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.

But all we're really trying to do is answer three simple questions for clients. Is this presented identity, a genuine identity? Am I interacting with the owner of identity? And are there any risk factors associated with that identity I've been presented with.

In the 90s, inflation in Brazil in one year was over 1,000% so literally, if you got your money today and you didn't use it, you didn't run to the supermarket, you buy it, you lost money. And so Brazilians really got good at moving money fast and spending fast. And the banks had to learn how to do those things since the 90s, the liquidity of the system, the security of the system, the solvency of the back like all those things, had to really be at a very good level, otherwise the mess would go into the economy

I think one of the most challenging parts of being a business, it doesn't matter what size you are, is that you tend to place a portion of who you are as a person, your value, in the outcome of whether somebody pays or not.

And you know, as much as you like to try, if you've got enough people not paying, it does actually become a demoralising feeling.

I think people are realizing that it's not always someone's fault if they are having financial difficulties, and I think that message is changing, albeit sometimes I still have frustrating conversations with people who don't necessarily see it that way.

And I think overall, the lenders, the collection agencies, debt management plan providers, whoever it might be, are wanting to be able to treat their customers in a better way, give them the experiences that they deserve, but they just don't have the systems to power that.

If you're an individual and you care about the climate, the biggest impact you can have is what you do with your money: where you deposit your money, how you spend your money, and where you invest your money.

That is by far the largest impact you can have. Much more than buying a solar system, putting on your house, though, that's a good thing to do, and it's much, much more, by the way, than buying an electric vehicle, though that is also a good thing to do.

And this is not a niche market. Fully 40% of US adults identify themselves as highly concerned about the climate and seeking ways that they can make an impact in their own life.

Unbankable is an investigative documentary exploring whether Africa's innovation, tradition, and tech can revitalize the West. It examines mobile money, digital lending, and Bitcoin, challenging economic norms and amplifying voices from the Global South.

One of the UK banks that we work with, they have 17 lending systems. That’s really complicated to work with. People can change. Technology can change. What doesn't change is the process. So you have to adapt to every banks process. Technology has to adapt to every process. So essentially, people adapt, and technology adapts. But the process is something which doesn't change, and that is something which is the learning process for everyone when you work with a particular institution.

AI is emerging as a as a transformative force, which is redefining banking: from digital lending to advisory, to research, it’s across all its different business units.

The nice thing about digital lending, really, is that you have full transparency over individual loan applications, and I feel like that, rather than buying a blind pool, or a securitization backed by some some collateral pool of loans that you don't really have an influence on, you can now, with the technology and the emergence of the digital lending segment, go way further and actually have perfect insight into what's going on in the collateral pool.

So ultimately, we are directly integrated into the underwriting systems of the originators that we work with. So essentially, we see the same data that was used from the originator to process the loan application, and that enables us to form an independent view. And in addition to that, we usually get also the entire historical track record of the originator, which allows us to then also fine tune our risk models to the specific types of products and the specific type of underwriting that the originator is doing, in order to then form an opinion on a loan by loan basis, or borrower by borrower basis,.

Our take is that the system has crazy waste, An to that is that, when I built Vezeeta, I consumed around $60 million, but if I knew then what I know today, I would have built the exact same company for less than 50% of the money. And I think that would have been way more beneficial to myself as a founder, and even more important to the investors and the shareholders.

The second thing is, not all the companies are created equally. This is the, basically the thesis, and that's why we built In Vitro Capital. And even the word in vitro, is we're giving birth of companies. We're artificially doing that because we're not an investor. We build these companies hand by hand with the co founders. And that's when we share equity, support funding, no waste, no wasting the time to raise money, no waste in trial and error, because we are helping on those, and then we take it from there.

There's about 80% of European household left that haven't transitioned to renewable energy installations. And for them and financing is a very important part. So that's how we come in. We help our installation partners, first on the software tuning side, but then also kind of coupling that with end customer financing.

So, a typical mortgage is kind of what it is, and there have been attempts and some regulatory stuff prevents a lot of innovation, but the only way to innovate is customer acquisition. And I don't want to sound super absolute there, but the opportunity so you get, like, a Rocket Mortgage, right? It's an acquisition play. That's how they're disrupting.

In B to B, it's different. There is innovation on both sides. There's innovation on how you distribute your product, customer acquisition, there's innovation around product structure. There's innovation around reducing losses.

Marquee investors like Warren Buffet, Jack Ma, Masayoshi Son are aggressively investing in FinTech ecosystem and fintech startup.

And the reason it has happened is just one: 10 years ago, the dream of every person after completing the Master's in finance, was to get a job and private equity or hedge fund or investment banking. Now, it is not the case, every person who graduates or comes out of masters wants to get into startup ecosystem, or want to start a new startup.

So you will say that there's lots of ESG scores out there that can be a blackbox, the company will be given a score, but you don't necessarily know that the Inklings behind it.

What we're bringing with our green score is effectively that transparency, bringing in SME climate experts for a single institution and try to build that score around what their views are and how they view it and align it to their pathway to net zero or ESG, or climate risk within within their institution.