Tom is joined by Kartik Kaushik, Managing Director and Head of RBC Clear. Kartik shares how he went from building India's first e-commerce platform at Unilever to reimagining corporate transaction banking in the US — and why that unconventional path gave him the customer advocate lens the industry desperately needed. He breaks down why corporate onboarding still takes 45 to 60 days, what it took to compress that to same-day, and how parallel processing and intelligent validation replaced an army of operations staff. Kartik also explains why he rebuilt RBC Clear as fully cloud-native from day one, how co-developing the platform with 28 of their largest clients shaped every product decision, and why the real unlock for treasury isn't just better technology.

Guest quotes:
“ Technology is only as good or as valuable as what the business case or the business intent or the need that you're solving for.”

“ You have to rethink policy, you have to rethink process, you have to rethink everything that's sacrosanct or held as the gold standard in the past. Everything has to be questioned.”

“ All the great products, we become part of their life as a customer, and the customer forgets we exist. That is the best state of any product.”

Links & Resources:

Connect with Tom Gavaghan

Connect with Kartik Kaushik

Learn more about Kyriba

Learn more about RBC Clear

YouTube Timestamps:

00:00 Show Intro and Guest Overview

00:26 Kartik's Background

01:44 Building the First E-Commerce Platform in India (1999–2000)

03:17 From Unilever to Citi to RBC

04:28 The Customer Advocate Lens in Corporate Banking

06:23 What Is RBC Clear? Putting Clients in Control of Working Capital

07:27 Co-Developing with 28 Client Advisory Firms

08:42 Why US Corporate Banking Is So Archaic

12:38 Re-Imagining Onboarding: From 67 Days to Same-Day

14:10 Time and Motion Study: The File Was Touched for Only 10.5 Hours

16:50 Pre-Populating Client Data and Intelligent Document Validation

19:58 Parallel Processing: How RBC Eliminated Sequential Handoffs

22:00 Pricing Transparency: Why Bank Invoices Require a PhD to Read

27:46 Flipping from Reactive to Proactive: The "Where Is My Payment?" Problem

29:20 No Published 1-800 Number: Zero Client-Facing Ops After 24 Months

32:14 What Had to Break Internally to Achieve Same-Day Onboarding

37:13 First Fully Cloud-Native Core Banking Payments Business

42:01 Lessons from Unilever: Start with the "So What"

43:50 The Three Types of Workers in an Agentic AI World

49:25 Outro and Wrap-Up

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tom is joined by Natalie Derse, CFO of Gen. Natalie shares how she and her CEO delivered $330 million in cost synergies in under 18 months following Gen's merger with Avast, and what made that execution possible. She also breaks down her approach to AI-native finance, why the CFO is becoming the de facto Chief Trust Officer, and how real-time data from GE and eBay shaped her modern playbook. Natalie also shares her take on talent — what she looks for in every hire and how mentorship, not just work ethic, is what actually accelerates careers.

Guest quotes:
“ One of the biggest responsibilities I hold is to give the business as much clarity as I possibly can.  I don't know how you do that without a great hunger for more technology and data to help you guide.”

“We achieved $330 million of cost synergies in less than an 18-month period."

"You cannot be successful just running your own playbook and running your own game. You've got to connect and you've got to embrace, and really be humble enough to be coached."

Links & Resources:

Connect with Tom Gavaghan

Connect with Natalie Derse

Learn more about Kyriba

Learn more about Gen

YouTube Timestamps:

00:00 Show Intro and Guest Overview

00:36 Natalie's Background: GE, eBay, and Becoming CFO of Gen

01:15 Leadership Philosophy: Why She Refuses the Corner Office

02:43 Data-Driven Mindset Across Industries

04:11 CFO as Business Partner, Not Just Finance Leader

06:49 The Avast Merger: $330M in Synergies in Under 18 Months

08:49 Execution Strategy: Alignment, Clarity, and Relentless Commitment

10:44 Transparency as a Leadership Tool

11:18 Leveraging 500M Subscribers: Customer Data as a Leading Indicator

14:01 Cybersecurity Retention Rates Through Economic Cycles

16:23 MoneyLion and Financial Wellness: Two Sides of the Macro Spectrum

18:54 AI-Driven Fraud and the CFO as Chief Trust Officer

24:55 The Jellycorn Concept: AI and the Future of Headcount

28:49 Redesigning Finance Functions with AI

33:26 AI Adoption: Milestones, Not Light Switches

35:54 Building Human Talent: Curiosity and Engagement Over Credentials

40:30 Future Skills for Finance Leaders: Tech Fluency and Human Connection

35:54 Fasting, Family, and Staying Balanced as a CFO

37:04 Career Advice: Work Ethic + Mentorship = Acceleration

39:06 Wrap Up and Where to Follow Natalie and Gen

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tom is joined by Marc Friend, CEO of Sift, a machine learning-powered fraud prevention platform that recently crossed $100M in revenue. Marc shares how he's restructuring the business to move from individual acts of heroism to true operational leverage — and what that requires at the organizational level. He breaks down how Sift thinks about fraud as a revenue enablement problem, not just a defensive one, and why agentic commerce is the next frontier no one has fully figured out yet. Marc reflects on how his background as an MIT systems engineer and 13-year VC shaped the way he architects companies and spots patterns worth replicating.

Guest quotes:
"You have to turn best practices into processes that are written down, so that when I say them and someone hears them, they're the same. Then you have to build a cadence around which you operate."

"When I come back to a merchant and say, I didn't authorize my agent to do that — that's a kind of fraud that we don't think about so much. Who's gonna take the risk of that is not decided."

"People are a lot more resilient than we give them credit for, and we are able to drive people much harder and further than they think they can go. People want to be challenged."

Links & Resources:

Connect with Tom Gavaghan

Connect with Marc Friend

Learn more about Kyriba

Learn more about Gen

YouTube Timestamps:

00:00 Show Intro and Guest Overview

00:25 Marc Friend Background: MIT to VC to CEO

01:51 Scaling Past $100M: Heroism vs. Systems

02:35 Re-Engineering the Org at Sift

03:25 Operational Leverage in SaaS

04:47 Competitive Landscape and Differentiation

05:46 Fraud as a Revenue Enabler

08:45 What Is Agentic Commerce?

09:23 Who Bears Risk When Agents Transact?

13:01 Sift's Data Advantage and ML Signals

13:45 Using AI as an Internal Challenger

16:37 Explainability and Feedback Loops in ML

21:15 Career Arc: Engineer to VC to CEO

23:10 Re-Architecting the Business at Each Growth Stage

25:14 Process, Documentation, and Cadence at Scale

26:25 Different Teams, Different Cadences

30:37 Leadership Lessons from the 1980 “Miracle on Ice”

33:04 Advice for Hiring or Becoming a CFO

34:00 CFO as Thought Partner and Business Architect

35:23 Wrap Up and Where to Find Sift

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.