Luke Boland shares insights from his journey spanning over 15 years in banking, from managing merchant relationships during the early days of contactless payments in Australia to building Standard Chartered’s FinTech client coverage across Asia. In this conversation, he discusses the evolution of bank-fintech relationships, the bank’s approach to supporting both global players and homegrown innovators like StraitsX and Finmo, the role of stablecoins in bridging traditional finance and digital innovation, and practical advice for FinTech founders on building strong partnerships with financial institutions.

About our Guest

Luke Boland is the Executive Director and Head of Fintech for ASEAN, South Asia, and GCNA (Greater China and North Asia) at Standard Chartered Bank, based in Singapore. In this role, he leads the Corporate & Investment Banking initiatives within Banks & Broker Dealers, focusing on expanding Standard Chartered’s FinTech client coverage across Asia and the bank’s global network.

Boland joined Standard Chartered in March 2020 as Director of FinTech, and was promoted to his current executive director role in January 2024. His career spans over 15 years in banking, with a strong focus on transactional banking, cash management, and payments. Prior to Standard Chartered, he spent over a decade at National Australia Bank (NAB), where he held various leadership positions across Singapore and Melbourne, including Director of Transactional and Trade Asia and Associate Director of Transactional Banking Asia.

Boland’s early career included a role as Business Relations Manager at Merchantlink, a merchant acquiring business, where he developed deep expertise in card acceptance and payments infrastructure. He holds a Bachelor of Business in International Business (Applied) from RMIT University in Melbourne.

Throughout his tenure at Standard Chartered, Boland has been instrumental in fostering partnerships with leading fintechs in the region, including Xfers (now StraitsX), Finmo, and Atome. He has been at the forefront of the bank’s digital asset strategy, supporting the integration of stablecoin infrastructure and blockchain technology into traditional banking services. Under his leadership, Standard Chartered has positioned itself as an active participant in Asia’s evolving FinTech ecosystem, supporting both global players and homegrown innovators.

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

Paulo: Hi folks. Welcome back to On Call with Insignia, where you go on call with leaders innovating the future of Southeast Asia’s Internet and digital economy, as we like to call innovation and beyond. I’m your host, Paulo Kenya, and we’re back with season eight of our podcast.

It’s always great to meet people from different players in the ecosystem—not just startups, but leaders who are all invested in technology and innovating financial services in the region.

And I have one such leader with us on call, none other than Luke Boland, who’s the head of FinTech Asia at Standard Chartered Bank. Luke, thank you so much for coming on call with us. I came across you because you had done these conversations with some of our portfolio companies at Insignia—Finmo and StraitsX—and there have been some announcements over the past year about a lot more collaboration between Standard Chartered and fintechs. It’s always interesting to hear from you directly about how you view these various technologies that are up and coming, how they’re shaping the banking industry, and how FinTech founders especially can better work with banks and institutions like SC.

Luke’s Journey into FinTech

Paulo: Before getting into the meat of the discussion, we would love to learn a little bit more about you as well and how you got into this space. I know prior to Standard Chartered, you’ve always been a banker, right? In Australia and all of that. Were you always exposed to FinTech? How would you describe your relationship with it? Let’s start with that.

Luke: First of all, thank you so much for having me. I’m really honored to do this, and I’ve enjoyed some of the other coverage that you’ve done.

I started working at Standard Chartered about six years ago now. And look, it was really to come and join the bank and focus a lot on building out the FinTech client coverage team—the business, firstly mostly in Singapore, which was growing already, and Southeast Asia and across the whole Standard Chartered network.

It was a bit of an interesting experience. As I said, if people have done the math, I joined six years ago. Yes, it was around that time when we were all sent to work from home, and literally that’s what it was. I joined on the Monday and I was home by the Thursday and came back nine months later into the bank. Yeah, so I was, as soon as we were allowed back in the office, probably one of the first that were banging on the doors to come in.

Fortunately at that time I had already been in Singapore for a while. I was working at an Australian bank in Singapore in a slightly different role, more in liquidity and deposits. But I had also covered some of the FinTech names that had regional headquarters in Singapore, but the bank was doing stuff within Australia as well.

At the point at which I joined Standard Chartered, I’d been fairly exposed to the FinTech ecosystem. I knew a lot of the clients, I knew a lot of the people that were at the clients that the bank had already had relationships with. So I think I knew the clients better than I knew the bank, which was a good thing to happen. When I first joined, we didn’t have Zoom or BlueJeans or anything like that, or Teams. So we had a lot of, still back in the sort of almost teleconference days for the first few months.

The experience started even before that when I was from Melbourne. And as I said, the business that I helped start was in the merchant acquiring space. And so I really deeply started to understand that sector around card acceptance and so forth. And that’s how I joined a bank in a role that was related to that—managing a lot of the large merchant relationships.

Showing my age here, but I did a lot of work when contactless started to get rolled out. And that’s where it began and understanding some of the players in the global industry. So as some of the big merchants acquiring online names that we’re all familiar with—the large merchants like Expedia and so forth—started into the Australian market, I was involved in that. So yeah, again showing my gray hairs, but it’s a journey that, from a sort of roundabout way, led me to Standard Chartered and having a lot of different knowledge and experience positioned me well to work with the FinTech clients that we support today.

FinTech and Banking: A Changing Relationship

Paulo: Yeah, I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into that experience that you covered and what you’ve seen in terms of how fintechs and banks have had that kind of relationship over the years that you’ve been in the industry, from Australia all the way to Singapore. How would you describe that relationship? Obviously it’s been quite interesting seeing how, I guess maybe 10 years ago, fintechs were seen as very much outsiders and like, “What are they doing?” kind of approach. But now there’s a lot—the lines have blurred, so to speak, and banks have their own kind of FinTech arms and you have all these different approaches to technology and innovation. What are your thoughts on that?

Luke: What did everyone say? All the fintechs were going to disrupt all the banks. And I think in elements, there’s definitely been parts of that where that’s happened. And definitely there’s been that innovation that fintechs have brought to financial services, leveraging that technology, which has kept banks a bit honest as well.

So there’s not all parts of banking, but certainly areas that have been disrupted—whether it be from a better customer or UX experience to pricing in different ways. It’s been a relationship that I think now has lifted the bar for the delivery of financial services.

How Banks Have Evolved to Understand FinTechs

Firstly, the understanding of the FinTech clients today and their business models and requirements—banks are much stronger at it, right? Whether it’s over time having these directly as clients, you have people that have worked in banking moving into the FinTech space. I think even today here in Singapore there are at least four to five roles available at different banks advertising, looking for people to cover fintechs.

That has changed dramatically, whereas previously it was a bit hit and miss for perhaps a FinTech client approaching a bank. They might find someone that’s interested, and then that person tries to champion it internally and may not always have many supporters. I think that’s dramatically changed, right? I think all parts of the bank have some sort of strategy or view around what is the FinTech segment, and it may be from a banking relationship standpoint, it may be from a partnership standpoint. Both in terms of originating new client relationships—the partnership that the bank has had with Atome is one great example of that. So there are different fundamentals, but I think it is a much different landscape than it was even when I started my career in banking.

Paulo: I wanted to touch on that point you mentioned—originating client relationships and then trying to bridge that gap of understanding. How has that changed in your role over the last six years since you joined Standard Chartered? Is it a lot easier now, or are there new challenges, so to speak, when it comes to that?

Luke: I’ve been extremely lucky in terms of that experience. Firstly, obviously in the last six years, the work that I’ve been able to do in multiple markets—whether it be here in Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai—and working with fintechs from those markets, working with global fintechs looking to enter those markets, getting to understand the regulatory environment. That has become easier partly because of that regulatory environment.

There are markets today where there isn’t a clear regulatory framework and so forth for fintechs in that location. That’s becoming more of the exception than the rule. So that perhaps is the easy part. It is one thing interesting at the moment—particularly around, I guess, the digital asset space, the conversations around stablecoins and the use of that technology—that has certainly taken it to the next level.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that when I was looking around five years ago for support, there might not have been as many people there to give it. Now that has changed, and I think that’s a benefit for banks, it’s a benefit for fintechs, it’s a benefit for businesses, right? That there is that view to look at, “Okay, how can we enhance what we’re doing?” Whether it’s adopting a new process or technology or the use of stablecoins. That’s great. But that has been one of the changes. There’s definitely more structure around things, and regulatory structure is part of that.

Paulo: Since you brought it up, the whole stablecoins—I’ll get right to it.

The Role of Stablecoins in Modern Banking

Paulo: Obviously one of our portfolio companies, StraitsX, has that relationship with you at Standard Chartered. We’d love to learn a little bit more about what you said about stablecoins and that technology bringing things to the next level. What does that mean in the context of Standard Chartered and obviously, I guess, StraitsX? I would say they’ve done the pretty difficult work of working with regulators and actually helping mature the Singapore regulatory ecosystem around this technology. And although there’s still more work to be done, I think they’ve definitely done a lot in that regard. How did that aspect also help build kind of trust in the relationship as well?

Luke: What StraitsX have done with the work in the Singapore market, even before they were StraitsX and issuing a stablecoin—and there are other related payments businesses across Singapore and Indonesia—look, I think, taking a step back, if you look at us as a bank, one thing that I always looked at is, while we may not be a dedicated local bank in every market we are in, we typically have a significant presence in many.

Supporting the Local FinTech Ecosystem

One of the commitments I always wanted to do with our business or what we’re trying to do is ensuring that we do support the local FinTech ecosystem as well. And I think StraitsX is a great example of that. And as you said, the influence or the input or the work that they have done from a Singapore perspective to foster that ecosystem here—again, back from a payment standpoint for regular FinTech, or as traditional FinTech as I like to call it, to the work around working with MAS, working with other partners around stablecoins as well—I think that is something that should definitely be called out. And the team there has done a great job.

It was always a view that we want to be a part of that ecosystem and balance that between working with global players as we do, but also ensuring that we definitely support the local, domestic, or homegrown businesses that are also working in that space as well.

I’ll be very upfront. What I say is what we do is we do boring things for interesting people. Let us be clear, StraitsX are the interesting people here and they’re doing really interesting stuff, and it is great. Some of the stuff that they’ve done, which we’ll get into, but obviously what do we work with them on? We support them around holding the balances for the stablecoin, supporting them for the clients who want an off-ramp for the mint and burn activity, and doing that in a way that we understand what’s required from a regulatory standpoint, ensuring from a customer standpoint that there is that trust and that resilience as well for our banking infrastructure to support all the work that they’ve put into their stablecoin infrastructure.

We do what we can to support—how can we make, I guess, the fiat or payment rails of that aspect move as fast as a stablecoin? And that is the element of that partnership—that level of reliance on each other that happens.

The Invisible Technology: Stablecoins in Action

What is great about what StraitsX is focused on, right? Because it’s somewhat unique in some aspects where you and I may have been exposed to the use of their stablecoin but wouldn’t have a clue, right? So that backend infrastructure around the power of a stablecoin to support instant settlement or faster cross-border payments between two entities or between a merchant and a buyer who might not even know that was used. And I think that’s one of the great examples of—no one in the morning wakes up and says they want to use an XSGD stablecoin. They may very well do it if they’ve got a specific need to solve.

If I was a traveler with the ability to scan a QR code of a merchant in Singapore from another country and be able to pay that merchant—so pay locally and have that merchant want to receive funds locally—and if a stablecoin helps that settlement flow, then that’s fantastic.

Any ways we can work with firms like StraitsX, and not even just StraitsX alone, is how we can work with them, their partners, whether they be platforms or other players in the ecosystem. That’s really what we’re trying to do in bridging that gap, whether it be only in the FinTech or digital asset or native crypto world to even furthermore into the sort of more traditional or “TradFi” or other players as well.

Paulo: That reminds me of a quote from something Jed said back in 2022—the whole goal is to become invisible. And I think you really spoke to that. Yeah, I think nobody really cares about what technology it is as long as it delivers on the experience and the efficiency.

To your point about doing the quote-unquote boring work for interesting people, I think that also speaks to the structure that the FinTech ecosystem is, I would say, embracing a lot more than previous years. And it’s quite great to see a lot more of these players partner with institutions with the kind of distribution that, for example, Standard Chartered has.

I was curious to know, since obviously XSGD is very much a Singapore champion, and I think one of the things Jed has always wanted to do is create these kinds of stablecoin rails for different currencies, for different markets, right? Not just the US technology, so to speak. What are your views on how the stablecoin technology or blockchain adoption has shifted in Asia overall vis-à-vis the rest of the world?

Luke: Let me also add that one day I hope that we will do interesting things with interesting people as well, and we might do interesting things for boring people as well.

As a bank we definitely view that digital assets are going to be an essential part of the financial infrastructure going forward—that most settlements and payments will occur on the blockchain. Look, essentially, or blockchain technology as such, right? So essentially, look, if you look at stablecoins yourself and in terms of the tokenization of fiat money, it is definitely something that even perhaps as a bank at first, the adoption outside of, I guess, the crypto trading world where it was first seen, has now moved into, I guess, more traditional use cases.

That’s where we’ve seen a lot of the adoption, particularly in Asia, where you have markets that are looking to, I guess, enhance their payment infrastructure or where there are gaps in the existing payment infrastructure. And I think that’s where stablecoins can really play a role.

What’s interesting is that, as you mentioned, XSGD is a Singapore dollar stablecoin. And I think that’s important because it’s not just about the US dollar. It’s about having local currency stablecoins that can support local economies and local businesses. And I think that’s where we’re seeing a lot of the innovation happening in Asia.

That’s where Standard Chartered wants to be as well—supporting that innovation, supporting those local ecosystems, and ensuring that we’re part of that journey. And I think that’s where we’ve seen a lot of the partnerships that we’ve had with various fintechs in the region, whether it be StraitsX or others, is really about how we can support that local innovation and ensure that we’re part of that ecosystem.

That’s where we’re seeing a lot of the adoption happening in Asia, and I think that’s where we want to continue to be. And I think that’s where we’re seeing a lot of the innovation happening as well.

Paulo: What you mentioned about not just staying on the sidelines but really being an active player in the ecosystem where a lot of the development is happening is really a theme for Standard Chartered. And I think definitely a lot of banks are invested in innovation and technology.

Standard Chartered’s Approach to FinTech Partnerships

Paulo: I also wanted to talk about another portfolio company that announced the work that they’re doing with you guys, which is Finmo—a treasury management platform with a lot of money movement capabilities across various countries. And a lot of their—I would say I had a podcast recently with their CPO and he was really talking about how 80% of his time is actually not as much thinking about the product as it is about distribution and how do you integrate the product into various local infrastructure, whether that’s other FinTech players or other banks, whoever’s the go-to for businesses in that particular market.

You also mentioned earlier that Standard Chartered itself has a lot of these local presences across many different markets. So how would you speak to SC’s approach to working with clients that are looking to leverage the kind of distribution that SC has? And what are you looking for in terms of those partnerships?

Luke: I think you’re right. Finmo is a great example of where that works and where it can work well, and we’re certainly starting off on that sort of longer-term journey with them. Look, obviously we do get a lot of approaches from FinTech clients, from new businesses, even some more established in the space, perhaps looking at Standard Chartered as a banking partner. And look, I’ll be upfront—we can’t work with everyone. And there are many different facets for that.

Understanding Business Models and Roadmaps

But you know what? We obviously do have a lot of conversations, and obviously if we looked at Finmo as a great example, right? It’s understanding the business model and maybe why does their business differ from others in the market? And then understanding their roadmap, their requirements, and their plans.

If we look at Finmo in particular, right? So as you said, a really interesting business model in terms of almost combining that treasury management system requirement to payments, where a customer can use all of that or parts of that, integrating with us beyond just payments but giving their clients the visibility of their balances, of their accounts. And then that roadmap part, right? So just ensuring that where they’re going to operate, where they’re looking to operate, where they’re looking to get regulated, fits our network.

Market Overlap and Product Fit

So obviously with the plans around Singapore, obviously the UK, Hong Kong, the UAE, and in some of the markets they’re already operating in—Australia—that fits where we have capability, where we have people that understand the business, understand how to work with these clients, and we can deliver the right thing from having the same APIs, from having the same FX capability. That’s really important, right?

There’s been times where we’ve gone on a journey with a client and whether it might be too early in their growth story or we just don’t have the right products and solutions or really have the right overlap from a market perspective, and it’s never a good outcome for everyone, right? So it’s important to have that conversation upfront.

The team at Finmo, as I said, is a really great matchup in terms of that roadmap, the products that we can do and deliver for them and their customers, but also that next stuff that they do around the sort of open banking, which we’ve been keen to explore with them. And it’s a journey, right? Because elements of that might need more development on our side. We might be able to deliver something to them that they hadn’t thought of, and because of our product capability, it allows them to offer a new service or solution to a new client.

Or, you know, that we’re in most of the Middle East, we’re in the UK, we’re in the US, we’re pretty much all of Southeast Asia. So even that may skew their roadmap plans. So as a bank, it’s always important to work together and have those different factors around having the right products, right connectivity, and right sort of overlap of markets. It is important.

Paulo: I really like that point you mentioned about how the priorities as well of Standard Chartered, for example, could potentially affect the roadmap of the FinTech and how the FinTech also has to take that into account when thinking about the scope of the relationship, so to speak.

I wanted to touch on what you mentioned about open banking and kind of your views on that in particular—that complexity of how data is managed and the different regulations around data usage and all of that across different markets impacts the role of AI in banking as well. Because I think that’s often—you can always say that, “Oh, we use AI,” and so on, but there’s always that kind of discussion of where does data come from? How is it used? How is it secured and all of that? And how do you think of that relationship, especially when working with clients that also pitch to you guys of, “Oh, we want to do something with AI for banking,” or those kinds of use cases?

Luke: Obviously it is a topic that is being talked about a great deal, almost more than perhaps stablecoins at the moment as well. And then there’s actually an interrelationship between the two, right? But look, obviously again, you can mention AI, you can mention AI in banking, but it can mean different things, right?

No doubt today many of our customers have probably moved faster in the adoption of leveraging AI, whether that be creating faster onboarding, whether that be through transaction monitoring and teams being able to sift through data and so forth using that, whether it be just general-purpose use cases within the firm to make it faster for emailing and recording of information.

No doubt that is something that a bank has a harder time in developing or adopting that technology because, as you said, a bank has a huge amount of data, right? And that data shouldn’t be necessarily accessible to all, and that data needs to be kept safe. And when you develop these programs, it requires a huge lot of rethinking around the access of data or what it can be used for training and how it can affect the job scope. And as you said, as a bank that is in so many different locations and following different regulatory requirements and whether the data is required onshore or offshore, what can be accessed by whom—there is a myriad of things that, although I might sit here and say, “Look, I want AI to make my calls faster and my emails faster,” there are other impacts.

Hopefully AI delivers more than that. But look, I definitely think that today it is—we get vendor questionnaires and it is a question that gets asked: How is the bank adopting that technology? How will the interaction between our clients and the bank’s adoption of that technology come into play?

It is something that will be ever-developing. And a bank plays a particular role in that as well.

Challenges and Risks in FinTech Collaborations

Paulo: Just to wrap up the series of questions we’ve just covered all the way from stablecoins to AI—banks are in the business of managing risk. So I’m curious to know, what are your views on the biggest top-of-mind risks when it comes to working with clients to implement certain technologies or certain use cases of these emerging technologies? What are the top common considerations?

Legacy Systems and Infrastructure

Luke: As a bank, we’ve been going through an update of our own legacy systems, and the impact that can have on clients when you’re going through a huge technology change as well. I think that’s definitely one thing that keeps me up at night in terms of could a changeover cause an impact to an end user or an end client? And that’s the thing—our clients rely on our infrastructure and our systems to be robust to deliver their services. So I think that’s a definite thing that we focus on.

Cybersecurity, Fraud, and Client Trust

Obviously the other around cybersecurity and the risks related to that—the potential around fraud and scams and the use of AI around impersonation—that’s another one that I’ve been really interested in looking at and ensuring that both that is monitored and there are almost elements of friction to try and reduce those things from happening in some aspects.

Paulo: I would think that’s what a lot of startups and fintechs also come to and have conversations with—that’s the reason why they have these conversations with Standard Chartered, is because you guys do provide that kind of infrastructure, and whether that’s through distribution or whether that’s through just the way things have operated and processes and all of that, they themselves could improve their product experience but just by virtue of working with you guys.

Insights on Successful FinTech Founders

Paulo: I wanted to also talk about the founders, right? Because obviously you did mention that a large part of your role is cultivating these relationships for Standard Chartered, and obviously that happens as well on a person-to-person kind of level. And you also mentioned that you were more immersed or more exposed to that ecosystem than you were with the banking side of things when you first joined. So I found that quite interesting. I’m curious to know what you have learned from working with a lot of these founders, with folks like Jed or David—what do you say makes a successful FinTech founder from the point of being able to build a really global kind of business?

Luke: What we’ve seen—fintechs typically establish a solution or service to plug a gap or where they’ve seen an opportunity within the market that they’ve come from, right? And that’s different by market. In some places it may be more about lending. In some places it’s more about payments. And in some places it skipped and moved more into the digital asset space as well. So that’s obviously typically what we see—a founder has seen that opportunity, has a particular skillset, or partners with other co-founders to bring that to life.

One thing I would say is I’d like to consider a lot of these as friends as well. And I think that is a very close relationship. As I said, from what the FinTech may rely on the bank, it is really important to have a really open and strong relationship with the firm, with the founders in some cases, to really be that champion for that business within the bank.

Clearly Articulating Your Business Model

One piece of advice—looking at a firm or a founder looking to go out and speak to banks, giving insight to what the business model is, what they do—is really having that really clearly laid out, which is perhaps different to what you would lay out if you’re looking for funding. It’s different to what you’d have laid out if you are looking to acquire or originate customer relationships. It’s having it really clearly laid out to the audience. It could be, yes, someone like me that is a bit experienced in the segment and may be able to recognize what the business model is, but it may be someone within a bank that doesn’t have the same experience.

It’s just really honing in on what it is that the business model is doing. What is the organizational structure? What are the different roles? What are the different teams? And really laying that out. So essentially that person that the founder may be presenting to within the bank can become that champion of that FinTech internally. And that’s something we’ve seen—I’ve seen different levels of that occurring.

Focus and Specialization

We’ve gone on a bit of a journey, right? There’s probably a period where founders and fintechs felt that in order to grow, they needed to have multiple business lines or multiple products across multiple client segments. I think that’s changed a little bit, and founders are more about, “I’m going to do this one thing really well, and I’m going to focus on that.” And I think that’s been a really positive shift that we’ve seen.

That’s where we’ve seen a lot of the success stories as well—where founders have really focused on a particular problem, a particular market, and really gone deep on that rather than trying to be everything to everyone. And I think that’s been a really positive shift that we’ve seen in the ecosystem.

Paulo: That’s a really important point. And I think that’s something that we’ve seen as well in our portfolio companies—that focus on doing one thing really well and then expanding from there rather than trying to do everything at once.

Looking Ahead: Future of FinTech in Asia

Paulo: I wanted to also touch on, as we wrap up the conversation, what are you most excited about in the next few years when it comes to the FinTech ecosystem in Asia? What are some of the trends or developments that you’re keeping an eye on?

Luke: There’s a lot to be excited about. I think firstly, as I said, the regulatory environment continues to evolve and mature. And I think that’s a really positive thing for the ecosystem. I think it provides more clarity, it provides more certainty, and it allows for more innovation to happen.

Secondly, the partnerships that we’re seeing between banks and fintechs are only going to continue to grow and deepen. And I think that’s a really positive thing as well. I think it allows for better outcomes for customers, it allows for better innovation, and it allows for better collaboration across the ecosystem.

Thirdly, the adoption of new technologies—whether it be stablecoins, whether it be blockchain, whether it be AI—is only going to continue to accelerate. And I think that’s going to bring a lot of new opportunities and a lot of new challenges as well. But I think it’s going to be a really exciting time for the ecosystem.

Finally, just the growth of the ecosystem itself. I think we’re seeing more and more fintechs being established, more and more innovation happening, more and more talent coming into the space. And I think that’s a really positive thing for the region as a whole.

There’s a lot to be excited about. And I think Standard Chartered wants to be at the forefront of that and wants to be a partner to the ecosystem as it continues to grow and evolve.

Paulo: That’s a great note to end on. And I think it’s really exciting to see how the ecosystem is evolving and how banks like Standard Chartered are really embracing that change and being active participants in that ecosystem rather than just sitting on the sidelines.

Luke: Absolutely. One thing I would add is that, you know, meeting and understanding—just when you think you may know the ecosystem, someone will say to you, “Look, have you heard about this firm and what they’re doing?” And there’s a whole new journey that you can go on.

What I’m really excited about this year—as I said, at Standard Chartered there is definitely a focus on leaning into the ecosystem, whether that be across the board around digital assets, stablecoins as well. As much focus is continuing what we’ve been building around just delivery of cross-border payments, supporting our clients entering into new markets.

We’re only just getting started. Look, a predominant part of our business has been in Singapore, it has been in Hong Kong. It’s been growing in Southeast Asia and we’ve been opening new markets there. It is now really growing in the UAE. We’re doing more in India, and yes, we are a large bank that has a large network and franchise in Africa as well. And we’re starting to look at what we can do there.

The adoption around stablecoins is an influence to that. I think it’s a timing factor of where we’re expanding out and growing from a hub into the markets and locations around. Yes, it’s been six years. Do I feel like I’ve accomplished everything? Absolutely not. Have there been some misses along the way? Maybe. Have we had some great successes? Yeah. Do we want to have more? Absolutely. And that’s what I’m excited about—the continual evolving of where we’re going to be doing things, who we are going to be doing things with, how we can partner, right?

The bank’s doing some great things in investment through our SC Ventures. A big part of the bank is, if we’re prepared to invest or build, we have to be prepared to bank it as well. As the bank develops new products, we will be doing interesting things for interesting people. We’ve got a lot to do, and I’m just looking forward to continuing to do that with the people within the bank who definitely have renewed interest and real support across our management from our CEO down, and to the ecosystem and clients that we work with.

Paulo: Yeah, thanks for doing more interesting things with more interesting people. And I’m sure, you know, sometimes people say you can take the person out of the startup, but you can’t take the startup out of the person. And I think that definitely speaks to your experience. Even though you’ve spent most of your recent career working in banking, I think that kind of mindset you have of always looking out for what’s next is definitely entrepreneurial. And I think for FinTech founders listening in, if you want to make a friend at Standard Chartered, Luke’s your guy.

Luke: I’m more valuable here than I am elsewhere, for sure. Absolutely. So yeah, please. Yeah, we have a growing team as well, which is fantastic. And look, it’s great that we’re having conversations and able to do more within the space.

Paulo: Awesome. And yeah, here’s to reading more news and sharing more news about more work that you’re doing with fintechs and hopefully more of our portfolio as well.