Breaking Banks

In this episode, Brett King sits down with Carl Rivera, Chief Product Officer at Nubank—one of the world’s largest digital banking platforms—to discuss how Nubank is redefining modern banking.

With customer-centricity at its core, Nu continues to pave new paths in financial services. In this conversation, Brett and Carl discuss Nubank’s exponential growth, international expansion, U.S. market entry, design philosophy and product strategy. They also explore Nubank’s recent launch and leap forward with Nu Global, a multi-currency digital account for people with global lives.

From the beginning, Nu had a cultural value mission: to be the first bank that customers love fanatically. People go to banks for the most important decisions in their lives. By prioritizing customer experience and intuitive UI, Nu ensures users can easily navigate financial tasks—from KYC to global remittances—with the same ease as using a familiar social network or app. Building across borders.

Listen now and stay tuned for more!

As banking, wealth, and commerce converge, customers increasingly expect one view of their financial life — a view they often get from third-party apps rather than their bank. Are banks misdiagnosing what is holding them back?

In this episode Brett King connects with Rob Rooney, Co-Founder and CEO of Hyperlayer to discuss emerging infrastructure for next-generation AI-based financial technology. Some listeners will know Rob from his 30-plus years at Morgan Stanley. He ran Morgan Stanley International through Brexit, and later became Global Head of Technology, Operations and Firm Resilience.

Hyperlayer is addressing a challenge common to almost every bank: the desire to launch products as fast as the neobanks, but institutions are hesitant to touch the core. By placing a programmable layer on top of a bank’s existing core system, Hyperlayer enables institutions to build and launch new products in weeks, with governance built in from day one.

 Listen as Brett and Rob discuss:

What convergence costs banks

Why seamless banking is an infrastructure problem, not a design problem

Why core replacement is not the answer

and more

Enjoy the episode, and don’t forget to share!

As a Peace Corps volunteer with an engineering degree from MIT, Doug Ricket, Founder and CEO, PayJoy, a leading financial services provider for underserved consumers across emerging markets, learned first-hand what it means to build trust in underserved communities. The experience in West Africa sparked a long-held interest that eventually put Doug’s engineering and tech background to work to make a true financial impact and build a mission-driven business for underserved consumers, 20 million of them to date across 9 countries (Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Colombia, and the Philippines)

Listen as Doug shares his founder journey with Brett King and explains why he left a comfortable path in tech to help first-time borrowers build credit and access broader financial services and payments.

Smartphones have become essential economic infrastructure. A smartphone can be a customer’s first productive financial asset and first step into formal financial access, creating financial opportunity for consumers otherwise locked out of traditional credit and payments infrastructure.

40% of PayJoy’s customers are new to credit; 37% are first-time smartphone users. How does PayJoy build a credit profile for someone who’s never had access to credit before? What sets their approach apart from traditional lenders? Listen to find out.

Can a not-for-profit, member-owned credit union genuinely out-innovate a bank with a multi-billion-dollar AI budget by being more disciplined and mission-anchored?

In this episode of Breaking Banks, Bev Anderson (President and CEO of BECU) and Nadim Homsany (SVP, Head of AI at BECU) join host Jason Henrichs to unpack the strategy behind the credit union’s AI decisions. They discuss where to focus, the choice between buying and building, and whether traditional ROI even applies.

Discover how BECU is getting serious about AI and whether this marks an opportunity for credit unions to reshape financial services in the U.S.

Interested in hearing more? You can catch Nadim on stage at MoneyLive North America with Samer Saab (SVP of Product and Partnerships at Alloy Labs) in Chicago on September 14–15. Find out more at moneylive-insights.com/breakingbanks

In this episode host Brett King and Paolo Sironi, host of Breaking Banks’ sister podcast The Bankers’ Bookshelf, speak with Pal Krogdahl, author of Rip Out the Core—an essential guide for anyone wrestling with the stubborn realities of banking core modernization. Despite massive investments, many institutions still face overruns, delays, and outcomes that leave them no stronger than before.

Sparked by a flooded kitchen that perfectly mirrored the chaos of real-world banking transformation programs, Pal’s book shifts the lens from pure technology to organization, showing that lasting change is impossible without adapting how people work. Pal speaks to banking executives and transformation leaders tired of endless patching, converting hard-won industry experience into precise, actionable steps that finally deliver meaningful business value.

Join as the trio unpack why core modernization so often fails, how organizational design must evolve alongside systems, and the practical path to progress that stops the cycle of frustration once and for all.