The jazz ensemble approach: How Fundbox's dual leadership model powers lending growth

As fintech companies transition from scrappy startups to scaled operations, traditional leadership models often hit their limits. The demands of managing complex partnerships, navigating regulatory requirements, and driving sustainable growth require a different kind of executive structure than the founder-led approach that got many companies off the ground. Today, I'm joined by Prashant Fuloria, CEO of Fundbox, and Anchit Singh, the company's Chief Business Officer, to explore how they've developed a collaborative leadership model that's helped drive Fundbox's evolution in the embedded finance space. We'll dig into the CEO-CBO dynamic, how they divide responsibilities, and what other growing fintechs can learn about building leadership structures that scale.

Americans give nearly half a trillion dollars to charity each year—over 2% of GDP. Yet despite this massive scale, charitable giving remains stuck in the past, dominated by donor-advised funds marketed exclusively to the wealthy and clunky processes that make generosity harder than it should be. Today I'm joined by Adam Nash, co-founder and CEO of Daffy, a modern platform that's democratizing charitable giving through technology. Adam brings decades of experience building consumer fintech products as the former CEO of Wealthfront and in leadership roles at LinkedIn, Dropbox, and eBay. During the pandemic, he recognized that while fintech had revolutionized how we save and invest, charitable giving had been largely untouched by innovation. We'll explore why Adam left Wealthfront to tackle charitable giving, how Daffy's membership-based model differs from traditional approaches, and why he believes donor-advised funds will soon be as common as 401ks. Adam will share insights on tax-advantaged giving as more people hold appreciated assets like stock and crypto, how Daffy is incorporating AI, and why they've opened their APIs to partners like Betterment and Robinhood.

As the banking landscape accelerates toward digital transformation, some financial institutions are questioning how fast and far to leap. Others have long made the jump. As Canada’s first cloud-native bank, EQ Bank is already ahead of the curve. Its early adoption of a cloud-native core banking platform through a partnership with Temenos is now powering its next phase: real-time data and AI-driven innovation. Behind it all is a long-standing relationship between EQ and Temenos that encourages mutual collaboration and support. In today’s episode, Temenos’ Chief Revenue Officer Will Moroney and EQ Bank’s Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Geoff Vona discuss the benefits of cloud-native banking, improving customer experiences through real-time data, developing new capabilities powered by AI and how technology partners and banks can offer each other deeper value.

Today, traditional insurance faces mounting pressures from new technologies and market entrants, and digital transformation has become an imperative rather than an option. Kamiel Bouw, Global Head of Insurance for Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions, joins the show today. He brings extensive experience navigating this evolving landscape, where efficiency, data-driven approaches, and customer-centricity have become paramount. With traditional insurers working to adopt new technologies within legacy infrastructure, Buow describes how Citi has positioned itself to strategically support these organizations capture opportunities while enhancing customer experience. Throughout the interview, Buow explores several transformative themes reshaping the insurance industry. He uses real life case studies to emphasize the tremendous opportunity in digitizing payment processes — both for premium collections and claims payments — highlighting how instant payments can create superior customer experiences while providing operational benefits. Buow also discusses how Treasury functions must evolve beyond their traditional role as financial settlement centers to become innovation leaders, engaging across enterprise-wide initiatives and providing expertise in risk management and end-to-end payment flows. Listen to the podcast to gain unique insights into emerging technologies like digital assets and tokenization and their growing role in insurance, and how organizations can start with small, focused use cases to drive learning and foster broader adoption of this new tech.

Banking executives face a familiar dilemma: decades-old core systems technically constrain innovation while replacement costs can reach hundreds of millions of dollars and take years to implement. Meanwhile, fintechs launch new products in weeks while traditional banks remain trapped in months-long approval cycles. The challenge extends beyond technology. "Most banks duct-tape capabilities onto what they already have, and eventually they break," explains Ritesh Rihani, Vice President of Enterprise Banking at Galileo. "You've seen the number of outages we've had in the industry recently. That's all happening because they put duct tape upon duct tape." The pressure to modernize comes from multiple directions. Customer expectations have evolved toward integrated experiences and ease of use and operational risks multiply as the pool of COBOL programmers shrinks through retirement. Regulatory compliance becomes increasingly difficult with manual processes and fragmented systems. This podcast explores five critical dimensions of core modernization: balancing costs with competitive necessity, understanding operational and regulatory risks, implementing incremental transformation strategies, enabling product innovation, and unlocking the future potential of modern banking architecture.

Isabelle Guis understands the need for marketing to speak technology's language. With an engineering background, Guis sees her strength as Temenos’ Chief Marketing Officer in bridging the communication gap between technology innovation and the value it brings to customers. In a conversation at the Temenos Regional Forum Americas 2025 held May 28-30 in Miami, Guis explained that Temenos values customer centricity above all else. “There is this reliability, this expertise that’s needed to make sure you deliver,” she said. “And you innovate without compromising what you already have.” Guis also discussed how banks are investing in technology to stay competitive amid economic uncertainty, and why legacy systems can hinder that progress. She outlined paths that banks can take to modernize their core infrastructure, offering alternatives like the choice between cloud or on-premise solutions — or even module-specific upgrades. Guis also shared how Temenos’ new motto “Leading Banking Forward” captures the company’s vision for collective progress in the banking industry. Today’s podcast episode explores Temenos’ customer-centered perspective, the need for digital transformation in banking through modern infrastructure, and the company’s strategic vision of how it can emulate industry-wide progress and leadership.

The infrastructure for crypto-native finance is maturing beyond proof-of-concepts into real financial products. Tokenized securities are moving from experimental pilots to regulated offerings, stablecoin infrastructure is becoming the backbone for 24/7 payment systems, and traditional fintech companies are quietly integrating crypto rails to improve settlement and unlock new capabilities. I'm joined by Juan Lopez, General Partner at VanEck Ventures, where he focuses on investments at the intersection of traditional finance and blockchain technology. Before joining VanEck, Juan was at Circle Ventures, giving him a front-row seat to how institutional-grade crypto infrastructure has developed. His portfolio includes companies building the regulated infrastructure enabling this shift from experimental to operational. Juan's perspective on where real value is being created—from tokenized equity platforms achieving regulatory approval to stablecoin routing systems—offers insight into how crypto infrastructure is becoming essential plumbing for modern financial services. We'll discuss what's driving adoption, where the next wave of exits will come from, and how fintech companies are integrating blockchain technology to improve their core business models.

While co-branded credit cards have dominated consumer wallets for decades, a new option is emerging in the payments landscape. Co-branded debit cards represent an untapped opportunity for brands to deepen customer relationships while addressing the preferences of a generation that increasingly chooses debit over credit. Derek White, CEO of Galileo Financial Technologies, has been at the forefront of this shift. Under his leadership, Galileo recently powered Wyndham Rewards’ launch of what's being called the industry's first co-branded debit card in the US. "The opportunity is huge here, where we have customers that have a deep loyalty with the brand," White explained. The timing for this launch is strategic. 30% of customers are pulling out debit cards when making purchases at major travel and entertainment brands, "even though they're not getting rewards associated with it." This value gap represents millions of transactions where brands could be deepening customer relationships but aren't. Listen to this Tearsheet podcast episode with Derek White to learn about how co-branded debit cards are creating new monetization opportunities for brands, what consumer behaviors are driving this new product, and how the convergence of AI, blockchain, and quantum technologies might fundamentally change how money moves through payment systems.

SMBs are drowning in a sea of disconnected financial tools, juggling separate platforms for banking, payments, accounting, and lending. Many business owners find themselves logging into five or six different systems just to manage their daily operations, creating inefficiency and driving up costs at a time when economic pressures are mounting. U.S. Bank's latest 2025 Small Business Survey shows that SMBs are looking to their FIs to collapse these various digital solutions into one integrated experience. "They are overwhelmed by the number of standalone software solutions which exist in the marketplace," explains Shruti Patel, Chief Product Officer for the Business Banking segment at U.S. Bank. "They would like to consolidate these so that they're not constantly juggling with multiple tools or playing mental gymnastics, all while streamlining costs." The survey data, drawn from approximately 1,000 SMB owners across the country with revenues up to $25 million, shows a clear trend toward viewing banks as comprehensive financial hubs rather than simple repositories for funds. SMBs are seeking integrated solutions that combine banking, payments, and software capabilities under one roof. Listen to this podcast to learn about U.S. Bank’s Shruti Patel is helping U.S. Bank position itself as the primary re-bundlers of financial services in the post-pandemic era.

Financial institutions are drowning in payment complexity. Between legacy systems, and the accelerating pace of change in how people pay, banks face a modernization crisis that threatens their competitive position. At the FIS Emerald Conference 2025, FIS announced a partnership with Episode Six which is designed to address these challenges head-on. Episode Six, an API-driven payments technology provider, will now be working with FIS to deliver a cloud-based, end-to-end digital payments platform. The collaboration brings together FIS's global scale and institutional relationships with Episode Six's modern, configurable payment infrastructure. The new partnership will allow FIs to scale beyond their local borders, without having to build new tech and processes from scratch. "We did some pretty hefty research over an extended period of time," said Rob Hudson, Head of International Banking, at FIS. "It became very apparent very quickly that Episode Six was the one that we wanted to work with. This was the standout opportunity for us, without doubt." John Mitchell, CEO and co-founder of Episode Six, emphasized the strategic nature of the partnership. "We've always envisioned that if we had a partner with the strengths and the scale of FIS, that our platform would be used in a much broader capacity," he said. "This partnership is going to enable us to present a solution that will allow all of our clients to innovate at scale." Listen to the podcast to learn what financial executives can do to navigate legacy system constraints surprisingly well, tackle global payment complexity to expand internationally, and implement progressive modernization without putting careers on the line. It's a conversation on practical strategies for overcoming institutional resistance to change while delivering the cloud-native solutions that modern banking demands.