Kris Hansen has a dual role that may be unique in financial services. He is Chief Technical Officer of both the Canadian challenger bank Koho and the early-stage fintech investor group Portag3 Ventures, also Canada-based.
These roles give him an overview of the entire fintech funding landscape. He also knows intimately, perhaps painfully, how banks actually work. Earlier in his career he was Director of Solutions Architecture for RBC, and in this role he mapped out the entire operations of a bank. He could pull out a piece of paper and diagram the workings of a bank in minutes.
This insight allows him to do things differently at Koho and not be stuck, as he put it, “in the constructs of the 70s and 80s.”

Listen to this episode to hear Hansen discuss the Canadian banking and fintech scene, how banks can build things differently and better, and the outlook for venture funding for today’s up and coming startups.