Michelle Katics

Co-Founder and CEO at BankersLab

Chiang Mai, Thailand

@BankersLab | LinkedIn Profile

Your career spans roles at the Federal Reserve, IMF, Fair Isaac, Standard Chartered, and now your own company. Yet you don’t call yourself a banker. Why is that?

A former colleague at Standard Chartered, Rob Cookson, nailed it one night at a dinner party in Dubai with a group of bank executives. We were trading stories about mountaineering, trekking, adventuring, and volunteer work. Rob commented,

“People think that Michelle working in a refugee clinic was a blip in her banking career. What they don’t understand is that being a banker was the blip.”

I’ve been trained and volunteered as a firefighter, technical rescue and emergency medical technician. For a while I telecommuted from the back of a canyoneering shop.

As long as I could find new challenges, while still having other activities, I stayed in the financial industry. I had one foot out the door of the industry just before starting BankersLab. I decided to come back because I believed we could move the needle on improving the human capital aspect of the industry – “Be Part of the Solution”.

What connects it all for me? Always challenging yourself and always learning.

Renascence Woman’ – this description fits you well. You’ve lived on several continents now. How did you end up in Thailand?

I was thinking about leaving banking and starting a second career in public health. I decided to road-test the idea and moved to the Thai-Burma border to work for two years under a renowned Nobel-nominee, Dr. Cynthia Maung at www.maetaoclinic.org

I had no idea at the time, but the experience I gained has been invaluable in boot strapping a startup. At Mae Tao Clinic, I taught myself WordPress, Social Media marketing, and many tactics now known as growth hacking. We had to do a lot with no budget just like in a startup. You might think you’re negotiating from a position of weakness because you’re the one without the cash, but you need to always keep your mind on the immense value you bring to stakeholders.

To support myself, I was freelancing as a bank trainer on the side, which is where I encountered Dr. Neil Seitz’s original version of the simulation which was the starting point for BankersLab. I then moved upcountry to Chiang Mai in order to start BankersLab.

What is the FinTech scene like in Thailand?

When we started BankersLab, there wasn’t much of a startup ecosystem in Thailand, let alone FinTech. A few years ago, I got involved in the ecosystem here as a mentor for the Founder Institute and these days the sector is beginning to grow. I would still describe it as early days in Thailand, but due to strong regional collaboration and support, I expect them to start moving fast now. For example, Startupbootcamp Fintech (Singapore) were recently in Thailand to solicit pitches from Thai FinTech startups.

Your company is truly global with a stellar client base. What to you contribute this success to?

We’ve grown through our relationships. Our founding team was global before we started, so it was natural for us.

What is it like running a global company from ‘the jungles of Thailand’?

It’s a great reality check. After a fast-paced conference call, I’ll run out to pick up a bowl of noodles. The dish is prepared with pride and quality and delivered with a smile. It brings you back to reality and reminds you what’s important.

An international airport is a stone’s throw from nearly everything these days, and I can conduct Skype calls on 3G while I go trail running in the jungle. If anything, it’s a bit sad that there aren’t many remote places left in the world so I’m fortunate to have access to some nature at the moment.

You volunteer with ‘Bankers without Borders’. Can you provide an overview of this organization and the activities you’ve been involved with?

When I lived in India, we started to see microfinance lending blow up. We had the “Andhra Pradesh Crisis” when MFI borrowers became over indebted which led to wave of suicides and human catastrophe. Just prior to that, I had approached MFIs and begged to work for them as a volunteer to build a stronger underwriting and risk function. I was in disbelief when each turned me away. The message I got was, “we agree with you, but we don’t have time for that, we are under pressure from donors and stakeholders to grow”.

I’m pleased to report that, since then, the MFI sector has strengthened with the collaboration of many, including Bankers without Borders. They aim to set up a truly global and scalable model of providing technical assistance and mentoring to non profits and smaller MFIs who normally couldn’t provide that expertise. After watching the Andhra catastrophe unfold, it is with joy anytime I can contribute my effort to BwB. If you’re in banking or fintech, I encourage you to donate your skills. You will truly get back more than you give.

How do you go about measuring ‘risk/reward’ when debating a career change? What advice would you give those considering such a move?

I didn’t perceive it as a risk/reward decision. Life is short and what are you going to do with it? What do you want to accomplish? What are you learning? If I were to give advice, keep your personal burn rate low even as your income goes up. For example, back in the day, upgrading from my old truck to a new car was not important to me (to the chagrin of my colleagues who refused to ride in the truck). These kinds of decisions, over time, paved the way to have more freedom of decision in the future.

Who(m) do you believe has had the most influence with respect to your own career?

Dr. Rae Moses, Dr. Leon Moses, and Mike Dacey were my advisors and professors at Northwestern University. They pushed me to think bigger. They framed the future as being about solving problems and accomplishments rather than traditional career metrics. I surely got some of my ‘root cause analysis’ mindset from them.

More recently, Ben Horowitz has been a powerful impact on my thinking about how to be a startup CEO.

Who do you consider to be strong women leaders in the FinTech space?

Melissa Guzy combines of deep technical and business intuition. She’s not afraid to call a spade a spade and will never get caught up in the hype.

What do you see as the 3 leading future trends for FinTech?

• RegTech
• More cross-vertical integration (e-commerce/payments/lending/social)
• Emerging Standards and consolidation for payments and shared ledgers

More about BankersLab:

We built “flight simulators for bankers” – a simulation training platform for retail, consumer and FinTech lenders. By managing virtual portfolios in many conditions, you can learn the intricacies of managing a credit card, mortgage portfolio or small business lending portfolio. We train people across functional areas and levels of seniority the bank or lender, now from 40 countries around the world.