EPISODE 253: Marketer of the Month Podcast with Laurent Marochini

The Big Questions!

Saksham Sharda: Okay. Well, that’s the end of the rapid fire. Now we’ll go on to the longer questions, which you can answer with as much time and ease as you like. The first one is, most people spend their whole career playing it safe inside big banks. You basically looked at that and said, “No, I want to be the guy blowing things up from the inside.” Where does that come from? Were you always wired differently, or did something happen? 

Laurent Marochini: Both of them. To be honest with you, I spent my last 27 years in finance, and I’m still in finance, but something was happening around 2010 and 2014. So I started to work in finance in ’98, and in 2010, I decided inside my last company to be head of quality and innovation, to work more with clients to work more in the front office. And I decided to jump into this role, and I discover a bit of myself, and especially in innovation. I decided also to make an MBA in innovation during that time. And in 2014, as head of innovation, blockchain was more in the top of the agenda of the first early mover. I decided to take my pen and to write a note to the direction of my previous company, Societe Generale, and we made a first investment in 2014. And I decided to spend more time in conferences and more time to work on the new technology, blockchain, and this is the start of the second part of my life, let’s say, professional life. 

Saksham Sharda: So it seems you were talking about blockchain when most people thought it was either a scam or science fiction. What’s it like being early on something huge and having everyone around you think you’re kind of crazy? 

Laurent Marochini: Yeah, so they said, “Yeah, Laurent, you are crazy, or you are maybe too early.” Indeed, you cannot imagine the number of times in my life when I was discussing with C-level people to say Bitcoin is a fraud. Even a big CEO in the world said that, “Bitcoin is a scam. Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. ” And each time I have to say and to explain and to convince people that Bitcoin and the technology blockchain is here to stay. Now they change a bit the angle because since 2020 they are not telling me, “Laurent, you are crazy,” but, “Laurent, you did the right things.” So definitely, it’s always a question of timing. It’s always a question of conviction, and you should never give up. Even if you have your conviction, you should never give up. 

Saksham Sharda: Okay, so since you’ve done this before, explain tokenization to me, as I’ve never heard of it. Like, why should someone who has nothing to do with finance care that this exists? 

Laurent Marochini: Okay, it’s quite simple because today, if you want to invest in a transaction, if you want to buy an equity, you need to follow different infrastructure. So the settlement of your share or fund will go to a different infrastructure using a different layer with a depository bank, with a correspondent bank, et cetera, et cetera. You have a lot of intermediaries. Tomorrow, in a tokenized world, the settlement will go to the blockchain infrastructure, so you will not have the same player in this field, and it’s cheaper, better, and you will have the speed with it. 

Saksham Sharda: So there’s always a gap between what a technology can do and what normal people will actually use it for. What’s the killer use case that makes tokenization something your people would eventually use without even knowing it? 

Laurent Marochini: The tokenization of money market funds is definitely the killer app for us, and I think now they know how to do it using blockchain, but in the future you will never see it. 

Saksham Sharda: So you went from being the guy inside a giant bank pushing for change to actually running a bank. Did that change how you see the machine? Like, is it harder to be a rebel when you’re in charge? 

Laurent Marochini: It’s very hard to be a rebel because you need to convince each time. But I have to admit that I prefer running a bank, especially with Standard Chartered Luxembourg, because you can see all the different aspects and you can take your own destiny, and this is what is very important for me. 

Saksham Sharda: Big institutions are famously resistant to change. How do you get a very old bank to try something genuinely new without it just dying in a committee meeting somewhere? 

Laurent Marochini: So in terms of history, you need to know that I joined Standard Chartered one year and a half, so the work has been done before, and I have to acknowledge that it was very well done. But you need to see two different angles. The first one, it should come from the top management, and we have a clear commitment from the top management that blockchain is here to stay, and it’s part of the strategy, so it should be acknowledged in terms of strategy and investment. So we have the education that has been done at the top management level, but the most important is the conviction. And at the end, you have the people that needs to work on the project, that are here to do the daily job, and a lot of things have been done in terms of education and mindset. And to be honest with you, when I joined Standard Chartered a year and a half ago, I was very impressed by the level of knowledge and the mindset of people inside the company. Good job for Standard Chartered. 

Saksham Sharda: What do you know now that you wish someone had just told you at the start? Like, the thing that took you twenty years to figure out that could’ve been a five-minute conversation. 

Laurent Marochini: Yeah. So for me it was mainly in term of mindset. You should not be shy. You are here to set up, to set some ambition. And for me, the most important, you need to connect, you need to connect with people, and you need to work on the education, because education is very important. You need to know what your assets, and you need to move forward. You should not wait that things are doing by themself. You need to move forward, and you need to take your destiny in your hand, so otherwise it will never happen. 

Saksham Sharda: You also teach the next generation of finance people. Are they genuinely ready for how fast everything’s moving, or are we kind of setting them up to be obsolete by the time they graduate? 

Laurent Marochini: No, definitely, they are ready. They were born with an iPhone. They were born with the digital asset. So they are ready, but what they need to take in account is that technology is moving very, very fast, and as I just said before, you, in term of education, you have a kind of expiration date of education. You need to set the foundation. This is what I have done with blockchain and digital asset, but if I’m just going to an island during one year, and I’m not speaking about digital asset during one year, after one year you have a kind of expiration date, so it’s a continuous improvement process. 

Saksham Sharda: Do you think most people will ever actually understand or trust digital assets and tokenized finance, or is this always going to be a thing where a small group of people quietly reshape the world while everyone else just uses it without knowing? 

Laurent Marochini: There is a global improvement in term of understanding, but as I said, things are moving very, very fast, so they need to continue with education because what’s going on today will happen potentially in two, three years’ time. But if you go beyond the five to 10 years’ time, there will be additional changes. So the technology is moving very, very fast, and if you are just looking to 2020 with AI, now we are speaking about AI a bit everywhere. Everything is moving fast, so you need to constantly move forward in term of education. 

Saksham Sharda: You ride bikes, you lecture students, you run a bank, you’re pushing the frontier of finance. What are you actually chasing? Like, what does winning look like for you? 

Laurent Marochini: I’m chasing to go for the success of Standard Chartered Luxembourg. We have a lot of projects. We have a lot of things to do, so my priority number one today will be to make the success in Luxembourg, in Europe, in the world of Standard Chartered. 

Saksham Sharda: If everything you’ve been working on for the last decade actually plays out, what does the financial system look like in twenty years, and should regular people be excited or terrified? 

Laurent Marochini: We should not be terrified, because the best way to predict the future is to build it. So, definitely you need to embrace innovation. You need to work on the education. And in twenty years’ time, we will not speak about AI, we will not speak about digital assets. It will be part of our daily life. 

Saksham Sharda: All right. So the last question for you is of a personal kind. What would you be doing in your life if not this? 

Laurent Marochini: Bicycle. 

Let’s Conclude!

Saksham Sharda: Thanks, everyone for joining us for this month’s episode of Outgrow’s Marketer of the Month. That was Laurent Marochini, who is the Global Head of Payments at Accenture.

Laurent Marochini: Great to be here. Thank you.

Saksham Sharda: Check out the website for more details, and we’ll see you once again next month with another marketer of the month.