How to Lend Money to Strangers
Episodes
A fintech pioneer and change bringer in Pakistan, with Naureen Hyat (Tez/ ZoodPay)
23 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Naureen Hyat and Humza Hussain joined forces with Nadeem Hussain, the founder behind the world’s second-largest branchless banking solution, th...
Building a Canadian loan marketplace, with Vlad Sherbatov (Smarter Loans)
16 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This whole show is built on the premise that lending money is a tricky endeavour, but, let's face it, borrowing money can sometimes be easier said tha...
Pay your rent and I'll give you the house, with Ike Udechuku (Pathway Points)
09 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine you rent your home. Now imagine your landlord gave you a straight choice: (1) pay rent for forty years, renewing the lease biennial...
Opening a beer faster, with Oli Tomson (Era)
06 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is a special episode for two reasons: (1) it is my long-awaited debut in Australia, a market that's slipped through the gaps for too long on this...
Closing a mortgage faster, with Eilon Shalev (Elphi)
02 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The fact that it takes 45 days to close a mortgage in America today is not just a one-time hassle for home buyers, it can be a source of ongoing compo...
Transforming the credit landscape in Central Asia, with Abdullo Kurbanov (Alif Bank)
23 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alif Bank has grown into one of the leading fintechs in Central Asia; and with its portfolio of Sharia-compliant lending, payments, and banking produc...
Now you can buy that boat you've always had your eye on, with Joe Dalton (Salt)
16 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
So you want to own a boat but you don't know how to finance it? Then we've got you covered. I'm in Venice with the family this week, a city more close...
Turning a customer obsession into retail credit, with Regan Adams (RCS)
09 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"Retailers are obsessed about consumers." And it is by leveraging the fruits of this obsession, their understanding, that retail creditors can take on...
Lending innovation in Finland, with Kim Ahola (Creditstar)
02 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When I moved to Scandinavia, Finland quickly became one of my favourite countries to work in. That much colder than my home in Copenhagen, it was wher...
Financing the property industry, with Paul Watts (Lenuity)
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In any property transaction, you need a willing buyer and a willing seller. What you don’t need, but almost always have, is a disinterested lender. ...
Credit management meets innovation and ethics in Nigeria, with Moses Nmor (BFREE)
19 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Developing markets have a reputation for being unavoidably high-risk for lenders. And sure, developing markets are associated with less stable employm...
Transformative change in credit scoring, with Sanjay Uppal (Finbots.AI)
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“AI is not something that's come around today, right? What has changed is our ability to store an enormous amount of data economically; the processi...
Helping students to achieve their financial goals, with Ethan Fraenkel (ProGrad)
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
I'm almost old enough to start voicing opinions about youngsters needing to cut their hair and get themselves some jobs. Which is convenient, because ...
Growth from a small island, with Mark van Beuningen (CIM Group)
29 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
To grow from a small island you need a dual aspect: looking inward, CIM has a relationship with about 60% of commercially active Mauritians; looking o...
Pioneering fintech in Uruguay, with Mateo Infantozzi (Prezzta and Octa.dev)
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In one way, it's slightly surprising that Mateo Infantozzi Riembau was a fintech founder. Not because there were no signs of entrepreneurial thinking,...
A credit bureau for emerging markets, with Burak Kilicoglu (CreditInfo)
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When I was living in Denmark and working at Experian, my boss’s boss was a rockstar, you would never hear Burak Kilicoglu ’s name mentioned withou...
Building the P2P app she needed because no one else would, with Lika Osmanova (Lendwill)
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I feel an affinity for the peer-to-peer lending model. My initial interest was sparked during an MBA p...
Strategy meets data science when it comes to SME lending, with Frank Gerhard (McKinsey & Company)
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“This is not a small change, and it doesn't affect isolated groups. This is not just an IT problem. This is not just a modelling problem. This is no...
NFT-backed crypto loans, with Nuno Cortesão (Zharta)
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Pawnshops are one of the oldest forms of lending, allowing people to turn assets they’d like to keep for the long-term into cash in the short-term -...
Tax credit lending in future industries, with Zach Tarica (The Forest Road Company)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“If you look at the things we do as a company, whether it's in digital assets, renewable energy, or media and entertainment, we are always looking a...
Gamifying a route to a long-term credit relationship, with Jorge Enriquez (Credilikeme)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Mexico lending market is not one I know well. It’s not one I know at all, truth be told.Luckily, Jorge Enriquez is blessed with an infectious la...
More appealing credit card offers (and a trip around the world), with Chris Hutchins (All The Hacks)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The credit card landscape glitters with options for the consumer - different rewards earned at different rates, in different ways, sometimes with an a...
Fueling your business with other people’s money, with Jonathan Fodera (Integrated Business Financing)
27 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“Would I prefer cash through debt, or cash through equity?I would always choose cash through debt - what happens in partnerships is one person alway...
Using the power of amortisation for good, Jinesh Vohra (Sprive)
20 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I spend a lot of time talking about how to create debt for consumers. I do it because I believe that, when done right, debt can be beneficial to all p...
Holding up a mirror to the lending industry, with Elena Botella (Delinquent: Inside America's Debt Machine)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"Fairness in pricing often starts with the idea of competition - if there's healthy competition, that will bring the price down. But, in the United St...
A more inclusive credit score for lending and securitization, with Toni Hubbs (VantageScore)
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Credit scores are near to my heart. I kinda work around them now, but still, I spent a wonderful decade rolling the things out and so I’m getting ba...
How to lend money to refugees, with Lev Plaves (Kiva)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This is a special interview for me. HTLMTS doesn't pull in huge volumes of listeners, but that's OK, that's not really what I'm after. I want the righ...
Crypto-backed mortgages, with Phil Blows (ByBrix)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In February, I spoke to Phil Blows about backing traditional loans with digital assets. The crypto markets had a rough time in the months that followe...
The service is the collateral, with Neel Juriasingani (Datacultr)
15 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"It was, at that time, a very crazy idea", Neel Juriasingani tells me. "A lot of people still look at us as those crazy guys. But coming from tha...
Explainable AI and a new style of credit bureau, with Evan Chrapko (Trust Science)
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We eat volatility for breakfast, we make love to volatility! Which is handy, because we’ve all heard it, most of us have even said it ourselves, the...
Lending in frontier segments, with Todd Kleperis (Payzel)
25 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Not all bankers wear suits - some, like Todd Kleperis, are built for frontier markets. It has been a decade since Washington and Colorado legalised th...
The future of South African banking is open, with Nick Tuttelberg (DirectID)
23 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Open Banking is a proven technology with proven use cases, and in the UK, perhaps its spiritual home, user numbers continue to rocket - there are now ...
BNPL in the Middle East, with Ziyaad Ahmed (Spotii)
18 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
BNPL is usually spoken about in terms of it being a more convenient payment tool for people in option-rich credit markets, but a revenue model that do...
AI driven credit scores, with Sabelo Sibanda (CreditAIs)
16 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
More than 200 million formal and informal micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets lack adequate financing to thrive and grow; a...
What lenders can learn from borrowers, with Nicole Lapin (Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin)
11 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nicole Lapin, Host of Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin, is “the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand”.And sure, you may no...
Making payday lending redundant, with Caroline van der Merwe and Simon Ellis (Jem)
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
South Africa has an awkward history with payday lending and payday adjacent lending, so I was a touch concerned when I first heard that a fresh pair o...
Empowering entrepreneurial women, with Debbie Watkins (Lucy)
04 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Singapore might not feel like a natural home for a mobile banking app built on a vision to increase access to credit, but the city is not all glass sk...
How to stop lending money to strangers and follow your dreams, with Gideon Griebenow (World Turtles)
02 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Stephen Hawking starts A Brief History of Time with an anecdote he attributes to Bertrand Russel who, having just finished a lecture on the heliocentr...
Private lending for real estate, with Alex Breshears (Lend2Live)
28 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Early in Dead Poets Society, we’re introduced to Dr J. Evans Prichard’s approach to measuring the greatness of a poem, a dual-axis model which plo...
The value of self-regulation, with Anna Roughley (LSB)
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“Please, sir, may I have some more regulation?”The Lending Standards Board is the primary self-regulatory body for the banking and lending industr...
Putting core banking on the cloud, with Antonio Separovic (Oradian)
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s not often that a bank’s ATMs running out of cash is a sign of its success, but that’s exactly what happened when Cantilan Bank - with its s...
The little credit bureau that did, with Paul Randall (Creditinfo)
12 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When I was living in Denmark and working at Experian, my boss’s boss was a rockstar, you would never hear Burak Kilicoglu’s name mentioned without...
A foot-up onto the property ladder, with Cameron Orcutt (OnLadder)
07 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We all pay a mortgage every month, just sometimes it's our landlord’s mortgage we're paying… I was in London for The Podcast Show in the last week...
The data you need when you need it, with Simon Gregory (Data on Demand)
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
You may have noticed, but the world is a little unsettled these days. Incomes are variable. We’ve had government support programs come and go. And u...
Machine learning to power a fintech revolution, with Jeff Keltner (Upstart)
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The first really big event that I spoke at during my time in Asia was in Shanghai. I was at Lendit China speaking about the emergence of fintech lendi...
Lending innovation in Moldova, with Bogdan Plesuvescu (Victoriabank)
16 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I used to feel a little bit exotic knowing a person born in Moldova, but since he left as a baby, that’s actually all I knew about Moldova. It turns...
P2P Lending is Not Dead, with Mukesh Bubna (Monexo)
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I feel a strange affinity with peer to peer lending. I've never done it myself as a lender, borrower or connector but one of the first projects I ever...
Lending in Thailand and SE Asia, with Marco Chu (TransUnion) and Phadet Charoensivakorn (NCB)
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Thailand is one of my favourite markets. My main memories are of the fantastic food, the vibrant streets, and the perfect beaches but I also helped to...
How to Lend Money to Charities, with Holger Westphely (CAF Venturesome)
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Now, here is a topic I didn’t see coming. But why lend money to a charity, isn’t that a bit mean, to ask for your money back if they’re doing wo...
Building an all-in-one credit platform, with Ash Bhatt (Pillar)
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As a three-time immigrant myself, I’m always going to pay attention when I hear that’s there’s a new fintech in town building credit that moves ...
Consumer protection in Inclusive Finance, with Jayshree Venkatesan (Center for Financial Inclusion)
12 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It used to be that developing markets suffered because they didn’t have physical bank branches. And as a result, a lot of innovation sought to find ...
Active credit building, with Sho Sugihara (Pave)
05 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve recently moved and now I have an electric stovetop, the old-fashioned type that stays hot for ages. When I inevitably place a stray hand on a s...
Financing smart agriculture, with Allan Tollo (MyFugo)
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I know the voiceover says this is my 38th show, but a quick reshuffle means it is actually the 40th, still, my message remains the same - MyFugo is po...
The cards are alright... for now, with Liz Ruddick (FICO)
21 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Liz Ruddick is the author of the UK Cards Report, FICO’s go-to resources for anyone working in the UK card industry. This means Liz is perfectly pla...
Expanding access to micro-credit and micro-incomes, with Adam Rice (AssetDirect)
14 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This is not investment advice, but I’m going to put it out there: Adam Rice is one of the most exciting entrepreneurs I’ve spoken to on this show,...
Purposeful BNPL in an emerging market, with Mark McChlery (PayJustNow)
07 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
My career in consumer credit started in South Africa, a little over twenty years ago, when making access to credit fairer for the lower tiers of the e...
Open banking is mainstream, with James Varga (DirectID)
31 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
No one will give you a job until you have work experience. No one will extend you credit until you have a credit history. Two absurdities that have ex...
Can the blockchain solve ‘identity’, with Jonathan Camilleri Bowman (Sekuritance)
24 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s weird: when I moved house, the world suddenly stopped while everyone waited for me to get a new utility bill, at which point we resumed normal ...
Open Banking in Greece and beyond, with Dimitris Petrilis (Infin8)
17 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve spoken about Open Banking on this show before, often from the perspective of how to use the data, and often with a UK-centric point-of-view gi...
Touch and tech in African consumer loans, with Michiel le Roux (Unifi Credit)
10 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Not every hot new name in consumer lending is some smartphone-native app underpinned by a quiver of machine learning algorithms. But also, not every h...
Learning from our lending mistakes, with James Lambridis (DebtMD)
03 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Not every loan made to a stranger is a good one, sometimes the lender suffers as a result, almost always the borrower does. On this show, we often tal...
Lending against assets, all assets, with James Constantinou (Prestige Pawnbrokers)
24 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Where do you go next when you already have your own show on Channel 4? Well, to HTLMTS apparently 😁In today’s episode, I speak to the founder of ...
Consumers and their credit data, with Kelli Fielding (TransUnion)
17 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I spent several years creating industry-level research for one of the big credit bureaus, first in Asia and then in Europe. During that time, one of m...
Could we lend against crypto assets, with Phil Blows (AQRU)
10 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We owe this episode to a comment Praveen Sinha made in episode 15. Praveen was talking about the trends to watch in fintech/ lending in India and ment...
Fixing vendor finance, with Alex Armitage (Nectarine Credit)
03 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For the last 20 years, I've been delivering lending projects across the credit life-cycle and around the world, but always focused on the consumer. Th...
A global career in collections, with Chris Somervell
27 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
New Zealand might be forgotten from world maps so often that it’s become a meme, but that didn’t stop today’s guest from taking his career truly...
What is an identity, with Jaime Ramirez (Preventor)
20 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In episode 17 of this show, John Cannon said of identity that “when you really sit down and think about it, in the digital world, it is broken."On t...
Seamless working capital finance, with Alek Koenig (Settle)
13 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A lender will always want to know as much as possible about a business’ health before extending credit. That’s not changed, but until recently the...
Gamifying credit scores for the unbanked, with Yatir Zaluski, Niharika Bhargava, and Jacobus Eksteen (ConfirmU)
06 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I've worked in consumer credit for 20 years, but I think the first time that I heard of anybody trying to use a psychometric-based scorecard for makin...
Credit scoring in Nigeria, from Jes Freemantle (Stratus Credit Consultancy)
23 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the very first episode of HTLMTS, Raymond Anderson mentioned a consultant who’d served as something of a mentor to him – Jes Freemantle. So it ...
Lending against talent, with Joel Frisch (Prodigy Finance)
16 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Back of the envelope, according to Poets and Quants, a Harvard MBA will set you back $130,000 per year once you've added in all the extra costs, maybe...
Expanding the definition of credit bureau data, with Jon Roughley (Experian)
09 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It used to be that to speak about credit bureau data, was to speak about defaults. But negative banking data became comprehensive banking data, became...
The Russian consumer credit landscape, with Igor Propopenko (Experian)
02 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
I've always been interested in emerging markets, which early in my career meant the BRICs - Brazil, Russia, India, and China (and, yes, South Africa, ...
Building better collections processes, with Dylan Jones (IE Hub)
25 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Level with me, how often do you really go to the dentist? Is it every 6 months like they tell you to?Look, I’m not here to judge you, I’ve certain...
Accelerating BNPL in Spain, with Jaime Marin Merlo (Fiizy)
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Is this another BNPL episode? Of course, it is.But what can I say, the world seems to have an unquenchable thirst for the model right now 😁Plus, th...
Fraud and identity trends, with John Cannon (Oakford Consulting)
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
My very first job was building models to catch credit card fraud, at that time we were most concerned with counterfeited cards, then lost/ stolen card...
Resilient Canadian consumers are looking forward to growth, with Matt Fabian (TransUnion)
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this week’s episode of HTLMTS, I speak to Matt Fabian, TransUnion Canada's Director for Research and Consulting. Matt spoke to me about the credi...
Modern lending In India, with Praveen Sinha and Amit Pandey (Pincap)
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Powered by a growing middle class and a more connected rural population, the Indian consumer credit economy is carrying a lot of momentum, as is the m...
Consumer credit in the Nordics, with Jakob Færgeman (Experian)
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Vikings are coming! The Vikings are coming!For a long time, the Nordic financial services market was a geographically contained one, with just 25 ...
A Hong Kong market update with Dr Francis Lau
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hong Kong is a small market, smaller still in the shadow of the Chinese Mainland market which we explored in episode 4 of How to Lend Money to Strang...
The exponential growth of digital banking in Ghana, with Felix Duku (Duku Consulting)
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Poor infrastructure was an insurmountable hurdle for the traditional banking model in many developing markets. Branches were too expensive to install ...
Making credit histories globally portable, with Misha Esipov (Nova Credit)
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve been an international immigrant three times now – into Denmark, into Hong Kong, and into the UK. In each case there was the expected pile of ...
Instant gratification with Michele Tucci, André Marques, and Anit Antony
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Last week I had the pleasure of hosting a panel discussion at a virtual event hosted by some of my friends and ex-colleagues at TransUnion in the Phil...
Lending money to friends and family, with Craig Smith (JustLend)
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
I named this podcast How to Lend Money to Strangers because for the last twenty years that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do. And although I’...
Big data scoring for thin file and new-to-credit customers, with Oscar Koster (Big Data Scoring)
09 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The traditional credit model is often underpinned by an existing credit history. This makes sense mathematically, after all the best predictor of futu...
Risk-based collections in the time of COVID-19, with Terry Franklin (Qualco)
02 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For a long time, collections teams tended to look a bit like government departments, where customers are assumed to have no alternative but to put up ...
The state of the American consumer credit industry, with Matt Komos (TransUnion)
05 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Few of us will have experienced something as disruptive as COVID-19. The disease, and the lockdowns that followed it, shaped national economies and in...
Scoring for microfinance, with Joffre Toerien (Credit Insight Analytics)
29 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We like to talk about algorithms, and big data, and machine learning, but sometimes we’d do well to take a step back and ask about what the business...
An insider‘s view of the Chinese consumer credit landscape, with Zhong Liu and Ruifeng Liu
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When Dr Ruifeng Liu was transferred to China, it was to help the Postal Savings Bank of China roll out consumer banking for the first time through the...
Leveraging BNPL to expand access to credit, with Georg Steiger (BillEase)
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Philippines is home to one of Asia’s best-performing economies, but many of its 60 million adults may be missing out on the party thanks to thei...
Turning scorecards into revenue, with Graham Whitley (Quid Pro Consulting)
12 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, we set the scene, and in doing so we allowed ourselves to keep the conversation high-level and somewhat academic in nature. In the corporat...
A History of Risk Assessment, with Raymond Anderson (Rayan Analytics)
12 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Raymond Anderson wrote the textbook on credit risk modelling, two of them in fact, and so when I was looking for someone to help me lay the foundation...
How to Lend Money to Strangers
10 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How to Lend Money to Strangers is a podcast about lending in all its forms and in all the markets in which it takes place, however diverse those marke...