Gilbert Verdian, CEO & Founder, Quant

Today we're meeting Gilbert Verdian, the CEO and Founder of Quant, the foundation of digital finance, helping financial institutions and enterprises unlock the power of blockchain.

Over to you, Gilbert!

Who are you and what's your background?

I’m Gilbert Verdian, Founder and CEO at Quant. I work in the exciting world of blockchain and digital finance, but my background is primarily in cybersecurity. I’ve been a CISO, CIO and CTO (all the best ‘techy’ C-suite titles).

I’ve worked in the UK government – for Downing Street, HM Treasury, the Cabinet Office, Ministry of Justice and NSW Health – and served in the private sector, at Mastercard, Vocalink, CSC, EY, PwC, BP and HSBC.

I’m passionate about disruptive technology and what it can bring to financial services, and established the Blockchain ISO Standard TC307 initiative in 2015 – a new set of international standards for blockchain to support its adoption in a safe and secure way.

I’ve lived and worked in the UK for over two decades, but I was born and raised in Australia, where I earned my MBA from the University of Technology, Sydney. I consider the UK my home, but I certainly miss the good weather down under!

What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?

As CEO, I steer the company ship, making sure that everything stays on course while navigating the very fast-moving world of digital finance.

I’m responsible for building and maintaining relationships with key clients and partners, ensuring the financial health of the company and reviewing our strategy to make sure we’re meeting business goals in the short and long term. This means on a day-to-day basis I juggle multiple tasks.

As CEO I’m also one of the key public faces of the company, meaning I often speak at events and represent Quant in media interviews and other public forums. It’s extremely busy, but rewarding.

Can you give us an overview of your business?

Financial services is moving rapidly towards a more digitised infrastructure and at Quant, we are laying the foundation for the future of digital finance.

Assets of all kinds, from sovereign currencies to funds, are being tokenised on distributed ledgers. This is going to bring immense benefits to financial services, including improved market access, greater liquidity, improved operational efficiency and democratisation of assets.

Our Overledger platform is spearheading this transition and is the enterprise standard for building on blockchain. Overledger has been used in our work with the likes of the Bank of International Settlements and the Regulated Liability Network across a range of digital currency and asset tokenisation initiatives.

However, it’s not just financial services we work with – it's businesses of all sizes across all industries. Overledger is unique because it makes the same enterprise-grade technology that underpins all of Quant’s projects with institutional and central bank customers, accessible to large enterprises, SMEs, and developers. This is what we mean when we say we’re unlocking the benefits of blockchain to all.

Overledger is super easy to use and develop; its ‘plug-and-play’ useability and self-servicing capabilities means it does not require specialist skillsets and coding languages. The platform is low-code and API-based, meaning apps can be built in any mainstream coding language and run on any blockchain. This broad and inclusive approach is what makes Quant different to other blockchain players.

What’s the origin story? Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?

Our origin story goes back all the way to 2009, when I was working in HM Treasury and first came across Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin white paper. I was struck by the potential of the underlying technology, blockchain, to transform financial services.

A lot has changed since then, and we’ve seen a clear divergence between crypto and the blockchain technology that underpins it. While the unregulated crypto experiment has clearly failed, we’re seeing distributed ledger technology make major headwinds in traditional banking and financial services.

The problem is, however, that many blockchain technology providers and digital asset platforms lock their customers into proprietary networks or deliver only components of a solution. The situation is made more complicated by the fact that each of these blockchains has its own unique rules and language; a developer trained to work on one blockchain will not necessarily have skills that can be transferred to working on others. In essence, this creates ‘walled gardens’ that stop different blockchain networks from seamlessly communicating with one another.

This was the reasoning behind founding Quant and creating our Overledger platform. Overledger allows companies to issue digital money and interoperable assets with just a few clicks, move them from one blockchain network to another, write new apps that will run on any network, create secure smart contracts that will execute on any blockchain, and use simple APIs to integrate with existing systems.

To date, one of the biggest barriers to blockchain adoption has been a lack of interoperability, and Quant exists to fill this gap.

Who are your target customers? What’s your revenue model?

We have a broad range of customers, ranging from commercial banks, central banks, and investment firms to corporates, SMEs and developers.

If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?

If I had a magic wand, I would accelerate the pace of regulatory reform to make our framework suitable for digital assets.

Much of the regulatory effort and focus to date has been on the consumer side of digital asset usage. However, we need to bring far more targeted regulation to wholesale capital markets so that the entire financial ecosystem can benefit from digital assets.

As is the case with most disruptive technology, recognising the need for regulation is one thing, designing and implementing it is another. Regulation must prioritise security and privacy, while also giving the industry enough breathing room to innovate without barriers. There is a balance to be struck, and close collaboration between technology providers, governments and regulators will be key to reaching it.

What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?

My message for the largest players in financial services: don’t get left behind in the transition to digital finance.

We’re rapidly moving to a new era of digital money, with CBDCs, programmable payments and tokenised deposits set to usher in a new era of payments innovation.

Those that embrace blockchain will not only have the biggest say in crafting new regulatory frameworks, but also hold first-mover advantage in attracting the best talent and skills.

Firms that sit back risk losing their influence and won’t be in as strong a position to reap the benefits of this technology as those that have already begun preparing for and embracing this change.

Where do you get your Financial Services/FinTech industry news from?

X as a first port of call, but I also regularly read the Financial Times, City AM, Ledger Insights and Finextra.

Can you list some people you rate from the FinTech and/or Financial Services sector that we should be following on LinkedIn, and why?

I have two that I’d like to share:

• Tony McLaughlin at Citi. He comes from a deep banking background and presents his thoughts in a straightforward, sensible manner, and cuts through a lot of the ‘airy-fairy’ content that seems to come with fintech.
• Charlotte Hogg at Visa. Her content is positive, collaborative and interesting, and introduces a wider range of topics to my feed.

What FinTech services (and/or apps) do you personally use?

Outside of Apple Pay and PayPal, I don’t generally use fintech apps in my day-to-day live. The only exception is Revolut, which I use occasionally.

What’s the best new FinTech product or service you’ve seen recently?

To be perfectly honest, it has been a while since I saw a fintech product or service that really made me stop. It’s clear that fintechs are trying really hard but in my opinion, they are no longer innovating. Instead, they are rebranding services incumbent banks introduced to the market years ago, or adding on top of legacy systems but there’s no stand-alone service that has blown me away.

I think that fintechs feel limited – they can’t push ahead with the major innovations because of limited access to financial infrastructure, complex compliance frameworks and limitations of the underlying system.

They can’t be as innovative as they want to be.

Finally, let's talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?

Although the past 18 months has been a tumultuous period for crypto, blockchain technology has continued its path towards broader use, with more successful central bank digital currency experiments and the launch of tokenised commercial bank money.

Over the next five years, blockchain will enter a new era of maturity, as a result of tighter regulation and widespread institutional adoption. Rather than a ‘disruptive’ technology as it has been labelled, we should expect a far closer intersection between blockchain and traditional financial services. Financial services go through natural evolutionary cycles, and blockchain is poised to play a central role in ushering in the next era of simpler, faster and cheaper processes across capital markets and financial services.

However, success is reliant upon a commitment to ensuring any projects or solutions prioritise security, compliance and trust. Those that can achieve this will be the ones who reap the benefits of this technology in the long run.

Thank you so much for taking the time to participate Gilbert!

You can find out more about Gilbert Verdian on LinkedIn and read more about his company Quant at https://quant.network/.