Shaloo Kulkarni

Managing Partner at Syntheo Ventures

Director - Global Innovation at Santander

London, United Kingdom

@ShalooKulkarni | LinkedIn Profile

Can you please provide an overview of your role at Banco Santander.

We are living in a very exciting time for the financial services industry and Santander is a leading global challenger bank, playing a defining role in the in the FinTech space. I rejoined Santander from Citibank last year to perform a dual role- Managing Partner of Syntheo Ventures, Santander’s new JV fintech venture builder and Group Lead for global efforts to create a consistent Innovation framework across all our core markets. With Syntheo, our aim is to reach out to the intraprenuers within our banking environment as well as to bright entreprenuers from within the broader fintech community, to jointly build exciting new business models for our growing digital customer base. In my role, I essentially also provide a bridge between the traditional bank and the broader talented fintech community, providing an engaging environment for these groups to work collaboratively with each other. I am based in London, one of the fintech capitals of the world and I work alongside our bank colleagues to transform the way in which we approach digitization and the customer experience. Our chairperson, Ana Botin, set forth in early 2015, the vision of putting Santander at the forefront of digital innovation and this top-down commitment to make a disruptive change, alongside a very talented team, has made this a very exciting time in my career.

You’ve lived and worked in multiple countries throughout your career. Is there one location you enjoyed the most and if so, why?

I have lived and worked across various markets from India and Hong Kong in the east, to the USA, Mexico and Brazil in the West. I have also had the opportunity to study and work across many European markets in my prior roles including, France, Spain, Germany and the UK of course. While my emotional connect with India, having grown up there, is immense, being in financial services in London, has been the most energizing and rewarding experience for me. Besides London’s position as a global trading hub, the presence of a technologically sophisticated customer base, availability of sound business capital, a very supportive regulatory approach, excellent financial services infrastructure and availability of a leading talent pool, make it a very exciting, incredibly competitive and hence, challenging place to work and live in. The capacity that London demonstrates to reinvent itself time and again, is also very invigorating personally for me.

You started your career post MBA with Accenture. What led to the decision to begin your career in banking specifically?

After my MBA at INSEAD, I chose to walk down the business consulting path as it provides an incredibly rapid pathway to be exposed to multiple geographies, sectors, organizations and to build your problem-solving skills in a real work environment. Having done that for a few years, I was tempted by a headhunter to consider a transformation role at Santander (at the time of its acquisition of Abbey National) and have stay committed to this space since. A career in banking (consumer banking, in my case) has provided me with the opportunity to work in a rapidly-changing customer-oriented environment, with a real focus on year-on-year working hard at the two core levers-revenue growth and cost efficiency- in a strongly regulated environment. The challenge of working these metrics within a bank, while also being part of the incredible transformation the broader banking industry has had to go through with the financial crisis, has kept me hooked. Finally, the work-life balance has also worked better me too, as a young mother, despite performing a global role recently, which did require me to travel a fair bit across many geographies.

You’ve been engaged with Syntheo Ventures from the start of the joint venture. What has been your approach to setting up the organization internally and externally?

Syntheo Ventures, is Santander’s recently launched JV, to create a fintech venture builder with a degree of independence from the BAU bank and yet, with a focus on supporting the bank’s growing digital consumer base and leveraging its incredible distribution network for our ventures. It is early days in our inception, but we have deliberately established ourselves in London, to tap into the diverse and rapidly evolving fintech ecosystem here. We are increasing our connect into the broader fintech community, via active participation in fintech events, mentoring, panel participations, sponsorship of key events, etc. Our team is growing and we are reaching out both within the Santander bank as well as into startup/venture capital environment, to tap into entrepreneurial talent, who will to roll up their sleeves and work with us to test, learn and build new business ventures.

How important are innovation ‘sandboxes’ for financial institutions?

Innovation sandboxes are an approach to create a ring-fenced environment to foster learning, creativity and innovation, while not impacting the BAU business priorities. In my view, any organization can adopt a sandbox approach to fostering disruptive innovation but it needs to be mature enough to adhere to the principles within which sandboxes succeed. Organizations that are culturally, across all management levels, willing to rethink and revisit all aspects of their business model (technology, distribution, products, organization etc), can understand and embrace their target customer segments’ evolving needs and recognize that they cannot innovate in isolation, have the most success with a sandbox approach.

“There are those in banking who are too stuck in the now”. What did you mean by this quote with respect to innovation?

We are all working within the banking environment today, recognising collectively that there is a need to change the paradigm within which we operate. Disruption is a reality and the very concept of what defines a ‘bank’ is being challenged by the new entrants in this space. For large, regulated organizations to embrace this change at all levels is not an easy task and requires a strategic planning process that is able to clearly categorize initiatives belonging to the horizon of ‘now’ (BAU/ 6-15 month timeframe tasks) to the horizon of the future (~15-36 months and beyond). It’s when the pipeline of initiatives in the horizon of now looks more robust and enthusiastically sponsored than the pipeline for the more futuristic initiatives, that there is cause for worry. Organizations with leadership that can organize themselves effectively to balance both the now and the future with equal enthusiasm have an incredible chance of success, in my view.

You mentioned there “are shades of the boys’ club” in the VC space. Do you believe it is improving?

Awareness levels around lack of gender diversity within the fintech environment are certainly on the rise but there is also a definite lag in the numbers catching up. Innovation is all about change and hence, it is important that as we bring to the fore, disruptive technological and customer experience impacts, we also look at the composition of the talent driving this change. When 70% of the global consumer spending is driven by women ($20 trillion), I struggle to see how we can invest in or build new products and services targeted at them, without women being involved top-down in any organization. I must say, though, that in my experience, many male colleagues are aware of this situation and I do see some momentum building up to encourage and support women to participate more and engage more. At Santander, we are also very fortunate to have as our chairperson, Ana Botin, who is a very inspiring female role model in the financial services industry. There’s still though a rather weak showing of women leaders at industry events and we need to continue to support women to assume leadership positions and to mentor them on navigating the traditional minefields. And we need to break the stereotype that the only way to engage in the fintech space is to turn up at late evening events and drink pints of beers with the ‘techy’ types.

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

It’s difficult to point to a single individual, as so many have influenced, supported and shaped my professional career over the years and without their support, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I have had multiple bosses, some of whom are today my very dear friends and I feel very privileged to be able to reach out to them even now for advice and guidance. My pillars, my support and my energizers are three people closest to me - my parents and my husband. Without their encouragement, guiding presence and gentle strength, it would not have been easy for me to balance a demanding career with motherhood. For those women out there looking to build a career in the financial services industry, that would be my message to them. Don’t think you can do this alone. Work smart to create a supportive ecosystem around you that empowers you to aim high and reach for the stars.

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

I am personally inspired by women who have a demonstrated and credible track record of building businesses and hence, am so very impressed with some of the names making a splash in the fintech space such as Lucy Peng of Ant Financial Services and Celine Lazorthes of the Leetchi Group. Am also continuously impressed by the energy and enthusiasm of some of our very talented Fintech commentators such as Duena Blomstrom, Susanne Chishti, Julie Lake, etc.

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

In the developed economies, a short term focus on radical simplification and redesign of the digital customer experience, with a more medium-longer term direction towards leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence . In the developing world, it would be financial inclusion with the aid of mobile banking.