Generative AI is revolutionizing the financial world across sectors. Christopher Calabia, Head of MIT’s Central Bank Digital Currency Program, weighs the pros and cons of this new technology while emphasizing regulatory and ethical frameworks.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Nthupang Magolego from the National Credit Regulator (NCR) of South Africa and Collen Masunda of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) join Jo Ann to discuss using a TechSprint model to tackle really hard problems in financial inclusion.By Jo Ann Barefoot

AI Ethicist Nell Watson and author of Taming the Machine describes the foundations we need to put in place to build legal, regulatory and ethical systems to channel fiercely powerful new AI technology away from the bad, and toward the good.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Community banks face a tech revolution. Explore the challenges & opportunities with Increase CEO Darragh Buckley, who has a unique perspective and novel ideas. Hear his thoughts on how smaller banks can survive & thrive in a changing landscape.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Upgrade's visionary CEO, Renaud Laplanche, unpacks his pioneering thinking on consumer finance. He unveils 3 key financial consumer needs and explores the evolving landscape of fintechs — progress, challenges and what's next.By Jo Ann Barefoot

To mark Women’s History Month, AIR’s Shelley Anderson interviews Barefoot Innovation host Jo Ann on her perspective about the progress, and lack thereof, on efforts to drive toward gender equality.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Itai Damti and Alex Acree delve into Unit's design as a "technology operating system" for bank-fintech partnerships, the legal framework they establish between partners, and their view that compliance must be built into these systems from the start.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Kwame is the charismatic head of innovation at the Bank of Ghana. He shares advice for regulators on how to adapt to tech transformation and emphasizes collaboration to break down silos and foster innovationBy Jo Ann Barefoot

Michael talks about the global evolution of financial inclusion and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s ongoing efforts. Learn about digital financial inclusion, consumer protection, digital public infrastructure, and barriers to fair finance.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Kelly serves on the White House National Economic Council and helped lead the executive order issued in 2023 on AI. She discusses what the order requires, the challenges it aims to address and the upside opportunity of the technology.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Former CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo updates on the evolution of Central Bank Digital Currencies around the world and predicts where we’re headed.By Jo Ann Barefoot

In this special episode recorded live at the Annual Conference of the National Bankers Association in Washington, D.C., Jo Ann speaks with three innovators working to help Minority Depository Institutions modernize their technology to continue serving communities of color.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Generative artificial intelligence is sure to be a hot topic for regulators and financial innovators on the upcoming conference circuit. Here is how attendees can get the most out of events likely to be a harvest of new ideas.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Discrimination in the credit markets is a persistent problem. Lisa Rice, head of the National Fair Housing Alliance, says we can solve it if we understand the role of structured, hidden bias, and use new technology to root it out.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Following the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Velocity TechSprint, the official leading the agency’s conservatorship and fintech strategies joins Jo Ann to discuss all the ways the mortgage market is ripe for a technology overhaul.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Most agencies focus largely on how technology affects the industries they oversee, but the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority’s innovation approach is also inward-focused. Jessica Rusu and Nathalie Lowe, two leaders driving the FCA’s strategy, discuss the regulator’s achievements.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, joins Jo Ann for a discussion on the upsides and downsides of technologies designed to expand access to homeownership and small business capital.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Banka helps lead the World Bank’s initiative to make payments interoperable and fast. In this episode, he discusses the launch of Project FASTT, the principles that make fast payments work and how to meet key financial inclusion goals.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Hand, the Director of Financial Fairness Advocacy at Consumer Reports, leads the magazine’s initiative to evaluate new fintech products to give customers greater awareness of the rapidly changing financial services market. The ratings system could be a game-changer for pricing and product development.…

It has been quite a ride since our first episode in 2015. Over more than eight years, this show helped mark AIR’s founding, unpacked what the pandemic and other events meant for financial regulation, and hosted so many enlightening discussions about disruptive technology.By Jo Ann Barefoot

In this episode, Jo Ann interviews the most famous generative AI. The chat is “unsmart” but it gave responses to complex questions that were accurate and displayed the ability to grasp subtle issues.By Jo Ann Barefoot

The head of the Bank for International Settlements’ innovation initiative offers insight on ways that central banks and other regulatory organizations can boldly explore technological change.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Tillemann, Chief Policy Officer of Haun Ventures, shares his views about the crypto winter and how the confluence of blockchain, open source and digital tokens could solve stubborn problems.By Jo Ann Barefoot

The Bank for International Settlements, which ensures payment systems work, has prioritized technology. Tara Rice, who heads the BIS Secretariat of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures, discusses CPMI’s stablecoin guidance and more.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Kyle Hauptman, vice chairman of the National Credit Union Administration, comes on the show to discuss how his agency encourages credit unions to take steps to stay relevant in the digital era.By Jo Ann Barefoot

The question of how to expand access and ensure fairness for people of color deals with finding the right balance of regulation, technology and traditional finance. Two leaders on this issue speak with Jo Ann about finding the best answers.By Jo Ann Barefoot

In this episode, Jo Ann speaks with innovation leaders at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Haimera Workie and Alex Khachaturian, about a new tool to help transform financial regulation and compliance.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Todd Harper is the first head of the National Credit Union Administration appointed after serving in the agency’s own ranks. His conversation with Jo Ann touches on the NCUA’s new innovation office, and the technology pressures and opportunities facing credit unions.By Jo Ann Barefoot

The first 2023 episode is Jo Ann’s discussion with Simon Taylor, Head of Strategy at the anti-fraud tech firm Sardine. He weighs in on crypto’s “massive fraud problem,” and the pros and cons of building trust through decentralization and code.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Rathi heads the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, which has raced ahead of other agencies in recognizing the importance of digital transformation. He sits down with Jo Ann for a wide-ranging discussion on the FCA’s sandbox initiative, why the ‘G’ (for Governance) in ESG matters, and how the agency aspires to be a “data-driven regulator.”…

Ravi Menon, the managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, has charted a bold course on regulatory innovation, inventing new models that are being emulated throughout the world.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Ramaswamy, the Chief Legal Officer of Andreessen Horowitz, speaks to Jo Ann about the World Wide Web’s evolution and how version 3.0 aims to improve on earlier shortcomings through blockchain technology, tokenization and smart contracts.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Guerra leads compliance work at the five-year-old B2B platform enabling financial firms to offer crypto services. He says tech innovation challenges the assumption that compliance efforts are not aligned with business goals.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Young speaks to Jo Ann about the alliance that she leads and how its innovative members are building the bridge from traditional compliance to digitized solutions.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Renaud Laplanche, the CEO and co-founder of Upgrade, explains how the company aims to create a healthier credit card by converting debt into an installment loan with zero fees.By Jo Ann Barefoot

The first appointee to lead the Federal Reserve’s innovation office is focused on modernizing the technology of the central bank itself. Her goal is to bring the agency into the 21st century, and to keep it up-to-date as change accelerates.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Renier, a veteran of both the Treasury and the Fed and now managing director of digital finance at the Institute of International Finance, speaks with Jo Ann about the recent correction in the crypto markets and the need for regulators to hone new digital tools to get ahead of the curve.By Jo Ann Barefoot

David Foss runs one of three core processors that small financial institutions rely on for tech services. He and Jo Ann discuss community banks' tough times, how cores can help clients compete and the need for small banks to “plug in” to vendors.By Jo Ann Barefoot

Today’s show is required listening for our regulator audience, and is also packed with practical advice for ANY organization, public or private, that has to transition from the analog to the digital age. The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, or MSRB, is a small US regulatory body that’s doing outsized work in technology innovation. Our guests …

My guest today is Randal Quarles, Chairman of the Cynosure Group and previously the Federal Reserve Board’s Vice Chair for Supervision, a role in which he also chaired the US Financial Stability Board. He left the Fed at the end of last year, which makes this the perfect time to chat with him – I think it’s always extra-interesting to talk with gov…

We had hoped to post this episode during Pride Month and didn’t quite make it, but, of course, the topic is timeless. My guest is Rob Curtis, CEO and Cofounder of Daylight, a fintech startup that focuses on serving LGBTQ customers. In our conversation, Rob shares the story of why and how Daylight came to be. He talks about the stigma and bias encou…

Today’s show is different. My guest, Sigal Mandelker, is the former U.S. Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and she talks to us with exceptional reflexion and, frankly, frustration, about why and how we need our government to work better. That’s not a novel theme, of course – the world is noisy with critiques o…

Given New York’s unique role in global finance, the state always has top notch regulators and is normally at the forefront in addressing market change. It’s not surprising, then, that the state is focused today on the technology transformation underway in finance, including crypto. My two guests today are both leaders at the New York state Departme…

My guests today are Nicole Elam, CEO of the National Bankers Association, and Robert James II, who chairs the NBA’s board of directors and is also president of Carver Financial Corporation in Savannah, Georgia. The NBA is the trade association for Minority Depository Institutions, or MDIs. It was founded nearly a century ago, in 1927, to build on t…

How do you solve the biggest, hardest problems in the world? Usually, we just don’t. They persist. Today, though, we live in an age that’s putting powerful new technologies into our hands, opening up ways to make seemingly impossible solutions suddenly, theoretically, possible – if we can put them to use. These are the challenges that get taken up …

My guest today is one of the world’s leading innovators in this effort. Rashesh Bansal is the CEO of the Reserve Bank of India’s Innovation Hub. In April, AIR worked with the RBIH and other partners on the Swanari TechSprint, named for the Hindi word meaning “self-reliant woman.” I’m excited to have Rajesh on the show today to share a perspective t…

My guest today is Michael Hsu, the Acting Comptroller of the Currency, and we are talking all things– and only things – crypto. Our conversation covers a lot of other ground: the lack of interoperability among today’s stablecoins; whether and how stablecoin issuers should have bank charters; problems with blockchain technologies; the evolution of C…

There are a lot of very rare things about my guest today, Anne Boden. She is one of a very small group of people who have founded what the U.K. calls challenger banks – banks that were chartered after the financial crisis as part of regulators’ newly minted mandate to foster competition in the financial sector. She is one of the very small group of…

This is a special emergency episode of Barefoot Innovation with a call to action for helping to protect Ukrainian refugees from being preyed upon by human traffickers. Yesterday, I got a message from Stuart Watkins, the CEO of Zenoo, in Prague. I got to know Stu two years ago when AIR ran our first TechSprint on the US Paycheck Protection Program, …

My guest today is Ian Hollowbread, the Global Innovation Lead for Safe and Compliant at ING Bank. Ian and I have known each other since the early days of regtech, and even fintech, as I visited him in London to see the innovation lab he built at ING, figuring out how to do compliance better, using the best technology.…