Finmo CPO and co-founder Akhil Nigam joins Paulo for a chat live from the 10th Singapore Fintech Festival 2025 to talk about Finmo’s journey creating a truly connected intelligence platform for finance teams and treasury management able to serve businesses from SMEs to larger multi-market enterprises. A lot of it has to do with Akhil’s partnership-first approach to product development. This interview was recorded live at the Finmo booth in Singapore Fintech Festival 2025.  

Timestamps

(00:04) How Akhil became co-founder and CPO of Finmo;

(02:39) Why Finmo started out with money movement;

(05:15) The evolving needs of CFOs and finance teams;

(08:49) The role of stakeholder partnerships in product development;

(13:37) Finmo’s journey with leveraging AI;

(18:23) How does AI help with Finmo’s vision for treasury management;

(21:23) How Finmo’s product developments over the past year have strengthened its competitive advantages;

(25:01) Managing product and partnerships priorities across multiple markets;

(28:22) The next ten years of treasury management;

Directed by Paulo Joquiño

Produced by Paulo Joquiño

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The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Insignia Ventures⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ fund. Any and all opinions shared in this episode are solely personal thoughts and reflections of the guest and the host.

Transcript

How Akhil became co-founder and CPO of Finmo

Paulo: I would love to get a quick introduction from you first to learn a little bit about your background and where you’re coming from before you co-founded Finmo. What was that whole moment like, at least from your perspective?

Akhil: Basically, Finmo was born out of sheer frustration that a lot of smart finance teams are making slow and wrong decisions because the platforms that they’re using are all fragmented, and they don’t talk to each other.

So I think this is something that we observed, and I observed during my stints working with corporate banking in the last 20 years. I spent my career building infrastructure products mostly with Mastercard and Citibank. Basically, treasury is very fragmented across spreadsheets, banks, and ERPs.

A lot of banks are not connected to the ERP platform, so most of them do not have full visibility of the P&L, accounts receivables, and payables that the finance teams are working with. So at the end of the day, most of these finance teams are left with data, but they can’t utilize that data to make certain decisions. 

Once you make those decisions, you have to execute those decisions. So that’s what we thought. When we came about four years ago, we thought, let’s focus on data and then focus on how we can utilize that data to provide insights and then execute that. 

With the advent of AI, the execution and the insights part has become relatively straightforward. Because at that point in time when we started, it was still something that we were figuring out how to work with that large amount of data and make something great out of it. 

Then I’ve also been advising fintechs for the last few years, and I also saw that a lot of these startups were very focused on making revenues. But still, in terms of scaling the financial operations, there was something still missing. 

That’s the real reason. We thought, however, when you get into treasury, it’s huge. It’s vast. So you have to start somewhere. Then you evolve as the needs evolve.

Paulo: So I guess that’s why you started first with getting into money movement, cross-border flows, and then eventually, from a modular approach, adding more and more capabilities.

Why Finmo started out with money movement

Akhil: I’ll zoom a little bit into that. Typically, if you look at any company, whether it is an SMB or an enterprise, you have a CFO or a finance director who is basically looking after the risks and the overall cash across multiple entities, responsible for the entire cash flows across the entire organization. 

So they need to be aware of their various risks and how they can optimize working capital across multiple entities. Now, there could be cash pooling, notional pooling, and things that are involved, and the finance director is supposed to be making those decisions.

Then the other leg is mostly on the financial controllership, where the financial controller is more responsible for day-to-day reconciliations, settlements, and making sure that the books are in order. To keep it simple, they are more looking after the financial operations of that part of the business.

And then you have the AR and AP teams who are actually responsible for making the payment for the invoices, fetching suppliers that they have to pay, and paying out their suppliers and things like that. This introduces healthy cash flow. And then in the end, it’s mostly around forecasting, because they are analysts. So this is a classic setup of a finance company. Some of those roles could be overlapped, but if a finance function has to work properly, you at least have to have these roles defined in that organization.

So when Finmo started, we thought our forte, as all the three co-founders and four co-founders that came about, was more focused on accounts receivable, which is collections and payouts. So we started with that, but we knew that we were only addressing a small part of the bigger problem. It’s just one team within the whole firm, AR/AP. 

But if we need to solve the problem of how we can give more predictive analytics and reporting rather than retrospective reporting, we have to have data. And then how we can leverage that data via AI is what we are working on.

The evolving needs of CFOs and finance teams

Paulo: I really love that framework of how to think about product development from the finance function, how it’s structured, and how the function should be operating. Do you also see that similar kind of mindset in a lot of the finance teams or CFOs that you’ve talked to since you launched Finmo? Are they also on the same track?

Akhil: There are definitely a lot of market changes that have happened because of the AI coming in, and a lot of banks are also working with AI and fintechs to solve those problems for CFOs. So CFOs and the finance teams, their needs have evolved from what they were a decade back. 

As they are growing and scaling, there is a big need for real-time visibility of data across all their entities and organizations. So that’s one thing. With a lot of regulations also coming in, there is a tightening of compliance and audit controls that the CFOs are more focused on.

The last part I mentioned about execution is: I know that I have the data, and I have made a decision that, okay, I am probably not going to be sitting on certain currencies that are much riskier from a market standpoint. 

So how do I execute, or how do I make sure that even if I’m collecting in those certain currencies, the teams are empowered to know that we have to quickly convert it, and we probably don’t sit on huge amounts of cash in those specific currencies. So once you make those decisions, we have to execute those decisions. So I think they’re looking for how those decisions can be made.

The other point was around predictive analytics, forecasting, and looking at the future—what kind of risks I could be exposed to. Knowing these problems, we now figure out that our platform is actually solving more on the collections and the payouts. 

We are actually helping them move the money, but if we need to give them the holistic or more strategic solution—so they don’t have to go to another ERP, a treasury system, or a bank—they should probably come to us. So if we need to do that, we have to solve all these problems that they are now facing in the current climate. The first and foremost thing, as I mentioned, is the real-time nature of the data is what they’re seeking.

For that, we are evolving a product from just focusing on money movement to connecting with their banks. How do we connect with these banks? It’s via APIs, host-to-host connections, and multiple times during the day, we receive the feeds from banks who don’t have enough tech. 

Tthat’s how the product is evolving, and we are connecting their banks apart from what they’re using Finmo for. That gives Finmo a lot more visibility in terms of their transactional flows, and also gives them better views of their cash flows across multiple organizations.

The role of stakeholder partnerships in product development

Paulo: What I really like about your approach is that you’re not just creating an all-in-one platform just for the sake of it. There is that element of wanting the CFOs and the finance teams to be able to make decisions more clearly and execute on those decisions more efficiently as well. 

I wanted to touch on one aspect you mentioned: creating that connectivity between banks and the many accounts they have across the world, and really creating that connected intelligence for Finmo. From a product perspective, how has that journey been to try to partner with all these different stakeholders, make sure they’re all well integrated into the platform, so those using Finmo don’t really have to leave Finmo to get the work done?

Akhil: I like the word that you use, “journey.” Yes, it’s actually a journey. First of all, we have to prioritize the markets, and mostly it’s based on our customers coming in and saying, “Hey, we are actually in these markets.” 

So we prioritize our markets based on customer needs. Yes, there are definitely markets where they’re using Tier 2 banks, or where they lack technical expertise in terms of getting the data. What we do is, because we can do AR/AP well for our customers, we project that. When we go to these banks, we talk to them about, “Hey, we are helping these customers with money movement.”

Right now, the way they’re doing it is they get an invoice into an accounting platform, then they come into your dashboard and make the payment, and then they have to go and manually do the reconciliation. That’s a lot of logging in and logging out. As a result, the whole process is quite slow. 

They actually really see this as a problem. A lot of banks don’t want to get into accounting platforms, but I think it could be a roadmap issue, or they’re not too focused on it. They think, “Hey, accounting is not my problem. My problem is to make sure that the money is kept right, it’s secured, and they earn interest on top of that,” or “I can set up a liquidity management structure.” So they are more focused in that area. If they start focusing on accounting, I think that’s a bit of a distraction.

So that’s how we approach these banks. We explain to them the benefit they’re going to get with a bit of automation that we can do. We have really got decent discussions going around with a lot of Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks. We have also worked with open banking companies and partners wherever the open banking frameworks are existing. 

That helps us to get a lot of data and statements from our customers, which at least solves the cash visibility problem. But we are actually going to the next level, which is you can initiate payment from your connected bank. For payment initiation, you need either an API or a Swift file that you can drop. There are multiple options. 

What we need to do is just make sure that we have a unified layer supporting all the options that could be available to our customer. It’s called standardization. It may not be applicable to them for every market, but at least the option is available, and then we can tailor it for them as and when they come with a requirement.

Paulo: I find it interesting that you mentioned that in different markets, the kind of banking infrastructure they’re using could be very different. So you have to tailor your approach to that. And maybe as the markets evolve, you guys will also have to evolve that connectivity. But it’s quite interesting that you can literally include the bank as part of the workflow from within Finmo already, and not have to log in and log out and do all that.

Akhil: We have been successful in a lot of cases, but what we try to do is leverage our expertise in terms of technology, where we can automate certain processes. We realize that these are certain things that we can do with the utilization of AI or even just automated workflows, like a scheduler or something that can automate, because these are things that they’re doing every day. So it’s running 24/7. 

Those workflows can be automated quite easily, and we just do it because we can. The way we approach our customers is that we are not just offering you a product; we are coming with more of a consultative selling approach. We look at your processes and see where we can help you improve your current processes and where you can automate the process. It’s more of how we can help you transform into thinking more about growth rather than just fixing the pipes.

Finmo’s journey with leveraging AI

Paulo: And speaking of automation and AI, I think one of the curious features or products that you guys have released in the last few months is MO AI. Obviously, you’re plugging AI into various different aspects of the product, but MO AI in particular. I wanted you to discuss that. How did you guys decide to launch this kind of copilot for finance teams?

Akhil: Yeah, so we have been actually using a lot of machine learning and AI techniques. First and foremost is more around predictive analytics. We use time series methods for forecasting, like Holt-Winter mostly, and a lot of simulations for FX and calculating all the currency risks that the customers are sitting on.

These models are actually helping you with the data. They look at your past data, and the data could be for a specific period, so it’s called seasons. We look at pattern recognition, we do pattern detection and anomaly detection, and seasonality. Based on that, we make a model, and that’s what we use to forecast the cash flows, basically.

But apart from that, yes, we are leveraging a lot of AI. We are using MCP, ChatGPT, and cloud to basically help automate a lot of flows for our customers. The way we are going with MO AI is that it’s your copilot, it’s your financial advisor, so it should be looked at as a silent listener looking at your transactions.

We have fed in specific instructions, and those instructions are triggered depending on your usage. So if you do plenty of FX, the FX agent will be active, and it’ll be looking at a lot more market risks. It connects with a lot of external providers who are looking at the currency fluctuations and giving more educated and informed insights and analytics to our CFOs.

If you’re doing a lot of payouts or you’re receiving plenty of invoices from your customers, and specific vendors are delaying on invoices, the AR/AP agent basically picks up and tells the finance teams, “Hey, you have delays, and this is your aging report,” and things like that. The way we are going with this is that these things are actually done by analyst teams, and they are more retrospective. Things have happened, let’s go and check. 

And then you figure out how we can improve in the next one, or maybe it’s too late, and we have to take a loss and things like that. But with AI and with the AI agents that we have been launching, it basically does a lot of preemptive work and provides a learning curve.

The thing is, it takes a while. Right now, what we have launched is more of a conversational interaction with the platform. You go, you ask, and then you write in your query, and it does a lot of analytics and stuff for you. It gives you, “What are my top three vendors who pay me on time?” or “Show me all the payouts that have been…” This is this interface, rather. 

But this is the team asking questions and solving a lot of analytical stuff that they have to do in Excel. However, the way we are going with this is you don’t have to ask. But depending on how you are utilizing the platform, it’ll detect and then start looking at those priorities first.

Paulo: Reducing the human in the loop workflow. Absolutely. When it comes to interacting with the AI, and it’s not just one agent, it’s eventually going to be a whole stack of agents. You mentioned the FX agent.

Akhil: Exactly. The AR/AP agent, the eCommerce agent. And you have these agents with system-defined prompts. And they look at those, crawl the data, and then they start looking at, and that’s pattern detection that they look at.

And then the most important piece is the agents talking to the agents. I think that’s where we are working a lot more, launching a lot more features. I think it’s an exciting part because once that happens, you don’t need to, I guess everything runs already in the background. Absolutely. It does the work for you.

I think for us, that’s the key. As I mentioned, the four problems that I highlighted initially. The predictive nature is what the CFOs are looking for.

How does AI help with Finmo’s vision for treasury management

Paulo: And then going back to day one of Finmo, how are all these different developments—the connectivity with banks, the AI agents—how does that tie back to that initial vision to really build a powerful treasury management kind of system?

Akhil: For financing? Yeah. Look, as I said, when we started, we knew that treasury teams are all fragmented across multiple platforms. We knew that it’s a lot of development that we have to do. And so we had to figure out a plan. Now the thing is, you have a lot in your head, but it’s easier said than done. 

It’s more around how can you do this without boiling the ocean? That’s the most important part because a customer could easily come in, and you could easily get distracted, because treasury is huge. And one particular segment says, “Hey, I want to do this,” and there’s plenty of revenue, but you may digress from your real mission.

So for us, it’s more about sticking to the real problems, and it could be the top three or four that I highlighted, that is how CFOs evolved. I think sticking to those problems is what was key. And then we worked towards it. But the important thing was we had to work with several partners in between to make those decisions. So we had to hire a lot of teams within the network side of things who can work with these banks specifically. 

That’s one stream that’s constantly talking to the banks and explaining to them what we are trying to do. A lot of them think of us as a pure accounting platform, but they see that we are also moving money and things like that. So we have licenses, so that gives a lot of trust, because licenses don’t come easy. So it definitely adds a lot of trust into those banks.

As you mentioned, it’s more of a journey. We have to keep working on building that network, the AI piece, and the automated workflows, which is actually solving the decisions or executing the decisions that the CFOs have taken. This can only be done if you have enough data. 

And the data only comes from when you connect with the ERP platforms, when you connect your banks. Unless and until you have the full gamut of your P&L, it won’t be accurate, at least. I would say 60 to 70% of our time is spent more on getting those partnerships and those partnerships sorted.

How Finmo’s product developments over the past year have strengthened its competitive advantages

Paulo: Actually, as of this recording, I think there’s a recent partnership that’s announced with Standard Chartered. So congratulations on that one. Another one in the network. And I’m sure more to come, as you said, it is a journey. I wanted to talk a little bit about how all these developments are helping Finmo differentiate itself more and more in the market. 

Obviously, as more people are trying to plug into this whole cross-border finance industry, payment flows, and all of that, how are these developments helping in terms of creating that moat, obviously of the licenses, but I guess from a product perspective also?

Akhil: Yeah, our philosophy is quite simple. We want to solve invisible problems for CFOs and for finance teams. We want to design it so that they feel more powerful rather than being more overwhelmed. So that’s our product philosophy. If it is too complex, it’s too difficult.

A lot of sophisticated customers may understand, “Hey, what’s Monte Carlo simulation? Do you do Monte Carlo simulation?” But very few go into that level of detail, which is a simulation that’s used to understand your currency risks. That’s for sophisticated ones, but if you’re targeting mostly the middle segment, they basically are looking at, “I want to just solve my AR/AP.”

So to answer your question about differentiation, I think we are trying to address all the problems that a CFO is facing today in a more strategic fashion. Because to solve the entire problem, it cannot be done by one platform. They have to go to multiple places. 

I think that’s what differentiates us because we are trying to help them Connect and then help them Control, which is your AR/AP and invoicing and things like that. Command—which is more around, “Hey, let’s get a command over our cash flows, analytics, and decision-making power.” Make decisions out there and then Create—create execution, create for growth. Exactly. So I think the Four Cs cover it quite well. And that’s the biggest differentiating factor.

Paulo: I think in the video we might display the Four Cs just so everybody gets a quick overview. Absolutely. I think it’s a powerful kind of heuristic to keep you guys grounded in terms of the product direction.

Akhil: And I think it helps us to explain because treasury is sophisticated. A lot of people don’t think treasury is just cash management or just doing money movement, making payments for invoices and receiving money. It’s much beyond that. Our platform fits in a small business who are living month-to-month. 

All they care is, “I want to make sure that I don’t default on payments, or if I’m supposed to be receiving money, at least I go and reach on time,” because I’m living month-to-month. And also sophisticated ones who need a lot more predictive stuff. So I think that sums it well. 

It’s not only for small businesses, but also the middle, and if you want, I think the enterprise segment is served well with a lot of TMSs. I think we are kind of playing in between the enterprise and the middle segment. That’s right. I think that’s where we are operating right now.

Managing product and partnerships priorities across multiple markets

Paulo: And I think making it easier, because traditionally, I guess most TMSs have been engineered for the larger enterprise and organizations, so making that kind of functionality more accessible to more businesses is important for you guys. Absolutely.

And speaking of, we touched on it earlier, of operating in different markets, having to tailor-fit depending on what the banking landscape or the banking infrastructure is. How does regulation, the kind of licenses that you have, impact you as a CPO and the product considerations that you have to make or deliver for specific markets?

Akhil: So we have to be, if you’re working with the banks, first and foremost, it’s about your data, how you’re protecting your data. So what sort of controls that you have in place. So we are a compliance-first organization. When we came up together, it’s the product, the compliance, and the partnerships coming together, which is the solid foundation of any FinTech business, basically. 

We knew that if we need to do this well, we have to be thinking about compliance first, which is why from day one, we have been thinking through what are the key things that we should have in day one? So whether it’s KYB, whether it’s an MS license, whether it’s security concerns, we made sure that all of them are there day one.

When we reach out to the banks and say, “Hey, we are not only collecting money on behalf of our customers, we are settling, but we are also giving them visibility.” And so there is a tech angle to it, which is what the insights and the MO AI is about. 

But then there is a bigger responsibility, which is dealing with customer money. And so the great thing is that we have got the right certifications in place. We are ISO 27001, we have PCI, and even SOC 2. So from a data protection standpoint, we made sure that every market that we go to, we are rock solid in those areas.

The other considerations are around standardization because as you scale, and basically it’s mostly from my previous life, working with some larger organizations. I got a lot of exposure on infrastructure build, which focuses on reliability, compliance, and scalability. 

That actually helped me a lot and to work with CTO Raj to make sure that these are implemented before we go any further and go out to the banks. And also my time, I also spent some time at Rapyd, which is also a huge FinTech. That helped me to learn a lot around how to be developer-friendly, have a unified integration, having a more partner mindset to do channel partnerships and things like that.

So I think with those DNA, again, it sounds easier said than done, but it’s plenty of work. It’s a lot of moving parts. Not all of them move together as you expected. There’s plenty of considerations as you scale.

The next ten years of treasury management

Paulo: And just to wrap up our conversation, I wanted to ask, how do you see the future of treasury? Obviously, there’s the AI piece. We’re here at Singapore FinTech Festival, and a lot of people are also talking about the stablecoin piece as well. There’s a lot of emerging technologies and new ways of thinking about treasury. Where do you see this moving in the next 10 years?

Akhil: Yeah, I think—I’m not just saying it because there’s a buzzword—we have been talking about stablecoins for quite some time and how stablecoins can be a part of real treasury. And I think a lot of companies that we have been talking to are already thinking in that direction. And I would say as a FinTech, agility is the top thing that we work with. Not doing whatever is coming your way, it’s more around how you fit it within your overall strategy.

So I believe with a lot of regulations and the genius act coming in, a lot of regulators and banks working on CBDC, I believe that a lot of cross-border flows will be happening using stablecoins and the blockchain technologies. We are already seeing that happening. And actually, what has happened is it has reduced the amount of time and the cost in moving those money. When you see those value add, I think definitely everyone wants to go for it. So I believe that’s where we are headed as well, to bring those technologies within our platform too.

Paulo: And just to bring up a concept that you’ve been mentioning throughout our conversation, this whole idea of standardization. I think in the next few years, definitely you guys will be spearheading that standardization of technology, how it’s used in the treasury function, the finance function. So excited to share more in the future.