In conversation with Tamaz Georgadze

Read time: 3 Minutes

Tamaz Georgadze, CEO and Co-founder at Raisin, attended our Festival Stage to talk about “Expanding, Transforming, IPO? Behind the Scenes with a Founder”. He then stayed on to answer more questions.

You came to Germany at 16, did your PhD in economics, spent nine years at McKinsey, then co-founded one of the most successful fintech companies in Europe. Was building a fintech company your plan –or were you simply solving a problem, and things happened from there?

Tamaz Georgadze: We were quite old for the fintech universe back then, I'm not even sure "fintech" existed as a notion. 

We wanted to solve a problem for customers. We knew people who wanted higher interest rates and were going to foreign banks themselves, trying to open accounts manually. 

On the bank side, Europe is a very fragmented market. There is no real European market in financial services. It's about 27 individual markets, each with its own language, infrastructure, and so on. 

It was about solving a problem and being curious about finding a good solution. I would never have dreamed we'd become a unicorn – I didn't even know what a unicorn was! 

I started at McKinsey not knowing what McKinsey did, and I started a fintech company not knowing what “fintech” meant.

On the topic of fintech and banks, in Raisin's early days there was a strong narrative about fintech disrupting banking and disrupting finance. Now things look very different in that sense. What does a healthy fintech-bank relationship look like today?

Georgadze: Our whole business model is built on partnerships with banks. Without banks, we would have no offering, in that sense, our case was always different. We never said we would disrupt; we augment. 

For every bank, doing everything - from customer acquisition to processing and customer service - for a single product doesn't make sense on its own. There are banks whose scale isn't sufficient to compete in this business alone, and for them we provide a platform. We give them standardised services that can be delivered across multiple countries. So, in that sense, our product and service is deeply connected to the banking world.

More broadly, I think fintech increases competition, which is good because the consumers benefit from it. Competition between banks and fintechs, makes banks faster and makes fintechs more resilient - because banks compete through stability, resilience, and capital. It gives both sides the incentive to level up.

We did an interview almost 10 years ago, where you mentioned that Berlin was the right choice to base Raisin, because of the large pool of international talent, the expats living here, the creativity spreading around, and so on. Would you make the same choice again? And what does Berlin need to do to keep its edge?

Georgadze: Yes, I think these are still good reasons for Berlin, which I still sign up for. For me, Berlin is the right place to be, I like being here. With Raisin we've continued to hire heavily here. Out of our over 800 people, more than half are Berlin-based. It's one of our main hubs.

Of course, there is potential to improve. Frankfurt as a big hub for traditional financial services is really acting for them, doing policy for them, supporting them in the German Parliament, and so on. Berlin is now a big hub for fintech, I'd wish more of that action from the Berlin side. Three of four years ago, financing from the public side started. FIBE is also part of that movement that made this possible. So, now it’s going in the right direction, but I think we need more speed, more energy and more support – because the fintech sector has a lot of potential to create high value jobs in this economy.

Beyond Raisin, what excites you most about the future of finance?

Georgadze: I like that that everything is symbiotic right now. The interfaces are blurrier and the quality of products and services is going up across the board. 

Compared to how it was 15 years ago, the sleekness of apps, the convenience level, the level of service you get has greatly improved and is increasing a lot, which I’m excited about. I think, there is still a lot of potential to go, but we are on a very good trajectory.