During this week’s Spotlight interview podcast, we speak with Naureen Hyat. Naureen is a serial entrepreneur ranked on the Women in FinTech Powerlist 2017.
She is co-founder of Tez Financial Services – the first fully digital financial institution in Pakistan, providing frictionless financial access to the unbanked and underbanked. She has been an Assessor of the SMART Campaign – with the aim to accelerate financial inclusion. She is also a Pakistan Credit Rating Agency alumnus.
During our conversation with Naureen she explains how technology can provide the missing pieces to the financial inclusion business case by speeding up access, creating efficiencies and reducing risk. However, says Naureen, the challenge is that the formal sector so often isn’t ready to adopt technological innovations, either due to their legacy mindsets or lower prioritisation in the budget ladder.
Listen to Naureen’s top three trends she foresees revolutionising the future of inclusive finance: Artificial Intelligence and robotics for acquisition, growth and risk reduction; Sharing Economy with partnerships driving the new business model and Blockchain for more customer centric use cases. Naureen is a young woman on a mission, to make finance inclusive and accessible to all. As she explains, “It’s empowering.” She believes in the importance of purpose-centricity – businesses with purpose at their heart, but isn’t convinced many she sees are really moving beyond customer acquisition.
And how does she run her own businesses and be successful? “Stay focused and stay strong. Be flexible enough to pivot when the need arises.”
