Dani Townsend

You are the first Tasmania we’ve interviewed for this series. What was the experience like growing up in Tasmania?

I am honoured! Tasmania was a great place to have grown up for so many reasons.

It’s a beautiful place; very clean and green with down to earth people and close knit communities, just like any other small place; wherever you live everyone seems to know everyone else’s business and if you wanted to run into friends you could chance one or two places and you’d likely bump into them.

I grew up in Launceston, a city of about 100,000 which was definitely worlds apart from my life in London today. I don’t think you can even compare the conventional opportunities of a big city with a place like Launceston, but in many ways the lack of these opportunities forces people to be more creative and without the fierce competition there are unique opportunities for entrepreneurs to thrive.

A lot of my friends have done well starting their own businesses having seen gaps in the market or replicated business models they have experienced abroad. I grew up helping a lot of them..= Probably the craziest venture was reselling imported Balinese statues … I’ve had some odd jobs!

My parents have also had a massive influence on my life; my mum as somewhat of a self-made entrepreneur and my dad, the smartest person I know – I like to think I have inherited parts of both of them.

I think because of the upbringing I had, I’ve always been grounded and kept a very open definition of what success means or the path to get there.

I am very proud to call Tasmania home.

What was the path that led you to London?

Like many other in my ‘Gen Y’ cast, I was fortunate or unfortunate enough to have graduated from university in the year of the global financial crisis. I say that because I’m sure my life would be quite different if jobs had been plentiful when I left university. I really had to work at it. I moved to Brisbane on my own in 2009 to expand my horizons and many internships and a few university courses later I started my career in marketing working in higher education and management consulting roles before moving to Brisbane’s economic development board where I had the opportunity to run a large global campaign for the city’s inward investment programme in the lead up to the G20 there in 2014.

I loved that role immensely but after my now husband and I married in 2013 we decided the time was right to consider a move abroad for careers and travel. We packed up our apartment, left both our jobs and moved a month later. Definitely one of the more risky moves in my life but life’s too short and I am a firm believer that new experiences are never wasted ones. And Lucky for us it turned out to be one of the best decisions we’ve made.

You studied entrepreneurship at university. How has this impacted your approach to marketing?

Being entrepreneurial I think is inherent and developed in someone rather than taught, I’ve grown up with entrepreneurial people around me so I’ve never been restricted in my own thinking.

I majored in the subject as I was keen to develop my understanding of innovation theory and thinking. I had a great teacher who really pushed my perspective and the experience definitely developed my ability to think laterally which has very much impacted the way I have approached my career and different roles. I don’t think anything about my career has been traditional. I very much relate to Sheryl Sandberg’s comment in Lean In that it’s better to think about your career as a jungle gym rather than a ladder.

Sometimes it’s hard to connect the dots from where you start to where you end up. I’ve always picked roles based on the culture and opportunity for growth rather than the position or job title. I’ve been with Earthport now for 18 months and in that time I’ve had roles in three different departments. Finding a company where management will promote and move people to add value wherever they can beyond linear progression and years of formal experience is unique. I think that’s something Earthport is particularly good at; testament to the culture and I think the company is better for it.

Coming back to marketing now I have a much broader understanding and perspective of the business and the role that marketing can play. In the last 5-10 years the role of marketing has been radically altered by technology and its role in the organisation has evolved. Marketing is everyone’s. Just as clients now take a single view of the organisation through a lens of multiple touch points, the role of marketing in developing brand and experience must be a collaborative, cross-functional one.

How did you get into the payments space? And why do you think London is such a FinTech hub?

In not too many other cities would the opportunity exist to work for a company with huge growth potential at ground zero of change and innovation in technology and services.

When I moved to London my objective was to try and find a role with one of these businesses – an opportunity that wouldn’t exist back at home where there isn’t the population, talent or investment capital to support such a thriving start-up ecosystem – when a contract role came up with Earthport a few days into living in London I jumped at it. I’d had no previous experience in the payments space, or financial services for that matter, but the business model sounded very interesting and the clients and management at that time were very impressive. A few months into the role I began to sense that what I had got into was something potentially very significant.

FinTech is booming and I have never worked in an industry during a time of so much change and excitement. All the indicators are there that we are in the midst of fundamental change, there is a lot of ‘buzz’ – businesses are racing to capture the opportunities and the space is rapidly evolving.

I feel extremely lucky to have the opportunity to be a part of it.

Earthport is truly a global company and has grown rapidly over the past few years. What do you believe makes the company and its consumers unique?

Good question!

My time at Earthport has certainly been a whirlwind.. in the last few years we’ve gone from a UK based business with one small regional office in New York to having staff located in 10 cities around the world and offices across five continents. We are now truly global, and our clients are too.

We are signing deals with some of the largest and fastest growing payments and ecommerce companies globally and are getting invitations to speak with governments and regulators around the world - incredible endorsement for the strength and credibility of the model and unique positioning we have.

There is no one else in the market doing exactly what we do today. While the last few years has seen huge progress at a domestic and regional scheme level with the introduction of faster and real-time settlement capabilities in several markets enabling new innovations like Apple Pay to launch and scale rapidly.

From a global perspective the underlying infrastructure remains fragmented, connected via a series of bank to bank relationships that makes servicing payments of lower value, complex, slow and expensive. The banks don’t win and neither do the end users.

As a consumer I am now paying for my tube with the tap of a card and paying bills with mobile apps but if I want to send money back to Australia I have to go into a branch and send a wire transfer for 5 plus pounds which takes a week. It doesn’t add up.

Earthport’s model is enabling banks, financial service provider and ecommerce companies to address this challenge by creating a centralised utility service – we manage the bank relationships in over 60 markets so our clients only need to manage one. And with direct access to local clearing capabilities in each of these markets we are leveraging domestic and regional system modernisation to provide a cheaper, faster and more transparent offering that is constantly evolving to adapt to new regulation and payments innovation. This global payments network has taken us years to build and this, coupled with the deep expertise we now have, puts us in a unique position to play a key role at the centre of change in the industry.

By outsourcing the back-end rails to Earthport, our clients are focusing on developing new products and scaling their businesses into new markets without the complexity and operational overhead. Building their brands and differentiating their businesses. More and more we are seeing our clients recognised as leaders in cross-border and that makes us proud, as we are the engine behind them.

Exciting times!

The executive team at Earthport is full of former CEOs. How do keep them in check?

The executive team at Earthport is definitely one of our key strengths – we have an incredibly experienced group of seven leaders who, as you say, have all held very senior roles in their past lives.

I think most people would be hard pressed to find another example of such a well credentialed senior management group in a business of our size.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with them closely in different capacities as I’ve moved through my different roles. I feel fortunate to have access to their experience on many occasion and am now honoured to have now earned their endorsement and respect as a leader.

…Keeping them in check is another thing… as we continue to grow globally into new markets and across new time zones, staying in synch is harder and something I need to continue to make effort with – the team rack up some serious air miles and as a business we are busier than ever.

Life at Earthport is anything but boring!

I’m very determined… and have good relationships with their EA’s!

You’ve been extremely involved in philanthropic activities. Why is this?

Investing time in giving back has always been very important to me; it keeps me grounded and connected to what really matters.

The people who have gone out of their way to create opportunities for me and impart their wisdom have enabled me to get to where I am today and I’ll forever be thankful for their kindness. Being involved in businesses and charities that support the empowerment of individuals through education, mentoring and access is my way of giving back and over the years I’ve met some very inspiring and courageous people. Charitable work is something I haven’t had the opportunity to do since arriving in London but would like to get back into when I find a charity I feel I can make a valuable contribution to.

At the heart of what Earthport does is our mission to make things fairer, more inclusive and transparent for individuals living and working across borders. It’s a compelling mission to have and be passionate about.

In a busy corporate world it’s easy to lose sight of the individual.

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

I have been fortunate to have great mentors at every stage in my life that have had a huge impact on my career and where I am today. There are a few that I thank for having influenced my course.

Annie McCall, my marketing teacher at technical college that pushed me to enrol in university, if it wasn’t for her I may never have never furthered my education which opened up my mind and opportunities I had never thought possible.

Colin Jones, my entrepreneurship lecturer; who pushed my thinking and inspired me to think bigger and eventually leave Tasmania.

My first boss, Cathy Stacey, whom I had great respect for as a courageous, intelligence leader, one of many strong women I have had the opportunity to work with and look up to as great role models.

Stewart Key, a partner at Litmus group where I worked in an office role who gave me opportunities to move into bigger things and told me one day I could run a global marketing function.

And most recently Kevin Lee, the former CEO of Calastone who I met at Earthport when we were both consultants, who has sponsored my progression through the organisation and given me many hours of his time and wisdom to support my development – he continues to inspire me.

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

As individuals and businesses become more mobile than ever – the race is on to make financial services easier, faster, cheaper and more flexible – globally.

I think we’ll see increased collaboration, coopetition and partnership between Banks and Fintech companies, a shift from vertical to horizontally integrated services supported with greater adoption of the outsourced utility model for un-differentiated services; and perhaps the most interesting to watch, distributed ledger applications coming out of the labs and to the market.

Definitely an exciting time to be working in FinTech.