Nordic Fintech Magazine’s - The Future of

Ep. 57 No Room for Complexity; The Future of Personal Finance is Transparent, Simple and Intuitive - Jóhannes Eiríksson, CEO at Two Birds

What do you get when you cross a comparison site with a powerful real estate assessment tool and loan calculators? In Iceland🇮🇸, this gets you an award winning platform that is helping people understand the real value of financial products like mortgages, insurance, car loans, saving accounts and debit cards; all while improving companies’ ability to make their products clear, transparent and easily accessible to customers. 💪

In our recent visit to the booming Icelandic Fintech Cluster, we had the opportunity to sit down with Johannes Eiriksson, CEO at Two Birds & Aurbjörg (www.aurbjorg.is), to learn more about how this exciting platform is simplifying the complex nature of financial services and offering people better understanding of their personal finances, all in one place.  Learn how Two Birds & Aurbjörg's innovation is helping Icelandic consumers make better financial decisions, bringing transparency to a traditionally murky industry and giving financial service providers direct access to a core audience of better informed customers.  This innovation goes to show that those companies that are able to make things easy and simple for customers will play an increasingly more important role in the development of the financial scene, in Iceland and abroad.

Ep. 56 Making it Last: The Circular Economy Fintech Enabling Product Subscriptions and Renewals - Hendrik Roosna, Founder of Fairown

To date, we’ve had the privilege of siting down with over 70 dreamers who are bringing to life the financial system of the future. While we have learnt and been excited by every single one of their visions, today’s guest has not only managed to inspire us but it has also amazed us with the sophistication of his thinking and the profound impact of his solution. Meet Fairown, the Estonian fintech that is rethinking the financial model behind the lifecycles of the things we buy, from manufacturing all the way down to reuse. 

In this jawdropingly interesting chat with Hendrik Roosna, CEO and Founder of Fairown, we learn how through a clever combination of the subscription economy and advanced finance and tech capabilities, Fairown is making circularity a practical reality in markets around the world. And what is circularity you may be asking. Well think of how we usually consume products; 95% of all the energy required in the lifecycle of a product is consumed in its production. Yet after obsolecense, products are disposed of and forgotten, including all their metal, silicon chips and other components that could be reused. Fairown is powering the finances that let manufacturers bend this linear economy into a closed loop circle where there is no waste and where nothing drops out. And what about profits we hear you say. Well this approach also builds healthy P&Ls by helping manufacturers effectively predict and plan for product and component lifecycles including the use, retirement and repurposing of every part of their products. This interview is worth every minute of your time. 

Ep. 55 Nourishing and Strengthening Norway’s Fintech Ecosystem - Hans Christian Bjørne, CEO at the Factory Innovation

In our attempt to uncover what makes Nordic fintech exceptional, we recently visited Oslo, the modern capital city of Norway. We couldn’t help notice that in spite of it being a market with a limited reach, at least from a B2C perspective, Norway has recently produced a row of remarkable companies that are reshaping how financial services addresses some of the most concerning problems for Nordic societies. With its strong values and open society, as well as a highly digital savvy population, Norwegian entrepreneurs are leaving their mark across the fintech spectrum. For example in areas like Impact, where companies like Empower.ico, an Environmental and Fintech company are using blockchain to create a circular economy and deposit system for waste plastics. Or important proponents of identity and security solutions like Signicat, now a European leader in digital identity, or Zwipe which is enabling biometry for digital security on credit cards.  Other relevant examples include Viips, a payment spinoff from one of Norway’s largest banks and , ZTL and Dintero which are making payments simple and convenient.  But perhaps the most progressive approach to fintech comes from companies operating in the crypto space like Firi, the Nordics largest crypto-exchange or Dune analytics and Nansen.ai who are providing real time data on the crypto and NFT markets.

To better understand the origins of all this innovation and the vision for Norway as a fintech powerhouse, we sat down with Hans Christian Bjorne, Co-Founder of The Factory and CEO of the Factory Innovation. In this chat you’ll learn more about the Norwegian approach to entrepreneurship and scalability, the advantages of launching and testing your proof of concept in a highly digital market and the transition to a global mindset that is helping Norway flourish as a fintech powerhouse.

The End of Bul$#!t Banking: Building a Bank that Customers Trust and Actually Like – Haukur Skúlason, CEO & Co-Founder at Indó Bank

Is the end of Bullshit Banking in sight? This will definitely get you thinking! For year’s we’ve heard from self-important people in expensive suits that while Fintechs have the snazzy innovation and speed to market, banks have the customer’s trust. But do they really? Sure our money is protected by a regulatory requirement that forces banks to guarantee our deposits, so we know that, should something like the crisis of 2008 were to happen again, our money would be safe. Yet according to a recent survey by Ipsos Mori, over 66 % of us suspect that our bank would take advantage of us if it could.

Haukur Skúlason , CEO and Co-founder at Icelandic challenger bank Indó is rethinking trust and taking what it means to trust your bank to a whole new level. With a refreshing philosophy of what banking should and shouldn’t be, Indó bank is gearing up to bring an end to bullshit banking with a revolutionary proposition: “We don’t want customers only to trust us, we want them to like us.” And how will it achieve this monumental task? with a mindset rarely seen in financial services and a value proposition centred on transparency, clarity, fairness and a rotund and friendly animated green mascot for good measure.

In this refreshing chat with Haukur we find out how his fearless founding team is approaching the development of Indo like many other disruptors outside banking; removing unnecessary fees, engaging customers in product development and taking a broader view that seeks to understand what problems they should be solving for customers, rather than what products they should be forcing down on them. Indo's measure of success will come when the rest of the industry is forced to change their approach to fees and customer service in response to the new standard it seeks to establish.

This is one of the most provocative takes on banking that we’ve heard so far, and we say that with a lot of excitement as consumers who yearn for the type of banking and mindset that Indó promisses. The end of bullshit banking cannot come soon enough!

The Feedback and Collaboration tool that Improves Relationships between Corporates and Banks. - Claus Nielsen, CCO & Co-founder at Buying Teams

Effective communication between corporates and their banks is essential as it enables banks to fine tune their service approach to businesses  and enables businesses to communicate their requirements. However as we all know the day to day work invariably gets in the way and the urgent often displaces the ideal.  A group of experienced bankers who have suffered at the hands of poor communication and less than optimal feedback loops with their business customers, have set out to solve the problem of expensive, ineffective survey reports between corporates and their banks.

We had the opportunity to sit down with Claus Nielsen, CCO and Co-Founder of Buying teams, a fintech that has set out to build a solution that replaces inactionable and invalid survey data for actionable feedback and business intelligence for sound and impactful decision making. Buying Teams highly specialised solution is leveraging technology to bring a degree of scalability and insight that’s been lacking in the relationship between corporates and their banks. Find out how this group of banking veterans are bringing their years of experience to bear, while solving a problem, that they as they well know, has long been asking for a solution.

The Norwegian App that Rewards Users for Paying their Bills on Time - Elin Antonsen, COO at Bill Kill

We all hate penalties, most of us are familiar with that stomach turning feeling of impotence that strike us when when we are hit with one. Yet, cynical critics may say that penalties exist as an integral part of the business models of many companies behind our bills and invoices.  60% of our monthly income goes into paying bills and invoices an activity that torments 100% of adults. Seems like a widespread problem in search for a solution with a significant addressable market. Enter Bill Kill, the Norwegian app that rewards users to pay their bills on time! Have we got your attention yet?  

We recently had a sit down chat with Elin Antonsen, Bill Kill’s COO, to learn more about how this nifty fintech solution not only enables users to pay bills with the credit card of their choice, helping them to accrue points, miles and other rewards offered by many credit card providers,  but also minimising those nasty penalties by helping customers pay their bills on time. Rooted in a deep understanding of human psychology and aiming to counter the behavioural downsides of effects like the pain-of-paying, Bill Kill rewards its users for paying on time by gamifying the entire payment experience and rewarding them with points, redeemable for discounts and other perks. Learn more about how this innovative company is getting rid of the penalty problem for good!

Cloud Core Banking: the Key to Incumbent Reinvention -Vilve Vene, Co-founder of Tuum

The disruption of the financial industry has come in waves. First there was the Fintech wave, where those taking the pulse of the market were worried that banks and other financial institutions would die by a thousand cuts as a myriad of fintechs took nibbles at their marketshare. Then there was the Big Tech wave, where Google, Facebook Amazon and Apple appeared to be readying themselves for an offensive play with their sleek customer experiences, deep pockets, massive user bases and superior technology capabilities. And then came the technology enablers who equipped financial institutions with spanking brand new cloud technology, able to sidestep banks clunky legacy and enable incumbents and new market entrants to develop fast, customer centric new services.

We had the pleasure of speaking to Vilve Vene, a uniquely experienced financial services executive turned entrepreneur and Co-founder of Tuum. Vilve has a remarkable background and track record in building banking technology from scratch as one of the main technologists behind no less than 15 banking platforms deployed in Banks across the region. I this insightful conversation with Vilve we get to hear how by combining deep financial services expertise and technology capabilities, Vilve and her co-founders developed a state of the art, modular API first banking platform, able to adapt to complex use cases and functional requirements of everyday banking. Listen to Vilve’s priceless insights on the future of banking, the trends the most excite her and her vision on building seamless backend operations so that banks can focus on their key asset, their customers. We are sure you’ll be blown away by her vast knowledge and experience.

Making Money Good through Human AI -Guðmundur Kristjánsson (GK), Founder and CEO at Lucinity

The majority of us are unaffected by financial crime, at least not directly. Unless we’ve had our bank accounts hacked, or our identity stolen and used for fraud,  it’s unlikely that we would’ve suffered at the hands of money launderers and criminals who cheat the financial system. Yet financial crime and money laundering is a significant and pervasive problem with estimates placing it at around 2 -5 % of the Global GDP! Thats anywhere between 800 billion and 2 trillion USD every year in funds that are used to manufacture and distribute drugs, finance terrorism and human trafficking, amongst many other ailments that affect our societies today

We had the unique opportunity to chat to Guðmundur Kristjánsson, CEO and Founder at Lucinity, an Icelandic company that has grown out of a strong conviction to equip the hardworking individuals fighting financial crime with cutting edge technology. Through teh use of Human AI, Lucinity aims to improve Financial Crime fighting productivity making it more difficult and more expensive for criminals to operate. In this conversation, you'll learn more about how this visionary company employs the best of technology, behavioural insights and human capabilities to supercharge financial crime fighters. Listen to how thanks to Lucinty’s solutions, people at the frontline of anti-money laundering can make decisions in split seconds that would’ve previously taken hours and how Lucinity is enabling collaboration amongst industry players to build resilience against criminals. 

Connecting Profitable Companies with Ordinary Investors – Jørund Gjesvik – Managing Director at FundingPartner Norway

Saying that digitalisation has revolutionised financial services is to state the obvious. What’s not so obvious however, is that much has changed about how Financial Institutions have gone about digitalising their services. In hindsight we can see that automating away customer interactions, replacing them with bots and online forms has optimised operations at the expense of distancing customers from their financial service providers.

After an initial wave of "exploratory" digitalisation, the industry has gained tremendous insights that are enabling a next generation of financial services to come to market with technology powered business models that offer new solutions to old and persistent problems. FundingPartner, a fintech that is tackling the problem of dwindling funding for SMEs, is using technology in refreshing new ways to service this traditionally underserved market.

We recently had an enlightening conversation with Jorund Gjesvik, Managing Director of FundingPartner Norway, where he shared how the company is cleverly using technology to automate what customers don’t see, freeing up resources for the meaningful customer interactions that foster trust, loyalty and closer relationships. Learn how FundingPartner’s widespread use of technology has also found profitability in a business model that until recently was not commercially viable and how with a unique mindset, its team is improving the playing field for SMEs across the Nordics. We are certain you will enjoy learning from Jørund’s vision as much as we did while speaking to him.

The Ownership Economy: How Web3 will change the Game for Business and Finance - Taylor Ryan, General Manager of Layer Three Ventures & CEO at Klint

Welcome to the ownership economy where you will be able to capitalize on your existing digital assets in previously unimaginable ways!

Web 3 continues to be the talk of the town as more clarity emerges on how this technological revolution will reshape the way we use and think about the internet.   As decentralized models for interaction and transaction between parties continue to take hold, visionaries and innovators are developing the services of the future that will allow us to capitalize our assets in dynamic and exciting new ways.  Have some money lying around? sure, you can buy a crypto asset and hold it in your wallet in the hope that it gains value, but through Web3 decentralized finance protocols, you will have the option to place that asset on a liquidity pool, a yield farm or a whole range of brand new exciting services that will change the dynamics of personal and business finance.

In this highly upbeat conversation wtih 6 time crypto and blockchain startup founder and General Manger of Layer Three Ventures Taylor Ryan we go on a exciting rollercoaster ride of what the near term future of payments, money transfer and interaction between people will look like. Learn more about how decentralization will impact ownership of assets, and organizations and how users will finally be rewarded for investing time, attention and data, their most valuable assets, in the development of online platforms.

Web3 offers so much potential that it is set up to become a component as essential to every business model as the internet is today.