Ep 19: Tim Cameron - Transferwise

In episode 19 and today I’m joined by Tim Cameron Australia New Zealand Country Manager for Transferwise.

Launched in 2011 with the vision of making international money transfers cheap, fair, and simple, Transferwise now has over 7 million customers and processes over US$5bn per month in international transactions

With investors including Sir Richard Branson and Paypal founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, Transferwise is one of the worlds most successful Fintech.

I chat with Tim about his own journey with Transferwise and their growth plans for Australia.

Transferwise Careers: https://www.transferwise.jobs/

Transferwise Product: https://transferwise.com/au/business/

Thanks to our partners FinTech Australia, a member-driven organisation that is building an ecosystem of Australian fintechs to advance the global economy and culture.

We share their mission to build a strong community, foster connections and support innovation. To become a member go to https://fintechaustralia.org.au/join-now/

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Transcript

Dexter Cousins  0:03  
Welcome to the FinTech Australia podcast, brought to you in partnership with Tier One People. Australia's leading FinTech Executive Search Consultants. I'm your host, Dexter Cousins.

This is Episode 19 and today I'm joined by Tim Cameron, Australia New Zealand Country Manager for Transferwise. Launched in 2011 with the vision of making international money transfers cheap, fair and simple, Transferwise now has over 7 million customers and processes over $5 billion per month in international transactions. With investors including Sir Richard Branson, and PayPal founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, Transferwise is one of the world's most successful FinTech. I chat to Tim about his own journey with the business and their plans for Australia.

Tim, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on Dexter. It's great to be here. Mate it's taken us a little bit of time to get here but it's great to finally make it happen.

Tim Cameron  1:09  
It has, some things have popped up in the world. But it's great to be here today.

Dexter Cousins  1:15  
What I thought might be a nice idea, as you've got a bit of a history with the Transferwise business, if you could share with the listeners just a little bit more about what Transferwise does globally. Give them a sense of the scale of the business because you've got to be one of the most successful FinTech in the world right now.

Tim Cameron  1:35  
Thanks, Dexter. I'd love to give everyone a bit of an overview of what Transferwise does. Transferwise is a global technology company. We're building the best way to move money around the world. We make it possible for our customers to send, spend and receive money internationally at the real exchange rate. Transferwise was started about 10 years ago now. We're our founders Taavet (Hinrikus) and Kristo (Käärmann ), two friends from Estonia, realised just how much money it costs to send money between the UK and Estonia.  Taavet was the first employee at Skype, and he was getting paid in Euros but he was living in London. He had living expenses in pounds. Kristo also worked in London, but he had to pay his mortgage back in Estonia. They were both sending money overseas with their banks, and they realised that they were paying about 5% to the bank each time. They needed what each what each other had, so they figured out a fair way to exchange the money between themselves using the mid market exchange rate without the bank taking any cut. Kristo would deposit pounds into Taavet's  bank account. They would look at the Reuters exchange rate online, the mid market rate, and Taavet would figure out exactly how many Euros he had to pay to Kristo. This actually snowballed from here they started facilitating these types of transfers for their friends. Eventually they realised that this problem wasn't just for Estonians in the UK, but it was a problem millions of people around the world face. Kristo and Taavet discovered this problem a decade ago, and they've been executing on that ever since.

Dexter Cousins  3:16  
It's another one of these overnight successes that takes 10 years.

Tim Cameron  3:20  
We can go into a bit more detail if you'd like. In this highly regulated industry, nothing here has been an overnight success. 

Dexter Cousins  3:29  
You've been with the business for about five years now. You're obviously an Aussie, but you joined in the UK, is that right? 

Tim Cameron  3:35  
I actually saw a job ad for Transferwise in London while I was living in Melbourne and took advantage of the great visa arrangements between Australia and the UK and applied and was lucky enough to get a job building our unit economics model. Which was a key input to how we price and how we invest in marketing and was really the best way to get a understanding of the business.

Dexter Cousins  4:03  
Awesome. You evolved with the business and you've taken on some fairly key roles as well. Can you tell us a little bit about that journey that you've been on to get you to the point of returning to Aus as country manager.

Tim Cameron  4:18  
As you said, I joined about five years ago. For about a year I worked on this unit economics model. This was the cost allocation model that really helped us understand how to price and how to invest in marketing. That really helped me understand the busine. I found myself gravitating more and more to, not just understanding the data or understanding the business, but fixing or building new parts of the business. To do that in a software company you need to be working with engineers. They're the ones that actually make the changes that help customers. The way Transferwise is set up means that product managers are the central node of a team working with engineers. Understanding problems, coming up with new product ideas, and then seeing that through to actually lead to better outcomes for customers. that's what led me to working as a product manager. Initially, I was working on South American expansion teams. Alongside another product manager I launched Transferwise in Chile, Peru and optimised some things in Mexico. Quite shortly after joining that, I got the opportunity to start up a new team from scratch. That was the Middle Eastern and Africa team. It was a full stack team and was our job to figure out how to launch Transferwise in new markets in the region and optimise the existing markets. It would involve finding banking partners, working with regulators to educate them on how Transferwise does things. Getting into the weeds of the operational issues. I think at the end of the day, that all led to us to be able to build a great, sometimes quite localised product for each market. That's the role I was in up until the start of this year. I launched Transferwise in 10 countries in that time. It was really great to be able to see customers able to send money to Nigeria, to their loved ones or to Turkey to pay for some inputs for their Amazon selling business. 

Dexter Cousins  6:28  
Tim, what were the challenges that you faced launching the Transferwise product in all of these locations.

Tim Cameron  6:35  
An interesting challenge at Transferwise is that we're often the first to do something in the market. We might be the first online money transfer company to enter a market. We might be the first to attempt to make transfers instant, or we might try and introduce another product feature, like electronic verification that's yet to be seen in a country before. Doing that always has a number of challenges they might be technical, regulatory or commercial. Solving these problems when you're the first person do it, is often very resource intensive. The thing is we can dedicate these resources because we've set the global standard of what a good customer experience looks like in the UK and Europe. We know what we need, what the end product looks like. Now we need to spend the number of years required to get that product to market. Maybe a good example of bringing that global standard to a new market is in Singapore. Four years ago, customers in Singapore had to be verified in person, there was no way to verify them online. To get up and running in Singapore, we set up a tiny office in the centre of Singapore with one employee. Every customer who wanted to send money from Singapore had to show up to the office just to get their ID documents verified before they could use Transferwise. We weren't even sure that customers would show up, because it's quite a lot. 

Dexter Cousins  8:03  
I'm smiling here, because I've just had one of the big four banks tell me I need to go into a branch, even though I'm a customer. To give them ID so I can actually use my online banking.

Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Cameron  8:17  
Yeah, well, yeah,

We did that, right. We did that for a long time. At the same time we had this little shop set up, we were talking to regulators, proving we were committed to helping Singaporean consumers and sharing with the regulators how we were doing things in the UK and Europe and in other places. Showing how online verification leads to much better consumer outcomes. All this while we were verifying consumers face to face. We were eventually able to transition to verifying customers, by them sharing their ID documents in the app or online, and that allows us to run a bunch of extra checks, that we couldn't run face to face. It was better for consumers and it was better for us. After that we were able to integrate with Singapore's national identity database. Something that's not available in UK and Europe and make it even more seamless for Singaporean customers to get onboarded. That journey was definitely not an overnight journey, it was a three four year journey. One thing we are really proud of is that now anyone else in Singapore that wants to start up a business like Transferwise, they can just jump straight in and use this  new global standard. We're really proud of that. We feel the impact we're having is more than just the direct benefits our customers get. It's really the benefits of bringing what we've learned. Investing years in some cases getting that to marke. Then everyone being able to reap those benefits. This challenge isn't limited to Singapore. The challenge means we're testing, learning, recharting our course. It's resource intensive. We've just done similar things in Brazil,  in Japan and the UAE. We've done, not to the same extent, because Australia has a lot of similarities to the UK in Europe, we really want to make money transfer instant. As convenient as possible and as cheap as possible here in Australia. 

Dexter Cousins  10:26  
Yeah. We mean, obviously,

You've touched on some countries there were financial inclusion is a huge issue as well. It's great to see the values and philosophy of the business. Really living that rather than it just being words up on a wall. 

Tim Cameron  10:43  
For sure It's something we really hire for too. We hire people who have shown they've cared about customers in their previous roles. You come to an interview at Transferwise and talk about the profit you've delivered, but not the customer problems you've solved. It might be a tough road getting your foot in the door. That comes from the founder, Kristo our CE. Kristo cares a lot about the mission. At the end of the day, the big difference Transferwise will make to the world is setting this new global standard and bringing transparency to international money transfer.

Dexter Cousins  11:25  
It's amazing what you've done over a five year period. I often say to people, particularly if they're looking to come up with a large corporate or a big bank, that start up years are a bit like dog years in comparison. One year in a start up is worth seven years in a large corporate. I think it's testament what you've achieved in just a short journey. In a five year period the exposure that you get in a rapidly scaling business, it's just phenomenal right?

Tim Cameron  12:00  
Yeah, it's so good.  I think getting in just anywhere, even if it's at the ground floor of a fast growing business. Someone that's done Series B, C, kind of investment. Then just taking all the opportunities that are presented to you as more and more people are onboarded gives you such a great opportunity to grow. Also find what you're good at and really focus on fixing problems that you're best suited to. 

Dexter Cousins  12:34  
One of the other things that you touched on was the role of a product manager. It's been interesting to see that that position evolve, particularly over the last five years. So much so that we see that as probably being the ideal position for anybody who ultimately wants to be a chief exec. Because you just get so much exposure across the business. What have you learned from that journey of Product Manager to Country Manager. 

Tim Cameron  13:02  
So I think

I think you're right that the product manager role is an integral one to any software business. I'm not a huge fan of the saying that a product manager is the mini CEO. Because actually, it's unlikely that you'll be the direct lead of anyone in this cross functional team you're working with. I think what's good about that is you have to lead through, be on the front line. It's more a battle of ideas rather than a battle of product manager says so. At least that's the way it works at Transferwise. It's all about making sure you're building towards the company's goals. It really helps that Transferwise has a clear company mission. Thats is about making money transfer instant, as convenient as possible for customers and as cheap as possible. That platform enables product managers at Transferwise to really shine.

It was a big decision for me to make, moving back to Australia and taking up the role of Country Manager. As you said at the start, I moved from HQ of a large growing company to the the most remote outpost, given our HQ is in London. There were a lot of things to think about when making that decision. 

Dexter Cousins  14:27  
One of the things we're known for is to help international FinTech launch here in Aus. We find that the Country Manager role is probably the most complex search that we have to do because it is such a difficult position to get right. It requires so many different skills and experience and areas of expertise from just one individual. How are you finding the move to Country Manager? Have you got any tips to share with people who might be thinking about taking on a similar role?

Tim Cameron  14:57  
 Yeah, very important to think about what you're good at and what you enjoy doing. At Transferwise as a Product Manager in HQ, it was much more of an internal role working across teams. Now my role is a lot more external facing, working with banking partners, negotiating or being the point of escalation if we need to improve things. Representing Transferwise, to regulators and also at public events. I'll say that's not something that I had a large amount of experience doing, but it was something that I knew Transferwise had the resources to support me and as well. Knowing that Transferwise could support me on that journey was super important. 

What about the culture? Having been in HQ and experienced first hand the culture that originated from the founders. Have you found that it's been easy to take that across to Australia with you and have a seamless culture? Or are there differences between the two businesses. 

I think we've done a great job embedding the Transferwise culture of autonomous teams and putting customers first, here in Australia. It has helped that we've has some old timers move out from London to Australia, as well as Singapore to seed that culture. Our culture is really a lot around empowering employees to do what's best for our customers. I think it was a great decision by Transferwise founders Kristo and Taavet to allow employees to figure out what's best for their customers. It must have been a hard decision to make, to be honest. When we're doing that across time zones, it does require slightly different communication styles and stuff. But at the same time Transferwise does have full stack support in the timezone with a lot of operational support coming from Singapore. That investment, again helps us  thrive and helps us carry on the culture in the region. 

Dexter Cousins  17:10  
Tim could we talk a little bit more specifically about the business here in Australia. How long have you actually been in Australia?

Tim Cameron  17:18  
Transferwise has been in Australia since 2015. In 2015, we launched what we call our send money product. Customers could send money from Australia, overseas or receive money into Australia. 

Dexter Cousins  17:33  
Cool. How big is the business in Aus in terms of people? 

Tim Cameron  17:38  
Yes.

We have a number of employees. We have risk compliance, marketing and comms in Australia spread across Melbourne and Sydney with support coming from Singapore. In terms of customers, globally we're processing over 7 billion Australian dollars for customers every month. I think the number we're most proud of is that we're saving our customers, over one and a half billion Australian dollars a year or $5 million AUD a day compared to using their bank. Globally, a quarter of our international money transfers are delivered instantly. We say that is less than 20 seconds while the customer is still on the Transferwise. app or website. That's a number that, personally we'll be pushing to get to 100%, both here in Australia and globally. 

push to get to 100% globally. Cool.

Dexter Cousins  18:38  
Cool. You've got some really interesting partnerships. I was at Intersekt last year when the partnership with Up bank was announced. Have you got any other exciting partnerships lined up? 

Tim Cameron  18:54  
Yeah. So you're right we're shortly rolling out this bank called the Transferwise for banks product. This allows banks who want to integrate with Transferwise to power international money transfers for their customers. If there's anyone working for an Australian bank listening today and you would like your customers to get the same experience as Transferwise, let's talk. We're also exploring a lot of partnerships around our business product. Globally, we onboard about 10,000 new businesses every month. We're really building our features set out for businesses around building multi user access. Some of the partnerships we've built are, GoCardless, so people can settle the direct debits they've received internationally. We have integration feeds with Xero and QuickBooks. Anyone using the accounting software can avoid doing any manual entry. We also have a project with Xero going on in the UK that allows Xero customers to use Transferwise to pay their bills. 

Dexter Cousins  20:01  
Brilliant. Any new news or updates that you want to share before we wrap up? 

Tim Cameron  20:07  
Yeah, for sure. We've had a big first half of the year. We've announced an integration with Alipay for customer sending from Australia to China or any country to China. We launched the UAE's first fully online money transfer service. Which is something I personally started working on a long, long time ago. Anyone who's got friends and family in the UAE, they can now send their money back fully online, which wasn't possible until now. We've recently announced our customers are holding 2 billion pounds with Transferwise in their multi currency accounts. We've just released a feature that allows our customers to send money to each other across borders instantly using just the mobile number. We're hoping to continue this same momentum in the second half of the year. In Australia, we really want to see money move instantly for our customers, and we'll be pushing as hard as we can to make money transfer as cheap as possible for customers. One thing we really want to see in Australia, and one of the main reasons I came back, is Australians actually pay the highest prices for money transfers of any developed country in the world. That's because banks can get away with charging markups or hidden markups.

And that's something Yeah, tell

Dexter Cousins  21:30  
Tell me about it mate. I've been suffering for 16 years. 

Unknown Speaker  21:34  
Yeah,

Tim Cameron  21:35  
Yeah. I'm glad you figured out. I don't know if you're a customer Dexter, maybe we can chat about that one offline, we'll sort you out! The big problem is a lot of customers, people don't know just how much they're paying to their banks in exchange rate markups. They log on they see the fee is free or $10. But they don't realise at the same time, they're not getting the rate that they see on  Google. As a result, the majority of people are paying far above the odds when they send money overseas. That's something we'll be working. Showing how solutions in Europe are prevailing and how that could be applied in Australia. We're working with the ACCC or any other regulators to show how big a problem it is and what needs to be done to solve it.

Dexter Cousins  22:21  
Tim, it's been great to have you on the show. If people want to find out a little bit more about Transferwise, I know you guys are hiring at the moment, where can they go? 

Tim Cameron  22:30  
Yeah, we're hiring in a number of roles across the globe at the moment. 

Transferwise.com/jobs has all of our open roles.

Transferwise.com if you need to send money overseas.

Dexter Cousins  22:44  
Tim, it's been great to have you on the show. Thanks for sharing your journey, but also some of the cool work that Transferwise is doing globally as well. We'd love to get you back on here about how the new product launches are going. 

Tim Cameron  22:57  
Thanks, Dexter, I'd love to come back on and share that news in a few months time.

Dexter Cousins  23:04  
Well, that's the end of the show, folks. Thanks for tuning in. And thanks to our partners FinTech Australia. Remember to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google and all of your favourite players. Check out the show notes for additional info on our current opportunities. If you'd like to sponsor the show, or you're looking to hire game changing FinTech talent, check out Tieronepeople.com or contact Talent@tieronepeople.com.