Tearsheet is a leading modern media publication, a daily must-read among influencers obsessed with the future of money.

Based in New York City, Tearsheet has deep experience identifying and analyzing existing and future trends, in its coverage of rising startups raising new capital to the digital moves of the largest players in finance and investing.

Tearsheet was launched as Tradestreaming in 2007 and has been an active participant in the rise of the global fintech industry. In 2016, it was acquired and relaunched by Digiday Media. In 2017, it was rebranded to Tearsheet.

Tearsheet Podcast: Fintech and the business of finance

Investment Banker Steve McLaughlin left Goldman Sachs in 2002 to start FT Partners, a boutique investment bank focused on fintech. Since then, Steve has played a major role in the growth of the industry. Now, 15 years in and with a team of 70 people, Steve and FT Partners have completed hundreds of transactions in the fintech space.

I sat down with Steve to talk about how fintech has changed over his career, how the industry grew to become cool, and how the interactions between incumbent financial institutions and fintech startups should continue to play out.


Top fintech banker Steve McLaughlin on the future of wealth management

I'm joined this week by Lex Sokolin. He's a self-described futurist and entrepreneur focused on the next generation of financial services. He currently directs Fintech Strategy at Autonomous Research, a research firm for the financial sector. Previously, he led product design and corporate development as COO at Vanare, a wealth management platform built on roboadvisor DNA. He was founder and CEO of NestEgg, a roboadvisor that pioneered online wealth management in partnership with financial advisors,

We talk about the changes happening in the financial services space and the types of opportunities for incumbent and upstart financial firms willing to do the hard work. Lex's entrepreneurial story takes us through his four wave framework for the evolution of roboadvisors. Pay attention to what he says about the next stage for the industry and what it says about the ETF industry, as well.

Autonomous Research's Lex Sokolin on the 4 waves of roboadvisors

Umpqua Bank is the West Coast’s largest independent community bank, headquartered in Portland, Oregon. The bank calls its branches stores and designed them as inviting spaces for people to come in, read the paper, surf the Internet, and enjoy a cup of coffee. That approach of using the bank branch as a community hub has been incredibly successful. Umpqua Bank has grown from 5 locations and $140 million in assets in 1994, when it moved to this community design, to more than 330 stores and $24 billion in assets today.

Umpqua’s approach to banking is in many ways an answer to a simple question: what does it take to have a conversation about money? The bank is doing just that with a highly acclaimed podcast called Open Account. Hosted by Sunchin Pak, the podcast tackles tough issues like how divorced couples handle finances or, my personal favorite, an interview with Neil Gabler about the secret shame of the middle class.

Lani Hayward on Umpqua Bank's acclaimed podcast, Open Account

This episode of the Tradestreaming Podcast is a bit different than our others. You'll hear multiple voices in addition to host, Zack Miller. These voices are the reporters behind Tradestreaming covering how technology is impacting the business of big finance.

This week we zero in on blockchain with Tradestreaming's payments reporter, Josh Liggett. Josh drills down on his monthly Blockchain Hype Meter (http://www.tradestreaming.com/changing-payments/blockchain-october-hype-meter-zcash-for-all ), which looks at how the mainstream media covers the space in an effort to distill signal from the noise. To be sure, distributed ledger technology portends to be super transformative -- but there's a vast distance between there and here.

We talk about the cryptocurrency Zcash and why there was so much excitement around its launch. We'll also chat about the growing influence of just a handful of people on the future of the blockchain.

You can get this episode, as well as another 130 episodes in our archives, here: http://www.tradestreaming.com/podcasts/page/1

Sign up for the Tradestreaming newsletter here: http://www.tradestreaming.com/subscribe

WTF Is Blockchain

Last week, we hosted our first conference, the Tradestreaming Money Conference. We had hundreds of top speakers and attendees from the largest financial institutions like Vanguard, US Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, NY Life, and Fidelity a join us to talk about reigniting growth in our industry.

Those discussions took different forms. Some of our sessions talked about the state-of-the-art in marketing. What are current best practices to acquire and retain new customers? Other sessions focused on how to drive more innovation within large financial institutions and attract new top talent. All in, it was a great event to learn, network, and collaborate.

Ron Shevlin, Director of Research at Cornerstone Advisors was one of those speakers. An analyst's analyst, Shevlin has been covering the financial services space for 25 years. One of the things I appreciate most about Ron is his no-nonsense delivery style. He frequently questions consensus thinking, going deeper and more honest into many of the hot-button issues our industry faces. He shares those views on his blog, Snarketing 2.0

Shevlin participated in a unique format session at our conference called Pardon the Interruption. Unscripted and unprepared, I threw various words and concepts at him, letting him riff off of them for a minute in front of our audience. The following recording joins that conversation part way through.

You can get this episode of the podcast, as well as over 130 previous episodes in our archives of the Tradestreaming Podcast, at our website, www.Tradestreaming.com. If you get value out of these episodes, please take a minute to rate us on iTunes. Doing so, helps other people find us. We're also available on SoundCloud.

Also, if you're not signed up for our newsletter, run, don't walk over to our website, and sign up. 10,000 industry professionals tune in every week to explore the impact technology is having on the financial services industry.

‘Chatbots are getting way over hyped’: Ron Shevlin on the future of people in banking

Welcome to the Tearsheet Podcast. I’m Zack Miller.

American Express has seen its customers really move to mobile — 81 percent of its cardmembers are now digitally active. Millennials and Gen Z are really leading this increased engagement. Amex’s vp of global mobile products Stewart Kendall joins me on the podcast today to talk about the company’s mobile strategy and how it informs the entire business. We discuss how Amex uses the mobile app in an attempt to play a more integral role in its members’ ’ lives. Lastly, we get into what younger users expect from mobile and how Amex has created products to service this generation.

Stewart Kendall is my guest today on the Tearsheet Podcast.

Amex's Stewart Kendall: '81% of our cardmembers are engaged with us digitally'

Tearsheet is news, opinion, and analysis on the business of finance.

Candid conversations with senior executives, fintech entrepreneurs, investors, industry experts -- all weigh in on the trends impacting the industry and the disruptive impact technology is having on the business.

Where social media, technology and finance intersect.