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From Banking Executive to Fintech Trailblazer: Lyn Kok's Inspiring Shift to Financial Inclusion with Mula X
Embark on a transformative journey with Lyn Kok as we navigate the thrilling waters of career change and the creation of something truly impactful. Lyn, the visionary behind Mula X, shares her profound experience transitioning from the president and CEO of a major bank to the innovative world of financial inclusion through fintech entrepreneurship. Her story is a beacon for anyone seeking to align their career with their core values, revealing the challenges and triumphs of constructing a mission-driven company from the ground up.
As we converse with Lyn, we uncover the threads that connect the corporate banking world to the agile startup ecosystem. Discover how skills like cultivating company culture and mastering regulatory mazes have new applications outside the boardroom, and which corporate practices might actually stifle startup vitality. Lyn takes us behind the scenes of Mula X, illuminating the intricate process of connecting those traditionally overlooked by the financial sector with vital services. Her insights provide a roadmap for leveraging corporate acumen in the fast-paced startup environment.
In this deeply personal account, Lyn's dedication to fairness, diversity, and inclusion not only defines her new venture but also serves as an inspiration for current and aspiring entrepreneurs. We explore the rejuvenating power of passion, the essential role of supportive networks, and the profound satisfaction of pursuing a career that transcends the mere pursuit of profit. As Lyn prepares to take the stage at Money2020 Asia in Bangkok, join us for a discussion that is both a masterclass in career pivots and a testament to the potential for meaningful change in the business world.
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Welcome to the Money Pot. I'm Sheryl Chen, Head of Content at Money2020 Asia. For this series of the Money Pot, we will deep dive into the scary topic of career pivots. We speak to formidable women who have left their jobs to create their own fintech startups and discover the why behind what they do. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Lyn Kok, the founder of Mula X, a digital lending platform whose vision is to enable digital leaders to bank the underserved segment. Prior to this, Lyn was a president and CEO of Standard Chartered Thailand. She was also very recently honored with the prestigious Thailand's Women Leaders title at Thailand Leadership Awards 2024. Joining me this week to explore this is none other than my wonderful counterpart from across the world, Ian Hon. Head of Content at Money2020 Europe. Hi, Ian.
Ian Horne:Hi Sheryl, thank you for having me on.
Sheryl Chen:Ian, have you done a career pivot before?
Ian Horne:Yes, Sheryl, I actually have done a career pivot before. So years ago, when I started my career as a writer before I entered finance, I used to write about tennis. Okay, so the work that I did wasn't Well. It won't win any pull-ups at Cheryl, I'll be honest about that but I basically used to preview matches that were happening across the tour and I did have a few moments in the sun where I got to ask questions to people like Roger Federer, maria Sharapova, novak Djokovic and more. It was an unusual start to the career and I've somehow landed in fintech.
Sheryl Chen:That's amazing, Very star-starred at Korea. I must say we're so glad to have you with us.
Ian Horne:Well, I do my best.
Sheryl Chen:So let's dive into the conversation, lynn, thank you for joining us today. So I have a very fun story to share. I actually met Lynn at an event in Thailand and, like all good content people do, I did a bit of professional LinkedIn stalking before meeting people and I was star-struck when I met Lynn. So Lynn she was the president and CEO of Standard Chartered Thailand High Flyer everything. She chose to leave that behind to pursue the noble cause of financial inclusion. Can you tell us a bit more about yourself, lynn, and what triggered the shift from StandChat into the star-struck world?
Lyn Kok:Sure, Sheryl, first of all, thank you so much for having me on your program and, second of all, I can admit that, yes, you do like to troll people on LinkedIn.
Lyn Kok:I was very, very impressed that you knew so much about me. My career pivot I always wanted to try and make a difference to everything that I do and that's what excites me most. And when Standard Chartered decided to sell their retail business in Thailand, I was left with kind of the decision as to whether I wanted to continue my career as a banker and move out of Thailand a place that I was very comfortable with and had grown sort of a very good network on or try and do something else that I was passionate about. And I sort of took some time to think about it and I decided that, given where I was in the peak of my career, that I think it was time to kind of give back. Being a professional, you can try and do a lot of things, but perhaps not everything that I wanted to do, and definitely helping people that were underserved by the formal financial system was something I was very passionate about, because I felt I could make a difference and there was room for someone to contribute to.
Ian Horne:Yeah, can I jump in on that actually, because it sounds like you've had a bit of time to reflect on purpose and the things you want out of your career. Was there a kind of defining moment that occurred that made you realise that you wanted to kind of change what you were doing?
Lyn Kok:I have to say it's pretty scary. So there's never really a defining moment. I think it's a little bit of things kind of happening to you. It wasn't sort of me waking up one day and saying this is what I really wanted to do. I think it was just the circumstance in which I was put in where I had to make a decision as to whether I would want to continue to be in banking, as a result, move out of Thailand or continue to stay in Thailand and do something that I thought was more meaningful. Those were really hard decisions, I have to say.
Lyn Kok:So there wasn't sort of that one defining moment, and I guess maybe the trigger was that I was at the peak of my career. I was managing five countries from Thailand and nothing else that I could do in the bank. That would really excite me. Going into another financial institution at the height of one's career also didn't excite me as much, just because it was going to be more of the same thing, but it was also scary, I have to say, to kind of think okay, well, maybe it's time for me to do something different, because being an entrepreneur is a completely different journey, and one not to be taken lightly for sure.
Ian Horne:Yeah, and I know Cheryl is going to ask you about Moolax more specifically. You know your new startup, but what I would ask on the, on the topic of your banking experience and going from position where you've run a team across five different areas or countries, right, the skills that you learned in that space, how Transferable have they been and what you know, what advantages have they given you and perhaps what disadvantages to?
Lyn Kok:Yes, I have to say I think I think you know you, you come out your head being really big right, oh, I've run this big financial institution. It's you know we were making you know hundreds and millions of dollars. You know I was growing the business that worked in all these countries. So you think, huh, I think I can start this. But I have to say, yes, there's some skills that are transferable. For example, I think, sort of building culture I think I had a lot of experience in doing that how to network I think I had a lot of experience doing that how to read a balance sheet, how to you know Maneuver around the regulatory framework, so all of that tick the box right. But when you start something from scratch, you know where it's you yourself and me kind of thing.
Lyn Kok:There are some skills that I think One learned in a huge financial institution that probably didn't you sort of lend itself very well to a startup. So, for example, you know making sure that all your eyes are dotted and T's are crossed. That's takes time. Time is money and, and when you're in a startup you don't have the luxury of time, right, you just kind of need to get it done and and be out there. So so I would say that's probably one skill that I had that I had to unlearn. You know how to create, you know little baby steps, how to, how to create little wins Every day that that one has, and you don't need to sort of make a big plan for a year and then wait for that plan to come into fruition. So, yes, some skills were very good and transferable, but there's some skills that probably you know, I probably had to leave at home if I had to do it again.
Sheryl Chen:Yeah, that that's really, really interesting, because even when I am like Transiting jobs, when I'm moving across roles, I find myself learning but also unlearning so much and it's, I guess it's also very good to hear that it happens to someone like you also, so maybe could could you tell us the genesis of mulax? What are specific experiences or challenges that you observed during a time in banking that inspired the creation of this financial inclusion platform?
Lyn Kok:Yeah, so mulax Was really born to be sort of this digital platform that would link product partners of different financial products to the underserved user base, and that was sort of the you know that the genesis of this, you know put particular platform. And when I was in the banking Segment sector, it was obviously a very large bank. We were, you know, launching a lot of different products and a lot of different things. But one of the areas that I felt we never really focused on are people that would borrow small amounts of money that probably didn't have a very strong credit bureau, that didn't have a lot of Salary or earning, or some wasn't even able to produce anything that was consistent that one could sort of put through a credit score.
Lyn Kok:The banking system also.
Lyn Kok:What I noticed was that we had legacy systems, which means that it wasn't very flexible in being able to customize small little payments, regular payments, payments that were of a particular time, just because the systems were not built that way from from the legacy standpoint.
Lyn Kok:So I felt that we were not able to to bank a lot of, you know, some of these smaller type businesses SMEs was always a challenge for for banks, and up to today, and that's why governments talk a lot about SME support and People that were earning sort of I would say, you know at minimum wage would always also be a challenge because they would never pass the minimum cutoff point. Whether it's earning a you know, a particular Income every year or having a credit bureau, the credit bureau always is the one that I think would be the biggest stumbling block, because you know how do you build a credit bureau if you never get credit in the form of financial system and and if banks and the form of financial system looks at that as the first criteria, as a way to you know to decide whether somebody gets a loan or not or continues on that process, it becomes a bit of a deterrent.
Ian Horne:Yeah, I'd love to jump in on some of this because we're seeing it in Europe as well arise in alternative credit lent. You know credit scoring methods, especially with the introduction of things like AI and, and you know more sharing of data and all of that, and I understand that's something that helps you at mula x, and you are Finding different ways to assess if people are credit worthy or not. Could you talk us through how technology is helping you with that and what you do that perhaps the banks haven't done traditionally?
Lyn Kok:Yeah, so there are different ways of assessing credit. Now, when MulaX first started, we were very, very conservative, so we wanted to work more on ensuring that we were processing sort of repayment and collections in kind of a very risk averse way, meaning that we wanted to work with employers that had employees and we would be funding them, so that with the employers, our risk was minimized. Now you can then say banks and other financial institutions are able to do that as well, except that they're not particularly interested in very small number of transactions. That's number one and number two. Their systems also are not flexible enough to be able to take sort of the pay that's due on a particular payday to knock off on different types of third party financial products that they would do. So this requires very little, I would say, ai or alternative data.
Lyn Kok:But once you have the user base on stream, you can then start to use things like phone data, which is now available. So your phone actually has quite a lot of data that tells you a lot about yourself. So, for example, the apps that you use, the type of messages that you potentially would get and different types of things that sit on your phone. That tells you a lot about an individual. So, for example, if I've got a lot of transactions on an e-commerce app, it shows that I'm probably a very big shopper. Or if I spend a lot of time watching YouTube, I don't know whether that tells me a lot about myself and just my work ethics and things like that but you can kind of derive a lot of behavioral type of data from individuals just from a phone. So that's one set of alternative data that one could look at.
Lyn Kok:The other one that's now becoming a lot more interesting is what we call psychometric data.
Lyn Kok:So we work with an Israeli company that does psychometric data assessments and through that, you know, through people's answers of questions, you could almost derive a score on their propensity for loyalty if you're looking for, you know, a long person to be employed, in order to assess the risk of that person paying you back over their job, over the lifetime of a job, or it could be assessing their propensity for honesty, what they would be like. In fact, I did it myself and it was very interesting because you know we were trying to gain the system and the system kind of knew we were trying to gain it. So that's another alternative type of data that one can get. Now, in addition to all of that, you then try to look for transactional data, which obviously is very powerful. You know things that you buy, things that you pay for, you know the frequency in which you do it, etc. Etc. So these are what we call alternative data that people are now assessing to look at credit score of an individual.
Ian Horne:That's absolutely fascinating, especially the stuff around you know psychometric testing and finding out what people do with their well in terms of loyalty spending, where they spend money, where they spend their time. I actually find it incredible that that helps to figure out how credit worthy someone might be. I guess it does lead you into a situation where you're perhaps gathering a lot of data on people, though. I mean, are there privacy and ethical concerns around that?
Lyn Kok:No, no, absolutely. I think you know you have to be and now I think that the laws are also very clear and the app stores are also very clear. So you know, when you put your app up on Google or Apple Store, they do look out. For you know you trawling people's apps without proper consent or without proper disclosure, and that's really important. And obviously I think you know the one that I think gets a lot of people. People don't mind if you're using their data in order to assess credit, if they really need credit right, I mean, it's linked to a particular purpose. But I think people really do mind if you use their data for marketing purposes or if you're selling that data I mean you know for other people to be spanning them for marketing. I think that's not right, particularly when people don't really understand that kind of you know, consent it to in terms of that data we can use that way.
Ian Horne:Okay, sorry, it's me, it's the inner nerds. Come out, lynn, lynn. My other question here is around there being, you know, many by now, pay later options and other sources of funding. What is it that makes mula x an inclusive one relative to others that are available?
Lyn Kok:I have to say I don't like buy now, pay later context. So a platform is capable of doing that, but because we are focused on the underserved, I don't have a problem if it's buy now, pay later, let's say, for a life insurance policy or a medical policy or you know something that they may really really need. But now there's so many BNPL type players out there that will give you money to buy handbags or you know, very expensive phones or just really silly things that you really don't need but want, and so Moolah X actually does not participate in that type of thing. So we do have ability on our app for people to make payments and to have installment payments. I mean, this is one of the beauty of Moolah X. We have this ecosystem where we have a kind of earn, wage, access or salary and demand product as a hook product for us, because we try to work with employers and try to get them to see this as a benefit for the employees. On the other hand, we actually also have a wallet proposition that what I call my foundational product, and with my wallet I can actually do buy now, pay later. Right, I can actually go and look at all the different merchants and say, okay, let us, you know, work with you on that. But I prefer not to, because all of the surveys that we've done, the basic essentials that people use money for are things like paying their phone bills, their electricity bills, their transport bills, food on the table, things for their children in terms of going to school, books and things like that. I mean, those kind of things have to take priority and that's the stuff that we would put in our ecosystem. We would make sure that anyone that uses our wallet is actually going to these types of purposes, rather than the BNPL wallets that are out there.
Lyn Kok:So that's how we're differentiated, and also, I would say, the other thing that differentiates us is that we have a very strong learning proposition as well, because when you're focused on the underserved market, the first thing that people tell us is why do you think they're going to pay you back? You know they don't understand. You know financial literacy. They really don't understand that they got a bad balance. They don't understand that they got to maintain a good credit.
Lyn Kok:So I think there is some truth to that, in the sense that it's you know that these people are quite gullible. If money comes easy, you know they take it, and that's why they don't understand that sometimes loan sharks should be avoided and that sometimes being in the formal system is a little bit more painful, like you don't get your money right away. It does take time. You need time in order to pay off all of your high debts and you shouldn't be gambling and buying lottery tickets and things like that.
Lyn Kok:So we do have a very strong educational platform as well, where we do encourage our users to, you know, to learn through blogs, through quizzes, through certificate programs. And you know, and now more recently, actually in the next week, we're actually going to launch a library as well, our ebook library, where we have more than 350 covers that we've chosen ourselves that our users can access and, with the partnership with, you know, with the ebook provider that we have, they're going to be able to purchase the book as well if they wish. So we're trying to do the right thing by kind of being a little bit prescriptive in terms of what we offer on our platform.
Sheryl Chen:I see, and actually this provides a very nice segue into my next topic, because obviously when you're educating the underserved segment on what to do, what not to do, that's a very noble cause, because financial education in emerging markets sometimes it tends to be a bit lacking. My question is a bit more personal because when I look at your background, you obviously spend a lot of time being involved in charity, charitable causes and this is also from personal place, because I do help out at a local animal shelter and that is on top of my day job, which sometimes is already very like consuming right, and this is saying that you cannot pull from an empty cup. So sometimes I do feel very drained when I see, when it feels like there's only so much that I can do and my energy is also limited. So how do you? I guess what I'm trying to ask is how do you sustain yourself such that you continue to produce and give your A game at work but also, at the same time, out of work, you still do all these charitable, noble causes?
Lyn Kok:That's a very good question, Sheryl. I always have the saying and I tell everybody this that I think it comes from Confucius, one of the philosophers. It says if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. I really truly believe that. Okay, not every day is a great day. They're going to be down days, obviously, and we're all human, but generally most days are good days. I do love what I do, which then gives me, in turn, the energy that I need to sustain, but at the same time, I also feel like I try. Well, some people say I don't really have a line between personal and work, unfortunately, so I'm constantly there, 24-7. But the way I look at it is that my family, I think, supports what I do, so that makes it easy, because that's usually the personal side, isn't it? And it's like, and what I do that I'm passionate about. I also try and bring it into my workplace. I'll give you an example Some of the charity that I do.
Lyn Kok:When I was at Santa Charity, I was the ambassador for they call it living with HIV. Santa Charity had a very big focus on people that were kind of discriminated against just because they were living with HIV. They did not have it and I felt very passionate because I kind of knew people, heard the stories and really felt it was very unfair. So justice for me was really important. Right, unconscious biasness I get really bent out of shape for that. So being in that kind of charitable cause was not difficult for me because it was something that I was innately already passionate about fairness, which is one of the core values also of Luna X, and then things like diversity and inclusion, which is stuff that I've also been involved in.
Lyn Kok:I also feel very passionate about that, just because I always felt, once again, it's about fairness, it's not about discrimination, it's treating everybody equally, it's having inclusivity and things that we do, and that's the culture that I also want to build at Luna X. And when I see that happening, when I see people being inclusive, people sort of having kindness in their heart, we have a saying here we work hard, we play harder. That keeps me going right. When I see my young guys being successful, either they've decided to go into business school, come back and rejoin us, or we have something that we succeed in that makes me happy, and when that makes me happy, it gives me energy and that's what sustains me. Not sure if that's kind of a very funny answer, but yeah.
Sheryl Chen:I love it. No, no, no, I love it. I love that answer. So maybe, as we wrap it up, my final question would be what would you, what advice would you offer for those people who are considering a similar career pivot, or people who are contemplating launching their own FinTech startup?
Lyn Kok:Oh my goodness. First, you better think very, really hard whether this is what you really want to do, because what I thought was really easy hasn't been as easy as I thought. I just thought, oh okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to take the box here, take the box there. Every financial model that I did, we've had to throw it out of the window because I was too optimistic about everything. I think number two also is that One needs to have really a good support system around you. I have to say I've been really blessed that my parents have been really behind me on this. They were one of my first investors. They're still asking me do you still need investors? I think, and obviously not everybody will have that luxury, but the point is that make sure you've got a really strong support system around you, whether it's emotional, whether it's financial, just because it's not the easiest of journeys. And the third is, I would say find something that you're passionate about, that you want to do, and getting rich and being a unicorn is not a passion, is not a goal, because if you have that, I don't think you'd be very stressed every day. But if you believe in what you do and that's what we're doing. We believe in what we do. We believe we can make a difference if we succeed, and when we succeed right, that we would change lives and that we would give people financial freedom and that we would make a difference in their lives, and maybe not for them, but maybe for their next generation.
Lyn Kok:I'm really also a big believer that the next generation should be better than this generation. Right, and so on and so forth. I think my parents have given me a lot. I'm obviously trying to give my daughter everything that, the best that I can give, and then so on and so forth. I think most of us are built that way and I'm hoping that for the underserved. You know, if we cannot help this particular generation, hopefully we'll help the next generation, because their parents have decided that they want to save more. They want to, you know, educate their kids more. They don't want to be in debt and hopefully, you know, if you have that passion that should keep you going through the very rough times. You know that comes with being a startup.
Sheryl Chen:I love it. I love it. This is fantastic advice Find what you're passionate in. So and with that, that's it for this episode of The Money Pot. We wanted to thank Lyn for gracing our show today. If you want to hear more from Lyn will be speaking at Money 2020 Asia in April in Bangkok, Thailand, along with 250 other speakers. We hope to see you there.
Ian Horne:And you can be part of The Money Pot at the Money/ 2020 Show. Please send pitches to podcast@ money2020.com and don't forget to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening. We love our FinTech nerds.
