Fintech and investing in an innovative future

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Viewpoint, a TD Securities podcast. Listen in as we draw perspectives from a variety of thought leaders on key themes influencing markets, industries, and the global economy today. We hope you enjoy this episode

TY PANAGOPLOS: Hello, and welcome to episode four of Viewpoint, a TD Securities podcast. My name is Ty Panagoplos, Chief Information Officer at TD Securities, and I'll be your host for today's episode. And I want to talk today about fintech, its partnership, and its pain points with the financial services industry. Luckily, I'm very thankful to be joined by two people who are far more interesting than myself. So we've got Diana Paredes, who's the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Suade Labs, as well as Anthony Juliano, who is Chief Technology Officer and General Partner of Landmark Ventures. So welcome and thanks, guys for joining.

DIANA PAREDES: Thanks for having us.

ANTHONY JULIANO: Thanks so much for having us. Ty, don't sell yourself short. You're very interesting.

DIANA PAREDES: I was just going to say that.

TY PANAGOPLOS: Depends on point of view, but I'll take it. I think-- fintech has been something we've talked about for quite a while in the industry. And I actually remember in the early days, it was fear of disintermediation of the banks. So it's oh my god, all these small companies are going to come in and they're going to kill us. And Then over time it morphed into hey, wait a minute, no, this might be an accelerant to how are we going to move faster in how we do cool stuff for our business, how do we get quicker access to more modern technology, and how do we quickly partner bolt-on, and drive. And I think that fueled a lot of excitement. And then what happened is we realized that bolting on really cool stuff with old bank legacy stuff wasn't so easy. And so we spent quite a bit of time, certainly at least where I sit, in upgrading our infrastructure, looking at our technology, improving our APIs, improving our ability to access things like cloud, and starting to do business in the SaaS world, which has now given us a much easier approach to be able to integrate with a fintech. And however, what I'm finding is although the tech has moved forward to get us to a place where we can easily leverage fintechs, it doesn't feel like our admin has caught up. And they tend to still be in the legacy. Keeping in mind that we are still a bank, we are a regulated entity. We do have a lot of obligations in terms of how we manage third parties. But it's really interesting because I think in the early days of me talking to fintechs, it was immediately I wanted a deep dive into the tech, and the architecture, and the APIs, and everything that you do there. Now I think my first question is, do you have a contract with us already? And if not, then oh my god, let's see, I'll go down this path which is going to be really painful. So I guess my first question is just kind of understanding. So I'll start with Anthony. How are you dealing with this? You deal with a lot of fintechs, getting them into financial services groups. What's your view on where it's headed and how we deal with this problem?

ANTHONY JULIANO: I think the first thing is perhaps to give a little bit of acknowledgment that you're not alone. It's not like TD is the only firm that struggles with this. It seems to be every firm, regardless of whether you're a bank or otherwise. So that's the first piece. I think a second piece is realistically-- and I'll say all the good things in the world about procurement and legal because this is being recorded-- but realistically, at the end of the day, they're trying to do their job, and there's an old rubric that's in place in order to do it. And I think part of the reason for that comes down to some level of avoidance of risk. And part of it is just the amount of work that's involved. So when you really try to accelerate, and you try to kind of drive this path, there are a lot of questions that of arise. And when I look at technologies like smart contracts, and I look at technologies like blockchain, and I look at technologies that perhaps enable some level of disintermediation of the bank-- because, let's be clear, realistically, while the culture may still have moved a little bit, it hasn't gone completely by the wayside. There is still a fear that fintech will somehow put traditional banking out of business. I'm not saying that legal and procurement are operating in that world. I'm not saying that that's kind of where they're coming from and that's why it takes six months to get an NDA with a new company. But it is, at least at some level, there's just a ton of influx. And so the question becomes, then, how do you take some of that workflow off of their plates? I think that's where automation comes into play. How do you enable faster checks from a security and a transparency perspective? That's where some of the third party risk management automation comes into play. And then I think realistically, something's got to change drastically. We've been toying around with this unique concept of innovation futures allowing for trading back and forth on contracts, being able to simplify the process of doing business across our portfolio in its infancy. But my hope is that at some point, it'll be super easy to say, look, I don't know the company. But I do know who made it. And so ultimately, I'm willing to take that chance and minimize the risk if the reward is great enough. But again, that's not how legal and procurement think. And so it requires executive leadership.

TY PANAGOPLOS: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I think A, you're absolutely right. The fear is still there. I think it got minimized a bit, but it's definitely still there. And you're spot on. It's on executive leadership to change the thinking. But I don't think it means taking more risk. I think it's just thinking about it differently. So Diana, you've been through this, clearly. You live it every day. So how do you feel about this issue and how are you dealing with it?

DIANA PAREDES: So it's a really interesting question because I think it has two sides to it. So I think in the first place, if you're an entrepreneur in fintech that sells to financial services, it is also very important to understand that it's a very regulated industry. You need to very much come with a hat that's very humbling about what you're trying to do. And effectively, you're really trying to change and rock the boat in some ways to an industry that has been around for hundreds of years. Financial services is one of the oldest industries in the world. And so there is a reality where as an entrepreneur, we're all at the beginning, because now it's a very different story for us. But I remember at the beginning, we had to, obviously, learn and understand where procurement was coming from, where legal was coming from. And that is just something that you cannot come self-entitled, thinking that as a fintech, you just need to get everything that you want, and that there's nothing you need to be changing. I mean, if Google Cloud and AWS have to change their own terms specifically for the financial industry, you can imagine that a fintech startup has to do the same thing. And there are a few things that you really can do at the very early stages that really help reassure, and they're very simple. You can get yourself ISO certified. You can commission a pen test, which is 10 grand. It's really not that expensive to commission that. You can get your house in order, put the right kind of company handbook and that kind of stuff in place. And all of those things don't really require a lot of funding and a lot of money to do. You can actually really get all of these things off the ground with $20,000 max, just trying to do your own diligence and your own job to make the life of procurement a little easier. Then there is also the reality that you do need to have internal leadership. And you need to really have this kind of intrapreneurs within the organizations that you're selling that are the people who help you to navigate the organization. And you need to stay close to your internal sponsors. And that's very important as well. When we were saying not to sell yourself short, Ty, it's because you're one of these intrapreneurs. And people like that, I really think, have to be rewarded within the organizations for their gut around adopting new technology because it is something that helps the organization longer term. And you really can create these long-term partnerships that are longlasting, that are very good for the companies that are the first adopters, and that fundamentally make the fintech company very loyal to them as well. And so I always like to think that fintech and the financial industry can really be partners, and we're all at the beginning in a very powerful way. And so if you get the right intrepreneurs, if they're supported internally, if management from the top supports taking new technologies on board, all of that will help legal and procurement to feel more comfortable that they can take a certain amount of risk. And then on the other extreme of being more comfortable and flexible with risk, you want to almost get procurement people, legal people who are used to fintechs and understand it, almost trained to their onboarding, because it is a very particular way of onboarding businesses at the very early stages versus adopting large enterprise companies. And that's just something that requires a bit of upskilling internally as well.

ANTHONY JULIANO: And I think to Diana's point, too, and I'll add on to that. And I will also agree. I think, Ty, you do a great job of this. And so that is one of the more interesting points about--

TY PANAGOPLOS: I'm glad all of the checks have cleared, by the way.

ANTHONY JULIANO: At the end of the day, the realities are that when you're a legal organization for a firm, you set up a one-size-fits-all policy. And the reality is not all risk is created equal. Not all companies need to adhere to the same standard. There's a certain company that I've been working with their [INAUDIBLE] on a whole bunch of things. And effectively, every company that comes in has to be FedRAMP certified. By the way, they're not FedRAMP compliant because they're not really doing business with the federal government. But they're using that as a standard. And it creates all of these roadblocks where little things like to do work on Salesforce, now your company has to be FedRAMP certified also, even though the platform itself is not living in GovCloud. These types of one-size-fits-all policies create big issues. If you're in banking, you're not going to, as a bank, issue the same account to an individual that you issue to a large company that you issue to somebody who's high risk, low risk. Banking itself understands the concept of risk. But the procurement and legal organizations, and the contracts and administration organizations don't seem to understand that it's not one-size-fits-all.

TY PANAGOPLOS: That's great. I love the comparison.

ANTHONY JULIANO: Always put it in language that they all understand.

TY PANAGOPLOS: I agree. I think you have to kind of tailor it a bit. And then when it's not tailored, it's definitely the onus is on the internal side to make sure we get through it. And it does tend to be quite a journey.

ANTHONY JULIANO: Do I need an insurance policy that's for $150 million if I'm touching $1 million of business? No. But the real question is, what's the impact of not doing it? What is the impact of screening out all this innovation? And I think the reality of that is the fear that people are having around disintermediation, that fear is real. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. The reality is, when's the last time you walked into a traditional bank, especially with COVID and pandemic and everything else? The world has changed. Things really are now in a digital kind of framework. And so if you're not looking at these companies that are coming out and trying to partner with them, you're going to get taken over by them.

TY PANAGOPLOS: So picking back up, Anthony, on what you mentioned before with smart contracts and blockchain. On the one hand, they were going to completely disintermediate the banks, and everyone's going to move to blockchain instead of bank account, to the other hand, which is this is going to revolutionize the banks because we're all going to go on to a single ledger, and we're going to eliminate any sort of reconciliation. And everything will be kumbaya. And the regulators can look at our ledger, and we don't even have to report to them. I don't feel that we've hit either of those extremes. And I think that it does continue to get fueled by crypto, even though it's just simply the technology underneath it. So in your view, Anthony, where is it going, and do you see the moment will come when blockchain kind of takes over?

ANTHONY JULIANO: For all of the technology and innovation and wonderful things that are within our portfolio that I represent, I feel like a Luddite at heart. Many people know that I still carry a BlackBerry, although with our recent transition, I've been unable to get it to work with email. So I may be phasing that out, even if I'm one of the last holders. But the reality is I did not understand blockchain. I'm still not sure I entirely understand blockchain. I did not understand crypto. I did not understand NFTs. And I'm still not sure I understand any of those things. So this is coming from a position of me saying, look, I kind of agree with you. I feel like the reality is all of this stuff is not as shiny as it once was. But the reality that I'm living in now is it's inevitable. This all will be the foundation for the future. NFTs are a thing. NFTs really will not go away. Crypto is not going away. I sit on and hold a reasonable crypto portfolio. I don't know why, but I do know that I'm going to be a part of it. And I think that there's enough kind of value here that blockchain, it's a particular tool for a particular job. There are a lot of untrusted transactions. There's a lot of need for transparency. But there's also a lot of people who get to make money today by living within the realm of not quite so transparent. The reality is that transparency causes other issues for companies and for regulators. I'm a big proponent at this juncture. And it's come over a long, long time of being an adversary. And I think that even as I look at the future, the question isn't if, it's when. And so is it 10 years, 100 years, 150 years, 1,000 years? Who knows? But the reality is decentralized currency, decentralized transactional capability and finance will be the future.

TY PANAGOPLOS: That makes a lot of sense. I think it's inevitably coming, and it's definitely not going away. Crypto is not going away. NFT, I think, will actually grow potentially at a more rapid rate. Seems to be something that people have really adopted fairly quickly. So I think it'll get there. It's just wait and see, and we'll continue to stay invested on the side. So we talk about blockchain, and there's all sorts of other cool technology that comes into the fintech space in the front office. Risk, analytics, AI, ML. But we talked a little bit-- and to shift over to you, Diana, talked a little bit about Suade, which is also a company I've been really excited about in terms of what it's done for our portfolio. Your sweet spot is regulation technology, which is not always thought of as the cool kid. What got your passion going for reg tech, and why are you excited to innovate in that space?

DIANA PAREDES: Well, I think reg tech is the coolest space there is in fintech, way more than blockchain. I think from my perspective, it's obviously the expertise that we came with. And it just made a lot of sense that the regulatory space also deserved innovation. And it's interesting, because I think that there are so many buckets of opportunities in terms of innovation that can be done in the back office, and that can be done, actually, in the operations side for the financial industry. The nice thing about the reg tech space is that it's not a nice to have. So everybody has to submit to the regulators ever since 2008. It has obviously a huge cost attached to it as well. So you almost realize that there is a huge opportunity. When I think of reg tech, I always call it one-on-one enterprise software innovation because this is actually really changing, and actually helping our customers to not just do better regulatory reporting, for example, in our case, or analytics or calculations, which is the work that we do every day. But it's also helping them to think differently about their data, and almost helping them to think differently about their architecture, and almost how can you use regulation as a way to free your data. It's a necessary cost. Why don't we turn that into something that's a positive spend that can give you more buck for your value? You have to spend the money, just do something with that money that can actually really help the organization to think more strategically. The point is that it's a huge opportunity for the whole industry, so it will spend the money in a way that helps them to do something that's more discretionary for your organization with money that you have to spend anyways because you have to make the regulators happy. So yeah, I think reg tech is a super hot topic. It's been good to us, so, I mean, obviously, it's been really exciting to be able to grow in that sector and to actually be a pioneer in the reg tech space in all sorts of ways. And it's good to not be in a super crowded space when it comes to innovation. It means that it really gives you an opportunity to innovate without having to worry too much about competition. It's very complex. It requires a lot of analysis. It requires a lot of understanding of the nitty gritty regulation, which sounds very boring, but it's actually quite interesting. I could talk for hours about regulation. And it's really a niche market with a huge TAM, so what's not to like?

TY PANAGOPLOS: For us it, always was a big tax that we had to pay every time a new rule came out. So it has been nice to see that that money to me, now, is more of an investment in data, which data is the next big thing. And so I think that's been really positive. So that's great. When I think about it and how fast things move, and certainly looking after a portfolio where you're always at a bank and have some measure of legacy, some measure of where you're moving to the new, and then some measure of cutting edge, in your view-- and you look at a lot of these companies, Anthony, where should I be working?

ANTHONY JULIANO: My crystal ball is no shinier than anybody else's. I think the key to that question is to be looking. It is not something that's just going to arrive on your doorstep. Now, there are ways you can make yourself become more of a net that you can cast that will kind of bring these things in. And I think back to earlier statements, and because you're paying me for it, you do a good job of that, Ty. I'm just kidding. For all the regulators, there's no payment. But the reality is you look for this in the places you least expect it, and you think about it in the context of things that are the art of the possible. So one of the big challenges for every technologist is if there's work that has to be done around figuring out how to apply a solution looking for a problem, it makes life difficult. One of the things that we do with all of our companies is about productization. It's about aligning to a particular problem set. The best and the brightest usually come from folks having conversations and saying, I hadn't really thought about this particular thing this way. I have a problem. This solves for ABC. I've got problem DEF. Can I make this fit in a way? And I think one of the benefits of working with younger companies is you have the ability to have those conversations, and they can say, actually, I'm willing to pivot. I'm willing to invest. I'm willing to create that long-term partnership that Diana alluded to that is really the value of actually having that. There's also one other kind of misnomer I hear often, which is the concept of digital transformation. I've been very vocal about this over the past five years since the term emerged. We need to stop thinking about it as transformation. It's digital evolution. And it's those incremental changes that you can make that are going to start to weed away at the old legacy culture, the old legacy investments. It's about positioning to be able to evolve. Transformation says that there's a beginning and there's an end. And if there's an end, then it's over. At the same time, transformation is not always the same as, hey, we implemented Salesforce, or hey, we put something in AWS. Yeah, it doesn't touch anything, but we put it up there. You can't look at these projects in these programs as being transformational without at least understanding the evolutionary impact. To that end, companies that you partner with-- I think we've got a great company in the data talent space. We've got a great company that is doing work around AI and ML applied to the broader ecosystem of explainability. We are looking at how to disintermediate some of the major cloud data platforms. So everything data-related is on the docket, in my opinion. Anything that is going to be about how do you find ways to take blockchain, whether that's Loopring or Devio or some of these companies that are coming out that are doing cross-blockchain work, and make it more palatable and easier to adopt? Great example. We have a company called Agingo. And basically they built this platform of not only one blockchain. And the idea, even though that spells new, it really does enable for fast transactions and overcome the limitations that I think a lot of people are looking at. The real answer to the question is, look where you least expect it and figure out how to apply it. And do the hard work rather than hope for something to come to you.

TY PANAGOPLOS: That's great advice. I appreciate that. I guess my next question, I'll kind of go back to the fintech-finance services partnership side. And I think I'm going to ask both of you this because I'm kind of curious. So if I look at using someone in fintech to potentially disrupt a legacy vendor or win a contract over a vendor that just expected it would, one of the things that concerns me is I do all this work, I bring in this vendor, Diana. I go through the journey of championing everything, blood, sweat, and tears, get everything in, everything's wonderful. And then all of a sudden the big guy with the big balance sheet and the big corporate sponsors comes around and buys that. And then I'm out of luck either because they completely morph it into the old legacy stuff I didn't want in first place, or they kind of stop investing in it, and then I got to have another plan. So I'll start with you, Diana. What are your thoughts around that, and how do you respond to that? And then Anthony, I'll get your thoughts, too.

DIANA PAREDES: I think it goes back to the partnership elements. I think that if you start working with a young company the way we started working with you guys, the partnership becomes very strong. It kind of generates a way for the company to think about its future in a way that's aligned with its customers. We have that with quite a few of our customers that were when we were early stage where at the beginning, obviously, it's a commitment from the founders, which is long-term, not necessarily something you can count on. But there is a reality that working with a young company, it is about trusting that the people in front of you can actually execute with what they're planning to deliver. And then what happens, because you have this alignment and you actually remain very close, and it's-- I think from our perspective, we're very close with our customers in thinking about this partnership along the way. We try to really get feedback on the things that they like versus the dislikes that they have from traditional vendors and what we do. And as we scale, we've actually made very sure that the things that our customers like remained in place. If you invest in these companies early on, and if you actually get alignment with the founders early on, you can actually really make sure that their journey fundamentally is aligned to what you want the technology to continue being, to the spirit of what you want the company to continue doing in terms of customer support. And for us, actually, it's been so intrinsic to the way we've done business that fundamentally, we've actually really thought, when it's come to fundraising and all of that kind of stuff, to continue doing something that we made sure made our customers happy. So the more you invest early on, you fundamentally get a lot of skin in the game from the founders to remain loyal to the first customers, and to deliver on what they've said they would do. There are obviously some ways that you can also caveat for that contractually as well. But fundamentally, there is a trust that has to be there. That is why you should be investing early on, whether it's through a partnership, whether it is through being a customer with these companies because then you really have a say in their journey so that you make sure they grow with your best interest in mind. And that's how we've seen this partnership working.

ANTHONY JULIANO: Look, the M&A problem is a problem. It makes a ton of sense that all companies want some level of exit, or at least all investors want some level of exit, whether that's going to be an IPO, a SPAC, an ICO, an acquisition, whatever the case may be. That's how investors look at the world. The reality of it is, the way to guard against this, in my opinion-- and this is going to make a whole lot of people who are very close to me very unhappy to hear me say-- but don't sign long-term contracts. Don't sign something that's a five-year deal on something. Don't sign a three-year deal on something. Figure out how to actually embrace that agile execution. Now, it doesn't mean that you can't renew, and sometimes you have to renew six months into a contract because the reality is you need more runway. But that's where I think the failure of procurement technologies, the failure of contracts and legal technologies-- and all going back to your original question, Ty-- organizations, large enterprises are just not set up to deal with it. So we went through a six-month procurement process. Great, you know, I don't want to do that again in, like, six months. So can you please just sign this 36-month deal? Also, I need to represent the revenue as ARR and be able to go back to my investors. And it just doesn't have anyone's best interest in mind. There's got to be a way to facilitate just better contracting process to actually align against budgeting processes. Budgets inside of big companies are broken, so, so broken. Tell me your budget, what you're going to need 18 months from now. I don't even know what I need three months from now. Would you tell me 18 months before COVID happened that there was going to be a world pandemic? So how do you build that flexibility and agility into the budgeting process? How do you make sure that you've got the right level of alignment to where it's not like there's just a constant churn of now we have to go redo all of these processes, go through all of this overhead and hassle. So build agility into that process so that if somebody does get acquired, reality is, you've got a year before they actually get subsumed and swallowed. Also, the other thing, too, is profile your big companies because reality is, there is a difference between doing business with a Microsoft or doing business with a Symantec or a CA or Broadcom now, I guess. There are certain places where if a company gets acquired, you should be asking all of your big vendors, what is your process for making sure innovation, when you acquire a small company, still benefits me? And if you like their answer, then you can keep them on the list of, OK, no problem. We'll let that thrive and flourish. But if the answer is something not to your satisfaction, and they don't have a playbook, and it's some particular big company that basically swallows small companies, and then all of a sudden they disappear six months later, you need to think about the agility of the contract and get out.

DIANA PAREDES: Just to add to what Anthony's saying, I think that the flexibility of getting out of contracts, so vendor lock-in, is something that all organizations should be very wary of, whether it's with a large company or with a small company. It's just a reality that any decent tech company will not be afraid on thinking about their business from a subscription perspective, from, again, annual evergreen thing that can be canceled because if you continue delivering on your tech, and if you continue being at the top of your game, there's no reason for anyone to cancel. And out of financial services, which tends to be an industry, as Anthony was mentioning, that moves quite slowly. So once you're onboarded, you continue being used unless you really messed up. So I think it's a reality that you have to think about the vendor lock-in element in any procurement process, in any enterprise software, whatever the size,

TY PANAGOPLOS: You guys are spot on. When I was at some other bank that will remain nameless, that was a big discussion, was really, how do you shift the vendors to the utility model, where you kind of pay by the usage, like the Cable Guy. Like if you don't like their rates and the next guy's better, you can shift. To me, I think it's not just about the contract. It's also about the agility inside the firm. Let's assume I get a contract I can get out of in a short period of time, can I actually migrate off the technology? Lock-in, I think, is not just from a contractual perspective. I think it's from a tech perspective. I find that with SaaS providers are looking into that world, that makes that a lot easier. And so I think that that tends to be the way to go. And I do think that it's a problem across both. Contracts are made and budgets are set with the future in mind. Just like you, Anthony, my crystal ball doesn't work. I kick it every day and hope it does. Be it my personal portfolio, you could tell that either it failed or I don't know how to read it properly.

ANTHONY JULIANO: Let me know if you fix it because I am in the market for that.

TY PANAGOPLOS: I keep trying. I brought it in, but it's not working. And so it doesn't work for budgeting, either. And it's really interesting because we're kind of setting a whole bunch of things. And then something goes wrong, something unexpected, and everyone looks at you like, how did you know this? And so it is a challenge. And I do think that whether you call it agile or however you look at it, the concept of the continuous funding bit, which is to say, we're going to invest this amount of dollars in this business on an annual basis, and we're going to kind of put it in the hands of the business to prioritize what they want to do as opposed to, hey, you got to tell me in the beginning of the year. I think that will start to improve, and it will align to a model where your contract can be more of a rental where I say, look, I'll pay you by the month based on usage. And then if I am unhappy with you, I'll start to pull back my usage.

ANTHONY JULIANO: We have a company, and I think I've introduced them before, but on the kind of cloud side, intuitive. And what's really interesting about some of the models they've created is the concept of a managed engineering model. Pay for 10 FTEs, but only pay for the things you use. So get them all aligned, executed, dedicated around a particular set of topics so that you have the full stack and can use it. And I think the same thing needs to happen to contracting. And this is where-- and I won't divulge all of the secrets on innovation futures-- but that's exactly where we want to go with it. We want to be able to have that flexibility, fungibility, and swapping. We shouldn't be afraid of doing something with a small company because they might get acquired because to your first point of the day, it's always easier to work on contracts with those big companies. Somewhere, something's got to give. And that's kind of the catch-22. But ultimately the elephant in the room is, if you really want to get ahead of it, you have to plan for it. And you have to plan to not be able to plan. And that means making things in the budget that you can go back to and say, OK, we're going to borrow from here and be agile there and we're going to invest there. And so why not invest in the concept of innovation future or whatever the case may be?

TY PANAGOPLOS: I love it. You're talking to a capital markets person, so--

ANTHONY JULIANO: Easy target.

TY PANAGOPLOS: Complex finance. It's fantastic. We'll move into crypto derivatives next. So on that note, first of all, just again, thank you guys so much for taking the time to do this today. I actually found this really interesting for me. I've taken down a lot of notes so selfishly. It's been great. But really, really enjoyed chatting with you guys today. Thank you very much.

DIANA PAREDES: Thank you for having us. Great to meet you, Anthony. Thank you.

ANTHONY JULIANO: Thanks so much. Ty. Thanks, Diana.

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