Inclusive Growth and Purpose-Driven Leadership

for a conversation about inclusive growth and purpose-driven leadership please welcome award-winning journalist editor author and founder of the women in the world summits Tina Brown and Ajay Banga CEO of MasterCard [Applause] [Music] well it's wonderful to be here for this very first global inclusion conference what a wonderful thing to be here and sitting here with someone who our due regard is something of a business superhero Asha Banga right during his 10 years he's led this company's stock price price into the stratosphere it's risen over 1000% but he's done more than that and this is what I so much admire about him he's shown the corporate world well doing well by doing good isn't just the latest bromide to brandish around at Davos it's a wildly successful business strategy that he lives and implements every day inside MasterCard a company run on a hundred percent renewable energy by the way he's delivered on pay equity for men and women he's brought nearly 500 million previously unbanked people into the financial system and he's founded the Center for inclusive growth one of the of course that he co-hosts really with Aspen today and last year he committed half a billion dollars to drive Financial Inclusion and ensure that global citizens everywhere prosper in the digital economy so great to be sitting with you RJ thank you my mother would be introducing me should just say I'm more good-looking that's about interesting to me I mean when you graduated from India's Business School you know top business school did you have your sights on you know one day running this huge global you know come a company in the US and what were you sort of what did you I have no I graduated from Business School in 1981 there was no Google do you still use the Encyclopedia Britannica to figure out where anything was and I had no idea I can my the limits of my vision were dictated by the limits of what I had been exposed to and growing up in India in the 70s and 60s my exposure was what Indian education and history as it was after the independence movement which was basically aimed at being separate from everybody else and being self-reliant those two words were used by Indian politicians very often in a funny kind of way they were not very different from the nationalistic movements of today just done differently and I grew up in that you know I had no idea that I'd come here I kind of thought that I would grow up do things in India and the limits was I would become you know if I joined the public sector organization I'd grow there if I joined a private sector organization I'd grow there I had no idea or what I'd end up doing I wanted to be a pilot which I still no clue how to do and you know I hope you don't have to get behind an airplane thing anyway so I none whatsoever so here you are and I understand that when you first arrived in the US you wouldn't you couldn't get a phone because you didn't have a credit history right that's such an amazing detail to me I mean did that sort of impact poker how you know you went about thinking about MasterCard yeah I came here in 2000 that's what we moved and by then I was a senior middle kind of level executive at Citigroup I'd been working in London in Brussels and and of course I'd been in India for 15 20 years before that with Nestle and Pepsi and so I thought it wouldn't be that hard to pick up a cell phone turned out when you arrived in the United States if you don't have a credit history nobody gives you anything you don't rent an apartment to you you can't get a cell phone and I had to go to a AT&T store and try and obtain the cell phones we'll guy pulled up my social security number and said you got no credit I can't give you a phone and so then I had to give him a brokerage statement which is crazy I was giving some kid in an AT&T store my entire brokerage statement who looked at it and said you have too many zeros and this I said I'm trying to explain to you that I'm not some dumb bass was just walked off a boat and he said well you know you don't have a social you know credit history I can't give you a phone and then he called some manager fax this all over now this brokerage statement has gone to some other guy whom I don't know and then finally I got a cell phone with and I just remember thinking that this is wrong and considering this is a country of immigrants where I at least have come at a relatively well-off time in my life if you'd come earlier it was obviously tougher and then I learned it most people who come here get their first card or their first car loan by having a friend or a relative guarantee it for them and that makes no sense we've got to construct a model that makes sense for people and not one that's built off people who only understand privilege and don't understand the challenge for the other that's the issue what it is and of course it brings me to to what we're all doing here because I mean when do you decide that financial inclusion was such a game-changing factor in reducing inequality actually I had no clue about financial inclusion either as you can see I didn't have a clue about many things but you know wonder whether I got the right guys over here so there's a guy I don't if he's here today is Bob and every year they is Sababa nibbly used to be my colleague at Citigroup and I was in London and Bob was in our treasury of all the things Treasury Department managing emerging markets risks and currencies and which was a very unlikely place to make friends with somebody who would then teach me about Financial Inclusion because we ended up working on securitizing small ticket loans for brac right Bob the first 150 dollar loans and I had no idea that they could be securitized I thought you had to have large loans to have a market that would take them off so you could free Brad's balance sheet for lending again and he taught me that it's possible if you apply your mind and don't take no for an answer and that started from there and then we got involved together at Citi for years on Financial Inclusion cities foundation was funding the effort to do inclusive growth for women with Saver in India which is an organization for self-employed women and one thing led to the other from there but that is the genesis of high regard involved with financial inclusion well you always have this keen a sort of sense of what it is to be an outsider so you've been an insider outsider Eddie's sort of all your life I mean how much has you know you're being you know a Sikh really impact in that I mean coming to the u.s. being an outsider really here well most people don't know I must seek they all think I'm somebody else who got assassinated from time back in a Pakistani house and so that's one of the challenges of being look like yes but you know do you know you can either struggle against who you are and what you look like or you can take it for what you are and keep going forward and I choose to be Who I am and go forward with it and I'm just gonna do what I can and my view is that the same thing that sets you apart is also the thing that makes you interesting to people if you're willing to engage with them and 99.9% of people who live in this country want to engage with you and so you got to find those ninety nine point nine and talk to them and then it kind of works out okay I've never had in my working career in this country ever felt different from anybody else so at work I can never ever not at City not at MasterCard not in the meetings I've been i never feel that anyone looks at me differently and that gives me a lot of confidence well it's also you know your sense of confident identities is obviously and it's wonderful and I think I'd like to know she although I do get stopped randomly at every story since you asked yeah but I do think that it also gives you a wonderful ability to sort of understand the outsider point of view yes a lot of people even very successful roles don't have that feeling yeah well I think that credit history things stated me forever when Elizabeth Warren was running the CFPB and I went to meet her the first conversation we had was about thin file credit lending and I told her what I'd been through and why I understood therefore that what was a challenge that needed to be fixed and while she was at that time trying to figure out how to curb excessive lending I was trying to tell her that these are two different things and you cannot deny people the right to be able to borrow money at a reasonable price for what they need just because they didn't have this credit history because that credit history system is archaic in itself the scoring system is backward looking and not forward predictive and built of parameters that were okay thirty years ago but unacceptable in today's world and I think that's the point on all of these that gave me an insight and the fact that I had that chance at City to get an award at microfinance also gave me some insights and you kind of put those two things together and I grew up in a country which was poor my group privileged because the son of an army officer we grew in our own enclosed cocoon but you could see it all around you and so I think that makes a big difference well recently there's been a lot of discussion about the Business Roundtable you know issuing that statement that said that corporations must value people not just profits and I thought well yes of course I mean that's what we don't want but you know is is that is this just gonna be another one of these lip service things that goes people go around sort of saying this stuff of business conferences but actually they're living in a different way and you've always wanted to implement that and have implemented it but what is your view about frankly the ability to make that a really you know ingrained new shift in business but I think the Business Roundtable statement is one step in a long journey it's a way to create a dialogue which shows that companies are now willing to discuss this openly I think the stresses and pulls of running companies impact everybody - you know you got to make a profit if you don't make a profit you don't exist you have to be competitive which means your product has to be good but your pricing has to be good and for that you got to make a margin which means you've got to manage your costs and there's no getting away from this there is no philanthropy in business right you've got to win in your business to see tomorrow morning and to provide employment I'm going to be employ thousands of people four times as many people as we had when I joined and I feel it every day that they make it that I've made a difference to those people they've benefited from our share ownership when I joined twenty five thirty people in the company used to get stock today 70% of the company gets stock every year as part of their compensation because the stock has done well they've made money as for their families and I feel that every day so there's no way to step away from that and say somehow companies convey have a magic wand and no longer be profit driven but you can make profits while also doing things that make sense for the future of your own company and that really means if you care about the middle class because then they will consume I mean look it's in all our self-interest if if to rich make another 100 grand they're not buying another TV or going out for another five dinners but if somebody in the middle class makes another fifty grand they will spend that money on things for their kids and things for their family on things for their house most of us aren't companies that survive on people spending money and therefore it's in your own self-interest to find a way to spread the peanut butter so that more people can be a part of this society that we all have been lucky enough to grow up in and that's the logic of the BRT statement I don't think you should take it out of context from that it's within that frame that it matters that piece it creates a dialogue there's no much stress on CEOs right everybody from everybody I mean from digital disruption yeah you know activist shareholders from absolutely many up CEOs just feel so beleaguered they feel well you know it's like who was it who said in fiction I could be a good woman on ten thousand a year or whatever is like you know is there a sense that okay I'll get I'll get to the doing good part when this crazy period of my business being in turmoil is done yeah you can take that view or you can take the view that if you don't do that side-by-side there won't be another five years for your company and companies like yours and so you know I was telling someone the other day you can take all the issues we all deal with in companies and in life in a triangle of three lines one line is man versus nature and it's very consciously chosen as man versus nature we can debate that in another time everyone in the world but we can talk about that the second line is long term versus short term and the third line is one versus many if you look at all the problems we talk about they're either about inclusion that's the one versus many they're either about the long term was a short term which is what you just referring to order about climate and man versus nature and we if he kind of can figure out a way to apply that triangle in your daily life as much as you do at work or at what you write or do you speak of you'll be mindful of what you're dealing with and mindfulness is all that that statement is about it's not about dramatically saying oh I woke up in the morning and I'm going to change the way my company runs it's about being mindful but what you do and how you do it and who you speak to and how you conduct yourself I think that's what I would take the BRT statement as a statement of intent by people who care about trying to make a difference because they they'll be mindful and will do things that that - we heard from Mike on the platform just now about DQ which I was extremely interested in yeah and I gather that's your invention right DQ the idea of decency quotient which is as important as IQ and EQ have we lost a decency quotient I mean what has been going on that we suddenly have to be so mindful of a decency quotient I mean I'd like to feel that a decency quotient is simply something that you know you that's ingrained in us through education and through experience we haven't lost our brains we talked about an intelligence quotient so we haven't lost our decency I just think it's the mindfulness again it's can I grow up an IQ was what mattered you were in school you have to win in school in India you did well if you studied well and you got your IQ going when you went to business school you started getting taught about EQ and how you had to be able to manage through difficult circumstances and you'd be tested but testing was part of your growth and I think when I was trying to explain inside the company or while you were trying to do these things on inclusion and why we were trying to do sort of doing well by doing good and translate that into people understanding what that meant I found it easier to give people and not start a guru and my own North Star is that I would have come to work every day or conduct my life in a way and I'll make my mistakes by the way I shout I get upset I do all the stuff everybody else does but I try to let you feel that with me you will always be safe not safe physically obviously that what's safe but I'm sorry dear the friends this is we have our own set of jokes but but safe in every which way safe that I will always treat you with the respect you deserve because of who you are safe that I will give you the space to speak your mind safe that I will give you the opportunity to succeed because I'll be the Tailwind for you not the hand in your face that is d/q that's the Sikh ocean there's no there's no miracle there's no science to it it's how you conduct yourself and that's the idea well I mean one of the things that you're proudest of in a sense in this philosophy that you've espoused I mean you know you've you've lived by this lodestar and you've been MasterCard now for over a decade so what have you where do you where where do you point to to think this I tried in this Radames ten years a long time one day I'll be gone and what you will you feel your legacy with most I don't know legacy it's tough when people start talking about legacy it reminds me of the guys who come to cut you know ribbons and the buildings are named after them that normally means they're trying to find a wheelbarrow to take you out in and so I don't know I I would I would say this that I I deeply care that the culture of the company should embody this DQ inside it I will be a winning company we my HR team came up with this idea of saying a winning culture with decency at its core and I cannot get it but I do I can't say it very well because it doesn't make too much sense to me by itself it makes sense in pieces meaning you gotta win remember I said you gotta win if you don't win you can't run your business the way we can but you must have decency at your core you can't win by standing on somebody else's shoulders and beating their head that to me is not winning that's just crude schoolyard bully and right now they've got a lot of crude schoolyard bullying going on everywhere and I just think we need to refined that decency inside ourselves and start talking about how we can all do this together because otherwise it's gonna be a hard message so do you feel that this is now really so true some of these guys were clapping work for me is they don't listen today so do you feel this is now a particularly important time to get the private sector and the public sector to work together and how what is the best way to do these partnerships because they're not easy to do well okay that's a really important question I haven't talked about that 500 million that somebody mentioned I think Mike mentioned that we were running after 500 million people to be financially included and the kind of day this announcement happened in 2014 at an IMF World Bank meeting which just kind of concluded the same kind of meeting in 2014 and we said by 2020 we'll find a way to get to 500 million it's not by ourselves by the way it's at partners banks telecom companies governments NGOs the whole lot the one thing I have found the most challenging in that period the single most challenging is the absence of trust between the public sector and the private sector and it's it's embodied when you go and talk to somebody they first look at you and say MasterCard credit cards you must be trying to make money out of the bottom of the pyramid they will all go under because of you yeah well you know if you watched Romeo and Juliet there's this line about what's in a name well Apple doesn't sell bloody apples and Amazon is not a river in Brazil although it's actually more consequential as a river in Brazil and yet we are seen as the credit card giant we don't I can't give you a credit card banks issue credit cards if you asked me to give you a credit card I gotta call friends of mine on a bank and say could you please give Tina Brown a credit card and by the way remember to ask her for a credit history yourself right yes exactly and so that's the biggest challenge to make them realize that our technology and our data and our skills can be used because what we are is an infrastructure company we provide connectivity and networks and rules of play we don't actually have anything to do with the credit card in your wallet we your debit card your credit card your prepaid card on a phone on your fingerprint rubbing your forehead whichever way you want to use it I'll help you use it but I don't issue it and I don't determine what you borrow and I don't determine what you pay for it I think that is an understanding that we still have to build and add to the trust quotient between us and to me that's the biggest challenge this problems in the inclusion world are too big for philanthropy alone to solve you know we I don't know if Rita Roy is here from the MasterCard foundation Shira okay so when we had our IPO the owners of the bank the banks were the owners were company at that time they put 12 percent of the company inside into the foundation that foundation today when Rita is the terrific CEO runs at cheesier somewhere and Rita is that foundation is worth close to 25 30 billion dollars and it's one of the largest foundations in the world and they focused on generating jobs in Africa 30 million of them over the next decade and I'm telling you they'll get it done because they know what they're doing and they've got the resources and they have the capability and they've got outstanding people and that to me people don't even understand that they wonder there must be a trick in that we and that runs independently by the way we don't have any influence in them they aren't completely separately we're their only donor but they run separately and yet people will interpret somehow oh that must be the real world MasterCard it's not and getting that trust going even with their money they can't succeed what is required tina is for private sector capital ingenuity and technology to be applied to the ideas because there isn't enough government money or NGO money in the world to solve for the kind of problems that the SDGs have laid out if you really order DST geez here's the easiest way to understand them one big goddamn problem which we got a song it's really a big problem climate change is a big problem inclusion is a big problem inequality is a big problem women's rights are a big problem yeah there are big problems there isn't enough money in the government or the NGO sector you need the private sector and private people to bring their capital their technology their ingenuity their people to the party that's really important no it's it's an enormous idea and and it's one that you are extraordinarily you know effective in you've got this huge foundation and now we have the inclusion Center the inclusive growth Center what is it that you felt this new entity could do that the foundation wasn't doing yeah so the foundation is very focused on Africa as a destination they've defined their role as generating jobs for young Africans because the if you look at the profile of age in Africa that would be the biggest challenge of the next decade or two so they're very focused in that space whereas our company is global and in fact Africa is one portion of our business but our businesses in the United States it's forty percent of our revenue comes from the US sixty percent comes from outside of the US and we're all over the world and so we needed to find ways to engage a one a broader category than generating jobs because we felt our technology can be helpful in inclusion not just for jobs or getting people into the financial world and then giving them a chance to get access to insurance credit savings at a reasonable price that's what we're trying to get them to go from being included to actually having the benefits of that inclusion be visible to them in their lives it could be a small micro entrepreneur who's got a shop outside of home in Uganda and she's gonna get credit and that's what we're trying to do with Unilever or it could be a person in a village who cannot get access to electricity because the grid is too expensive to bring there but working with m-kopa a company there we can bring them solar systems which can be activated to pay for what you can afford for the day by using a QR code and a four or it could be how you pay for your kids education you can't afford to pay the bill in one day in a month but you could pay one day every week and if you know schools don't run installment plans well we can manage those for you just divide the thing by four and let the pair in the process the kid can go to school but by the way interesting where the government can can manage whether the teachers are showing up or not because they are the ones entering the information about who's paying so there are many ways to use your technology which is basically in network connectivity capability and use it the current digital tools to enable people who otherwise were not there that's what the Center for inclusive growth is trying to do is to create those conversations empower those organizations we're not gonna do it ourselves we've got a great partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation I don't know if Rajeev is around but Raj Shah was here somewhere I've met him a little while ago and that's part of what we're trying to do just empower others to do it one on one in one sentence what would you like everybody in this room to take away in terms of what they can do they have we have a lot of very you know influential people in the room what do you want to see happen after today be really aware that the partnership between the private sector and the public sector will only change if we trust each other and we need to find a way to make those partnership ideas come to life thank you so much thanks thanks I love trust so right [Music] you

Channel: Mastercard News

Views: 11,468

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Ajay Banga, Tina Brown, Women in the World, Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, Global Inclusive Growth Summit, the Aspen Institute, Inclusive Growth, Inequality, Economic Growth, Corporate Responsibility, Digital Economy, FInancial Inclusion, Banking, Future of Work, Digital Inclusion, Economic Development, Social Impact, Partner for Good, Gender Equality

Id: k2tqpvK5ssA

Length: 26min 19sec (1579 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 12 2019