The above film centres on Kristo Käärmann who co-founded TransferWise.

Key Points from Kristo Käärmann | TransferWise:

• TransferWise makes international transfers super cheap by having reserves in both sides of the transaction rather than doing what institutions do;
• Banks can’t reduce their rates now in Kristo’s opinion because then those rate changing banks would have to admit that their international fees are bogus;
• TransferWise’s marketing is built on attacking banks. That plays well in London and elsewhere;
• Trying to raise money in London, UK is difficult. You should not spend too much time iterating in order to meet prospective investor demand. With one trip to New York, TransferWise got 1.3 million USD;
• During the Brexit, TransferWise dealt with the crisis professionally by being transparent. On June 24th, there was no service because of the fee fluctuation;
• BlockChain is interesting, BitCoin is not;
• Richard Branson likes sticking it to the man. He was interested in the idea and the approach but TransferWise was too small. Branson joined a significant round of funding. That endorsement was rather valuable as a marketing mechanism.

Background on Kristo Käärmann

Kristo is executive founder of TransferWise. TransferWise is backed by a team of smart investors who believe that there’s a dire need for innovation in financial services. In addition to the great institutional investors below, they are supported by private individuals who founded or are building Virgin, PayPal, Skype, Betfair, Simple.com and others.

Kristo lived and breathed the world of finance from the inside. At PwC and Deloitte, he helped banks and insurers bring their processes and systems into the 21st century. But stunned by the inefficiency of financial institutions, he wanted to do more. At TransferWise, he is in charge of all operations activities, technology, development, compliance and regulatory issues.

Did you know that Richard Branson also invested in TransferWise?

This guy’s flying board might be the future of something….Some points; I wouldn’t fly over anything other than water. Would you? I also think that the flying board is very very loud. N.I.M.B.Y not in my back yard please. This flying board could be the basis of sport however. This product will almost certainly require a license to fly. Once it gets down to the right price point, would you want to fly around? To be determined.

The Donald Trump / Rosie O’Donnell was probably the most storied tabloid level media story of the 2000s. Trump said he would sue Rosie in her fat ass pockets for mentioning the 4 business bankruptcies in the 1990s. Rosie bit back by flipping her hair in the style of Trump and impersonating him in a satirical barb from her tv platform on The View. It was generally entertaining in the way that nasty public feuds unfortunately can be. Seemed almost like a coordinated effort to bring the two more brand clout, hard to measure but a very real factor in business. Now, it’s 2016…Watch Rosie’s come back attack ad produced for The Daily Show. It features an infomercial section that may resonate with independent and republican voters in the US. Maybe publicly ridiculing people you might have to work with in the future or in this case, a person who might have a vendetta to wage is NOT GOOD.

The charcoal smeared faces of generations huddled around communal chimneys has given way to a diligent youth globe trotting with the promise of economic opportunity unparalleled  since the expansive growth of the American baby-boomer. The shimmering lights of Shanghai shine outwardly despite a nationalist protectionism that, of course, only the Chinese-themselves can enjoy. It’s an economic system that plays the world very effectively even if its internal logic is stunted by state control. However, according to The Economist, China needs financial reform and it is edging or leaning towards reform but ever so slowly. 

In the interim of further liberalisation, there has been a large increase in the number of bad loans by banks in China where the investments are failing at a higher rate. The debt to GDP has increased to 260% against Chinese GDP in the past 5 years and the solution is now to engage in shadow lending products which are difficult to liquidate during a downturn but are currently working to support bank profitability. Shadow lending investments is interesting because it’s difficult to know what is inside these shadow lending products. Bad lending by Chinese banks have pushed them into this more risky territory. Most bankers do not know what is in the shadow lending products. So what? A problem will arise if this shadow lending is impacted by a recession. However, The Economist story is an old repeated narrative where each week they try to engage readers with the thought of economic calamity centred on China.

Isn’t in the case that the political control of banking means bad lending is underwritten by an interventionist state? The risk will be redistributed in the form of bailouts surely. Also, from a western perspective, since the inbound and outbound investment by Chinese banks as so small any economic downturn is unlikely to have devastating effects on the global economy. The total banking sector valuation in China is $40 Trillion USD or 40% of the entire world GDP….the west waits in the wings to gain more access to this relatively low risk market. It will probably not happen with the current political structure, i.e. reforms will have to be in the interest of the Politburo….