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Interview: Root's Louw Hopley and MMI's Jonathan Stewart

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Thank you for listening to the TechCentral podcast. In this episode, TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod chats to Louw Hopley, CEO of fintech start-up Root, and Jonathan Stewart, head of Exponential Ventures at MMI Holdings, about Root’s fintech platforms, including its programmable bank card and its new insuretech product, Root Insurance.
In the podcast, Hopley explains the origins of Root and Stewart talks about how MMI started working with the company, along with venture capital provider 4Di Capital.
Root is a financial services platform, built from the ground up, with the aim of opening innovation in the fintech space. The company packages the difficult aspects of financial services and exposes a platform of programmable financial services through application programming interfaces, allowing software developers to prototype, build and launch new financial services products - and to do so quickly.
The company was founded in 2016 and has since built its platform to cater for both banking and insurance innovation.
Listen to the podcast as Louw explains why it developed a programmable bank card, how it works, who it’s aimed at and how software developers have used it. He also talks about Root’s launch last week of an insurance toolkit and platform API to allow start-ups - and others - to develop insuretech products without having to deal with regulation and other complexities.
Louw also talks about Root’s plans for international expansion.
It’s a great discussion. Don’t miss the podcast!
11 Apr 2018 English South Africa Technology · Business

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