In this fourth conversation between Paulo Joquino and Dr. Yanan Wu, CEO and founder of Surfin, the two catch up at a pivotal moment in the company’s trajectory. Nine years after its founding, Surfin, the Singapore-headquartered fintech serving over 100 million users across 12 markets, is entering its second chapter: one defined by agentic AI, fintech as a service (FaaS), and expansion into developed markets.

The conversation covers Surfin’s Japan market launch, made possible in part through the network and connections built within the Tokyo Stock Exchange Asia Startup Programme, its deepening suite of B2B partnerships with banks and government institutions, and Yanan’s framework for how agentic inclusion — asset-less, borderless, contactless, and divisionless — will reshape financial services globally. Against the backdrop of landmark AI and technology IPOs signalling a new era, Yanan makes the case that vertical and country-specific AI models, built on Surfin’s decade of social behavior data, will be the defining competitive advantage for fintechs in the years ahead.

Timestamps

1:50 – Surfin Snapshot Today

2:39 – Recent Milestones

6:10 – Japan Launch Focus

9:55 – Serving Migrants’ Needs

13:11 – ABCD: Agentic Inclusion

16:20 – Differentiation, Economics, and Data

20:00 – Institutions Adopting AI Agents

25:31 – Tailwinds and the Path Forward

About our Guest

Dr. Yanan Wu is the CEO and founder of Surfin, a Singapore-headquartered fintech platform dedicated to financial inclusion through AI and agentic technology. A former nuclear physicist and Wall Street quantitative portfolio manager, Yanan spent over 15 years managing institutional and high-net-worth assets in North America and Asia before founding Surfin in 2017, inspired by a stark encounter with inequality in Jakarta. Under his leadership, Surfin has grown from a regional vision into a global operation serving over 100 million users across 12 markets on three continents, having disbursed over US$4 billion in loans to underserved young consumers and achieving 50% year-on-year revenue growth with double-digit net profit margins for four consecutive years. Yanan holds a PhD in physics and was a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. He is a frequent speaker at global forums including the World Economic Forum in Davos and the New York Stock Exchange International Day.

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: For those hearing about Surfin for the first time: it’s a fintech company headquartered out of Singapore, serving over 12 markets with over 100 million users and customers, really focused on consumer finance and agentic AI-driven financial products. Apart from consumer finance, Surfin also has B2B partnerships with digital banks, financial institutions, and even government institutions, driving digital adoption and transformation in financial services. If I were to condense it in a few words: credit inclusion and agentic inclusion, as Yanan would say.

Happy to have you back on the show, Yanan. Maybe you can start us off with what Surfin has been up to in the last few months since we had that conversation in Singapore, I think it was September or October last year.

Recent Milestones

Yanan: Thanks, Paulo. Very nice to come back to your podcast. Since our conversation in Singapore and later in Manila, we’ve had really fast movement in terms of business. As you described, I’m always on the road. Surfin continues to push financial inclusion across more geographic coverage, as well as more financial agentic applications in different areas.

The theme of this year, since we spoke last year, is agentic financial inclusion. That’s why I mention the term “agentic inclusion”: alongside artificial intelligence, we are now entering an agentic inclusion era. That’s what Surfin has devoted itself to. As you know, we’ve specialized in data analytics, data aggregation, and data monetization to provide a variety of financial services, especially through agentic experiences for young consumers across 12 countries.

Since our last conversation, I’ve been to Ulaanbaatar, Dhaka, Tokyo, and Almaty and Tashkent in Central Asia. We’re also celebrating our Japanese launch soon, opening an office and having our official ceremony alongside our board meeting at the end of June in Tokyo, together with the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Thanks to Insignia’s support, we were selected by the TSE as part of their Asia Startup Programme. That has gone very well, and we are increasingly fitting into the Japanese financial ecosystem.

Also at Davos, as we mentioned last time, we already signed an MOU with the Philippine Social Security System to provide digital credit and loan services, as well as digital credit scoring technology, for Filipino OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) making cross-border transfers. That’s why we sponsored the Philippine Pavilion at the World Economic Forum.

Lots of things are happening. We’re really excited. There’s a new wave coming, given three upcoming super-giant IPOs in the market. That’s symbolic: one is about agentic AI, one is about robotics, one is about space exploration. I think that’s the defining scene for the next decade.

Paulo: Thanks for that update. You’ve outlined the key topics for this episode: Japan, the partnerships you mentioned like the SSS in the Philippines, and the tailwinds from the three big IPOs and what they represent for Surfin’s industry.

Japan Launch Focus

Paulo: Starting with Japan: even at Insignia, Japan is probably the top destination market outside of Southeast Asia for many of our portfolio companies. You mentioned the Tokyo Stock Exchange Asia Startup Programme, which we’ve been partnering with, and we’re really happy to see that introduction blossom into an actual market expansion for Surfin.

By the time you’re hearing or watching this podcast, Surfin would have already launched, or would currently be having their launch event, board meeting, and summit in Japan, their very first. It was really exciting.

But I’d love to go a bit deeper. You mentioned the migrant opportunity in Japan. What’s interesting about Japan specifically for Surfin, and how does it build on what you’ve done across other emerging markets?

Yanan: We want to appreciate the opportunity that came from Insignia’s recommendation. We became part of the TSE’s major initiative for more Southeast Asian companies to potentially list in the Japanese capital market. The reason we’re really interested in Japan is that we’ve been focused on emerging markets and developing countries, serving underserved and unbanked young populations across 12 markets.

Japan is really the first developed country where we hope to use our technology to empower and serve those otherwise underserved minorities in society. The long-tail customer exists in any country, whether developing or developed. That’s the second curve Surfin wants to demonstrate: that beyond direct-to-consumer financial inclusion, we can supply fintech as a service (FaaS), deploying technology that has been mature and stress-tested over eight years to institutions in developed markets.

We also just came back from Bali two weeks ago to celebrate Surfin’s ninth anniversary. Bali is where the name Surfin comes from — it’s really our birthplace, where this small vision was first planted. We celebrated together with our senior management team, to remind ourselves where we started, how we started, and where we’re heading.

So after nine years of stress-testing our models and systems across so many regions, we now have 100 million customers across 12 countries and have been through different economic and credit cycles. We’re more confident now. Our technology is tailored to young consumers whose credit risk can’t be priced using traditional financial history, but can be priced using social behavior data. Within one minute, we can provide a credit score. Within two minutes, we can disburse a micro-loan to a young customer who has no other financial alternatives.

That mature, stress-tested technology can now become part of a service we offer to banks and government agencies. That’s why I mentioned the Philippine Social Security System: the first initiative where we offer fintech as a service to a government agency that can then provide financial inclusion to its own citizens.

Serving Migrants’ Needs

Yanan: For Japan specifically, what draws us is that Japan has a very well-developed financial system with many large banks that cover their own market well. But young people in Japan, particularly young foreigners and young migrants, are still not well-served by the traditional financial system. They work in hotels, service industries, restaurants, and construction. It’s hard for them to open a bank account, and even harder to get credit access.

That brings us back to the two pain points we’ve been addressing for the past eight years.

The first is credit access: providing young consumers a credit journey to start with. As I’ve mentioned in previous podcasts, I believe fundamentally that a credit score is anyone’s human right. It’s a financial dignity that allows anyone to begin a financial journey. That’s why we want to give any young consumer, including young migrants in Japan, a credit score and credit access.

The second pain point is cross-border money transfer. As migrants move around, especially from the Philippines — and you can appreciate how much Filipino migrants move across borders — remittance is critical. How do we provide lower-friction, faster, and smarter money transfer service? OFW remittances contribute significantly to the Philippine national GDP. For Japan, as society becomes more aging and requires more service workers from other countries, remittance becomes even more central to this community.

Those are the two major fintech services we want to provide through Japanese banks and financial institutions, using our technology to empower them to penetrate and serve young migrants.

Paulo: I think for Surfin, even though Japan is the first developed market you’re entering, it’s still in keeping with the core vision of serving the underserved. Even in developed markets, there’s always a long-tail opportunity. At the same time, you’re finding new modalities to serve these customers: not just direct products and services, but fintech as a service, working with institutions and banks.

You’re not doing this for the first time in Japan either, because you already did it in the Philippines, and we’ve seen a couple of press releases in other markets covering the same approach. It definitely sets up a playbook for Surfin to expand to other developed markets as well. Is that the long-term plan?

Yanan: Yeah, we’ve shared this before.

ABCD: Agentic Inclusion

Yanan: I truly believe technology is scalable and has no borders. That’s why I summarize our agentic financial services, agentic inclusion, into an A, B, C, D framework.

A is asset-less. Anyone who has no assets can still enjoy financial service. In the past, banks only served those with financial assets. But any young consumer without assets yet should still be able to access financial services.

B is borderless. With AI technology, people will seek jobs and conduct cross-border consumption anywhere. Borderless should be the new norm for financial services: access them from anywhere.

C is contactless. In the future, financial service will be more conversational rather than keyboard-driven. It’s about dialogue, like an agent conversation.

D is divisionless. No age difference, no ethnic background, no rich-or-poor difference. Anyone can enjoy service anytime, seven days, twenty-four hours. No division.

A, B, C, D. That’s what I believe technology can enable, not only in developing markets but also in developed countries like Japan, because people move around and young consumers want instant financial service right within their living circumstances.

A good example from Japan: we’re involved in a project with convenience stores like 7-Eleven. There are so many convenience stores in Japan where cash transactions still happen, and ATMs from Seven Bank, for instance, are where many young migrants without bank accounts still transact. So how do you reinvent the ATM into a contact point where a young migrant can get a credit score or a digital loan right at the convenience store where they already shop? That’s the technology we want to help our Japanese bank and convenience store partners to provide.

We’re also engaging with a large credit card issuer in Japan. The credit card remains a major cross-border instrument, and it can help young consumers move anywhere. We’re helping that issuer use our credit scoring technology, based on social and alternative behavior data, to issue credit cards. We already issue our own Surfin Visa card globally, so this is another initiative to extend credit access to everyone who deserves it, wherever they are.

Paulo: What I appreciate about what you mentioned is that while you’re advancing how people interact with financial services through agentic inclusion, you’re still thinking about where customers actually do their transactions: whether it’s retail outlets or convenience stores. Going to where the customers are, so to speak.

Differentiation, Economics, and Data

Paulo: As you expand to more markets and more financial services, from credit cards to cross-border payments, how does Surfin maintain its differentiation and identity in an increasingly competitive fintech and AI landscape? And how does the B2B angle, or fintech as a service, contribute to that differentiation?

Yanan: I think Surfin has built certain competitive barriers through eight years of developing our own in-house proprietary technology. The first is about economics. We’ve been able to develop very efficient unit economics for our financial products. Not only can customers enjoy instant credit approval and digital loan access, but institutions also benefit from sustainable, sticky financial products for young consumers — products that bring them back again and again, not just for a one-time experience but across a lifetime financial journey.

Insignia has actually developed a case study on Surfin’s unit economics. That efficiency shows up in two ways: first, in credit risk pricing and delinquency management; and second, in providing a sustainable, lower-cost user acquisition journey versus lifetime value. That balance is our unit economics edge.

The second competitive advantage is scalability. Surfin has demonstrated expansion across multiple countries and regions because it’s all about data: understanding it, analyzing it, and monetizing it. We use multi-country user behavior data across different economic cycles to stress-test our model system, making it more resilient across different countries and different cycles. That’s a barrier we’ve built over time, allowing us to go not just across Asia but also into LATAM and Africa, now across 12 countries. Our technology has been confirmed to be more sustainable and resilient as a result.

The third key term is AI agents. We’re still at the beginning of transforming financial services with agentic experiences. It’s more about customers demanding and designing the products they want through conversation with a financial agent, rather than us delivering products to them. Embedded in their daily life, the financial agent helps them access the right product.

We’re fortunate to have 100 million young customers around the world, and their data, to understand their social, financial, and consumer behavior, and even their voice data. In the future, it’s about agents talking to customers in different local languages. That’s another competitive advantage Surfin has built: we own the customer base, and we can train new AI agent experiences based on that behavior and voice data.

Paulo: So to summarize: economics, data, and agents.

Institutions Adopting AI Agents

Paulo: I’m curious, having worked with a few organizations and institutions by now, what’s the biggest pain point for them in terms of adopting agentic technology? And how does Surfin help with that?

Yanan: Every institution now wants to embrace AI agent experiences. It’s a wave that’s inevitable. Every financial service company has to use AI agents. We already have voice bots in our customer service and collection operations. That’s the starting point: a customer service robot agent, a collection robot agent, that financial institutions can deploy to improve their efficiency.

We’ve already started two bank projects where they want to use our voice bot to serve their young farmers, young migrants, and young consumers. This can increase not only user and customer experience, but also institutional efficiency, allowing them to serve the long tail of young migrants at scale. It’s very hard to scale traditional human agents. That’s where AI agents benefit both the customer and the institution.

That’s step one. Step two is about reinventing the product itself. Everyone deserves a different, unique product at a different time in their lifetime cycle, wherever they are. That’s a fundamentally different approach to product engineering compared to traditional banking. In the future, it’s all about the customer demanding or designing what product they want through conversation with a financial agent. Helping traditional financial institutions embrace that kind of AI agent approach requires a lot of work on their end.

In the future, it’s about having a contactless point with a new type of customer through a robot agent. That’s what we also help financial institutions to do: equip them with this type of AI agent technology and help them provide this AI agent experience for their customers.

Paulo: Two ways you help, then: improving the economics and efficiency of their existing user experience, and potentially introducing new products and services through this technology. Is it correct to say Surfin can essentially help any type of bank or institution? Or is there a certain level of preparedness that makes Surfin more effective?

Yanan: After nine years, we reflected on this question in Bali during our strategy retreat. For the first nine years, we served the retail customer with very scalable technology. What’s the next nine years?

The next nine years have two waves. One is AI agents: we want to embrace this new wave. The second is fintech as a service: how to help governments, institutions, and sometimes even regulators use this AI agent technology well. I hope the second chapter of Surfin will redefine ourselves as a truly AI-native, or AI agent-native, company, more like a technology company. We can go anywhere to equip institutions, equip governments, and equip regulatory bodies with our agent technology, built on mature infrastructure developed through years of serving the retail customer.

In the future, technology for business institutions, for government agents, will become the new norm.

As for competitive advantage: Surfin has the benefit of being able to develop vertical models and country models for financial services. The general models, the LLMs, are owned by the mega companies. But for startups, growth companies, and fintech firms, it’s all about finding a niche market or vertical consumer segment and building a vertical model. For financial services, different verticals, whether lending, remittance, wealth management, trading, or investment, will each need a vertical model as a differentiator.

And then there’s the country model. Each country is unique, with a different economic cycle. Having stress-tested data from different countries allows you to develop a country model. We hope Surfin’s second chapter will establish us as the leader in some key vertical models and country models, becoming the enabler and exporter of that technology to institutions and government agencies as well.

Paulo: I’m excited just hearing about it. That really positions Surfin as a fintech as a service model leader, with the ability to develop vertical products for specific markets and specific countries.

Tailwinds and the Path Forward

Paulo: To wrap up, you mentioned at the top of the episode the tailwind coming from major AI labs and tech IPOs, and also companies like SpaceX. How is that impacting your ability to expand and have these conversations with banks and institutions all over the world? How is this tailwind helping Surfin’s next nine years?

Yanan: Thanks, Paulo. At this stage, Surfin also needs long-term strategic partners: institutions that can help us build an ecosystem. We’re experts in data modeling, data analysis, and data technology based on social and alternative behavior data. We’re also differentiated in AI agent experience in emerging markets. We can build strategic partnerships with institutions that are interested in emerging markets, expanding globally, and building a borderless, more scalable financial service. We can be equal partners in that.

Secondly, using more data to develop AI agent experiences for different vertical consumer profiles, using our own vertical model for lending, remittance, wealth management, and payment: we need more financial institutions to join Surfin. More consumer-facing enterprises can also join Surfin, because they have demand for different financial services and access to different consumer profiles.

We also hope to transform Surfin’s financial products to serve a wider range of consumer profiles: not only unsecured lending products, but also secured lending, cross-border remittance combined with stablecoin, and other new types of instruments that can deliver a much better and smarter money transfer experience.

Paulo: So just to reiterate: Surfin isn’t really specific to any single product type or market. At its core, it’s an AI-native company, and that allows you to build different types of infrastructure. If I were to amend my earlier introduction, in a few words, Surfin is an AI-for-fintech infrastructure company, more than anything else.

Thank you so much, Yanan, for joining us on On Call. It was a great catch-up. As we launch this episode, you’ve already launched in Japan. Maybe in the next few months we can have another catch-up to see how Japan is going, and hear about other new markets you might be entering. Looking forward to doing it in person again, maybe in Tokyo or somewhere.

References

1. Surfin CEO and founder Yanan Wu on Building a Global Financial Inclusion Platform with Agentic AI — Insignia Business Review — Source for guest identity verification (Dr. Yanan Wu), biographical details, and company performance figures (disbursement of US$4 billion in loans, 50% YoY revenue CAGR, double-digit net profit margins for four consecutive years).
2. From Nuclear Physicist and Capital Markets Executive to Surfin CEO — Insignia Business Review — Background on Yanan Wu’s career history.