Junxiong (JX) Ho is CFO at Brankas. Brankas aims to be a leading Open Finance and Embedded Finance technology provider and marketplace. They help to build and bring together providers and users of financial services APIs in Southeast Asia and MENA.

Before Brankas, JX was previously at BigPay, Stripe and Ninja Van.

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👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

As CFO, I help steer the ship, ensure we are sailing in the right direction, manage and allocate our resources to build it whilst moving at the same time.

Brankas helps to enable Open Finance—bridging the gap between traditional banking systems and modern financial technology, to empower improved financial services and innovations to be built.

Think: enabling payments, disbursements, credit scoring, and even building new digital banking solutions

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🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

Startup CFOs are typically a lot more hands on with the business than what one would imagine. Besides the bean counting and compliance, a lot of time is spent partnering with the other parts of the business to help make decisions

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🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

Not quite a highlight, but it's all a journey. Partnering with brilliant and visionary founders and working alongside teams at startups have been the most enriching through all the pains and joys

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🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

a16z had said "every company will be a fintech company". So seeing the continuing evolution of embedded finance in Southeast Asia will be interesting as we emerge from the shakeup of the tech winter. Of course, Brankas hopes to be at the front seat of enabling these partnerships between financial services players and the rest of the digital ecosystem.

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💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry?

Fintech = Fin + Tech; and we've now seen in the industry that you need a good blend of both to be successful. Financial services is age-old and requires the right regulatory and compliance. So blending that together with the "move fast, break things" approach of tech is a necessity.

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‍🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?

My family and especially my 2 precious daughters for sure. But also I've gone down the rabbit hole of miles hacking as an occupational hazard, so always keen to trade notes with others

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show?

Shutter Island and Breaking Bad

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🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

The most exotic sounding one in the display; or something umami like Hazelnut