The Battle Against Fraud | Interview with Luke Warner, Vitruvian Spirit at Sovereign

The Battle Against Fraud | Interview with Luke Warner

===

Ryan Purvis: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Digital Workspace Works podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host, supported by our producer, Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field, stories from the front lines, the problems they face and how they solve them, the areas they're focused on from technology, people, and processes to the approaches they took that will help you to get to the scripts for the Digital Workspace inner workings.

So welcome Luke to the digital works Do you want to introduce yourself please?

Luke Warner: Yeah.

My name's Luke. I have a background in engineering, worked as an investment banker for four years. I built my own, digital identity platform called Integrate Me. The vision of it then was self sovereign identity and sharing the profits with the user base as a form of universal basic income.

I had my Steve jobs moment and got fired by the board after four years. I then immigrated to the UK with my wife and daughter. I've been working at a few pre IPO companies. Helping them hyperscale, building end to end digital onboarding for SMEs and corporates. So basic identity verification, know your customer, AML screening and the like.

And in the past two years, I've been performing a consultant role. Again, doing like CTO roles, director roles, chief innovation officer and the like, or just doing end to end digital transformations. And my latest venture now is I'm acquiring my business IntegrateMe in South Africa as a KYC. Third party trusted provider, and I've launched something called the Vitruvian key which is a blockchain based, digital identity wallet where 88 percent of the profits will be distributed to the user base as a form of universal basic income. So that's, what I'm passionate about. And that's what I'm working on.

Ryan Purvis: Wow. I had no idea. That's what the vitrium key was about.

Luke Warner: Oh, I've also just published a book last week on, Kindle.

So it's called the Vitruvian Epoch. It's the icky guy of art technology, business and spirituality in order to create abundance for converging world. So you can get it for free on our website, or you can pay for it. I'm doing the audible recordings next week. So, there's, it's free and if you want, you can also pay for it.

Ryan Purvis: So, Why so altruistic?

Luke Warner: I suppose there's a whole bunch of psychometric tests that you do as you go along the business world. One of them was called the enema gram or in your, in your gram. Yeah. Yeah. I scored another seven on there for being an enthusiastic visionary.

Another good psychometrics test was called strength finder 2. 0. And so mine were: 1. Idealist, 2. Individualist, 3. Activator, 4. Futurist, and 5. Learner. So I think it's just in my DNA. to be altruistic, there's a whole psychology principle about selfishness is equal in altruism. Because when you realise that you are, and we are, and we're all one, then by helping others, you're helping yourself.

So being altruistic is actually just being selfish.

Ryan Purvis: Well, that's the whole Ubuntu thing. I am because we are.

Luke Warner: There we go. So it got the South African in you or the African in you.

Ryan Purvis: Well, I was born and bred in Jo'burg.

Luke Warner: So really? Yeah. So I was in Cape town for 20 years and then 10 years in Jo'burg before I immigrated to the UK. Okay.

Ryan Purvis: Which part of Cape town are you

Luke Warner: Newlands Rondebosch area.

Ryan Purvis: Okay. Oh, very nice. Yeah. my cousin was there for a long

time.

Luke Warner: Oh, I suppose where the altruism came from. I was in a lot of foster care and I spent 10 years in an orphanage called Marsh Memorial children's home. And so I kind of benefited directly from other people being altruistic, like donation of the Methodist church, looking after us KFCs to ran donations to feed us, Woolies giving us all the expired food.

And so I wouldn't be where I am today if other people were not altruistic, foster parents, and people like that looking after me and guiding me. So I suppose it's just my way of saying, thank you.

Ryan Purvis: No, it's good to hear. did you ever find your biological folks or, or not?

Luke Warner: Oh yeah. So they're alive.

When I was a kid, I used to say they were dead because it was easier to explain to my friends at school why I lived in an orphanage like Oliver Twist.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah.

Luke Warner: I met my biological dad for the first time when I was 15. And I, Established a relationship with my grandparents and my aunt and they took me in and it was hard to know that people loved you.

So there's a, there's an article that you can Google. I think it's on my link tree page. It says from assassin to electrical engineer, because before I met my dad side of the family, when I was 15, like I was doing Muay Thai kickboxing. I got selected for the essay squad to represent essay in Greece at the Olympics.

And I thought, you know, fast cars, fast motorbikes, hot women, James Bond type of thing. I'm going to be an assassin. Like when you were at school, when they're like, write like a journal for orientation about what your profession is, they're like, I'm going to be an assassin. They didn't like that. Once I started to, I suppose, be loved and know that people can care about you.

I became an electrical engineer.

Ryan Purvis: What's movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger? True lies. Yeah. He's the, he's a salesman, and he's a secret assassin special agent. That's, that's sort of your vibe. Wow. Okay. and your biological mom, did you not find her at all?

Luke Warner: So I actually stayed with my biological mom until I was six.

Because I've got a daughter now, which she turned six in April. And growing up, there was like a lot of resentment for my mom. She got kicked out of the house at the age of 17 and she had five kids with five different fathers. She was definitely not financially literate. So bottom of the food chain, economically speaking.

And it was a very tough growing up, but now looking at my six year old daughter and the fact that she's alive and walking stuff, I'm like, Oh, my mom actually must've done her best because she raised me till I was six. And then I got taken away by child protection services, jumped around a few foster homes and then ended up at the orphanage from seven to 17.

The relationship with my mom is not great. yeah. Blames things on, economics and financial stuff. So it's kind of, I suppose what leads me into the concept of universal basic income, because if you take money out of the equation, most people are amazing people. But as soon as you add stress, it kind of brings out the worst in people.

And like money is just something we invented, to trade. So I think, especially with like all the AI developments and stuff and like people worried about where their job's going to go and things like that, you're just like, well, Why we take all the amazing benefits from AI developments being like billions and trillion times more efficient.

And at some point you're going to have to have universal basic income. So there's been like hundreds of experiments. I read a book about 10 years ago by Rutner, some Dutch dude. And he basically went through all the case studies of all the universal basic income experiments that have happened. And they were all successful.

Like you would think that if you gave people like a thousand pounds a month, they would all become drug addicts and alcoholics and just stay at home and do nothing. But what they ended up doing is women would leave abusive relationships. They would go and upskill themselves. People would buy gifts for each other.

They would educate themselves. They would leave jobs that we're not respecting them or doing stuff and it effectively go for a better life. So people are driven by a sense of purpose and dignity and wanting to play and do something. So I think by having UBI universal basic income, like you empower people to be their best selves.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. Rutger, It's yeah. I've just looked at utopia for the realists. and it's interesting because if you look at some of the stuff that, you know, Musk was saying a couple times recently that he still thinks UBI makes a lot of sense

Luke Warner: I have this tiny regret. I've been part of this community called A360 Abundance Digital by Peter Diamandis by Digital Technologies and Entrepreneurship and Abundance. And it's a, it's a real, real good cocaine for your brain, type of content, that they give. And, I was part of that community and I got invited to speak on a panel with Elon Musk on universal basic income in January, 2020, and then COVID hit and then the event didn't happen.

And like, when it didn't happen, so like that would have been like my little claim to fame. So I got, well, basically there was a pause and I'm back with a vengeance,



Ryan Purvis: honestly. I'll be back.

Luke Warner: You got to say it right. I'll be back.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. I wish I could. I actually want to get that little, remember used to get those, back in the original apps you'd get on the, iPhone when it first came out, you get the Arnold Schwarzenegger buttons and you press for all these different preloaded sayings.

So like I'll be back and all that stuff. And I actually wanted to make it a ringtone.

Luke Warner: Oh yeah, I used to play ringtones. When you had like your Nokia 3310, like as a kid, you used to program like crazy frog or something. And then I, but so cute to play like snake and bounce for hours. And then I used to like program ringtones for every different person so that when the phone rang, I knew who it was based on what the ringtone was.

It was quite fun.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. Yeah.

I said, well, I mean, after a while you have too many different ringtones. You don't remember who's who.

Luke Warner: Okay. Maybe I didn't make, so like now you've got hundreds of contacts on your phone, but back then, maybe you had like a dozen contacts that you cared about.

Ryan Purvis: Well, I still think you do, but I mean, my phone's always on silent.

So it never rings, it vibrates.

Luke Warner: Like if you want like a fun tip to get hold of me, like phone three times in a row, my default setting is do not disturb. And you'd be amazed how much like noise it saves me because most people don't have the confidence to phone back twice and they sure as hell don't have the confidence to phone back three times.

So like it filters people really well.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I've chatted over WhatsApp. I mean, most of my conversations are text conversations anyway. So it's already the people I need to speak to that I speak to on the phone.

Luke Warner: I used to be really bad with text. So, you could have like blamed it on something like dyslexia or just like poor schooling.

And I used to get into trouble with text, like text writing, because I wasn't able to articulate myself well. And then I found this tool called Grammarly premium. It's a life changer. So not only does it, like correct your writing to be professional writing, but they've got like tone analytics. So like send a message, like it will show me a bunch of emojis, which is like how this is going to come across the other person.

And so what I do is like, I go into the backend of Grammarly. And like, if you pay for the business subscription, you can put in like your style guide and stuff, and you can say how your brand's supposed to come. And then they list like all the different like emotional contexts. And you can say, I don't want to come across as rude or disrespectful, arrogant, or, and so then when it pops up on your keyboard.

It effectively, reedits your text for you to come in line with your personal brand. So I think that's, I mean, it costs like 25 pounds a month and like, it's a no brainer. It's like completely changed my life.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, it's also on my, list of tools that I use. And in fact, I think I use the keyboard now.

Well, I flip between key two keyboards. I have TextExpand and I have Grammarly. Yeah. TextExpand is also one that saves me a lot of time.

Luke Warner: What does TextExpand do?

Ryan Purvis: Well, it's in the name. So, what you do is you have short codes, like exclamation mark, Cal 30, which is my, Calendly link or my booking link for 30 minutes.

So if someone wants to book time with me, it's easy just to say, you know, hit me up on there. And then, you know, if I have like, the introduction for ValuuExecs email, I can expand that as well. And then I can also in that, I can replace like the first name, their LinkedIn profile, you know, just to just the merging information.

Luke Warner: There's a super cool tool that I use, which is similar as called Super Human. So it manages your emails and it's effectively got all those short keys as well for like your calendar links.

Ryan Purvis: Okay. Yeah.

Luke Warner: And on the calendar link side, like I found this tool called Linktree. So yeah, it's basically just like, it's a page.

It's like a, it's a mini microsite, which has all your social media accounts and hyperlinks to your stuff. So I put my booking link on the top, but when I send it to people. Effectively, they can kind of do their homework. And then if you click on the booking link, it goes to motion. And then what motion does is you can ask like questions.

So I ask eight questions before the meeting to kind of effectively set up an agenda and prepare. So before the meeting happens, I know exactly why I'm having the meeting and what's the outcomes and results that somebody's looking for. And then on my meetings, I put in Otter AI as an, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, Like an AI transcription tool.

So it records it. It takes screenshots and then you can have like a chat bot with the transcript. But then I export the transcript into chat GPT. Give me an executive summary. Give me the action items and next steps. And then I pop an email out 30 seconds later with the auto AI transcript and the chat GPT executive summary.

And it's just made me like hyper, hyper efficient.

Ryan Purvis: I would love to do that. So I stopped using Otter AI for a while because I found that the Otter transcriptions weren't very good. so it might be good to, to go through that process with you because...

Luke Warner: we are doing it right now. So, right now you have access to it, and I'll send you the summary afterwards.

Ryan Purvis: No, I used to use it, so, so I'm familiar with the functionality. But that's handoff between the, having the call with Ottter's transcribing, putting it through chat GDP. How are you actually getting the one to talk to the other one?

Are you using Zapier?

Luke Warner: No, so I'm not using Zapier. Actually, it's just, look, I just go onto the auto, like it's running right now. So I can show you a screenshot if you want. You just go onto the thing and you click export and then it exports, you can do like PDF or I just do it in a text file and it can also be the audio. But I just, I export the text file and I upload the text file into chat GPT, just the normal chat GPT, like the basic one.

And then I just type in the prompt, give me an executive summary, take away the action items and next steps and then shoots out.

Ryan Purvis: So, if you've got the, premium version of auto, which I

don't know if you do.

Luke Warner: Yeah. Yeah. Basically with any application that's out there, if you've built your own business, you get what you pay for.

So the free version is, is free for a reason and the premium version is where all the gold is.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. So what I would do with the Otter is that you can actually synchronise your transcripts with a folder in Dropbox.

Luke Warner: Yeah, you can.

Ryan Purvis: And then you can use Zapier to pick up the file in Dropbox to push it through ChatGPT and then send you your transcript.

Like you've just done it with your prompt.

Luke Warner: Yeah, you can. So I think the ChatGPT is almost like a nice to have because the Otta thing actually does send you an email summary and like it does send you all the action items and summary points already. I just also like using chat GPT 'cause it's fun

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. But my, my issue with Otter that it didn't always pick up.

Luke Warner: it's like all technologies. It's on the exponential curve. The Moore's law curve. It's, it's getting exponentially better. So give it another shot.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. No. Well, it's good to have these conversations because it reignites,

Luke Warner: I stopped using it for about a year because it was shit, but now it's better.

Ryan Purvis: So now how'd you come up with the name Vitrium?

Luke Warner: Vitruvian. Vitruvian. Sorry. So I acquired 50 percent of an art portfolio as like a, an angel investor. The artist's name is Hakan Hassim. So like his work is just unbelievable. You can Google him. His work is unbelievably mind blowing. And so I commissioned a tantra piece where like the, goal was to like, take some, let's say erotic or seductive photos of my wife and I, and then send them to him and say, can you make a tantra piece of like the divine feminine and the divine masculine?

Like there's this cool book by David Dada called "The Way of the Superior Man". And I thought this would be really nice to stick up on our wall in our bedroom to remind us of like the best selves that we can be. So that's how the relationship with Hakan started. And I bought a bunch of his hoodies and stuff off his Shopify store.

But when I got to meet him and I found out how much money he was making, I was like, you're making an okay amount of money. Like he could live sustainably. But I was like, there's no ways like you deserve so much more. Like in my opinion, your work is greater than like Da Vinci or Raphael. so he started this piece called the Vitruvian spirit. So, Da Vinci did the Vitruvian man, which is an exceptional like piece. He was most well known for the Mona Lisa, but the Vitruvian man was, was a piece that he did. If you Google Vitruvian man, you'll see like this dude with like perfect symmetry and stuff. And. Yeah. So, yeah, so he created the Vitruvian spirit and you can see there's a, like a two month, 27 hour time lapse in 14 minutes.

It's on our website where you can just Google the making of the Vitruvian spirit. So I registered the entity and I said, well, cool, let's go 50, 50. I'll be your distribution angle. And like, I'll hyperscale this for you. I'll implement end to end digital transformation, optimise the shit out of your Shopify store, buy some themes and stuff.

And basically make sure that like, if you like took a Shopify store and like, you ran it through some analytics and basically said it was like slow as fuck. And it was like terrible. And I was like, you're creation, like your product is incredible, but your delivery sucks. And so, so we formed a friendship.

I've been to Turkey with his family and we're going again this year. And so when I, I basically set up a consulting entity. I've worked for a bunch of pre IPO companies doing end to end digital transformations, mostly customer onboarding, KYC, AML, credit vetting, fraud detection, and then all like the big data analytics on how do you mitigate default risk.

Yeah. So, all institutions face default risk. It's basically, even if you borrow money to somebody and they don't pay back your loan, but the biggest default risk is, no payment or late payment or no payment. yeah, that, that's kind of my bread and butter over the last decade has been effectively digital transformations, end to end automation and like hyper efficiency.

Ryan Purvis: So tell me about the digital transformation stuff that you do that, I mean, what is that? when you say end to end, would you do?

Luke Warner: So I did an engineering degree and they taught you these things of like process maps and flow charts and like inputs and outputs, like systems and boxes is an input.

There's a black box. There's some kind of mathematical function or something happens in the black box. I know, I think a degree only teaches you to read, write, and think, and maybe have some persistence and grit to finish something on a deadline. And when I was in the bank, it was taken about nine months to onboard a corporate client.

So from once you hosted like your conference or event, you sponsored it, that you met somebody on like. Some fancy sports match or something. And, you know, you shook hands with the client and you're like, we're going to do business together. It took nine months to onboard a corporate and nine months, a very long period of time.

And the revenue just doesn't come through. We're like, we were doing the budgets and stuff. And like, we were like, we have all these big game changes in the pipeline. And so I just took the task as a young, excited banker. And I said, well, let me understand what the process is end to end. So everyone in the bank, like 50, 000 people work in the bank and they're all working in their box. And they don't know who else is doing what or who's who and what processes actually happen.

So I just took a simple pen and paper. And then I put it into like, you know, you got like those, process mapping tools. So at first I did it in PowerPoint, then it got really big. And I think I used like lucid charts.

Ryan Purvis: Oh, yes. Yeah.

Luke Warner: I just went to everybody's desk, kind of like a business analyst type consultant.

And I just said, you know, we're going to onboard this client. Like, could I speak to next, who'd I speak to next? And I just built out the swim lanes and like the processes. And I, I put the processes, I put the people's names, I put the department's names and effectively mapped out like this long sequential process.

And then I say, well, I put time differentials on it. And I, so on the process map, there were the swim lanes, but I also put time differentials because as an engineer, you kind of want to displace time and space and you want to take something that takes nine months and you want to make it happen in like a split second.

So I put all the time differentials and it showed the nine month process. And then I re engineered the process to say, well, what processes could happen in parallel and where was like the lag time. And we managed to get that process down to six weeks and then we managed to get it down to two weeks. So from nine months down to two weeks. And then the reason it still took two weeks is there was the individual Onboarding stage of, of know your customer and identity verification, where effectively customers had to post in their IDs or they had to come into the branch and show their face and they had to bring in their utility bills and stuff.

And sometimes we would have big billion dollar deals for like power plants, railway lines, or bridges. And then we sit in around a credit committee table with like 40 executives. And then I get to sit in as an observer, as a business manager to like my head of department. And then somebody will ask the question, has compliance KYC and AML been done?

And like the deal can't go through unless it's been done. Those background checks have been done. And then they'll send me as the youngest person on the team in my car to drive to the client's site to do a site visit and ask for a copy of their ID and utility bills. And this process was taking about two weeks.

And so effectively I tried to solve the challenge within the bank. I tried to find a whole bunch of external vendors, which we're going to do effectively like remote onboarding. And the mobile phones 2016 they were cool, but In South Africa, most people had feature phones or like a Blackberry.

And so I resigned from the bank, to start my business, Integrate Me. And the bank was one of our customers and a bunch of the telcos and insurance companies. And we took that two week process down to two minutes. And so now it's the gold standard worldwide that you can sign up for a bank account and do your KYC and verification process in under two minutes.

But we were the first to do it in South Africa back in 2016.

Ryan Purvis: Sho. and it's so ubiquitous now. I mean, if you think, I mean, obviously with what we did at FinXone, we're building apps to do the KYC, the onboarding for someone to use a FinTech app.

Luke Warner: Yeah.

Ryan Purvis: It's still a critical process, but you're still talking about something that takes a few minutes to onboard somebody.

Luke Warner: It's amazing how we think a few minutes is a long time now when like 10 years ago it was two weeks.


Ryan Purvis: Yeah. No, that's it. And, you know, what I find interesting with all that is that, you know, what you mentioned about having a decentralised identity platform is you're doing the same onboarding all the time, different places, it's reusable.

Luke Warner: So there's, there's a whole bunch of best in class vendors, which like they're all multi billion dollar companies. Now, if you think about like on Fido and yachty and civic and, I can go on and I can send you the list afterwards, but they, because their revenue model is they charge per transaction, they don't actually store the identity and they kind of say, Oh, it's cause the GDPR compliance and bloody blah, but it's because their revenue model is they want to repeat business, whereas the way I position it is that you have this digital identity vault and you make it like SSO, a single sign on.

And you've effectively got data identity. So if you register for an app, I think Apple does it the best way it will say register with Apple and then they'll give you a virtual email so that nobody gets your email address. But all Apple and Google sign in and stuff does is it gives you a name and your email address for some reason, like I've been to San Francisco to Facebook headquarters and stuff.

And like, I've asked them, like they tried to acquire us. You know, why have you not stepped into the digital identity space and why have you not stepped into proof of residence? Like you've got billions of users and their view was just like, well, we already under so much scrutiny for like data privacy and stuff.

Like we don't want to step into the minefield of managing personal.

Ryan Purvis: I don't blame them. I mean, it's such a minefield, especially with legislation being so different across the world. I mean, you have obviously GDPR, you have the U S doesn't follow all that across all the states. So it's very complicated.

And then you have limitations or lack of it in China or Asia.

Luke Warner: It's so easy. GDPR is basically a product requirements document to say this is best in class and this is how you do it. So Oh, he's basically saying, this is, this is how you do it. So like, just follow the steps. It's interesting. In fact, once Elon Musk bought Twitter and they implemented the cost for the blue tick, pretty much all the social media platforms followed within six months, as companies usually do. And it costs 22 a month for a Twitter blue tick account, and it costs 11 a month for an Instagram blue tick.

And then you've got the LinkedIn verification and the Facebook blue tick. And so now they're all making money off this little blue tick. But again, in order to get the blue tick, They use a trusted third party KYC provider to verify that you deserve the blue tick that your name matches your identity document.

And then these big companies, they've got single sign on, but they're not leveraging it for one tap onboarding. Like I don't, they're not doing like the money's just sitting on the table.

Ryan Purvis: So how would you solve that problem then?

Luke Warner: With the Vitruvian key. We effectively, we are rebuilding a self sovereign identity, a digital identity vault on the blockchain, leveraging what's called a soul bound NFT.

So it's basically a non fungible token linked to your identity that only you can have. You can't sell it to anybody else. It's not transferable. And then there'll be the single sign on where we'll offer like 888 free credits or free verifications to businesses. And thereafter they'll pay like And it will be one click onboarding.

So there'll be two parts to it. There'll be an anonymised onboarding and then there'll be consent driven onboarding. So it's very much like a credit report where you get the soft credit report for free, but they're like, this is your credit score. So at a high level you can say yay or nay, but then if you want full 12 page credit report, well then you've got to pay like 10 pounds.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. And you can do the other one. There's a 15 pound, I think, where you get detection thing for any credit checks on you identity conflicts, I guess, I think they call it CFOS, which cause that when we did a trip to SA once came back and it was a whole bunch of letters to the door saying I bought like six cars.

And you know, cause that's, the way they check. If you've, they send you a letter to your address to make sure you live there. And I spoke to the one guy and he said, yeah, I know this, these guys are trying to buy this car. They're sending bank statements. They're sending you the central driver's license, all this stuff.

I said, well, it's not me. He said, yeah. And I said, well. Can you prove it's not you? So I sent him a picture of myself with driver's license. And he said, yeah, they can't do that. I said, that's how you know. And then the bank, I said, send me a copy of the bank statements. And they had, because they knew I banked with Barclays, they'd taken the bank and the Barclays letterhead.

And then put some other transactions on it because those transactions obviously match up to the payslips that they're providing.

Luke Warner: So it's very easy to commit fraud. It's easier than ever to commit fraud, but at the same time, like there's just, there's a fight between good and bad light and dark.

And just the game of life. And so it's also the easiest it's ever to mitigate fraud. I think some companies just don't do it because they're scared. So you've got cost of customer acquisition, and then you've got your leads and then they become prospects and then you verify them, they become qualified leads and then you've got to activate them.

Now there's this balance that you've got to make with the signup process where you want the least friction to make sure the customer doesn't drop off in that funnel. Now, a lot of businesses are valued based on how many active users they have and how many customers they have. So they got their valuation multiples based on potential future revenues.

And so if they've got friction to having people on boarded, they effectively have less customers. So this is what happened with a telco. So MTN got a 5. 2 billion fine because they were selling SIM cards to anybody without verifying them. But now if you're MTN, your view is, well, and this was in Nigeria.

And like, whenever you get an email from Nigeria, normally it goes straight to spam, but there's a high probability that they're, I mean, they're professional scammers. Like you would think like, why don't you use that skillset to be a professional seller? cause they, they're quite persuasive. And you just like use that same skillset in a different environment.

But so with MTN situation, their view was just like, well, we don't, and that's why they got the fine. They're like, well, we don't care if we're not verifying the people because we sell in data, we make your money and we can afford to pay the fine. So I think with most they're more interested in getting the customer on board.

Without judging the customer, but then what they're not realising long term is A. You've got reputational risk. And if you're a financially regulated institution, you can lose your license. Like you could lose your bank license, but B. At the end of the day, you're going to have default risk, which is they're either not going to pay back your loan.

And that's why loans are so expensive on their interest rates, because they've got to compensate for all the defaulted loans, or you're not going to have like payment risk. People might not pay you. So you do actually show rate and be selective over who you do business with.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, and I think your challenge with a lot of this stuff is when a company is established and the directors are put in place, you need to make sure that the directors are actually who they say they are, you know, the company is actually a legitimate trading organisation. Because you can have, you know, a fake company with the same details as another one looks close enough.

And, you know, where some of these challenges come is that the doesn't actually tangibly exist. And, you know, there was a thing where someone, it's sort of an invoice fraud, where they would invoice with the sum of the name.

Luke Warner: Fraud is a massive thing. So there's like, if you just Google like fines for AML regulations, you'll find multi billion dollar fines.

And apparently they estimate that there's 2. 3 trillion worth of money laundering every year happening. And fraud is such a big thing. And I've taken this up with regulators.

There's no legal obligation for you who has experienced fraud to report it. Anyway, there's no like central authority where you can log the fraud. It's just like, you just bite the bullet and be like, okay, burnt my fingers, not going to do business again. I had a really good friend, which unfortunately, made some bad decisions and he effectively committed fraud.

And he got banned. His business got dissolved and he got banned from the UK director's list for 15 years. So he just jumped on a plane to another country and started operations again. Now, why wouldn't you have a global centralised database for fraud? Like you've got your AML lists, you've got your sanctions lists, you've got your politically exposed people, and those lists are updated.

In a best case scenario on an annual basis. So even if you die in South Africa, it takes one year to update the registry. So dead in the live status is outdated for a year. Do you change your name or you get married or something? It takes a year to update. And if you're on the KYC list, you're on the fraud list or the sanctions list.

Like if your name is Muhammad, there's like 150 million without exaggeration that pop up. So if your name is Muhammad, you've got a tough time onboarding anyway.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, I mean, this happened to a friend of mine, in fact, two friends, one, when he arrived in the US he had a similar name to another guy and, they wouldn't live in the country because he had the similar name.

And, I remember we had another bunch of guys that we were traveling to a conference. And because the one guy got picked up and his cousin or like fifth cousin, some relation had a similar name, they wouldn't let him into the country either because of.

Luke Warner: Yeah. So when I worked at Greensville capital, which was a massive multi billion dollar company in the UK, which collapsed overnight, like it's very well documented in the press.

There's even a book about it called the pyramid of lies. I joined them for a year to do corporate onboarding worldwide.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah.

Luke Warner: We built KYC and AML systems where we were able to, it was taking them about two weeks to do this process. And we built end to end systems. And normally with these AML processes, what's the delays, there's like a 20 percent false positive.

So your name pops up. And then it's the same as some person, but in order to narrow it down, you've got to have your identity document, which has your date of birth and like your country of residence and your location. And if you're able to say, well, this person was born in 1970 and this person was born in 1954, you can kind of remove the false positives. But if you don't have the KYC part, and you've just got a name and you don't have the identity and the location, then the false positive thing causes the delay.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, and that's why I think what you're offering and sort of blockchain, solutions make a lot of sense. Because we need to have a distributed ledger. We need something that's reusable. And you look at passports as an archaic technology. I mean, passports are still, you know, it kind of an unnecessary thing if you had other things in place.

Luke Warner: Documentation is a revenue stream for governments. Like That's...

Ryan Purvis: Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luke Warner: Like, think about the simple as a Visa. So I apply for a visa to the us. They gimme a 10 year Visa. I apply for a Visa to France. They gimme a three month Visa. So like the US is obviously, cash flush, compared to France.

So, France is like, well, every time you come, you have to renew. And I'm like do you know how hard it is to apply for a visa? How much paperwork and documentation you have to provide. And then you've got to pay for like the printer and then you upload it all digitally. And then they're like, no, you have to print it out.

And we're going to scan and fax it in. And you're like, I can't invoice for this time. This is disrespectful. Like, I'm spending hours on this and I'm invoicing no one.

Ryan Purvis: Yep.

Luke Warner: So like the system, I would rather pay like double or triple or 10 times the amount for them to do it efficiently.

Ryan Purvis: Yes. And do it once.

Luke Warner: Yeah. Once. And then it's reusable. It's like Elon Musk with the rockets, like his whole claim to fame is he was able to reduce the, like he won these NASA contracts because he could make the trips to the space station 10 times cheaper than the competitors. Because his rockets were reusable, but they, didn't just blow up in space.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah.

Luke Warner: So digital identity is nowhere near as complex as a rocket. so it should be reusable.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. I completely agree. That it's a moneymaking scheme. I mean, I look at, you know, obviously when we moved to the UK, we were on South African passports, and now we've got British passports. But I mean, just the cost of doing the, leave to remain, thing was like four grand and doing the past was like another four grand, then another, you know, whatever it was.

And I remember a friend of mine who his expired and he didn't want to leave the country cause he'd sort it all out. And he was looking at a, black market version of the passport.

Luke Warner: And it's crazy. Like that market exists. So you get these WhatsApp groups and these telegram groups where they will sell you documentation.

And it's basically It's illegally legal. It's kind of like the driver's license in South Africa. You can buy your driver's license. But you can buy passports, driver's licenses, identity cards, NHS cards.

You can buy anything. And it's the staff working in the institutions. Which are processing these things after hours. And then you're just like, this is a joke. Like it's a complete joke.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. And I mean, this guy was looking, it was five grand to get a full identity done. And we were saying, well, you could go spend eight grand with the government, or you can spend five grand with the black market.

And it's probably the same guys. I mean, exactly what you said.

Luke Warner: One of the biggest challenges I find in, in the KYC space, obviously as, an entrepreneur, you raising funding and you're looking for investors Is, and it's happened to one of the competitor companies, which I won't mention to protect their identity.

They actually got royally fucked in South Africa because they had a 40% shareholder, which owned a bunch of casinos in the Middle East. And so when you're in the procurement process and the vetting process, this popped up, as like a politically exposed sanctioned person. And we've had multiple offers along the journey where extremely wealthy people will come to us and say, well, we'll give you an unlimited amount of funding.

But the condition is you creating a whitelist for all these institutions on who they can approve. And we want you to wash the list.

Wow.

Luke Warner: And so, I mean, you watch all those James Bond movies and stuff where people just keep getting documents and they're just like respawning the whole time. So it's kind of like a video game.

So you have to have a strong amount of ethics so that you'll see there was a venture on my LinkedIn profile. Wow. What's simply maestro. So there's like a whole SAP article on, I mean, they're like a listed on the stock exchange, a big reputable company. And we raised 30 million pounds worth of funding. I was the chief product officer and had 15 percent equity in the business.

And it started like hyperscaling where they would just like these big bids of money. And one of the examples of the money we were offered is like a hundred million pounds in funding where the money came from. This is the friend that got, banned of, the UK's director list. one of the money scenarios that were offered to us is Iran, which is sanctioned and can't sell oil had a pipeline from Iran to Oman.

And the Chinese were buying the oil from Oman, knowing that it was from Iran at a discount. And there was basically like a warehouse with a hundred million pounds, a hundred million dollars worth of cash. And these guys wanted to give us the cash we had a rock up in speed boats to pick up this cash in like black bags.

And I was just like, what the fuck? Like, why am I even, and this was a board discussion. And I was like, how could you even bring this to the board for us to consider? And so I parachuted out of that. It was very hard for me because. It was probably one of the most successful periods of my life. from like a status and, financial impact I was earning the most money.

And by resigning and walking away, like, I was fucked for a couple of months trying to recover from that.

Ryan Purvis: Oh, I can imagine. Yeah. apologies, Luke. I've got to drop off for a quick call do you mind if we just wrap it up here? Perfect. So, uh, how would people get hold of you?

What's the best, route?

Luke Warner: You can Google me. yeah, if you just Google Luke Dominic Warner, like you'll find a way to me.

Ryan Purvis: Well, we've got your LinkedIn as well. Are you on Twitter or X or any of those things?

Luke Warner: I'm on all of them. So one of them have a little link tree bio and then from the link, if you click on any one of them, there's a link tree and then there's a booking form if you want to chat to me.

Ryan Purvis: Fantastic.

Great stuff. Well, I appreciate you having a chat with me today. It's been great. And I look forward to reading the book and seeing how

Luke Warner: you do.

It's available on the website or on my link tree. You can just download a free copy.

Ryan Purvis: Fantastic. Super. Thanks, Luke. All the best. Bye.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Heather Bicknell is our producer editor. Thank you, Heather. For your hard work on this episode, please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes at the Google Play Store.

Follow us on Twitter at the Dww Podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website, www.digitalworkspace.works. Please also visit our website, www.digitalworkspace.works. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends or colleagues.