I mean, everyone has to renew their motor insurance every year and you have to go through those 60 questions every year, and in between three different platforms in trying to find a comparison, find the best quote for you.

And that was the frustration when I had to deal with those things.

After having been in events for over a decade, I had worked on events that talked about technology and yet, as far as using technology for the event itself, I felt that there was a bit of a gap there.

And so then when I saw what Fintech Meetup was doing in terms of using technology to maximise meeting the right people or being exposed to the right ideas, you know, I thought that just took that to a new level: it was a financial technology conference that actually used technology.

And so, as an example, we had 4,000 people at the event and we had over 43,000, 44,000 meetings scheduled!

Part of the reason the product's flourishing is because of these qualification processes. What we're looking at is the asset, right?

What's the value of it today? How much is that mortgage? How much equity is there in it? Once we can establish that, then we start actually looking at the homeowner.

It's far less restricted because there's no monthly payment.

We’ve just surpassed two billion in debt facilities on our platform. Now, that number itself does not mean a lot to me, because there's some facilities that are huge, others that are small, right? And the complexity might be totally different.

We have some customers where it's huge facilities, but it's fairly simple stuff like auto loans, and then one of our smallest customers, they do income share agreements for students internationally. It's a crazy, complicated interest calculation.

It's hundreds of thousands of data points every hour that we process. So that's incredibly challenging from a tech perspective. So the number is good. It's impressive. It shows that we are being trusted, but I'm more excited about the use cases behind that, right?

I think where AI excels is in trying to emulate what could be a human interaction.

And, by definition, what we do, and specifically do for mortgages, is dominated by human interaction. Across the world - so we're talking not only about emerging markets, but developed markets as well.

You have mortgage brokers that talk to customers. They do simulations. They explain what the bank offers that they can get approved for, and so on and so forth.

So I think the real need here was how do you bring that human experience into a place where you have thousands of islands and very remote locations and where the people buying properties are not necessarily concentrated around the large cities.

But what they ended up doing is, okay, if you want to take this thing without a credit card, bring your salary statement, bring your bank account statement - I don't have any of this, right?

One of the huge issues was, and still is, the access to finance in Laos. There's hardly any infrastructure, too. You don't find a paved road everywhere.

And the people live in their village, in their community, but they have to travel like two hours to the next bank. And then they talk to this bank and they want to get a loan and it's not possible.

Every one of our customers, though, is credit scored. we have 16 data points, starting with age, profession, if you live close to a border with a lot of trade between Thailand and Laos, might be very different than to a very rural place in the middle of the Mekong - we have some islands in the Mekong that don’t have electricity, don't have Internet, but they have a village bank.

It doesn't matter if you're from China or if you're from Brazil, if you're from the US and from UK, from Italy. There's people with ideas, there's innovative founders, and then there's other people that, like myself, I needed a job, so I can't necessarily become a founder, my life trajectory has run differently, but then equally, I have this creativity in my brain that I love sharing with peopl because I know that the founders that I share with and the passion that I have for the things that I actually invest in, it helps them accelerate certain things.

And potentially, I'm the crazy one that goes to conferences as well and then speaks at places. But I know a lot of people that are similar to me, that are very good at their day job but also want to invest.

Sometimes we'll talk to you like an independent team within a larger organization that has their own small budget that they can do for operational efficiency.

It's like, what do you want built?

We'll just build that for you. We don't need to jump through a lot of the regulatory hoops because we're not selling it as a product, right? They're just hiring us as an outside developer to build something for them.

We wanted to find out what were the critical elements that leaders in risk management were thinking about and what was the top of their priorities and what were the things that were challenging for them.

And interestingly, the biggest difference, of course, is not in technical credibility, because most risk management, they're pretty good at that. The biggest was communication and influence.

It unlocks two other elements :the first one is the real-time sharing of information which otherwise would be impossible, but the second one is that when we are connected by API to a financial institution, every time we ping their database, they actually have a record that allows us to pay them. Essentially, we pay on a portion of the fee that the network captures back to the same financial institutions.

Now, that means that they can either run this as a data monetization channel - and by the way for some of the landers that we work with in the Philippines that's been the case - or it also means that they can use the same payments for then increased consumption through the platform. The increased consumption then reduces their data pool cost, and ultimately that makes it two to three times cheaper than any other alternatives.

In the world of crypto, a few months can be a lifetime, and, in the most recent few months that’s not been the easiest lifetime, and yet, Milo has just issued its largest single transaction ever: a $12 million crypto mortgage. The demand is real, from high net worth individuals buying homes with Bitcoin to clients tapping home equity to buy more, and, if anything, the recent dips in crypto prices reflect a story of growing resilience rather than one of growing volatility, and that's a very good thing for the industry.

Smarter advice leads to smoother lending, so today I am sitting down with James Tucker, CEO at Twenty7tec Group, talking about how his solutions, helps lenders maximise product visibility, streamline applications, and improve adviser engagement.

Banks certainly don't lend as much as they should, but if you talk to the average banking executive, they want to. Lending is growth, at the end of the day, lending is one of the best, biggest, most efficient growth drivers.

I think my point of view on the banking sector, specifically community and regional banks, have shifted where there is this wild aspiration to build larger lending functions…. but I think they're looking for a way forward.

All financial decisions were being made like this, by a banker in your village who knew you and your family, he knew if you were a responsible person or not at all, and that's what decided if you are eligible or not for something that the bank offers. The thing is now, with the further digitalisation, it has dehumanised, actually, the world, all these kinds of personal relations and personal insights are being vanished away because everything has to be made efficient and fast.

What is really important for me, about Most Probably, is that I want to be known as a company that can connect dots and look at complex problems and bring it to a solution that is workable, implementable, and has impact.

I like getting people together from different areas, getting people from sales, credit and and channel to speak. I'm very passionate about having people understand one vision and having the outcome be beneficial to all. So, with my executive background, together with the detailed background I have in statistics, analytics, etc. I am mentoring and coaching up and coming executives.

60% of businesses just gave up halfway through a loan application, which is crazy.

I think that indicates how much of an obstacle the process is in itself, which I think then speaks to a system that is built, probably more for institutions in terms of debt funding, rather than a system that is built to support small businesses.