from that rather than just a tunnel vision.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

Yes, that's very true. Very, very true. We all see it like that, right? I mean, you have good experiences at in in like whatever industry it might be, you kind of tend to just say, well, why can't the others just follow suit and and be the same? You never ever say, oh, well, that's them and they are advanced. Let's like leave it at no, you don't. You kind of say, oh, everybody should be like them. They they're so cool.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Yeah, yeah. Or and it just raises the bar on expectations, isn't it? Like uh if if Amazon can do it in overnight, I expect everything. It just changes expectations across all industries, I feel like, from a consumer perspective.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

It does. It does. I mean, it it forces whoever's in that industry to start to catch up pretty quickly because the threat is it's right there in your face. But for others, it's like looking at it, and then we we all say, but like, hmm, why can't you do that too? It's once again, it's a people thing, right? It's a human thing. Everybody should be like that.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

I guess kind of thinking towards the future and um curious about you know being customer-led. Do you see any changes or differences across generations and you know how they are approaching financial planning or this, or is it anything of significance?

SPEAKER_00 37:18

So I think a lot is happening. There's a lot of change happening, and there's a l there's so much of choice and technology that exists now that even five, ten years ago was never there. Nobody thought it would ever even be possible. I mean, now everybody banks, for example, without cards. They're banking on apps. People very rarely even go to an actual ATM. They just swipe and tap and all over the place and it's all done. And when you think about it, when online banking first came out, everybody was like, whoa, who's gonna go put their credit card information in the computer? Sounds very dodgy, you know? But now your card information is in so many places you have no idea, you know, over time how many places it actually exists at. And it shows you how quickly that changes. Once again, it's about trust, right? They built it, and over time, there have been fewer and fewer incidences of fraud. There's been so much about security, and you've kind of seen how that security has also evolved, and so people tend to trust more, and it the adoption takes off, and then it just, it just, you know, it just it just goes from there. Now, the thing that I find is that as that's happening, then the younger generations are born into that. Not watching that unfold. They were born into that. I mean, kids these days have no idea about you used to go and get money from a what? No. What are you talking about? Yeah, they haven't even seen all the various banknotes, for example. In some of them, but not all. And do they care? They don't, you know. That's the thing. It's that's how it's rapidly it's changing. So with that generation now, it's a completely different expectation. It's like everything should be digital, everything should work, there should be all of this choice because they just they're just born into it. That's just how they see things. Now, with that comes like a lot of responsibility because businesses, especially in financial services, have to find ways then to continue to keep things safe, secure, and they need to continue to evolve and they need to continue to to deliver in ways that keep shaping the industry. And it's a lot of pressure and it's happening all the time. But I think one of the one of the most important things around that is do people, even with all of that access that they have, are they equipped to engage with those things in the right ways? So you can have all of that tech, you know, where you can, you can you can pay with your watch, pay with your phone, you can, you know, all of these interesting things. But if you are mindless around security, if you don't pay attention to statements, if you don't know how to read those things that you receive from the banks and and that sort of stuff, then that's a whole different world of trouble. Because once again, it means, yes, access tick, engagement is a big red cross because you're not really extracting the value that you should from this. You know? Rewards is another thing. I mean, you get so many rewards programs attached to banking these days and attached to financial services, and that's across the world. And most people are clueless about how it works. They're just like, oh, I have lots of points. What does that mean? I can buy something or I can pay for something. Yes, you're right, to some extent. But there's probably a whole lot of deeper value in there. It's just that you've never engaged with it. And one of the reasons you've never is because when you look at all of the write-ups that they have, it's just too much to comprehend. So you're like, nope, I'm just gonna go for the basics here. It's to say I just get ABC, I'm happy with that, leave the rest. In reality, you've abandoned a whole lot of value that they've actually put up, you know, to you. And it comes down to, well, you're just not equipped to engage with it. Yeah. So I think, you know, as things evolve, people attention spans getting shorter. People pay less attention to the detail. And I think those sort of things do offer opportunities for for innovation. How do you how do you present things in a way that people can engage and they can get it very quickly? Yeah. And they can not devote a lot of time to it, but they can understand it, they can get the value that they deserve and they can they can move on.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Well, fantastic. Well, thank you, Arjan. Coming to time, been a wonderful conversation, covered all sorts of all sorts of great stuff. Would love if you could, you know, give your thoughts. If if listeners could take away one idea from today's conversation, whether it's a piece of advice or something that you would love people to pull through into their work, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 42:15

So I'll give you kind of two perspectives. My view, so in the financial services world, one of the things for me is that if you get people to sleep better at night, argue and stress less about money and live, live with a little more confidence, then I think you're succeeding. I think from an innovation perspective, you're definitely succeeding. Because those are things that we know a lack of understanding around finances and money leads to an endless amount of trauma and drama and stress for just about everybody. And it's a thing that's been happening since forever, probably since money was invented. A lot of tragedy also happens behind that as well. So I think that if anybody is working in this industry and is innovating around it, if you are doing any of those things or speaking to any of those things, you're doing an amazing job and you should continue. The world needs more of that. Then for me, from a more personal perspective on the side of innovation, it is culture and execution beats. The rest of it is just my culture is gonna keep things sustainable. Execution means you are delivering value to your customer and to your business. Your reason for existence is justified right there. As simple as that. You know, you're doing it for your customer, you're doing it for your business, they can see it, they can feel it. Happy days. You're building a culture that's gonna sustain this even after you've gone or moved on or left the industry, whatever the case might be, but it's sustainable, then that's fabulous. For me, that's success. It might sound overly simple, but I mean, Louise, what I've also found is that the simpler you keep it, the better. And you have a way greater chance of success if you keep it simpler. Was there'll just be less noise around what you need to focus on or what you want to focus on, but so less noise is always better. That would be my key principles.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

Yeah, no, fantastic, love it. Innovation is is culture and execution. I think that's a really, really powerful note to end on. Thank you so much, Ajahn. Again, really, really appreciate your time and great conversation.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Awesome, Louise. It's fabulous chatting to you.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

Thanks for listening to Codex Futures. If today's episode sparked new ideas, we'd love to hear from you. Email me at louise.newson at triptych.com or click on the link below. Follow Triptych on LinkedIn and subscribe to our Codex newsletter as we explore more perspectives shaping tomorrow.