The Irish Tech News Podcast

🎙️ "Delight is a deposit strategy."
In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Angela Scott, Sales Enablement leader at Zions, joins host Theodora Lau, to discuss her idea that “delight is a deposit strategy,” arguing banks can win deposits by creating intuitive, responsive, and even enjoyable experiences that make money movement easy, especially when digital experiences are constrained by shared core and app vendors. 
They get into: 
Why delight isn’t fluff

Why the best deposit strategy makes money easy to move in and out

The chick-and-egg trap of building on the same handful of core and app providers

Financial literacy, and why communities shouldn’t bear the burden

Why we need to make banking more legible

Angela stresses balancing efficiency and humanity through employee, digital, and brand experience to build trust. 

💬 “If you want deposits, you have to bring the right environment to set them free.”
🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Keywords: Fintech, FinancialServices, Banking Industry, Financial Inclusion, Financial Literacy 

00:00 Welcome and Introductions
01:05 Delight as Deposit Strategy
04:43 Banking UX and Vendor Limits
07:16 Neobank Story and Micro Delights
11:46 Angela’s Origin Story
17:22 Inclusion and Literacy Work
25:29 Digital Efficiency vs Human Touch
33:02 Brand Experience and Differentiation
36:56 Takeaways and Goodbye

More about our guest 
🌐Angela Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-scott-a2348827/ 

More about our host and One Vision Podcast 
🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 
🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 
🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 
🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 
**

The EU AI compliance deadline arrived on August 2nd and it’s important that companies have been preparing for it. According to AI expert Cathal McCarthy of Kore.ai, companies that establish robust AI governance frameworks today will be better positioned to deploy AI faster in a highly regulated industry.
To help leaders assess their preparedness, Cathal has developed a six-question diagnostic that evaluates the maturity of an organisation's AI governance program. The framework is designed to quickly identify whether key governance structures, accountability mechanisms, and oversight processes are in place, or where gaps still remain.  
I caught up with Cathal to find out more about the EU AI compliance and how businesses should prepare for it. Cathal talks about his background, AI compliance, AI adaptability, the ability to learn, AI transparency and more.
More about Cathal McCarthy:
Cathal is Chief Strategy Officer at Kore.ai, an enterprise AI and agentic AI platform serving Fortune 500 and PE-backed customers globally.
He has twenty-five years scaling enterprise technology businesses and has held leadership roles at Apple during its growth from $8B to over $200B in revenue, and at eBay leading initiatives across 163 million users. He also brings P&L instinct, GTM design experience, and credibility in the boardroom on AI transformation.

Here at Irish Tech News we love meeting and introducing new Irish startups to our readers and podcast listeners. One such startup is Montro that helps companies with their AI and SaaS governance. Earlier this year at Dublin Tech Summit my colleague Billy Linehan brought Montro onto out radar and I recently caught up with Ankur Arora one of Montro’s Co-Founders to find out more about Montro.
Ankur talks about his background, compliance, what Montro does, shadow AI, EU regulations and more.
More about Montro:
Montro is a Dublin-based AI governance and SaaS intelligence platform that discovers unmanaged software and automates European regulatory compliance.  Discover every tool, classify against EU AI Act, DORA, NIS2, and GDPR before auditors do.

As insurers move beyond AI experimentation towards enterprise-wide transformation, industry leaders are increasingly focused on one question: how do you scale AI to deliver measurable operational impact?  This was one of the challenges explored at the recent InsTech.ie Transformation Summit 2026 and to find out more about this I caught up with Gary Leyden, CEO of InsTech.ie.
Gary talks to me about  about his background, AI adoption, insurance transformation, and the trends shaping the future of the sector. 
More about InsTech.ie:
InsTech.ie was formally established as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee in November 2021. Since then they’ve been helping their members and insurtechs to connect, collaborate and build capability. 
In 2024 InsTech.ie was selected  to receive funding under the Smart Regions Enterprise Innovation Scheme to help support the growth and development of our insurtech cluster. This funding will help us to maximise enterprise collaboration and stimulate the growth and development of the insurtech cluster in Ireland.

In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Theo chats with Huyen Tran from US Bank and founder/investor at Elys Ventures. Huyen shares her path from computer engineering and early real-estate investing to two decades in banking product leadership and P&L ownership. She discusses why banks can appear slow due to resilience, regulation, legacy systems, and trust requirements, and how AI will accelerate prototyping, testing, data analysis, and iterative product development while meeting customer expectations for personalization and security amid rising fraud. 
A must-listen episode on startup, innovation, relationship building, and ecosystem thinking.
 
🔥"What value are you creating for everyone involved? ...Just don't forget about the people."

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Keywords: AI, Fintech, FinancialServices, VC, Startups, Banking Industry 

Timestamps:

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:53 Path to Banking
05:17 Are Banks Really Slow?
08:09 AI Changing Bank Product
10:39 Customer Expectations and Trust
13:27 Inside Elys Ventures
14:18 Moats in the AI Era
18:37 Founder Questions and Cycles
20:27 Advice for New Founders
23:41 Closing 

More about our guest 
🌐Huyen Tran on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huyen-tran-09a580aa/ 

More about our host and One Vision Podcast 
🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 
🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 
🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 
🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 
**