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In today's episode, Ryan Zauk is joined by Firdaus Bhathena, CTO of FIS.

FIS is one of the world's largest financial technology companies, building solutions for leading financial institutions, businesses, and developers. Their scale is incredible...Over $16Tn moves through their systems annually. FIS processes $75 billion of transactions globally, serves tens of thousands of clients, and employs over 50,000 people worldwide.

A major focus of today's episode is The Harmony Gap, an in-depth report from FIS and Oxford Economics exploring the use of AI by businesses to combat the sources of financial, operational, and technological disharmony.

In this report, FIS aimed to quantify the anecdotes we are all hearing around AI adoption, cybersecurity threats, regulation, and innovation challenges at large organizations. They surveyed over 500 senior executives and revealed some poignant findings (preview below).

The $100M 'Harmony Gap'

The total cost of the Harmony Gap can be estimated at nearly $100M...a major budget gap for any large organization. Cybersecurity/Cyberthreats was by far the #1 concern and largest cost center for technology executives, even more so than fraud and regulatory compliance.

AI Adoption + Barriers

No surprise to anyone, enterprises are aggressively pursuing AI adoption and are seeing ROI fast, with 78% of respondents stating AI has helped reduce fraud and risk. 56% of respondents (remember, these are large enterprises) are fully implementing and scaling AI, with 45% planning to increase investment in the next 2 years.

However, barriers to adoption remain high with folks commonly citing cost of implementation, lack of inhouse expertise, and integration challenge.

Fintech Innovation

Fintech strategy remains a critical focus for large firms. 74% of enterprises have set up dedicated fintech teams, and another 17% plan to establish them.

Embedded Finance

Embedded finance is big business...~82% of executives have implemented embedded finance solutions and realized an 8.5% growth in sales

There's a lot more that Firdaus covers in the episode and you can download the full report here.

In today's episode, Ryan and Firdaus discuss:

2:44 - Firdaus' long path from venture-backed startups and F500 healthcare to CTO of FIS.

5:53 - Managing innovation at a global giant like FIS and his trusted adage for the Build Buy Partner debate.

12:31 - How FIS balances hiring industry insiders vs. outsiders to best serve their customers (some of whom they've served for 50+ years).

15:15 - A deep dive into ⁠The Harmony Gap⁠, an in-depth report by FIS and Oxford Economics to explore the use of AI by businesses to combat the sources of financial, operational and technological disharmony. They cover AI, stablecoins, fintech innovation, payments, and more.

30:35 - His thoughts on the great COBOL migration problem facing institutions today, and where AI can and cannot help.

32:46 - A rapidfire round including his first job, CTO role model, and more.

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Episode Sponsor

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Company + Speaker Bios

FIS is a financial technology company providing solutions to financial institutions, businesses, and developers. We unlock financial technology to the world across the money lifecycle underpinning the world’s financial system. Our people are dedicated to advancing the way the world pays, banks and invests, by helping our clients to confidently run, grow, and protect their businesses. Our expertise comes from decades of experience helping financial institutions and businesses of all sizes adapt to meet the needs of their customers by harnessing where reliability meets innovation in financial technology. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, FIS is a member of the Fortune 500® and the Standard & Poor’s 500® Index.

Firdaus Bhathena serves as FIS’ Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Firdaus is responsible for driving the company’s technology and infrastructure initiatives across the enterprise, ensuring that FIS’ technology strategy is focused on achieving its business goals. He is also responsible for leading the company’s digital transformation efforts with a focus on innovation, governance, risk-based security and standardization to advance FIS’ global solutions portfolio while also leveraging technology investments to drive profitability.

Prior to FIS, Firdaus spent 25+ years driving innovation and large-scale digital, business and cultural transformations across technology startups as well as Fortune 50 corporations. Recent roles include general manager at Noom (the fastest-growing pre-IPO consumer digital health company), enterprise chief digital officer at CVS Health; and chief digital officer at Aetna. Firdaus also currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Tufts Medicine, where he is the chair of the Digital Transformation Committee.

Firdaus holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has been granted eight patents for software and distributed systems.

Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor at OMERS Ventures, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with $130Bn+ in net assets. OMERS Ventures focuses primarily on Series A through C direct investments in Software, Fintech, and AI. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area. You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ryan Zauk: The views expressed in this podcast are the speakers own and are not the views of This Week in FinTech or any other person or entity. The content provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal, business tax, or investment advice or recommendation, solicitation endorsement, or offering by me or anyone else for the sale subscription or purchase of securities, or for investment advisory services of any kind.

And now a quick word from our sponsor Capchase. You know how B2B payments feel like they're stuck in 2005? Capchase is changing that fast. Capchase is where contract financing meets digital payments. It lets your customers pay for software or hardware, monthly, quarterly, even extended net terms, even while you still get the full contract value upfront.

That's right. More flexible terms for them, but immediate cash flow for you. If you are in sales or finance, you already know long sales cycles and rigid terms kill [00:01:00] deals and stall growth. Capchase fixes that. No discounts, no collections, no friction. Over 2000 SaaS companies are already using it to pay flexibly close, faster, boost TCVs, and make the buying process feel way more modern.

Bottom line, Capchase helps you sell like it's 2025, not 2005. Check it out at capchase.com/this weekinFinTech and see how smarter payments can power your growth. Once again, that's capchase.com/thisweekinFinTech. Capchase is where buyer flexibility meets instant revenue.

Hello everyone, and welcome to today's episode of the This Month in FinTech podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Zauk of OMERS Ventures, and today I'm joined by Firdaus Bhathena, chief Technology Officer of FIS. FIS is one of the world's largest financial technology companies building core banking, digital banking, capital markets, and more for the world's largest companies.

Their scale is incredible. Over 16 [00:02:00] trillion moves through their systems annually. They process 75 billion of transactions globally, serve tens of thousands of clients and employ over 50,000 people worldwide. On today's episode, we cover his path from startups to large healthcare to CTO of FIS, how his team manages innovation at such a large organization. His mantra for the great Build Buy Partner debate, the Harmony Gap report and what it means for today's FIs, his take on some topics du jour, including AI, stablecoins and COBOL migration, and a fun rapid fire round, including a gritty first job and much more. Let's get started.

Firdaus, welcome to today's episode of the This Month in FinTech podcast. It's great to have you on the show today.

[00:02:42] Firdaus Bhathena: Thank you, Ryan. Real pleasure to be here.

[00:02:44] Ryan Zauk: Why don't we jump in talking a little bit about your background and your transition to FIS and financial services slash bank software. I see you came from a long time healthcare background, some startups before that would love to understand what drew you into the tech world and how it brought you [00:03:00] to FIS.

[00:03:00] Firdaus Bhathena: First of all, , I'm an engineer by training and a product guy at heart, which means. I learned early on in my life, you know, when I was a, I was, I was really a technophile when I came outta college. Like all I cared about, it's like, am I working on cool stuff? What I really began to understand is like things become cool only when , people in the real world actually use them and get some value out of them, and whether it's.

Candy Crush or a, you know, complex application. It's the thrill of , taking technology to build a product, putting it in users' hands, and then having them derive something from it. So actually, even before I got into healthcare, I was in the world of, venture backed startups. So I've been lucky enough to work on both ends of the spectrum.

You know, 20 people growing up to 300 people, and then all the way to, uh, very large organizations in, in healthcare. And now in, , in FinTech. I had some successes and some failures in the world of startups and, , failure is always the best teacher and so , I'm lucky. I had some learning experiences early in my life, but also had some successes and then [00:04:00] got to the point where I felt like having impact at scale with those same users or customers that I was talking about was really the thing that was exciting me in the sort of latter half of my career.

So I made the transition to healthcare because I believed that it was very much ripe for disruption with technology. And the interesting thing there is that you would think that the leap from healthcare to FinTech is the big leap. It's really not because a lot of what you need to do in healthcare is around the financing of healthcare.

We have a very complex, healthcare system in the United States, and a lot of it is around who's gonna pay for what you want the best product on the market, who doesn't want the best doctor for their children or whatever, right? You want the best possible product on the market, but you want somebody else to pay for it, and that's creates a, like an economic system that's very hard to deal with.

Who's going to pay for it, what your, you know, network supports, uh, things like that and how much is it gonna cost? And so I would say maybe 60, 70% of the [00:05:00] work we were doing in healthcare was in that area. Coming to FISI wasn't just moving into financial services, I was moving into a product company in financial services.

Right. We're a FinTech and it takes me back to my core, which is working in an organization where. The tech is the product as opposed to the tech being something in the service of another, a different business service like healthcare. So when Stephanie Ferris reached out and you know, we had a conversation, I was thrilled to see that this is a company that has a storied past, it's been around for 50 plus years.

Not a lot of tech companies can lay claim to that. Like how do you take a company that has such incredible deep customer relationships, has built up such a great reputation over time, and then take it to the next level. Preparing it for, , the next 10 to 20 years. In a very rapidly evolving technology landscape.

Definitely. That's why I'm here. That's why I love my job.

[00:05:53] Ryan Zauk: And then as you talked about, preparing for that next decade ahead, can you talk a little bit about maybe your first a hundred [00:06:00] days as CTO? Right? You're coming in this large, you know, iconic organization. Making the transition into financial services now and trying to lay out your new vision of where you think the company should go, where to innovate, where to, you know, lean in on existing capabilities and strengths.

[00:06:16] Firdaus Bhathena: I think that the number one thing that I feel like we're preparing our organization for or setting up FIS four, and this is all with the intent of, you know, success in the future, is how do we create a nimble. Organization is that is highly adaptable to change you know, the old saying that like the, it's not the largest, the strongest, the fastest who will survive and win. It's the ones most adaptable to change, right? I'm a true believer in that. Look, in the world of technology, it's very hard to predict what we're going to see two or three years from now.

I'm, no, I don't have a crystal ball. If somebody else does, , , let me know. Right? There's lots of people in the business who are trying to tell you what the future is gonna bring, right? I prepare for that, and I'm trying to get FIS from a tech stand point to prepare for [00:07:00] that by creating. An environment and a tech organization that is highly adaptable to change investing in the platforms, investing in the modernization, that is no regrets that will stand us in good stead no matter where we go.

Investing in the automation and ai, of course, including gen ai, that will allow us to respond to market shifts and market needs in ways that a legacy organization may not be able to. We have great software that has been running for many, many years, many decades. Some of it, it's highly resilient. It runs the infrastructure of the financial system.

I'm proud of that. The thing about that though is that it doesn't lend itself to to change as well as modern systems do. So we have to strike that balance between ensuring that we preserve the resiliency and uptime, and always on business availability. That has been sort of how this company has built its reputation in the past and now create an [00:08:00] environment where we can unleash.

A lot of the great talent that we have using some of the new tools. And look, you know, we don't hire people because they're experts in a particular technology area. We might sometimes, of course, but the number one thing we look for are people who can learn and adapt and be there at the tip of the spear when it comes to leveraging technology for.

For our customers. We are not inventing the next breakthrough in gen ai. We're not inventing the next breakthrough in, you know, data management. Our place is to be the best in the world at leveraging technology of all kinds. In the service of our customers needs and be absolutely ahead of everybody else in doing that

[00:08:36] Ryan Zauk: Makes sense.

And I do want to go a level deeper here on managing an org like FIS to handle disruption and aiming and firing that vast organization. We can use the old build buyer. Or partner adage, which you must face often, not only at FIS but as a CTO. What frameworks have you developed to handle that decision and align your organization around you to execute on those decisions?

[00:08:59] Firdaus Bhathena: , [00:09:00] So I'll, I'll answer the first part of your question there with , the build by partner thing. Like I have a phrase, uh, I didn't come up with this. I wish I had because I love it. That I've been using for many, many years now, and I heard it from a colleague in a previous job. It's, we want to build what differentiates us.

We want to buy what accelerates us. It's a very simple way of, I like that, looking at the world and saying, we're investing in our people. We're investing in learning and development. We're investing in the tools that they need. And then we want them focused on the things that truly drive differentiation for us and our clients in the marketplace.

And when I say us. I really mean us and our clients, nothing we do is because, , we're interested in doing it, irrespective of whether our clients care about it or not. So when I say we want to build what differentiates us, we want our clients to be benefit from that and differentiate themselves in the markets that they serve.

Remember, we are a software product company. We're not an end user financial services company. And so , that's [00:10:00] absolutely a mantra that we use here. When we think about how we want to go forward, and, , , as you probably are aware, like as, as our listeners are very much aware in legacy organizations, , we've built a lot of stuff in the past that we had to build because it didn't exist.

We now unlock a lot of talent and a lot of resources to go and work on the future. If we follow that practice of like, now that it's available in the market from a best of breed source, let's go buy it, not build it ourselves and focus our smart teams. Their subject matter expertise and their domain knowledge on the things that will help us and our clients differentiate themselves in the market.

Another part of our framework is, is modernization and modernization. Sometimes people think of it as, okay, we're gonna take this old product and we're gonna sort of re-architect rebuild it with new technologies. That is one version of it. It's not the most scalable, most valuable version of modernization.

When it comes to modernization. We actually start with what the customer is actually trying to do, because customer needs evolve too. You can't take a 20-year-old [00:11:00] product. Modernize it with new, it's not a technology problem alone, right? Solve, fix it with, uh, modernize the technology , behind the product.

Then take it to the customer and say, here, keep doing what you've been doing for 20 years. There's just a nice modern tech stack under it to the customer that's invisible, right? They may benefit from, you know, rapid deployment. They may benefit from a faster pace of change, things like that.

But it's really starting with like, what are the customers trying to do? How every modernization opportunity is a, is an opportunity to reinvent. The solution we're offering and make sure it's targeted at the problem of the day-to-day, not what we started solving 20 years ago when this first started.

It's a mindset shift, and so we don't do modernization in technology without working with our product and business partners at the same time. And that's another part of it, right? We are moving in what has been an organization building software for 50 plus years into. A world of agile driven by product management that is [00:12:00] much more client-centric and product led with a huge focus on simplification.

Sometimes we have, multiple versions of the same product for different markets that were a necessity when the technology was at a different state. You know, many years ago, but that's not the case today. And so often there are internal benefits, benefits to FIS of driving that kind of efficiency.

Once again, in the pursuit of unlocking resources, I. That can focus on that differentiation that I talked about.

[00:12:31] Ryan Zauk: Makes sense. And then on the people piece, as you think about hiring, I know you touched on this already, you mentioned we are hiring, not necessarily always product experts and FS experts, but great technologists.

How are you going to balance hiring that intellectual athlete or someone with a lot of AI nativity for where the world is going versus, as you and I both know in financial services, there's so much incumbent knowledge to be able to serve. Not just our own software, but our customers that have been around for 5,100 years [00:13:00] as well and don't want to rapid pace of change.

[00:13:02] Firdaus Bhathena: It is something that a lot of us in the industry, , think about a lot. I'll share our experience, like where I found the most success is when we are able to bring in people from the outside with fresh perspective, with a different skillset, with actually a different industry background like myself, and then marry them up with people who've been at FIS for a while.

Who have the domain expertise, who have subject matter expertise, have been working with, , clients for a long time. What is F i's like strongest advantage in the market? It is our deep customer relationships. Technology comes and goes. Technology waxes and wanes, right? , But at the end of the day, the thing that endures and we have customer relationships that go back 40, 50 years.

I that, that's no joke. Right? It's pretty shocking. It's pretty amazing actually. And shame on us if we are not able to. To draw upon that and leverage the people who have helped build those relationships over decades of hard work , and not say to them, well, that's the [00:14:00] past. Now we're looking to the future.

We got all these new people coming in. That's a recipe for failure. So we have had our best success. When we bring people in and they may have domain expertise, we actually do want people who have worked in financial services. It's not like we, we don't want them, especially when they've been spending time working , at companies where that represent our clients.

At the same time, you're not gonna find a lot of people in any one industry that are digital natives or that are AI natives or have, gen AI skills, or know how to best leverage those technologies, in which case we're willing to source from wherever. We just need to make sure that they are partnered up well with product and technology talent that we already have that truly understands, , the customer journey.

And look, I'm seeing this with our clients too. A lot of our clients grapple with the same problems we grapple with, right? How do I unlock the value in my data? How do I make the best use of ai? Like what are the use cases that make the most sense? We're all trying to solve these problems together. Our goal [00:15:00] is to be slightly ahead, not decades ahead, you know, not too far ahead, but slightly ahead of our customers to say, here we are a, as your strategic partner, you don't just come to us to buy stuff.

You come to us with your problems and we can help solve them with you.

[00:15:15] Ryan Zauk: Uh, I think that's a great transition point then to a report that FIS released called the Harmony Gap. I would love for you to unpack a little bit, maybe the genesis. Of this report and what the harmony gap actually means. So the

[00:15:29] Firdaus Bhathena: harmony gap refers to the friction and tension that exists, in the money lifecycle.

And when I talk about money lifecycle, , you know, at any given point, money is at rest, money is in motion, , or money is at work. So when we think about our products and our go to market strategy and how we think about our customers, we think about, are we dealing with money at rest, in motion or at work?

That's , what we call the money life cycle, right? And , this harmony gap we're talking about is when there are [00:16:00] this friction in that money lifecycle that leads to all kinds of challenges for our clients. Now we speak to our clients all the time. In fact, , it's my favorite thing to do, right?

Like there's no better way to learn about like how you're doing or where the world might be going than speaking to your clients. We kept hearing about all of these issues and we'll touch on them as we go through the conversation about what actually drives the disharmony in the money life cycle. And the thing , we thought is, you know, I wonder if we can quantify this.

We're data-driven people. Our CEO is a former CFO, right? She's very data-driven. I, I dare not go to Stephanie and ask for something without having the data to, , back it up. And that's a good thing, right? Like we're in the financial intake business, we better be for sure. Yeah. Uh, and so we said , maybe we can quantify this because our clients are struggling to understand.

What's really happening here, they're all very much like us. They're data-driven people in this industry. And so they're like, how much do I invest? Is it worth the investment? What's my [00:17:00] ROI going to be like, when if I make this investment, will it actually change the game for me in the future? And so we turned to the experts at, , Oxford and , Oxford Economics, and we said, uh, can you help us quantify this?

That was the genesis of the study. And bringing in an external party that you know is an expert at doing this kind of research. And then we talked to, I believe, over a thousand C-suite business and tech leaders across six different industries. We tried to, quantify the true impact of financial operation and technology.

Disharmony, basically defined as the disruptions and inefficiencies that come across the money life cycle, right? We did it in the us, the uk, and Singapore. So it was a bit of an international

[00:17:41] Ryan Zauk: effort. So let's dive into some of the takeaways of this report. I know ai, the topic du Jore, made up a big piece of this.

We just had Databricks head of financial services June on last month, and he cited. Almost the exact same problems, the harmony gap mentioned. And it's funny you mentioned the need for quantifying ROI and efficiency. He [00:18:00] cited that as a top reason people use Databricks. And so from your seat, and at FIS, where are you seeing hurdles to AI adoption and how does it jive with what's out in market?

[00:18:10] Firdaus Bhathena: You know, before, uh, the fall of 2022, like we weren't talking about this at all, and then, you know, six months later, no one talks about anything else. Right. I mean, the, the, first thing is like. What are the problems we're trying to solve that we've already been, that we're aware of and that we're already trying to solve?

So when I look at this disharmony report, the number one cause of this disharmony is cyber threats. Hopefully that comes as no surprise to anybody, right? But we are quantifying that. So 88% of respondents said like it's an overwhelming majority. So I'd side with threats number, right?

So that guides us to say, what are the best tools in my arsenal? Of tools to actually go out there and address these challenges. , And where's the expertise in the organization? We're rapidly training the workforce across the industry. I don't just mean FIS, everyone's doing this on getting better at understanding what AI can do.

It's like, you know, if you're a good [00:19:00] carpenter and you, know which tool to use for which job. You know, no jokes. When I was trying to fix a, a faucet in my daughter's bathroom. When my friend introduced me to a basin in wrench, , I thought my world had changed. If you don't know what tool to use for a particular job, you're gonna be floundering about for a while.

Uh, you can see I'm not much of a handyman, but, but, but, so that's, that's, you know, step one is to say, are we aware of the problems we're trying to solve? And so we look at the use of AI in two categories. One is. All of the corporate functions and internal efficiencies that we can drive with ai, there's a huge focus on that.

We're signed up, we're enrolled in that, right? Like we need to make that happen. And so our client service reps are already using phelp from Gen AI tools to be able to better, faster and better answer customers questions. It's not the solution for everything, of course. Our belief is that category [00:20:00] of use cases is going to be table stakes for companies in the next short period of time.

Some say one to two years, , maybe two to three years. Who knows? There will be differentiation there. It will only just be in timing. Every company in the world for their client service is gonna be using Gen AI at some point, right? If you do it sooner, you might have a little bit of an advantage, but that is a short-lived advantage because everyone's gonna catch up.

We think the long term differentiation comes from. How do we actually leverage AI to be able to drive, , product value for our customers? We're a product company and that takes a unique set of skills. It takes understanding what challenges the customer faces today, but also what they perceive as , what's gonna come down at them in the future.

It takes an understanding of what the tools can do in specific areas, and it takes an understanding of what our products actually do today. And I think the most interesting and exciting part is [00:21:00] when we are able to actually do things for our customers that you just can't even do today. And so, for example, in the area of fraud detection, we can dramatically speed up and therefore, instead of sampling transactions to detect fraud.

We could maybe run fraud detection on every single transaction, and that would dramatically change the outcomes that the customer would see. And it would change it for in, in both directions, right? We'd pick up more fraud. We'd also be able to, you know, quell more false positives and be able to drive more transactions through the system, which is something our customers would like to see happen, the right kinds of transactions.

Of course. So I think we see that in those two categories. And this is where FIS. We believe has a significant advantage because we have that domain expertise, we have that deep client understanding. Everyone wants to talk about, , AI and gen, AI being the solution for pretty much every problem they have.

Right? That is not the case. And then of course, as I said a lot earlier. In the program, , we're [00:22:00] investing in platforms and our data and AI Foundations platform is a key part of that. We just built an AI framework on top of that, and at Emerald, our big client show, which was I think four weeks ago now.

We launched the agent agent AI framework, along with the first set of agents, , to operate inside banking environments.

[00:22:17] Ryan Zauk: And I do want to touch on one other piece of the report that I, I think was despite all of this exciting disruption that we're talking about, payments still remain the top investment area for FinTech transformation.

And it's funny because folks outside of financial services may think of payments as a solved problem. And it is definitely not. But then we're seeing innovations in real-time payments, cross border rails, tokenization, stable coins to drive cost reduction in customer retention as you cite in the report.

How is FIS positioning itself with some of these mega trends in payments and rails over the next five years?

[00:22:55] Firdaus Bhathena: You're right. A lot of people who are maybe not steeped, in the industry believe payments is a [00:23:00] solved problem because, . By and large in your, your day-to-day life as a consumer, it works, right?

You know, I made a payment, it went through, like, what's the big deal, right? One of the biggest challenges in payments is the number and complexity of the systems involved, right? And this is the money and movement part, and the money and movement part, uh, of the money life cycle is where there's a lot of friction.

And that friction exists because as you might expect, every time you cross a system boundary into another system. You might be moving from a modern stack into a legacy stack without the right kinds of APIs, without the right integration patterns. Things that have been sort of put together over time, over a long period of time.

So there's a lot of complexity under the covers. And then there are a lot of players involved, right? So there's a complexity there in the system that could do with simplification. No one company is going to solve that. And I do have friends who ask me like, why is it that when I make a payment through my bank, they [00:24:00] say it'll take one to three days?

Like, what are you guys doing with this? Is this artificial? Is it sitting somewhere? Right. You know, most people don't understand that like the world of finance runs on batch processing.

[00:24:11] Ryan Zauk: Batch processing. Yeah.

[00:24:12] Firdaus Bhathena: Right. You think like, okay, . Why doesn't it show up? , And every time we. Work around that batch processing, we create complexity.

So when I use a direct peer-to-peer payment model and I send money across, there has to be clearance happening in the backend and settlement before, like things sort of as the word said on top. Right?

[00:24:31] Ryan Zauk: Right.

[00:24:32] Firdaus Bhathena: And all of that complexity. I think we need to, we need to address as an industry, because in the meantime, we're just all grappling with, with trying to.

Make short term improvements in how this stuff works.

[00:24:46] Ryan Zauk: Some people view, stable coins as this technological leapfrogging, this platform shift that'll be occurring. Where do you sway on the bull bear on stable coins, potential to disrupt? Let's just do domestic payments. 'cause I think. [00:25:00] Domestically is a more interesting debate.

[00:25:01] Firdaus Bhathena: We're looking at that very closely. We're learning a lot, as many others are, and honestly, we're not seeing as much pull from the market as Right. Some of the hype might talk about, but that's, it's not eating 10%

[00:25:15] Ryan Zauk: of your volume overnight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, well,

[00:25:17] Firdaus Bhathena: that's why it's called hype, right? I. That's okay. That's the way the world has always worked in, in technology. It's the hype cycle. If we go through a hype cycle on this and then go through our truffle of disillusionment and then come out into the stable air, like what are our customers doing?

Like this is a, this is part where we have a group of what we call lighthouse customers that we stay very close to, and we have them in different market segments that we serve, from the largest. Financial institutions down to credit unions and, , regional and community banks and investment firms

and we stay close to them to understand where their mindset is, right? Like I said, we wanna stay ahead of our customers, but not too far ahead. And so I think in that area, as in the area of gen [00:26:00] AI deployment, we're taking a prepare for the change, but don't run headlong into it. So I, I guess I would say.

I'm not a bull or a bear. We're taking a measured approach. We're taking a data-driven, where is the world going approach, because, , at the end of the day, our clients are very sensitive to things like you. You're well aware of, you know, um, absolutely. Compliance, security, regulatory issues, things like that.

There's a lot of noise and, uh, turbulence in this area that like, you know, creates uncertainty.

[00:26:37] Ryan Zauk: And then A lot of companies have set up a FinTech sandboxing team or an innovation team, or it gets rolled up in strategy or a CBC or venture. I thought it was interesting actually, in the report that 74, 70 5% of companies had dedicated FinTech teams and that they saw the best ROI versus ones that did not have dedicated FinTech teams.

How does [00:27:00] FIS handle. Rocking all of the disruption, exciting new products, partnership opportunities in the ecosystem, right? Because in my job I meet 10, 20, 30 companies a week. Everybody wants to either disrupt or partner or get bought in one day by FIS

how do we get involved in, in that ecosystem?

[00:27:18] Firdaus Bhathena: We have a very, I would say, market aware approach to this, right? And I purposely say market aware, not. So much customer aware. Every once in a while we'll do something that's a one-off for a customer if it's a big enough customer and there's a real compelling need, things like that, right?

But at the same time, we are developing an approach where we say, where are the needs that our customers have that we cannot deliver out of the box, , that compliment what we do? And then far more importantly, how do we do this the right way? How do we do this in a way that maybe if we're going to do a partnership.

How do we do it in a way that, you know, some we're so big and we have such a big footprint that like we could crush a small company [00:28:00] if we didn't do this the right way. Definitely. That, that can benefit anybody. Like I was on the other side of this,, in the early part of my career, right?

And I know how that feels. And so what we're looking for is companies that are truly market aware, solving a real problem, have achieved some level of scale. Or are at least showing the promise of getting to a significant level of scale and then accelerates our entry into a certain area. I mean, it's, it's no secret.

Stephanie Ferris has made it clear that we'll be spending, , around a billion dollars a year on bringing, , new products and technologies into the portfolio. We're becoming really good at how we bring that in. We have an integration, a focused integration management office that, brings these companies in.

[00:28:43] Ryan Zauk: And then one more thing on the Harmony Gap report, before moving on, there are some pretty alarming quantitative figures of the actual dollar amount that companies are, sacrificing to deal with these complexities. Can you talk more about how high that figure is and what it [00:29:00] means for these clients if they're able to overcome?

This, this cost savings.

[00:29:04] Firdaus Bhathena: Yeah. The, the research showed that, , the number is very close to a hundred million. It's like 98 and a half million, , dollars, , per year are being, I guess you could say squandered in making up for this harm gap. Right. And dealing with the, this harmonies in the money life cycle.

Now look like every company can decide what it would do with a hundred million dollars, but I would like to think that as opposed to making up for. Challenges and issues, whether it's in with money, in motion, in their payment systems or across the different parts of the money lifecycle. Most leaders and our customers , would want to be able to use the a hundred million in.

Efforts that are differentiating. I would invest a hundred million in building out, these platforms that I talked about, the cloud transformation data and AI transformation in better tools and technologies to train and enable our teams to leverage the technologies that we believe are going to play a very significant [00:30:00] role in the future.

There may be hype around AI and specifically around gen ai, but I think there's a lot of us who believe that this is real. It's here to stay. We need to, keep investing even if there will be a period of disillusionment because the hype just got so high and that's totally okay. We've seen this movie before many times.

I'm old enough to, I've seen this movie multiple times as we went through all the different, technology innovations over the past 25 years. But yeah, it's here to stay and we need to prepare for it. Investing some of those savings in that area I'm sure is on everybody's mind.

[00:30:35] Ryan Zauk: Some of the nuggets that you mentioned, remind me of one other major problem in financial services, insurance and healthcare, which is the COBOL coding problem.

And for those that aren't aware, this is legacy. Coding language that despite its age, powers an alarming amount of us, and honestly global financial services and technology infrastructure, there's been a lot of excitement the last few [00:31:00] years and I feel like. This hype has come probably every five years with a new technology or a new way of migrating or transforming an aging code base.

What are you seeing the latest on the ground from either FIS or your clients on how people are tackling the COBOL problem with ai?

[00:31:16] Firdaus Bhathena: So clearly there is a significant benefit to be able to use, , gen AI to translate cobalt into other languages, you know. Most often into Java, right? And so, , some people call it Joe Ball, uh, which is, you know, going from cobalt to Java, but you can't stop there, right?

If you stop there, you have a Java version of what you build. Whatever it is 20 years ago, the right thing to do. Once you've got it into a language that the people you can hire and train today, , know and understand and actually want to work him.

'cause, you know, try convincing my son who is a software engineer, no surprise. Uh. From working in cobol, I mean, you know, you've never heard, right? And so we need to make sure that we don't view [00:32:00] that as the end game. We view that as the starting point, the accelerator, getting us over a hurdle that we thought was, , really difficult, right?

Imagine human beings going in there and looking at, , millions of lines of code and trying to convert it. Then understand the logic behind it. This really helps us, , get over that initial high hurdle. So now we can start to do the things we should be doing, which is understanding, , the new customer needs today, that the application has to meet, what other changes are needed, and then re-architecting and rebuilding it the right way.

Because now you can inject the talent once again with. Things like, , coding copilot so that you're not doing it, , the old fashioned way. And it's kind of weird I'm even saying that because once Old fashioned today was not old fashioned, you know, short.

[00:32:46] Ryan Zauk: And then, uh, you've made it to the last round of the, uh, of the interview here, which is the rapid fire question round.

What we're gonna have is five to 10 questions and just maybe, uh. 10, 22nd answer each a little bit of a mix of [00:33:00] personal side and then also professional side. Are you ready?

[00:33:02] Firdaus Bhathena: Ready.

[00:33:03] Ryan Zauk: Awesome. All right, so first one, I know you're CTO of a major Fortune 500 company now, but everybody starts somewhere.

What was the first job that you ever had?

[00:33:12] Firdaus Bhathena: My first job was building software for, uh, and, and wiring the, the electrical cabinet for. CNC machine control tools in a startup. We were being very disruptive. We were trying to do with Windows, PCs, what people had been doing with proprietary architectures , for decades.

[00:33:29] Ryan Zauk: Oh wow. Anything before that Lemonade stands, lifeguarding.

[00:33:33] Firdaus Bhathena: Oh my goodness. Um, uh, I, I'll say I pushed trash really. In my college dorm, you know, I would be the one running around in the evening, uh, at night, , pushing giant trash barrels around in the basements.

[00:33:45] Ryan Zauk: Oh wow. What From literally started from the bottom and now, uh, at the top.

That's crazy. You

[00:33:50] Firdaus Bhathena: water cakes, right? I mean, right. When you're broke, you're broke. Exactly.

[00:33:54] Ryan Zauk: Brick by brick. That's great. And now let's go back up to your experience now at FIS. [00:34:00] Large organization. Let's say you were given the magic wand or silver bullet and you could change one thing about the organization so far, what would it be?

And that can be where the office is, that can be talent, new hire that you get to have a technical change.

[00:34:14] Firdaus Bhathena: This might be very obvious, but I would like to, wave a magic wand and get rid of, you know, legacy tech debt that we have. Just because this company has been around for a long time.

[00:34:25] Ryan Zauk: Ah,

[00:34:25] Firdaus Bhathena: makes sense. I've also have every piece of code and every product we have be architected, you know? Modern way, just so that we could move faster for our customers.

[00:34:36] Ryan Zauk: Yeah. No, it's, it's a great answer and I assume a common one. Perfect. All right. Next up on the CTO side, who is your CTO role model or mentor that you've had?

[00:34:45] Firdaus Bhathena: This is, you know, he was not a CTO in the sense that like I am, but I look up to Steve Jobs and because, when he said this one phrase, I really, resonated with it. He did a lot of great things. Right. I get it. Right. Um, and, [00:35:00] and you know, I didn't know him as a person, so this is no commentary on him as a human being.

This is about what he did at work. Yeah. And so, but you know, saying we, we often talk about innovation. We often talk about like, you know, oh, this is so great. We're gonna drive like innovation in the future. Steve Jobs said innovation is saying no to a thousand things. And that really, that really resonates with me.

That's really good. You know, if we're going to give our people the ability to really perform at the top end of their potential, we have to empower them to focus on the few things that really matter, and being able to sift through all the noise and the clutter. You know, lazy product management is when you put every feature into the product.

That's easy to do. It's like go around with a ball that everybody wants and say, here's my list of things and we'll just chuck through it over the next two years. But really putting in the effort to figure out what really matters and saying no to the other thousand things that people are putting on the table.

That's hard and it's challenging [00:36:00] and I use that in my life too. Uh, not just, you know, at work.

[00:36:04] Ryan Zauk: Yeah. No, that's great. And it's funny why you interviewed, uh. One of the chief, the chief business officer of Brex, and he had Angel invested in an X Brex employee. Uh, Zach, who's founded Bridge, the Stablecoin company.

Uh, and I asked his what his superpower was and he said prioritization. He told me no more than any other employee I had ever met, and that's when I knew he would be good leader. All right. Next question. Uh, when you are interviewing candidates, do you have a go-to or best interview question that you like to ask?

[00:36:30] Firdaus Bhathena: I do, but I shouldn't be sharing that here.

[00:36:32] Ryan Zauk: Oh, that's true, right? Well, it could be a good sign that the candidate is researching you so intensely. Yeah. So maybe it's a reward. For listening to get it to the end of the podcast.

[00:36:41] Firdaus Bhathena: Well, I'll tell you, um, one of my favorite questions is if I was having lunch or dinner with three of your colleagues and or, or three of your friends and I told them to tell me more about you, what would they say?

Right. What, what, what is your self-awareness as a human being? Like, what do you, what do you [00:37:00] feel people think about you? And you can tell when people come up with like, this is what I hope people would say, or This is, is what you actually say, right? Yeah, that's one of my, you know, questions.

[00:37:11] Ryan Zauk: That's good.

All right. And then last two questions. First one, Stephanie Ferris, what would surprise most people about her

[00:37:20] Firdaus Bhathena: or

[00:37:20] Ryan Zauk: about working with her that maybe they wouldn't know

[00:37:22] Firdaus Bhathena: how much she's able to get into the details on things that you think she would not have a lot of knowledge for? Right. So when I'm in meetings with Stephanie, she's a finance person.

She went, came up through the ranks of, you know. Finance, but she is able to, you know, cut through the noise and very quickly get to questions that make you think, dammit, I should have been thinking about that, not these 12 other things. Right.

[00:37:51] Ryan Zauk: That's a

[00:37:52] Firdaus Bhathena: superpower. Um, and it could be in like technology. And you're like, wait a minute.

What, what, how does she get, how is she able to do that? And I, and I think that's a [00:38:00] real, that's a real strength.

[00:38:01] Ryan Zauk: That's awesome. And then last question before we wrap up. Who is your dream guest that you would love to hear on a feature episode of the podcast?

[00:38:08] Firdaus Bhathena: The founder of Patagonia.

[00:38:11] Ryan Zauk: Oh. Oh, that's a great one.

Yeah. You pulled that out quickly. You didn't even

[00:38:15] Firdaus Bhathena: hesitate. Well, it's because I, you know, it's a. I care about that brand because I care about their approach to the world. Yeah, it's incredible and it, and it comes from ARD himself, right?

[00:38:28] Ryan Zauk: Yeah.

[00:38:28] Firdaus Bhathena: I hope I said that name right. But you know,

[00:38:31] Ryan Zauk: I'll fact check you after.

Well, Ferdo, thank you so much for coming on today's episode of the This Month in FinTech podcast. It was great to have you on and share so much of Fi s's, uh, story and of course, the Harmony Gap report. Thank you for coming on.

[00:38:45] Firdaus Bhathena: Thank you, Ryan. Uh, it's a very pleasure to be here and, and, and I hope that that was interesting for your listeners.

[00:38:53] Ryan Zauk: Thank you for listening to today's episode of the this Month in FinTech podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please [00:39:00] like, follow, subscribe, or rate us across your preferred podcast and social media platforms. Lastly, I'd like to thank our editor Evangelo Markous for his great work on our episodes.

Signing off, I'm your host, Ryan Zauk.