Privacy in the Pandemic
The pandemic has put our lives online like never before, but is anyone building the tools to secure our personal data?
How many websites and online services have you registered with or bought from in the last six months?
Take my word for it, don't try and add them up. The figure will be much higher than you expect and maybe go into the hundreds. That’s a 100+ organisations with more information on you than you’d likely share with an acquaintance IRL.
Even with a failed track and trace app and the mix up of 16,000 coronavirus test results thanks to an Excel spreadsheet mishap, privacy should be much higher on the agenda. So we had a chat with privacy and fintech expert, Andres Ramierz Sierra, to find out what he's been building...
Hey Andres, why don’t you introduce yourself...
Hi guys, well, I’m originally from Colombia but I left to study a masters in business finance at the University of Technology Sydney.
After uni, I built Banlinea, the first marketplace for financial products in Colombia. And it was a success! We grew to 80 people, expanded across latin America, were awarded the most innovative company Colombia in 2014 and we were featured in a Google Cloud case study.
But I’ve since left...and started up again. In NYC!
Incredible. So now you're a serial entrepreneur. What is your new startup?
Hubbec: it’s a privacy platform.
In short, we standardise application processes for products and services in real time. We want to create a button similar to federated logins like "Login with Facebook" or “Sign in with Google”, but offering "Apply with Hubbec".
This will allow for simple single authentication logins to very complex and secure banking products and services applications.
What is the problem you solving?
The platform not only simplifies peoples' lives by providing a single app for any application and a secure personal information repository to avoid filling out information over and over, but it also solves privacy issues, allowing people to know who has their data and how it is being used.
IMO privacy is like recycling. We all care about it, but it's difficult to do well because we are not really in control of who decides on how it is managed.
We like this analogy. It's almost impossible to not use single use plastic because supermarkets (for example) package so many products in plastic...
Exactly. We’re solving the problem for online services who should store your personal data, responsibility, but it can be difficult because this requires expertise and costs. We solve this by storing the data and sharing only what is needed.
How has the pandemic affected you starting up?
The digital transformation necessitated by the pandemic has helped us grow 500% this year. More than just sales, lockdown has pushed companies to be more efficient in relation to how they are selling online. They have realised that they do not necessarily have the money nor the time to have a fully functional system to (responsibly) sell online within days.
Who are Hubbec’s first customers?
So far, our customers range from financial institutions, health companies and telcos, but we will be offering free services for small and medium size companies.
It’s an impressive start. What does the future look like?
At Hubbec we see a future where your information is as secure as your money in a bank, and you “transfer” your information as you would transfer your money. A future where people realise that information is as equally if not more valuable than money and it should be treated as such.
Sounds utopian!
There’s a LONG way to go. A major challenge is the fact that companies still see their customers’ information as theirs instead of seeing information as borrowed from their customers. Changing that conception is vital to change the flow of information. It is also challenging helping companies understand that just because they might have the resources for creating digital onboarding does not mean they are best at doing that. Similar to CRMs, large companies can hire a team to develop their own CRM system but will they be better than Salesforce? This happens when companies do not have a clear understanding of what technology they should be into. They forget what the core business is and what technology they should be developing and what tech they should be hiring.
Awesome. Thanks Andres. Keep doing what you're doing.
We will! Thanks for taking the time.
