Monica Millares: [00:00:00] hi Svitlanka. Welcome to the show. I'm really looking forward to this chat because you, well, I think you're an amazing woman building a FinTech, but also you've gone through very tough times.

And that's a beautiful example of a strong woman. So welcome to the show.

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: Thank you so much. Hi, Monica. I'm also excited to be here. Thank you.

Monica Millares: So, before we go into your story as such, let's get to know Svitlanka a little bit better as a person. So, what does success look like for you?

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: To me, the success is to do what you like and be in harmony with yourself and live according to your values.

Monica Millares: Oh, I think that's so important, live according to your values because sometimes that's when we struggle. Right. When we're like, Oh, it's against, and that's when there's inner [00:01:00] conflict. Exactly. So talking about inner conflict, like you're originally from Ukraine and you were living in Ukraine when the conflict started, what, how did you find resilience and strength inside during the tough times?

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: That's a good questions because the first reply that I want to give is that we just have it is that you don't have any other choice. You need to be strong. You need to be resilient in order to keep going in order to keep working, especially if you're a leader and there are many people that depend on you you understand that if you're not resilient.

If you're not strong then what kind of leader will you be for all this other people that actually depend on you? And for me, there were several layers. There was a [00:02:00] layer of my family that needed help and needed support. And all eyes were on me in terms of how we're going to go through this.

And the level of my teams that were also. Looking at me and the leadership's position in the hard times is critical for, for team's operation. So it's something inevitable. You should, you either go strong or you go home.

Monica Millares: I like that. Yeah. Because there's no way somebody asked me recently. Like, how do you cope when it gets really tough? What do you do? And I with a very serious face, I said, I just keep going. And she was like, what? I'm like, well, maybe I stop, I cry. You know, I reassess this, the other, but I just keep going. And that's what you need to do.

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: Yeah, you keep going. You can be scared, you can cry, but [00:03:00] you can still go in the meantime. Okay. Crying, but go.

Monica Millares: Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's a beautiful message. It's like, yeah, crying, but go. It's like scared, but go. You just keep going. Whatever feeling is coming up, just keep going. Because I always see it as otherwise the alternative.

I never liked the alternative. The alternative is scarier than , wherever situation I may be at the moment. No, I don't like the alternative. So I just keep going.

Cool. So that's a deep topic that probably we'll go into in more detail a bit later but this podcast is about like purpose and how we can create more impact in FinTech as such. So what's your view on how we can create more purposeful products in the industry?

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: I think here it's very important to look into the various senses behind everything that we're doing. [00:04:00] FinTech, and in general financial industry, is a very classical, conservative, and heavily regulated industry, and it has reasons for that. It should be that way for many reasons. At the same time, What I think it is critically important behind all the processes behind all the regulations behind all the rules to understand the sense why we are doing what we're doing, why this rule has to be this way, doesn't really have to be this way if we look more into the sense of what we're doing that we can do the purpose driven products.

If we have the true. Thank you. Motivation then we can do the purpose driven product. Neofin is a purpose driven technology that powers products like that. We love working with products, with a goal, with products, with a purpose and products with an [00:05:00] impact. Yes.

Monica Millares: And that's super important because exactly it all comes back to the.

intent behind the product or the company, even like the why we're doing what we're doing. So you as Neofin, you have a customer promise that it's quite ambitious, courageous, audacious, that it's launched your lending business at four times the speed and zero delivery risk. Can you tell us about Neofin and what this customer promise is?

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: Yeah, absolutely. We're well, we're in the FinTech. We cannot just do the marketing phrases and then do not correspond with that marketing phrases because otherwise we'll get regulated. So of course we do have an explanation what that means. At Neofin, we are. Introducing the wave of no code to the financial world.

So at the moment, the [00:06:00] world is driven by the API wave. No code is a completely new mode of interaction between the user and the technology because it enables to cover. All the commodities would the professionally specialized expertise only, for example, business analysts or risk management of the bands or underwriters or product managers, and so on without involving the hard coding without involving the development team, because development team can, in the meantime, take care of the core business, take care of the core tasks development team.

We all know always has a huge backlog, and it's not that easy to cram into that backlog. Whereas they can work on the core things and not be distracted. While at Neothin, we cover Everything around the lending [00:07:00] technology which is basically a commodity tool. We cover it through the no code approach.

That is why it's four times the speed, because for example, you don't need to wait for the development team to become available in order to build out a marketing lead generation page for the new London product. Or for the new financial program you can just use the site builder and get a couple of pages that are needed fully branded, fully white label as a part of the domain done in a couple of days, or you do not have to involve a huge team of integrators and developers to fine tune your underwriting strategy because you can use an underwriting studio, you And you can establish all of the, those decision and algorithms inside the studio that makes it faster.

And when I say zero delivery risk, of course, there's always some risk. I, [00:08:00] as a Ukrainian I know that the risk can be everywhere and especially in the places you never expect, but I would say that. From the technology platform, because it's not hard coding and it's a platform that is already there and that provides you with those Lego parts that you need to combine together, you don't have a delivery risk that you won't have those Lego parts, big parts, because they're already there.

You don't need to code them. That's why. That's why it just decreases the very basic delivery risk to

Monica Millares: minimum. Okay. I thank you for that explanation because I'll deep dive a little bit before we go more into Neofin. I want to understand properly what Neo, the impact of no code, because I've been hearing the word, you know, like no codes, these no codes, the other.

And then if I put that in the context of product people, so for example, some. [00:09:00] Somebody was asking me the other day, Hey, are you a technical product manager? And I'm like, no, I'm any other type of product manager that's a product expert, but I'm not a technical product manager because that's not my background.

I did study engineering, but I did not study computers engineering. Therefore, like it's not my strength as such. But then what you're saying is basically. As a product professional, I can deliver my proposition, my journeys, lending journeys faster, because then I will use my tech team to go and build the core.

While I, as a no coder can play with these other software to build all the, not all, but some of the surrounding elements of the product. And then basically save time because I can do it rather than putting it in the [00:10:00] roadmap or in the backlog for the tech team to do it. Therefore, it's much more efficient because we all know that that 20% of building all the additional tools

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: takes so much time.

What I like to say is that you don't have to be a coder. You can be a no coder, so you can be a non technical product manager. And it's still completely fine. With Neothin we often work with founders who are people of the business and not technical people. We often work with a product team or with the let's say head of retail lending.

And so on, these are all business positions and the business, the system is designed in a way that it's going to be clear for the business positions. And for you as a product manager, for example, is it important for you to be able to test various strategies or for example, financial promotion [00:11:00] before launching it massively?

Monica Millares: If it's a massive launch, yes, you have to test a lot.

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: probably you do. And here you are getting a simple and low risk way to test it out to take, for example, an existing cohort of the users of a financial institution run this cohort and pre score it with.

Existing underwriting strategy of the new lending product that you foresee , for your new financial product and see how much of them pre qualify, how much of them pre score, how relevant it is in general for this cohort of the users, how interesting it's going to be to them. Maybe it's your assumption and idea, but they actually don't qualify for that.

And you can do it in a couple of days for just a test, because it's a low risk

Monica Millares: model

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: and the loan management system would allow to create multiple constructions like those and [00:12:00] test them, understand what works and stick to what works in the production.

Monica Millares: Okay, cool. I like that. So coming back to you and your story, how did you guys start Neofin?

Like, what's the story behind you and the founders, the idea?

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: That's a fun story. My co founder, Alex, who's a technical co founder. Yeah. You see, we also have that same duo. I'm a business co founder and he's a technical co founder. He used to work on. A number of CIO, CTO positions in the banks and the fintechs.

And he was always stressed by the fact that the loan management systems are all created. So long ago, they're not optimal. And what is very relevant to the region where we are coming from. So we're all coming from Ukraine, specifically from the East of Ukraine. And. Most of the tools [00:13:00] that have been used in the banking, they were not made in Ukraine.

They were originated from Russia and in many countries around us, in the Eastern Europe these products were very popular, even though they were not. Functional, not flexible, not modern at all. And at the same time, I, I spent over 10 years scaling international Ukrainian tech businesses on the worldwide arenas.

And at that point I was really. Interested. I was a big fan of the innovations in Ukrainian banking. And I love what we are doing from the user perspective from the end users perspective, but at the same time, what I did not like is how it looks like from. Insight from the perspective of the institution, from the banking perspective.

And that's how we found each other. That's how we found each other. And [00:14:00] it was firstly, it was kind of a patriotic intention because we just didn't want our banks use the product that was originated from Russia. And there was actually. At that point, it wasn't a national thing. It was a thing that it's actually the product that doesn't work quite well.

So it started with that and started just as an idea that we were building out at night, having our full time jobs. And then it gets super quickly sold to the first bank super quickly in a few months and then boom, and we started serving a lot of major banks and institutions in the, in the country.

Oh, that's amazing. Congrats. So it all started in Ukraine, actually.

Monica Millares: Yes. I was about to ask that. And then what happened? Because this is like prior to the war starting and then... Actually, it wasn't

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: the time of the war. [00:15:00] Actually, it was at the time of the war because we are from the east of Ukraine from Donbass all of the founding team of Neofim the war in Donbass started in 2014.

So Russia invaded our home region and when Neon started, it was already several, years of the war. And we were already expecting something and had experience with with this. There's a dark joke, dark humor that I usually say that we started getting missiles from Russia before it has become a mainstream humor, but dark humor, but this is what we have.

Monica Millares: Yeah. But then. Let's say the, that was 2014, but then I was referring to the current conflict. . So you guys were working in Ukraine, your clients were mainly Ukrainian, I'm assuming, [00:16:00] and then you are now based in Canada. Yeah. And now you've expanded to the us So can you guide us through what was your journey like?

What happened when the war started ?

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: What happened when the war started? So by February, 2022 we were already breakeven. . We were happy with that. We did plan to do international expansion by the 2023, and then on February 24th. The full scale war starts and then on February 25th, we wake up with understanding that we're not breakeven anymore, not even close to that.

Because the banks, our customers, Ukrainian customers, the banks start closing their credit business one by one by one by one. And we stopped billing the banks. The situation is very uncertain. It's hard to predict how it's going to operate, [00:17:00] how the country is going to live in general, how the bank system is going to live, to survive in general.

And the banks just close their banking businesses. And we understand that we have a fantastic team that we have been gathering from all the world from banks and fintechs that we want to hold in. And we're a fully self funded revenue funded business. So we need revenue to keep going. And our revenue just stops coming in and we realized that, well we.

Either should do something that we have never done before, or we just close, we just close and say goodbye to neophene. And of course we choose the first option and we decided we're going to scale internationally. We're going to go to international markets.

Monica Millares: Can I stop you there? Let's continue, but can I stop you?

Why did you [00:18:00] choose not to stop? Because I remember it seemed very gray and dark at those times. And I'm not from Ukraine and I was not even in Europe at the time, but what was going on through your mind and your heart, you and the founders that you were like, no way, we're not stopping.

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: You need to be effective as effective as possible because as a leader, you understand that a lot of people depend on you.

And there is a country that is in blood and in pain, and your people, your nation that is in blood and in pain. The only way for you to be effective and helpful is to keep going. To continue. To keep generating value, to be able to keep giving job to people. Keep paying the tax, keep earning something to be able to help, to donate.

Part of my family is in the army right now [00:19:00] on the frontline and on the, in the first days of the war would it not have any basic equipment in Ukraine? We basic, basically the families were trying to supply their relatives, their husbands, Fathers and so on to supply them with all that.

Equipment and it's not cheap, like everything, every small thing, I would never expect I would be able to understand what is a good terminal in an imager, what is a good anti drone rifle or what, what are, what drone models are there and so on, but you get, you become an expert in that because you need to buy all of that.

You need to choose all of that. So my family, part of my family was going to the army. We were working with all the family to manage and supply them with all the necessary things. Then a lot of dependents, like grandmas, like [00:20:00] mothers, wives children, a lot of dependents, and they all look at you and.

If you don't keep going, then what is the hope for you? And what is the hope for these people? You cannot make another, that was the only relevant choice that we could do at that point, and we were existing for a few months with no revenue. Working fully on internationalizing the product and working on building out the partner ecosystem and researching the ways how we can go international, which regions are the most relevant.

What would be our history that was lost in a few months and it was a big stressful month because as a, as a self funded business, you're not used to work with no revenue. You need, of course not. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So you need revenue. That was very [00:21:00] stressful. But we were going through it and the war became a very strong, I would say the most effective.

And tough accelerator that we were going through, yeah, because for example we needed to pass through compliance and certification to work internationally. And usually this takes at least a year, at least a year. In our case, we managed to pass all the U S compliance and certifications like ISO SOC two and so on in half a year.

So a lot of things we were We were doing because we were so motivated. We were doing faster and we were, when we decided to go into the into us I was talking to a lot of people from the FinTech space in the U S I was talking to a lot of investors from the FinTech space of the U S and.

What I was told was yeah, we know our system, it will take you at least two years to [00:22:00] get the first customer in the U S because the financial system is so slow and conservative and regulated. And then in four months we had the first customer in the U S. So that was a big

Monica Millares: catalyst. I'm like, congrats.

Amazing. You've done really well.

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: Thank you. Thank you. There's always there's always this thing. That we could do better and I'm thinking, could we do better? Of course we could, but of course, I think that it was still not bad.

Monica Millares: No, I think you did a great job because like, also if you think about it, like many, many FinTechs tried to go into the US.

And then they don't, you not only tried, but like you did, and you did it fast. And then you got the clients and you're now in the U S like you have U S customers, which is

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: amazing. Yeah. We still feel like with the U S we're on the start of our journey, but we're actively scaling in different countries.

In. To Southern [00:23:00] 23, along with scale to many countries of the Middle East United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan Egypt, and also central Asia. We started Kazakhstan. We're working on preparing Uzbekistan and then Central Eastern Europe. So Ukraine down, we got the representative office in Poland getting ready with Romania now.

So we don't stop there. War teaches you to diversify the risks. You don't put all the eggs in one basket. If we would only, who do you ask on stakes that would not be sustainable for us because it's a long term shot. Hmm.

Monica Millares: Yes. I like how you think it, I think it made you stronger also as a person, as a human, not only as a leader.

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: Yeah. Oh yeah. And it's interconnected. It's interconnected [00:24:00] because you, at some point you start feeling stronger physically too. Like, I understand that. Like, when I, even just work out in my free time. I think that why I enjoy it so much, so much more than before. Because I feel like with every minute I'm getting stronger.

Monica Millares: I love that. You know, like I, when I'm into the habit of. Weight lifting and then I'm like, and I start to see my body shape change and like the muscles and you feel stronger, like you're mentally stronger as well.

I do think that it's like, so related, like when the body feels like super strong, then the mind is stronger. And likewise, when the mind is super strong, then the body gets strong. It's just, yeah.

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: Working with body is my absolute recommendation to everyone who's going through the hard times. It's so interconnected.

Monica Millares: Yes, it is interconnected. Coming back to lending and EOFIN, especially now that you have like expansion plans across different countries. So [00:25:00] lending is a very complex product as such, because there's many parts. I would say within the process, if we look at it in the process, there's many parts to it.

Can you guide us quickly? So for anyone that's not familiar with the lending end to end process, can you guide us through the process and then expand what are the main pain points that you're solving for or that your customers may have? And they are like, yes, we want to go to Neofin because of that.

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: Yeah, of course. It's definitely a complex process. Let me try to structure it in a simple way. There are several stages on the landing process. The first stage is the actual onboarding which is common in this region to be called loan origination. That is the stage when the user is onboarding.

The application is captured all the magic. [00:26:00] Of the K. Y. C. And the fraud checks digital identity verification is being done on the background at this at this stage, then the application is. Processed and then the scoring happens. And then the decisioning happens and the credit decision is being made.

So it's either approved or disapproved or, or declined or it goes for the manual for the manual decision. All of that. Is under the umbrella of loan origination and for each part of this loan origination there are the separate solutions inside neophene on the stage of on the stage of the fraud detection on the stage of the face recognition, lightness detection for remote identification on the stage of the OCR documents check [00:27:00] then process and the application scoring.

Running the underwriting rules and making the decision. The goal with Neofim is to. Allow the customer automate as many decisions as possible, leave, let's say, automate 96%, leave 4% for the manual check. Yeah. Just make the use, the, the use of the, you know, human resources of the team effectively. Not to have them deal with the very standard cases that can be automated.

Then the next stage is the loan management system. This is when, okay, we've already made the decision. Yeah. What is going to happen next? You need to manage it somehow. You need to have the user base. You need to operate it. You need to use it as a. CRM, you need to build out various financial products.

We call it [00:28:00] like our loan management platform. We call it product building engine. It's our infernal jargon because of this Lego principle. We'll like the customers that are curious, that want to innovate. Try out different financial programs and then you should service it. So here the loan servicing comes you should service it to arrange the repayments to make sure that the borrower has a comfortable borrower's area, a clear understanding of how the repayments are going to happen, when they're going to happen, what amounts are going to be, what is left to repay.

Send the necessary communication, necessary notifications, necessary communication, and so on. And then you need to market it somehow. So run, let's say affiliate affiliate marketing campaigns run various communication [00:29:00] campaigns maybe do some promo codes or holiday activations and so on. And this is a marketing part.

So this isn't, this is how the process of lending looks like in a nutshell. Of course, under every of these part, there's a lot of nuances, a lot of solutions, but the platform covers this all in a nutshell, in a nutshell. And it is very open to any external solutions that the customer is used to work with, and we just make it super easy to, to work with, with that.

Monica Millares: So why could a financial institution, whether that's a fintech or a bank, why would they choose you over any of the other tons of lending management systems?

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: Oh yeah, there are tons of them. You're totally right. Yes. Yes. Why choose us? I would say that for the moment we are the most [00:30:00] optimal for the institutions that do not have sufficient, Technical teams to run lending on a to, to run lending automations.

Because for FinTech for bank, they, the technical teams need to be very focused on their core product to make sure that their user experience is perfect, their customer support is perfect. Their applications are perfect, and usually lending is something that is kind of left behind. And they're not, they're not, not much resources there whereas Neofin helps make it as digital, as seamless, as dynamic and automated as, let's say, the user experience of a great neobank.

That is 1 important point. Another important point is the general ease and flexibility because, for example, the traditional credit [00:31:00] Bureau score. It's important for the institutions to be open to alternative data sources to work with alternative data sources to work, not just with the scores of the credit bureaus, but with the with all those thousands, different attributes that can be pulled from the credit data.

That is super important. Exactly. So there's so many audiences right now that are getting access to finance, which would not be possible if financial institutions would not start using the alternative data. Having the legacy or I would say more traditional More traditional does not make the institution flexible and open to the usage of all of that new technology and integrations and solutions and and so on. It often can take years to integrate something new. It may have been the longest new data source [00:32:00] integration that has ever taken us five days. That was the longest, that was the longest.

Yep. So,

Monica Millares: I'll be like what people would be thinking now. Oh yeah. And it's super, super expensive. It's like, no, it should be less expensive than managing the whole team for X months to build the thing on your own. So this is like a good way to get fast to market and reduce your costs probably like development costs and maintenance costs

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: because the maintenance cost is just the, the personnel who is working with the platform. The employees that the financial institution has anyway.

Monica Millares: I'm like, I was thinking like, no, you know, like whenever I speak with any potential partner and they say, Oh, it's just three lines of code. It will take like just a day to implement whatever it is. I always say that is a lie. Like people like to over sell. I'm like, no, it's not three lines [00:33:00] of code.

It's not. So with you, I was just thinking, I'm like, I'm sure it's not just five. days, all this complexity behind it, just so that we don't miss sell the product as well. Of course,

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: of course. No, I want to be very transparent here. I'm speaking about the new data sources and the data sources. It can definitely be done below five days.

If we speak about integration with something heavy, like a core banking system. Oh my God. That can take a long time. That can take a long time. But still with me, I've been. We designed the system in a way that it has this ready API mythos to communicate with the existing lending landscape of an institution.

So it would not take that massive time as with the hard coded platforms, but oh my God. It's definitely a big piece of work. So I'm not going to do any false promises

Monica Millares: here. Yes, exactly. Which that is very important. So [00:34:00] going back to market expansion. Yep. What's the biggest challenges when thinking of market expansion?

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: Every market has its own specifics and its own climate and the regulatory landscape and the, its own local data. So the regulatory landscape. Does concern us, but a bit less because we are not providing financial services ourselves. We are a technology and all we need is we need to comply with the local certification and compliance requirements which is doable, challenging, but doable.

The. Next important challenge is the data. So we work with the, we, we strive at Neofim to choose only the top notch data partners [00:35:00] which we're very proud of. Right now we work not only do we work with the main credit bureaus that work pretty globally, like Equifax, Experian. We also work with the with a great alternative data providers, such as prism data, let's say still every market has their local data climate and local data providers that would have more of that and more relevant.

So getting to understand the local climate in the data. Is also an important challenge, and it's important to respect this because the effectiveness of the customers operations would depend on that. And also, of course, the local. Cultural differences, for example, when we went Middle East and we started working with Middle East in the first in the first place [00:36:00] we got to know the Sharia compliant lending very well because Sharia compliance is an important thing.

And the lending has its own specifics in the region. If you want to operate in the region, effectively, you need to respect that.

Monica Millares: Definitely. Cool. Because I think there's many fintechs that are trying to grow, exactly, international, but it is not that easy, but I think you, you gave like a good summary.

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: It's not that easy.

I'm just putting it into the clear words because we're on the podcast,

Monica Millares: Looking back summary, rather

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: than going through, no, we're on that journey, we're on that journey right now. Yeah,

Monica Millares: it's not that easy. As we are getting towards the end of the episode. Neil Finn has many awards. So I want to talk about leadership and your company culture as [00:37:00] such.

You were awarded Equifax Accelerate Award, Finn took an eCommerce Linking Days Award in Poland, you were selected as part of the top five companies to be part of in the MasterCard Start Path Ukraine program, recognized as an innovator of the U. S. Department of State's Global Innovation through the Science and Technology Initiative in 2023.

So it's like... It's not just one, it is many, it's multiple awards. So kudos to you and the team. Thank you. No, it's like, thank you to you.

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: When you're in the moment in the process of all of that you're so much in the operation. So sometimes it's useful to hear the summary like yours. So thanks, thanks for that. For us, the main importance, why we want to be in all of that places is that we want our voice to be heard and the programs, the [00:38:00] accelerators and these kinds of awards, I think are very important platform.

For the startups to have their voices to be heard. I know that we don't have right now. We don't do marketing. We don't have any budget for sales and marketing. We are a self driven revenue driven business. Not VC backed. And. All of these platforms, all of the awards and programs they provide a platform for your voice to be heard and for your message to be heard.

And... That's how we keep getting right now, in average, we have two financial institutions signing up with Neo every month. Oh, cool. Congrats. And we don't do, we don't do any marketing and sales. And we understand that we're getting the exposure we need to be in all of that. And I, Definitely recommend to all the Fintech [00:39:00] founders that are running Fintech startups that are early stage that cannot do massive sales and marketing right now.

Please look for these opportunities. Please go for them because that's your platform. That's

Monica Millares: your voice. I love that. I love the fact that you talk about your voice as such and your message. So. Obvious follow up question. What is your voice and your message as NeoFin?

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: We want to make FinTech in general and lending as such a place where Innovations are normal and not exceptional.

We want to make it a reality.

Monica Millares: I like that. That's a good message. And that, and I think you're doing it because innovation, it's not that it's hard, it's just like, it's complex because there's so much that needs to get done to build one simple feature out. Yes. It's people just see [00:40:00] like a button in the app.

But no, there's so much behind that button in the app and then you're right to innovate like we have so many limitations everywhere like that we need to. walk around and jump up and down and try to do it in a different way. So yeah, I like that vision of making innovation accessible and make it a day to day thing rather than the extraordinary once in a while thing.

That's cool. And what has been your secret to success then?

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: That was a complicated question for me because I don't think that we're that super successful right now to talk about that. I mean, we're not a unicorn yet. We just started getting our international, our international traction. So I'm always a little cautious.

With this kind of, [00:41:00] statements. I think an important way is to keep trying. Because the more times you try, the more chances you have. Do succeed in one of the tries, but it's important to be ready that not all the tries are going to be successful and it's going to be stressful. It's going to be freaking hard to go ahead and try again.

So yeah, probably the more you try, the more chances are you, you succeed. This is mathematics.

Monica Millares: Yeah you just described life or a startup, like, yeah, or, or both, or both. Yeah. So before we go, where can we find you and Neofin?

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: Okay. So the main place where you can find us. You can find us under NeoFinSolutions name in LinkedIn. Myself I'm Svetlanka Sergeichuk Romanuk. I know it's a. [00:42:00] Very hard, heavy, complex name. But I'm there on LinkedIn. I'm the only person with that name

Monica Millares: on LinkedIn, which makes it easy.

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: Which makes it easier and physically welcome to meet me in Toronto, our team in Kuala Lumpur, near you, by the way. Oh, we should meet. We have a team. Yes, we have a team there. And then we're often in Chicago on the floor of 1871 Innovation Hub, which is our little second home. Find us globally. Yes, I love that.

And also all the vintage shows, Yes, I've seen you money 2020 FinTech meetup. We go for all of that. All

Monica Millares: of them. That's amazing. You're very, very active. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure having this conversation with you. So the last one, if there was one thing that you could change in fintech to make fintech better and have more positive impact to [00:43:00] customers, investors, and members of staff, what could that

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: be? That's a tough one.

Monica Millares: Yes, it is a

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: tough one. One thing

I would probably make. Special fast track due diligence procedure to effectively evaluate, to enable financial institutions effectively evaluate and due deal the fintechs and be able to integrate the fintechs in their lives easier. Interesting.

Monica Millares: I like that. So it's more of the, how can we collaborate better between fintechs and, and large institutions or not, not, not necessarily fintechs and large institutions, but it's like within the B2B fintech ecosystem with the other fintechs or financial institutions how can we accelerate [00:44:00] that process?

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: And how can we, how can we be synergetic? Because financial, traditional financial institutions have a lot of what we need to learn from them, but we as the FinTechs also have a lot to, of value to bring and how it can be synergetic, how it can be how it can be brought to the level of effective interaction.

That would probably be the change I would be looking at.

Monica Millares: Yeah, I like that. It's, it's beyond efficient collaboration. It is proper. How can we work together better? Where I bring my strengths as a financial institution, I bring my strengths as a fintech, we both have different strengths. And then how can we bring them together to do better?

Yeah, it's beautiful. Awesome. Well, Svitlanka, it's been an absolute pleasure having you in the [00:45:00] show. Thank you for coming. And

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: thank you for having me, Monica. Thanks for the invitation. And you're a fantastic coach. It's the host of the, of the podcast. It's been a total pleasure.

Monica Millares: Thank you. It means a lot.

Thank you everyone. Ciao. Ciao.

Svitlanka Sergiichuk Romaniuk: Ciao. Ciao.