Building an all-in-one credit platform, with Ash Bhatt (Pillar)
How to Lend Money to Strangers
Brendan le Grange
4.9 • 43 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2022
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As a three-time immigrant myself, I’m always going to pay attention when I hear that’s there’s a new fintech in town building credit that moves with you, doubly so when one of the co-founders of that fintech is Ash Bhatt who I first met when he was Head of Lending at Revolut, for the US and UK markets. Ash has used that international experience, and his own experience as an immigrant in London, to build Pillar as an all-in-one credit platform for anyone who finds themselves excluded from the traditional credit marketplace.
As you know, the person who has withdrawn cash on the credit card is deemed high-risk, but when the person is actually withdrawing the cash why wouldn't the credit card company give them a prompt saying, “hey, did you realise if you do this, your score may go down?”
Pillar will help consumers build credit scores, maintain those scores, and access credit all in one place, and you can learn more - and join their waiting list - at https://www.hellopillar.com/
This is also my first in-person recording, and while I need to improve my mic discipline, I hope the more interactive feel outweighs the little patches of poor audio.
If you’re interested in the risk-based pricing study I mentioned, you can read a summary on my LinkedIn page here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/increased-price-transparency-shake-up-hong-kong-loan-market-brendan/
And the full discussion with Misha Esipov of Nova Credit, where we cover related topics, is episode 11 - https://www.howtolendmoneytostrangers.show/episodes/episode-11
Or if it is me you're after, you can find me on my LinkedIn page (feel free to connect), and my action-adventure novels on Amazon, some versions even for free.
If you have any feedback, questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page on this site.
Regards,
Brendan
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Dave McQueen's, and the Dave McQueen's podcast for each week we make economics easy, |
| 0:04.2 | uncomplicated, and accessible. And this week the podcast is sponsored by O2 Business. |
| 0:09.2 | Mac, the holidays are coming and I've been trying to figure out my prezy list. Have you started |
| 0:14.0 | yours yet? John, I'm a last minute man. You know that. It's all the panic the week before Christmas. |
| 0:19.3 | I never learn. I know what you mean, but I'm just saying, but do you know what? The holiday sales |
| 0:23.7 | aren't just for people anymore. O2 is having a Black Friday sale for businesses. And it's already |
| 0:29.3 | on. Did you know that you can get six months of half price on any selected phones and three |
| 0:34.4 | months half price on an unlimited data sim? I did not, but I know that technology is vital for |
| 0:40.0 | business. So good tech for good prices is something that we can always definitely support. |
| 0:44.8 | Search O2 Business Black Friday to find out more. And don't forget terms will apply. |
| 0:52.6 | Ashbat now and very recently the founder of pillar, people are going to learn more at hellopillar.com. |
| 0:58.8 | Welcome to the show. Thank you. You and I are both being immigrants for work. So let's start this |
| 1:04.3 | episode a bit differently with a worst first day in country showdown. I'll go first. When we left |
| 1:09.6 | South Africa, we packed all our stuff in the shipping container, sent them off. Took a few weeks of |
| 1:14.4 | holiday, you know, to experience the best the country has to offer. So when we left Denmark to go |
| 1:18.8 | to Hong Kong, we wanted something similar. Now maybe two weeks, your stuff's on the boat anyway. |
| 1:23.5 | It's going to take a few months. You've got no rent. Sit down and advertise. Yeah. Summer time in |
| 1:29.3 | Europe. Perfect. But I was told by the new bank I was joining. The 150 year history depended on me |
| 1:36.9 | arriving straight away. So we packed up, camped at a friend's house for the night on the plane the |
| 1:42.3 | next day, landed in Hong Kong 7 a.m. Straight to the hotel, shower, straight to the new offers by my |
| 1:49.6 | desk about nine o'clock. Meet my boss with a sorry, too busy to talk. I'm going away for two weeks. |
| 1:56.0 | I'll catch up with you when I get back. Keep yourself busy for two days. Perfect. So instead of having |
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