One Vision Podcast — Fintech, Banking & AI with Theodora Lau

Every few years someone tells us banking is about to be disrupted. It never quite happens. So when Dharmesh Mistry and Lou Carlozo came on to talk about their new book, The Intelligent Ledger, I asked: Why is this time different?Dharmesh's take? Banking has adopted plenty of individual technologies, from mainframe to client-server, internet, mobile, cloud. None of them disrupted anything. But the iPhone didn't win by being a better phone. Nokia was building a better phone. Kodak was building a better camera. Garmin was building a better GPS. The iPhone was all of them at once, and the market reorganised around it in under five years.His claim is that banking now has its own version of that convergence — what he and Lou call the Quanvergence: open, accessible data; agentic AI; tokenisation; and quantum, arriving together rather than in sequence. Not the best AI bank. Not the best tokenised rails. All of it, in one place. So platform or pipe? And who will win? 📱 The Intelligent Ledger ships at the end of September from Palgrave Macmillan. Hot take 🔥"Banks have already chosen pipe, but they're not admitting it. Nobody wants to hear it. If you're selling products and that's all that you're doing, you're making your money from margin on a product — that makes you a pipe. So just admit it and get on with it." — Dharmesh MistryHot take 🔥"Change or die by 2032." — Lou Carlozo🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: Fintech, Financial Services, Agentic AI, AI, Quantum, Digital Transformation, Tokenization Timestamp:00:00 Welcome and Guests00:50 Introducing The Intelligent Ledger03:29 Why Five Years06:58 Convergence and Platform Shift09:31 Skepticism and CEO Courage13:38 Four Forces 17:10 Small Banks Can Compete22:05 Bold Claims and 2032 Deadline34:37 Release Dates and Where to BuyMore about our guests 🌐Dharmesh Mistry on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dharmeshmistry2020/ 🌐Lou Carlozo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loucarlozo/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 

🎙️Agentic Commerce's Real Bottleneck Isn't the Technology — with Jas ShahA year and a half ago, agentic commerce was going to change everything. Type a prompt, get a package. So what actually happened?In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Theodora Lau sits down with fintech product expert Jas Shah for a clear-eyed look at where agentic commerce really stands. The technology has mobilized, but as Jas puts it, becoming ready is not the same as being ready. Disputes, chargebacks, and fraud liability haven't been solved for a world where transaction volume could rise exponentially. And consumer behavior hasn't moved at all: they will use AI for discovery, then still tap Apple Pay to buy. The conversation turns on a single test: utility. Where an agent removes genuine administrative burden, it wins. Where the person actually wants to choose, it doesn't. Which is why Jas argues the real early adopters are businesses: inventory systems, product codes, predictable repeat purchasing, and a procurement decision that comes down to price and delivery speed. Ready for a bold bet for 2030? It involves a wallet … 💬Hot take: "The tech is becoming ready, but I don't think anyone can say it's ready yet."🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: Fintech, Financial Services, AI, Agentic Commerce Timestamp:00:00 Welcome and Intro00:57 Agentic Commerce Reality Check04:45 Trust and Value Exchange08:55 Why Businesses Adopt First11:29 Authorization and Fraud Guardrails13:22 PSPs and Wallets Strategy17:27 What People Get Wrong19:23 Agentic Finance for SMEs24:37 Personal Finance Utility27:18 Bold Bet for 2030More about our guest 🌐Jas Shah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jas-shah/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 

In this week’s One Vision Podcast, Theodora Lau hosts Kathryn Outlaw, Co-Founder and COO of Spheros, a B2B SaaS platform that aims to unify client data into a single source of truth, enabling accurate, consented data sharing and supporting reliable AI agents. Kathryn talks about her entrepreneurial journey, the inspiration behind the startup, and the goal of making Spheros as essential as DocuSign for onboarding.💬Hot take:  ”Banks don't have a data scarcity problem. They have a data comprehension problem.” 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: Fintech, Financial Services, Data, Banking Industry Timestamp:00:00 Welcome And Guest Intro01:27 From Banking To Startup04:06 Why Spheros Exists07:58 Agents And Data Consent10:30 Open Banking Pathways15:31 Founder Lessons Learned17:01 Defining Success AheadMore about our guest 🌐Kathryn Outlaw on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathrynoutlaw/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 

🎙️ "Delight is a deposit strategy."In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Angela Scott, Sales Enablement leader at Zions, joins host Theodora Lau, to discuss her idea that “delight is a deposit strategy,” arguing banks can win deposits by creating intuitive, responsive, and even enjoyable experiences that make money movement easy, especially when digital experiences are constrained by shared core and app vendors. They get into: Why delight isn’t fluffWhy the best deposit strategy makes money easy to move in and outThe chick-and-egg trap of building on the same handful of core and app providersFinancial literacy, and why communities shouldn’t bear the burdenWhy we need to make banking more legibleAngela stresses balancing efficiency and humanity through employee, digital, and brand experience to build trust. 💬 "If you want deposits, you have to bring the right environment to set them free."🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: Fintech, FinancialServices, Banking Industry, Financial Inclusion, Financial Literacy 00:00 Welcome and Introductions01:05 Delight as Deposit Strategy04:43 Banking UX and Vendor Limits07:16 Neobank Story and Micro Delights11:46 Angela’s Origin Story17:22 Inclusion and Literacy Work25:29 Digital Efficiency vs Human Touch33:02 Brand Experience and Differentiation36:56 Takeaways and GoodbyeMore about our guest 🌐Angela Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-scott-a2348827/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 

In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Theo chats with Huyen Tran from US Bank and founder/investor at Elys Ventures. Huyen shares her path from computer engineering and early real-estate investing to two decades in banking product leadership and P&L ownership. She discusses why banks can appear slow due to resilience, regulation, legacy systems, and trust requirements, and how AI will accelerate prototyping, testing, data analysis, and iterative product development while meeting customer expectations for personalization and security amid rising fraud. A must-listen episode on startup, innovation, relationship building, and ecosystem thinking. 🔥"What value are you creating for everyone involved? ...Just don't forget about the people."🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: AI, Fintech, FinancialServices, VC, Startups, Banking Industry Timestamps:00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro00:53 Path to Banking05:17 Are Banks Really Slow?08:09 AI Changing Bank Product10:39 Customer Expectations and Trust13:27 Inside Elys Ventures14:18 Moats in the AI Era18:37 Founder Questions and Cycles20:27 Advice for New Founders23:41 Closing More about our guest 🌐Huyen Tran on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huyen-tran-09a580aa/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision **

Anthony Sar, Co-founder and CEO of Finoverse and the driving force behind Hong Kong Fintech Week, joins Theo on One Vision to share the story behind one of Asia's most iconic innovation gatherings. From a bar conversation about hitting 5,000 attendees (when they had 300) to welcoming 45,000 people from 120+ economies at their 10th anniversary, Anthony reflects on what it takes to build something that genuinely keeps people in the room.At the center of the conversation is Samantha, built in-house by Finoverse. She acts as your personal AI networking agent. She interviews you, learns what you're looking for, and makes introductions at scale. After a successful pilot at last year’s FinTech Week as well as the recent Genesis Festival, Samantha will return to Hong Kong FinTech Week 2026 this November.  This year’s conference is aptly themed Fintech Nexus: Bridging the World, Building the Future. It is a rallying call to drive connectivity and collaboration across global and Chinese Mainland markets, at a time when the world feels more fragmented than ever.One World, One Planet. This episode invites us to come together to foster collaboration for a more inclusive financial services ecosystem for everyone. 🔥 Hot Take: "AI can't have coffee with you. It can't go for a hike. It can't watch a comedy with you." 🔥 Hot Take: “There's so much happening in mainland China and Asia that the rest of the world simply doesn't see." 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: AI, Fintech, FinancialServices, Startups, Hong KongTimestamps00:00 Welcome and Introductions02:59 A decade of Finoverse and Hong Kong Fintech Week 07:39 Introducing Samantha: The AI Host10:13 The Future of Events and Networking19:07 How AI Makes Human Connection More Valuable, Not Less27:55 Hong Kong Fintech Week 2026: Fintech Nexus: Bridging the World, Building the Future33:01 Closing Thoughts: One World, One PlanetMore about our guest 🌐Anthony Sar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonysar/ 🌐FinTech Week Hong Kong: https://www.fintechweek.hk/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision **

In this new episode of One Vision Podcast, Paolo Sironi joins Theodora Lau to unveil his new book, Quantum Sapiens, a philosophical literary thriller on artificial intelligence, quantum gravity, and the origins of human consciousness. A burning question: Why now?We talk about the "I love you" problem and what happens when we attribute meaning to words that machines give us. Paolo invites us to think about the journey ahead of us before we walk through Alice's mirror. What do we need to carry with us? What do we leave behind? An exhilarating conversation about the present and future of technology that you won't want to miss. No PhD required.📍The algorithm has no meaning. We need the entanglement and the magic of the human touch."🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: AI, Fintech, Generative AI, Quantum, EmpathyTimestamps00:00 Welcome Back Paolo00:58 Unveiling Quantum Sapiens02:38 Why Fiction Not Whitepapers06:52 From Fintech to Consciousness18:48 Illusion of AI Meaning25:06 Poetry as AI AntidoteMore about our guest 🌐Paolo Sironi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thepsironi/ 📘Quantum Sapiens: https://mybook.to/Quantum-Sapiens More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision

Many people in this country don't have access to reliable financial guidance — so they're increasingly asking a free chatbot instead. The problem? A general-purpose model trained on Reddit threads inherits Reddit's appetite for risk, and now that skew shows up in the conversations people are having about their money. In this new episode of One Vision Podcast, Alisha Chowdhury, Founder of Kiro Money, joins Theodora Lau to argue that the same technology, pointed with different intentions, can do the opposite: close the advice gap instead of widening it.Alisha traces the origin of Kiro back to a socioeconomically diverse Bangladeshi community in New Orleans — the "aunties and uncles" who taught her immigrant parents how to navigate an unfamiliar financial system — and to the University of Pennsylvania, where she saw real wealth and learned how it's built for the first time. After years as an investor at Vanguard and in private equity, she left for an MBA in London and started building the earliest version of Kiro: a low-code, RAG-based coach fed only sources she trusted. "Not garbage in."Today Kiro is an embedded financial intelligence layer that lets a bank or investing platform drop a context-aware AI coach directly into its own app, so users get guidance where their data and their relationship already live. A conversation about financial inclusion, the advice gap, and what it takes to build AI for money that people can actually trust. Because when it comes to money, trust has to be earned — and tested.🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: AI, Fintech, GenerativeAI, AI Agents, Chatbots📍”The vision of why I started this is to give back to people like my parents, is to give back to a younger version of myself, and making sure that access truly means access.”Timestamps00:00 Welcome and Introductions01:22 Alisha’s Founder Roots02:38 From New Orleans to Finance04:48 Career Path and MBA Pivot07:35 What Kiro Money Builds10:19 AI Agents and Product Vision12:27 Trust, Emotion, and Community17:36 Safety Guardrails and Testing22:12 Impact Metrics and ClosingMore about our guests 🌐Alisha Chowdhury on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisha-chowdhury-163808122/More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 

We're halfway through 2026, and the fintech landscape is moving faster than anyone can track. In this new episode of One Vision Podcast, Theo brings back three fan favorites — Jennifer White (J.D. Power), Tiffani Montez (Insider Intelligence / EMARKETER), and Julie Muhn (Finovate) — for a midyear roundtable that covers it all.What did the recent Finovate Spring reveal about where AI is actually landing in financial services? Tiffani shares the latest from the AI Visibility Leadership Board — why banks are no longer competing for attention, they're competing for recommendations, and why the rules of discovery have completely changed. Jennifer brings the data that captures our attention: 53% of consumers used AI in the last 3 months to ask a personal finance question. While awareness of bank-provided PFM tools runs 70–90%, adoption sits at 17–22%. Soft churn is now the real primacy threat. And Julie calls out one of the hardest questions in fintech: what's real, and what's just marketing?This episode covers AI as infrastructure, the trust paradox, agentic payments, GEO vs. SEO, and why the money leaving your primary bank might be the most important signal nobody's watching closely enough.🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: AI, Fintech, GenerativeAI, AI Agents, AI Visibility, LLM📍 “AI is no longer being just tacked on to existing platforms, like customer service chatbot. It's now being integrated into solutions.” ~ Julie Muhn📍 “For decades banks spend billions of dollars competing for attention, and they're now competing for recommendations.” ~ Tiffani Montez📍  ”You being the center of how the consumer manages where their money flows is a potential new definition for primacy.” ~ Jennifer White📍 “ Would we all have a little agent that's running around trying to look for the best product for us and move money for us?” ~ Theodora LauTimestamps02:35 AI Gets Practical05:25 Consumers Using AI07:04 AI Visibility Leaderboard14:26 Trust Paradox 19:53 Primacy and Soft Churn25:38 What to Watch NextMore about our guests 🌐Jennifer White on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-white-57257424/ 🌐Julie Muhn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julieschicktanz/ 🌐Tiffany Montez on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffani-montez/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision