FS Vector on Election Fintech Implications with Ashwin Vasan and Peter Freeman

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00:00 | 36:20

Fintech Layer Cake

In this episode of Fintech Layer Cake, Reggie Young sits down with Ashwin Vasan and Peter Freeman, partners at FS Vector, to discuss the evolving regulatory landscape and its implications for fintech and banking innovation. From personnel changes in Washington to the future of digital assets and data privacy, Ashwin and Peter provide actionable insights on what’s shaping the fintech industry in the wake of election outcomes.

Transcript

Reggie Young:
Welcome back to Fintech Layer Cake, where we uncover secret recipes and practical insights from fintech leaders and experts. I'm your host, Reggie Young, Chief of Staff at Lithic. On today's episode, I chat with Peter Freeman and Ashwin Vasan, who are both partners at FS Vector.

We get into it in the episode, but FS Vector is a strategic consulting firm that helps fintechs and banks succeed with innovation. The firm has a host of subject matter experts like Peter and Ashwin, so I wanted to get them on the podcast to tease out the fintech implications of the election. We're big fans of FS Vector at Lithic, so I was really excited for this conversation.

Ashwin Vasan:
Yeah. FS Vector, we're an advisory firm consultancy for- anything kind of innovative financial services is how I like to say it, but that's a pretty broad bandaid itself. Perhaps uniquely, we do everything from licensing, creation of new businesses, new product launches, all the way to sort of public policy advocacy, lobbying work. The team here has a really great sense of everything that's happening in Washington and how it impacts fintechs and banks and others trying to do new things in innovative finance.

Ashwin Vasan's Background:
I spent a bunch of my career at the CFPB, both first under Director Cordray in the early years, helping to build the agency, and most recently with Director Chopra for the last three years, running most of the policy work. Joined the team here at FS Vector about a year ago.

Peter Freeman:
Peter Freeman, helped head up the advocacy team here as a partner at FS Vector. I spent most of my career on Capitol Hill working for Republicans on the House side, Financial Services Committee, Foreign Affairs Committee, and House leadership as well. Really excited to have Ashwin on the team. We've got a depth of experience on both sides of the aisle, regulatory experience, Capitol Hill experience. It's a fun group to work with every day.

Reggie Young:
That's where I want to orient today's episode around. I guess I'll just open it up broadly. What do you think are some of the more likely changes or impacts that we're going to see from the election outcome?

Peter Freeman:
The biggest thing is obviously the administration. The House and the Senate are both Republican, but the majorities are so slim; real, lasting changes, generally going to have to be bipartisan still. The biggest changes, personnel at the administration, the SEC in particular. If you're thinking digital assets, I think enforcement activity is not going away, but it's definitely going to change demonstrably.

Reggie Young:
Yeah, love it. I'm endlessly impressed with where I see FS Vector folks continually pop up. You guys seem to be working on anything and everything related to fintech and banking and financial innovation. Excited for our conversation because I reached out to FS Vector to see who the best folks to talk about election implications would be, and both of your names immediately popped up.

Ashwin Vasan:
The other thing I'd say is all the changes Peter talked about is going to be super interesting to watch. It's not clear what the North Star is. I think there'll be a lot of undo-everything energy. But once you start to look at individual policy questions, especially as the merging of left and right populism has more and more green shoots, you might see some surprising results.

Reggie Young:
It's a great segue to my next question. I think a lot of our conversation so far has been focused on existing initiatives, but I'm curious to hear what you both think are some of the most likely or more interesting potential, like net new regulatory initiatives. Digital assets I think is probably- given the amount of money that was spent on lobbying this past election, that seems like we'll see some likely movement there.

Peter Freeman:
Digital assets is obviously one where there's been movement in Congress. One of the key legislators in that space, Congressman French Hill from Arkansas, just won selection from the House Republicans and the Steering Committee to be the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. So he's going to be in a very consequential seat working on some of those same issues.

The two big legislative initiatives that have been circulating, deal with stablecoins and then a larger, what we term, market structure bill. FIT 21 was the name of the bill. So there are starting points with these pieces of legislation that had some Democrats support as well.

Ashwin Vasan:
I expect there to be movement on maybe new bank charters to traditional processes along with bank mergers, acquisitions. I think that, I can imagine, especially with leadership changing and the FDIC changing, moving forward. Payments charter is the big one. I feel like we'd need to pass some sort of stablecoin first as a model.

Reggie Young:
Thank you both so much for this conversation. It's been enlightening.