One Vision Podcast — Fintech, Banking, and AI with Theodora Lau

Hosted by Theodora Lau

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Oct 2026

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One Vision Podcast is a fintech, banking, and AI podcast hosted by Theodora Lau (Founder, Unconventional Ventures; author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence). One Vision goes beyond the headlines on AI, agentic commerce, digital banking, financial inclusion, and the future of money — with founders, analysts, venture capitalists, technologists, and operators building the next chapter of financial services. New episodes weekly. Featured guests include leaders from Ant, bunq, J.D. Power, Forrester, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAS, SAP, and Wall Street Journal. Recognized in American Banker's Top 20 Most Influential Women in Fintech. We believe there are many innovation stories that have impact on people's life across the world. We identify these stories and talk to them about their journeys, successes and challenges they have had to overcome. In providing a stage for these entrepreneurs, thought leaders and innovators, we hope to inspire a generation looking to effect positive change. One Vision, One Dream, and One Voice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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October 12, 202626 min

Local Roots, Big-Bank Expectations: AuburnBank’s Digital Strategy

What do you do when your customers love you for being local and expect you to work like a big global bank? In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Jerry Siegel and Joanna Watts join Theodora Lau to discuss the priorities and challenges that shaped AuburnBank 's digital strategy and the decision to select Alkami’s Digital Sales & Service Platform. Nick Weston from Alkami joins the conversation to explain how an integrated platform can help financial institutions connect account opening, digital banking, data, and marketing as they plan for the future. 🔥Hot take: “There is a risk to staying where you are.” – Jerry Siegel, Sr. Vice President / CTO, AuburnBank 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Keywords: Digital Transformation, Banking Industry, Financial Services Timestamp: 00:00 Welcome and meet the guests 02:20 Jerry and Joanna backstory 04:01 Balancing legacy and tech 07:38 Why AuburnBank needed change 13:26 Implementation game plan 17:17 Training and change management 22:54 What success looks like 26:23 Wrap Up and Thanks More about our guests 🌐Jerry Siegel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerry-siegel-2b6409/ 🌐Joanna Watts on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joanna-watts-8726aa3a7/ 🌐Nick Weston on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick--weston/ 🌐AuburnBank: https://www.auburnbank.com/ 🌐Alkami Technology: https://www.alkami.com/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision ** One Vision Podcast is a fintech, banking, and AI podcast hosted by Theodora Lau (Founder, Unconventional Ventures; author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence). One Vision goes beyond the headlines on AI, agentic commerce, digital banking, financial inclusion, and the future of money — with founders, analysts, venture capitalists, technologists, and operators building the next chapter of financial services. New episodes weekly. Featured guests include leaders from Ant, bunq, J.D. Power, Forrester, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAS, SAP, and Wall Street Journal. Recognized in American Banker's Top 20 Most Influential Women in Fintech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

October 4, 202621 min

A Bag of M&Ms | Briana Marbury on Financial Exclusion

Briana Marbury grew up in Detroit with one bank in the neighborhood. She opened an account after her first job. Then came the overdraft fees, and the fees on the fees. She had a choice: gas and groceries, or the bank. The bank account closed. So she went to the check-cashing place on the corner, five dollars at a time, for years — while the unpaid fees went to collections and marked a credit file that had barely started. Financial exclusion doesn't always look like someone outside the banking system. Sometimes it looks like a closed account, a check-cashing counter, and a damaged credit file. Briana Marbury, President & CEO of Interledger Foundation , joins Theodora Lau to talk about living it — and about the unglamorous infrastructure work that could stop it happening to someone else. But technology in and of itself was not going to be enough. They close the conversation on what’s next: Mexico, Colombia, and a growing push into US community banks and CDFIs. And on what gives Briana hope: that when she walks into a room with a government, they're not asking whether interoperability matters. They're asking how fast it can happen. Hot take 🔥"I have a choice between either buying gas, buying groceries, or paying a bank fee bill — when I can go access my money right away at this corner store for five dollars." 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Keywords: fintech, personal finance, financial inclusion, payments, cross-border payments, remittances, Interledger Protocol, Briana Marbury, Interledger Foundation #FinancialInclusion #CrossBorderPayments #Fintech #Payments Timestamp: 00:00 Welcome and Introductions 01:09 Interledger Foundation Origins 02:59 Hidden Financial Exclusion 05:54 Personal Stories and Literacy 07:55 Interoperability for Inclusion 09:16 Fixing Cross Border Payments 13:48 Why Fees Persist 15:50 Lessons Working with Regulators 18:11 Plans for 2027 More about our guest 🌐Briana Marbury on Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianamarbury/ 🌐Interledger Foundation: https://interledger.org/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision One Vision Podcast is a fintech, banking, and AI podcast hosted by Theodora Lau (Founder, Unconventional Ventures; author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence). One Vision goes beyond the headlines on AI, agentic commerce, digital banking, financial inclusion, and the future of money — with founders, analysts, venture capitalists, technologists, and operators building the next chapter of financial services. New episodes weekly. Featured guests include leaders from Ant, bunq, J.D. Power, Forrester, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAS, SAP, and Wall Street Journal. Recognized in American Banker's Top 20 Most Influential Women in Fintech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

September 21, 202635 min

Platform or Pipe: Why Most Banks Already Chose

Every few years someone tells us banking is about to be disrupted. It never quite happens. So when Dharmesh Mistry and Lou Carlozo came on to talk about their new book, The Intelligent Ledger, I asked: Why is this time different? Dharmesh's take? Banking has adopted plenty of individual technologies, from mainframe to client-server, internet, mobile, cloud. None of them disrupted anything. But the iPhone didn't win by being a better phone. Nokia was building a better phone. Kodak was building a better camera. Garmin was building a better GPS. The iPhone was all of them at once, and the market reorganised around it in under five years. His claim is that banking now has its own version of that convergence — what he and Lou call the Quanvergence: open, accessible data; agentic AI; tokenisation; and quantum, arriving together rather than in sequence. Not the best AI bank. Not the best tokenised rails. All of it, in one place. So platform or pipe? And who will win? 📱 The Intelligent Ledger ships at the end of September from Palgrave Macmillan. Hot take 🔥"Banks have already chosen pipe, but they're not admitting it. Nobody wants to hear it. If you're selling products and that's all that you're doing, you're making your money from margin on a product — that makes you a pipe. So just admit it and get on with it." — Dharmesh Mistry Hot take 🔥"Change or die by 2032." — Lou Carlozo 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Keywords: Fintech, Financial Services, Agentic AI, AI, Quantum, Digital Transformation, Tokenization Timestamp: 00:00 Welcome and Guests 00:50 Introducing The Intelligent Ledger 03:29 Why Five Years 06:58 Convergence and Platform Shift 09:31 Skepticism and CEO Courage 13:38 Four Forces 17:10 Small Banks Can Compete 22:05 Bold Claims and 2032 Deadline 34:37 Release Dates and Where to Buy More about our guests 🌐Dharmesh Mistry on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/dharmeshmistry2020/ 🌐Lou Carlozo on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/loucarlozo/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision One Vision Podcast is a fintech, banking, and AI podcast hosted by Theodora Lau (Founder, Unconventional Ventures; author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence). One Vision goes beyond the headlines on AI, agentic commerce, digital banking, financial inclusion, and the future of money — with founders, analysts, venture capitalists, technologists, and operators building the next chapter of financial services. New episodes weekly. Featured guests include leaders from Ant, bunq, J.D. Power, Forrester, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAS, SAP, and Wall Street Journal. Recognized in American Banker's Top 20 Most Influential Women in Fintech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

September 8, 202628 min

Agentic Commerce's Real Bottleneck Isn't the Technology

🎙️Agentic Commerce's Real Bottleneck Isn't the Technology — with Jas Shah A year and a half ago, agentic commerce was going to change everything. Type a prompt, get a package. So what actually happened? In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Theodora Lau sits down with fintech product expert Jas Shah for a clear-eyed look at where agentic commerce really stands. The technology has mobilized, but as Jas puts it, becoming ready is not the same as being ready. Disputes, chargebacks, and fraud liability haven't been solved for a world where transaction volume could rise exponentially. And consumer behavior hasn't moved at all: they will use AI for discovery, then still tap Apple Pay to buy. The conversation turns on a single test: utility. Where an agent removes genuine administrative burden, it wins. Where the person actually wants to choose, it doesn't. Which is why Jas argues the real early adopters are businesses: inventory systems, product codes, predictable repeat purchasing, and a procurement decision that comes down to price and delivery speed. Ready for a bold bet for 2030? It involves a wallet … 💬Hot take: "The tech is becoming ready, but I don't think anyone can say it's ready yet." 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Keywords: Fintech, Financial Services, AI, Agentic Commerce Timestamp: 00:00 Welcome and Intro 00:57 Agentic Commerce Reality Check 04:45 Trust and Value Exchange 08:55 Why Businesses Adopt First 11:29 Authorization and Fraud Guardrails 13:22 PSPs and Wallets Strategy 17:27 What People Get Wrong 19:23 Agentic Finance for SMEs 24:37 Personal Finance Utility 27:18 Bold Bet for 2030 More about our guest 🌐Jas Shah on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/jas-shah/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision One Vision Podcast is a fintech, banking, and AI podcast hosted by Theodora Lau (Founder, Unconventional Ventures; author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence). One Vision goes beyond the headlines on AI, agentic commerce, digital banking, financial inclusion, and the future of money — with founders, analysts, venture capitalists, technologists, and operators building the next chapter of financial services. New episodes weekly. Featured guests include leaders from Ant, bunq, J.D. Power, Forrester, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAS, SAP, and Wall Street Journal. Recognized in American Banker's Top 20 Most Influential Women in Fintech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

August 25, 202618 min

Breaking banking barriers with a single source of truth

In this week’s One Vision Podcast, Theodora Lau hosts Kathryn Outlaw , Co-Founder and COO of Spheros, a B2B SaaS platform that aims to unify client data into a single source of truth, enabling accurate, consented data sharing and supporting reliable AI agents. Kathryn talks about her entrepreneurial journey, the inspiration behind the startup, and the goal of making Spheros as essential as DocuSign for onboarding. 💬Hot take: ”Banks don't have a data scarcity problem. They have a data comprehension problem.” 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Keywords: Fintech, Financial Services, Data, Banking Industry Timestamp: 00:00 Welcome And Guest Intro 01:27 From Banking To Startup 04:06 Why Spheros Exists 07:58 Agents And Data Consent 10:30 Open Banking Pathways 15:31 Founder Lessons Learned 17:01 Defining Success Ahead More about our guest 🌐Kathryn Outlaw on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathrynoutlaw/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision One Vision Podcast is a fintech, banking, and AI podcast hosted by Theodora Lau (Founder, Unconventional Ventures; author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence). One Vision goes beyond the headlines on AI, agentic commerce, digital banking, financial inclusion, and the future of money — with founders, analysts, venture capitalists, technologists, and operators building the next chapter of financial services. New episodes weekly. Featured guests include leaders from Ant, bunq, J.D. Power, Forrester, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAS, SAP, and Wall Street Journal. Recognized in American Banker's Top 20 Most Influential Women in Fintech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

August 17, 202637 min

Delight is a deposit strategy

🎙️ "Delight is a deposit strategy." In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Angela Scott, Sales Enablement leader at Zions, joins host Theodora Lau, to discuss her idea that “delight is a deposit strategy,” arguing banks can win deposits by creating intuitive, responsive, and even enjoyable experiences that make money movement easy, especially when digital experiences are constrained by shared core and app vendors. They get into: Why delight isn’t fluff Why the best deposit strategy makes money easy to move in and out The chick-and-egg trap of building on the same handful of core and app providers Financial literacy, and why communities shouldn’t bear the burden Why we need to make banking more legible Angela stresses balancing efficiency and humanity through employee, digital, and brand experience to build trust. 💬 "If you want deposits, you have to bring the right environment to set them free." 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Keywords: Fintech, FinancialServices, Banking Industry, Financial Inclusion, Financial Literacy 00:00 Welcome and Introductions 01:05 Delight as Deposit Strategy 04:43 Banking UX and Vendor Limits 07:16 Neobank Story and Micro Delights 11:46 Angela’s Origin Story 17:22 Inclusion and Literacy Work 25:29 Digital Efficiency vs Human Touch 33:02 Brand Experience and Differentiation 36:56 Takeaways and Goodbye More about our guest 🌐Angela Scott on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-scott-a2348827/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision One Vision Podcast is a fintech, banking, and AI podcast hosted by Theodora Lau (Founder, Unconventional Ventures; author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence). One Vision goes beyond the headlines on AI, agentic commerce, digital banking, financial inclusion, and the future of money — with founders, analysts, venture capitalists, technologists, and operators building the next chapter of financial services. New episodes weekly. Featured guests include leaders from Ant, bunq, J.D. Power, Forrester, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAS, SAP, and Wall Street Journal. Recognized in American Banker's Top 20 Most Influential Women in Fintech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

August 3, 202624 min

Building Faster with AI: Trust, Speed, and Ecosystem Thinking

In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Theo chats with Huyen Tran from US Bank and founder/investor at Elys Ventures. Huyen shares her path from computer engineering and early real-estate investing to two decades in banking product leadership and P&L ownership. She discusses why banks can appear slow due to resilience, regulation, legacy systems, and trust requirements, and how AI will accelerate prototyping, testing, data analysis, and iterative product development while meeting customer expectations for personalization and security amid rising fraud. A must-listen episode on startup, innovation, relationship building, and ecosystem thinking. 🔥"What value are you creating for everyone involved? ...Just don't forget about the people." 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Keywords: AI, Fintech, FinancialServices, VC, Startups, Banking Industry Timestamps: 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 00:53 Path to Banking 05:17 Are Banks Really Slow? 08:09 AI Changing Bank Product 10:39 Customer Expectations and Trust 13:27 Inside Elys Ventures 14:18 Moats in the AI Era 18:37 Founder Questions and Cycles 20:27 Advice for New Founders 23:41 Closing More about our guest 🌐Huyen Tran on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/huyen-tran-09a580aa/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision ** One Vision Podcast is a fintech, banking, and AI podcast hosted by Theodora Lau (Founder, Unconventional Ventures; author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence). One Vision goes beyond the headlines on AI, agentic commerce, digital banking, financial inclusion, and the future of money — with founders, analysts, venture capitalists, technologists, and operators building the next chapter of financial services. New episodes weekly. Featured guests include leaders from Ant, bunq, J.D. Power, Forrester, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAS, SAP, and Wall Street Journal. Recognized in American Banker's Top 20 Most Influential Women in Fintech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

July 26, 202633 min

The Human Edge: AI, Trust, and the Future of Connection

Anthony Sar , Co-founder and CEO of Finoverse and the driving force behind Hong Kong Fintech Week, joins Theo on One Vision to share the story behind one of Asia's most iconic innovation gatherings. From a bar conversation about hitting 5,000 attendees (when they had 300) to welcoming 45,000 people from 120+ economies at their 10th anniversary, Anthony reflects on what it takes to build something that genuinely keeps people in the room. At the center of the conversation is Samantha, built in-house by Finoverse. She acts as your personal AI networking agent. She interviews you, learns what you're looking for, and makes introductions at scale. After a successful pilot at last year’s FinTech Week as well as the recent Genesis Festival, Samantha will return to Hong Kong FinTech Week 2026 this November. This year’s conference is aptly themed Fintech Nexus: Bridging the World, Building the Future. It is a rallying call to drive connectivity and collaboration across global and Chinese Mainland markets, at a time when the world feels more fragmented than ever. One World, One Planet. This episode invites us to come together to foster collaboration for a more inclusive financial services ecosystem for everyone. 🔥 Hot Take: "AI can't have coffee with you. It can't go for a hike. It can't watch a comedy with you." 🔥 Hot Take: “There's so much happening in mainland China and Asia that the rest of the world simply doesn't see." 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Keywords: AI, Fintech, FinancialServices, Startups, Hong Kong Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and Introductions 02:59 A decade of Finoverse and Hong Kong Fintech Week 07:39 Introducing Samantha: The AI Host 10:13 The Future of Events and Networking 19:07 How AI Makes Human Connection More Valuable, Not Less 27:55 Hong Kong Fintech Week 2026: Fintech Nexus: Bridging the World, Building the Future 33:01 Closing Thoughts: One World, One Planet More about our guest 🌐Anthony Sar on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonysar/ 🌐FinTech Week Hong Kong: https://www.fintechweek.hk/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision ** One Vision Podcast is a fintech, banking, and AI podcast hosted by Theodora Lau (Founder, Unconventional Ventures; author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence). One Vision goes beyond the headlines on AI, agentic commerce, digital banking, financial inclusion, and the future of money — with founders, analysts, venture capitalists, technologists, and operators building the next chapter of financial services. New episodes weekly. Featured guests include leaders from Ant, bunq, J.D. Power, Forrester, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAS, SAP, and Wall Street Journal. Recognized in American Banker's Top 20 Most Influential Women in Fintech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

July 22, 202636 min

The Map and the Landscape: Paolo Sironi on Quantum Sapiens, AI, and the Meaning Machines Can't Carry

In this new episode of One Vision Podcast, Paolo Sironi joins Theodora Lau to unveil his new book, Quantum Sapiens, a philosophical literary thriller on artificial intelligence, quantum gravity, and the origins of human consciousness. A burning question: Why now? We talk about the "I love you" problem and what happens when we attribute meaning to words that machines give us. Paolo invites us to think about the journey ahead of us before we walk through Alice's mirror. What do we need to carry with us? What do we leave behind? An exhilarating conversation about the present and future of technology that you won't want to miss. No PhD required. 📍The algorithm has no meaning. We need the entanglement and the magic of the human touch." 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Keywords: AI, Fintech, Generative AI, Quantum, Empathy Timestamps 00:00 Welcome Back Paolo 00:58 Unveiling Quantum Sapiens 02:38 Why Fiction Not Whitepapers 06:52 From Fintech to Consciousness 18:48 Illusion of AI Meaning 25:06 Poetry as AI Antidote More about our guest 🌐Paolo Sironi on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/thepsironi/ 📘Quantum Sapiens: https://mybook.to/Quantum-Sapiens More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision One Vision Podcast is a fintech, banking, and AI podcast hosted by Theodora Lau (Founder, Unconventional Ventures; author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence). One Vision goes beyond the headlines on AI, agentic commerce, digital banking, financial inclusion, and the future of money — with founders, analysts, venture capitalists, technologists, and operators building the next chapter of financial services. New episodes weekly. Featured guests include leaders from Ant, bunq, J.D. Power, Forrester, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAS, SAP, and Wall Street Journal. Recognized in American Banker's Top 20 Most Influential Women in Fintech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

July 6, 202625 min

The Coach Inside Your Banking App — Alisha Chowdhury on Closing the Advice Gap with AI

Many people in this country don't have access to reliable financial guidance — so they're increasingly asking a free chatbot instead. The problem? A general-purpose model trained on Reddit threads inherits Reddit's appetite for risk, and now that skew shows up in the conversations people are having about their money. In this new episode of One Vision Podcast, Alisha Chowdhury , Founder of Kiro Money, joins Theodora Lau to argue that the same technology, pointed with different intentions, can do the opposite: close the advice gap instead of widening it. Alisha traces the origin of Kiro back to a socioeconomically diverse Bangladeshi community in New Orleans — the "aunties and uncles" who taught her immigrant parents how to navigate an unfamiliar financial system — and to the University of Pennsylvania, where she saw real wealth and learned how it's built for the first time. After years as an investor at Vanguard and in private equity, she left for an MBA in London and started building the earliest version of Kiro: a low-code, RAG-based coach fed only sources she trusted. "Not garbage in." Today Kiro is an embedded financial intelligence layer that lets a bank or investing platform drop a context-aware AI coach directly into its own app, so users get guidance where their data and their relationship already live. A conversation about financial inclusion, the advice gap, and what it takes to build AI for money that people can actually trust. Because when it comes to money, trust has to be earned — and tested. 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Keywords: AI, Fintech, GenerativeAI, AI Agents, Chatbots 📍”The vision of why I started this is to give back to people like my parents, is to give back to a younger version of myself, and making sure that access truly means access.” Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and Introductions 01:22 Alisha’s Founder Roots 02:38 From New Orleans to Finance 04:48 Career Path and MBA Pivot 07:35 What Kiro Money Builds 10:19 AI Agents and Product Vision 12:27 Trust, Emotion, and Community 17:36 Safety Guardrails and Testing 22:12 Impact Metrics and Closing More about our guests 🌐Alisha Chowdhury on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisha-chowdhury-163808122/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision One Vision Podcast is a fintech, banking, and AI podcast hosted by Theodora Lau (Founder, Unconventional Ventures; author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence). One Vision goes beyond the headlines on AI, agentic commerce, digital banking, financial inclusion, and the future of money — with founders, analysts, venture capitalists, technologists, and operators building the next chapter of financial services. New episodes weekly. Featured guests include leaders from Ant, bunq, J.D. Power, Forrester, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAS, SAP, and Wall Street Journal. Recognized in American Banker's Top 20 Most Influential Women in Fintech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.