As the use of artificial intelligence expands and finds more use cases, there remains special interest in its applications for customer service. Retailers and service providers are training AI to retrieve important information in a natural, conversational manner, thereby delighting customers through giving them an unforgettable customer experience. And yet there are instances where delighting the customer isn’t the best approach. When it comes to bare necessities like utilities, perhaps the...

This episode of Tech Leaders Intel sees Nick Goodwin sit down with Paul Staples, ClearBank’s head of Embedded Banking. Paul has quite the story; originally starting out in the oil industry, he stepped into banking as he swung from working the floors at Goldman Sachs, to being a strategist at Deutsche Bank, then JP Morgan and finally establishing building a case for HSBC as a platform business in Embedded Finance before finally stepping fully into the fintech space with Clearbank. As if all of...

Stephen Marjot understands what needs to happen in order to make business transformations in the BFSI field a success. Yes, the company must be fully committed, and risks must be mitigated, but it is equally important that transformations must help the staff make them happen as much as help families and small businesses thrive. In an increasingly digital world where customer demands are growing, transformations must be based around people internally rather than the other way around. Serving...

For this episode of "Tech Leaders Intel," host Andreas Giesa interviews Dr. Timm Neu, Team Lead and Product Owner at Volkswagen. Having gained a global outlook on his profession and life, Timm took a long and winding path to get to Volkswagen; he has studied law, worked in India and the US, and even served a stint with the German embassy in Luxembourg! Timm then spent about 10 years in IT law, including as General Cousel of Cleverbridge and Group Legal Cousel at Volkswagen. He eventually...

This week on Tech Leaders Intel, our Mark Jacks sits down with Viator’s Head of Data and Revenue Management, Kiran Padavala. Viator is an Experience Marketplace that inspires travelers to plan and book unique experiences. As a part of the TripAdvisor family, they are continuing to scale following impressive trading results and ambitious plans. Kiran is an experienced technology leader, with a developed playbook that focusses on the core pillars, enablers and metrics to enable successful...

On the newest episode of Tech Leaders Intel, Lewis Bicknell sits down with Mark O’Brien, a senior platform manager with the Leeds Building Society. At the start of his career Mark didn’t expect to find himself in such a role having earned a degree in mathematics and working in fields such as development and architecture. He took up a service operations role for LBS and changed the way it works, transformed from batch process-oriented to event-driven organization, which helped fine-tune the...

In this insightful episode, host Louis Bicknell engages in a thought-provoking conversation with guest Nicholas Bobb, who serves as a trustee of The Data Lab and boasts an extensive background in the financial services industry. Nicholas Bobb's story is particularly compelling as he traces his roots back to the West Indies, detailing his transformative journey to becoming a seasoned data professional in Scotland. Throughout the episode, Nik places a strong emphasis on the critical role of...

What makes a leader? Not just an executive title or self-appointed honorific on social media, but someone who can take the breadth of their living and professional experience and channel it into enriching the work of their peers and championing their ideas and efforts to improve their field of expertise. That’s what Carolina Restrepo, a Products, Technology and Innovation Manager at Vanderlande and 2023 Next CIO award-winner, aims to do. Carolina drives innovation and value by emphasizing...

In a time when insurance providers are pulling coverage due to the increased frequency of events brought on by climate change, more must be done to offer policies that protect people, their homes, and their belongings, as well as ensure that policyholders can get quick initial relief aid in the immediate aftermath of natural disasters. On the newest installment of Tech Leaders’ Intel, Nick Goodwin sits down with Rosina Smith, Chief Product Officer at McKenzie Intelligence Services (MIS)....

This week on the Tech Leaders Intel podcast, host John Cheng sits down with Daniele Forni, Director of Credit and Lending at HSBC. Daniele is an author and subject matter expert on risk management who creates analytical solutions for a living, but he’s quite the polymath as well. The first few minutes of the conversation reveal that Daniele formed a band that he recorded albums with, moved to China to study Chinese, and earned his MBA in Economics before settling down to work with HSBC, first...

In the latest installment of the Tech Leaders’ Intel podcast James Loveridge sits down with Ben Upcroft, VP of Technology at OXA (formerly known as Oxbotica). Given his background as a researcher, it is clear that Ben is unwaveringly passionate about automation and robotics as he infodumps on the ins and outs of the technology, especially with regards to safety. It follows that OXA’s MetaDriver is a virtual tool that aids a vital step in the safeguarding process, identifying both edge and...

Join host Nick Goodwin as he sits down with ITC DIA’s Head of Content Merlin Beyts on the newest Tech Leaders Intel. Merlin is involved in organizing events for ITC DIA, an organization that caters to insurance executives, insurtech investors, associations, brokers, and regulators in the European insurtech industry. He uses content and webinars to promote emerging technologies that get insights from data such as Web3, blockchain, and GenAI. Merlin has his finger on the pulse of burgeoning...

When we consider attracting the right talent, we always take technical skills as priority. But what makes talent a real deal and how can we nurture a person’s growth, if we don’t give them a chance to begin with? In an era of endlessly listed bullet points of “must haves” and “mandatory skillsets”, we tend to not take into consideration how we should create positions around people, instead of seeking omniscient beings to fill the unnecessary brackets. In our most recent Tech Leaders’ Intel...

In a world surrounded by Data, it’s basically impossible to keep track of it all. But even if we live the Data, there’s still much more to learn. Perhaps a “wedding cake” analogy, might pique our curiosity to expand our knowledge. On this week’s Tech Leaders’ Intel podcast, we talk with Shantanu Lodh, a Director of Data Platforms at Shawbrook Bank, which is an award-winning specialist bank, serving real estate professionals, SMEs and consumers with a broad range of lending products and a...

In the virtual world of meetings and remote work, it’s hard to keep the communication and morale at the highest possible level. In the latest episode of #TechLeadersIntel, Daniel Sielaff interviews Anna Peeck, Senior Manager in operational excellence and change at Aviv Group. They delve into the significance of Operational Excellence and Change Management in various IT-led companies. Anna also highlights the role of Product Ops in her activities. Aviv Group, a major real estate holding...

Digitalization is a massive benefit for every company, especially now, that the modern standards of remote and hybrid work are all the rage. On this week’s episode of Tech Leaders’ Intel, we speak with Silke Kanes, a Chief Product Officer of Scopevisio AG, a company that was the first German cloud-based ERP, CRM + ECM Suite solution for SME businesses. Silke starts our interview with a little background story of studying and working in the Tech industry in the 80s. She gives us a little...

One thing is always true: It’s extremely hard to become a trailblazer on unknown grounds. But it’s even harder to discover new roads on a few-hundred-years pavement like Insurance. In this week’s Tech Leaders’ Intel, we meet with Ben Davis, Head of Web3 at Superscript, the first UK Insuretech broker licensed by Lloyds that launched its crypto product to the world. Ben is passionate about the Web3, and for those unfamiliar with it, Web3 is a series of open-source and interconnected...

There are only two things certain in life: death and taxes. And the latter is decidedly easier to tackle. On this week’s episode, we talk with Piotr Tomaszewski, a Design Manager at Taxfix, a German company that created a mobile application that allows its users to either answer a questionnaire to speed up filling forms or connects them with a tax advisor that does it all for you. During the interview, Piotr goes into detail about career changes, leaps of faith he took and how managerial...

When we talk about digital transformations, they are not meant to sound like a cure-all that can be applied to stimulate growth. Any firm not willing to do the meticulous work to see that a digital transformation goes to plan properly will find themselves no better off than when they started. In the most recent episode of the Tech Leaders’ Intel podcast, Richard Jackson talks to Nikolaus Sühr, CEO and co-founder of the insurtech firm Kasko, a firm that works with large insurance companies and...

As tech startups and disruptors seek to provide more niche services to the general public, data security becomes an increasingly bigger concern. It follows that education on security risks and precautions for insurtech firm leadership, solution architects and end-users is absolutely paramount. On the latest installment of the Tech Leaders’ Intel podcast, we speak with Lee Williamson, Chief Information Security Officer at EIP, who has spent years helping colleagues and customers understand...

Increasing satisfaction within internal and external teams is a never-ending job. But how do you even approach the subject, considering there are just as many opinions as people within the team? In this week’s Tech Leaders’ Intel podcast, we speak with Nuno Veloso, the Head of Engineering at luxury fashion company FARFETCH. Nuno enlightened us on the challenges of being a leader in a rapidly evolving industry where expectations are constantly on the rise. Struggling to understand the...

Oftentimes we read, hear, and see influential people share their journey of becoming great leaders, nurturing growth, setting an example, and lightning the way for others. What most of them omit is the real challenges life puts in your way, that not everybody has the willingness to do. In other words, nobody can become a great mentor overnight. On this episode of Tech Leaders’ Intel, James Loveridge speaks with Joe Pettersson, a self-described introvert who has broken out of his comfort zone...

Conventional thinking goes that the most successful startups, technologies, and business leaders are specialists with years of experience mastering the niches and corners of their field. While that may be the reality, it is crucial not to overlook how a generalist mindset can also fuel success. On the newest edition of Tech Leaders’ Intel, Didier Caroff speaks with Simon Upton to deliver some particularly salient insights about navigating changes in business growth. Didier, who is vice...

You rarely hear from business leaders about those difficult early decisions that go into building a startup. Hearing from someone who has been there speak about their experiences with radical candour is a breath of fresh air. On the newest episode of Tech Leaders’ Intel, Lunio founder Neil Andrew tells his story from disenchantment with education to distaste for corporate life to founding a successful marketing efficiency platform. With the Great Resignation seeing elevated numbers of people...