When Fiserv Head of Fintech and Growth, Sunil Sachdev, and President of Digital Payments, Matt Wilcox, join me to explain the nature of their roles at the company, the two are united by a clear common cause. Simply put: leverage the expertise and innovation within Fiserv to help clients continue bringing new financial innovations to market, deepening relationships by adding more value for the consumers and businesses they serve.
“Fiserv is in a very privileged position,” Sachdev says. “We are the largest core banking provider in the US, the largest digital banking provider, and the largest bill payment and person-to-person payment provider in the country. And that’s not to mention the enviable footprint we have as a leading provider of services like merchant acquiring in markets all around the world.”
Sachdev, a long-suffering New York Knicks fan, knows a thing or two about an underdog story. His background lies in banking and payments, including stints overseas in the UK, South Asia, and India – where he gained an appreciation for the challenges and struggles that people in emerging markets endure to access financial services. He says that definitely has a bearing on his work today, particularly when he thinks about opening up financial services to the unbanked and underbanked through the power of open finance.
“Fiserv is all about taking something from the whiteboard and bringing it to life,” he explains. “For me, that's the best part of it – it’s about having an idea or identifying a problem, having a conversation with our clients and other market participants, being able to bring different subject matter experts together. Then we combine the technical pieces, commercial pieces, and the go-to-market pieces to build a successful product or service to address the opportunity. That's why I enjoy it. I don't really think of it as work at all.”
For Matt Wilcox, open finance begins with solid data. Other markets like Europe have accelerated ahead of North America, but he believes there’s slowly growing parity in the US. “We're starting to see the area of open finance really open up,” he explains. “We've seen a faster clip of innovation. And that's starting to open the doors for industry collaboration. We're working with countless companies where that opportunity exists now and there's a faster path towards more open finance.”
Ultimately, he believes that this will bring more benefits to the consumer, and that open finance will shift away from being primarily about personal financial management and start to become more focused on the important task of compliance and ID verification.
When asked about his style of leadership and who inspires him on a daily basis, Wilcox says: “I'm very much a leader on the ground with the team. We have a very flat organisation, inspired by some of the key leaders in financial services. We also have some tremendous leaders here at Fiserv that have given me guidance throughout the years. I have been very fortunate to have really good mentors throughout my career.”
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