Peter Lu
Head of Product Monzo
Peter Lu is Head of Product at Monzo, where he's on a mission to make Americans actually love their bank. He brings over a decade of product leadership, most recently leading the product team at KOHO — one of North America's most successful challenger banks — where he helped close their most recent fundraise, launched Canada's first Credit Builder product, and scaled the company past two million customers. When he's not building the future of banking, he's advising and investing in talented entrepreneurs across North America. He is based in San Francisco.
2026 Agenda Sessions
Are institutions losing balance in an open banking world?
This panel explores why first party transaction data remains uniquely valuable — and why banks and fintechs have both the opportunity and the obligation to do more with the data they generate themselves. Institutions that lean into owned data will be far better positioned than those relying heavily on intermediaries.
This isn’t a critique of open banking as policy. It has an important role. But it cannot be the whole strategy. When it becomes the default, it introduces noise, inconsistency, and lowest common denominator insights.
The gold standard is still an owned card program. Leading institutions are investing in their card portfolios, data infrastructure, and customer experiences to build differentiated, network driven insights that power better products and deeper engagement.
Takeaways:
• Owning your data — and the card programs that generate it — is a competitive advantage.
• First party card data is the gold standard. Issuer native transaction data is cleaner, richer, and more structured, enabling accurate budgeting, personalization, and guidance.
• Open banking is access, not strategy. Aggregator data can add noise, weaken categorization, and limit differentiation. It’s a supplement, not a foundation.
• Winners will own their data experience. Institutions that invest in their own card programs, data infrastructure, and customer journeys will outperform those that outsource insight to third parties.
Sponsored by Spade
Monday 30 March 12:30 - 13:10 Banking
This isn’t a critique of open banking as policy. It has an important role. But it cannot be the whole strategy. When it becomes the default, it introduces noise, inconsistency, and lowest common denominator insights.
The gold standard is still an owned card program. Leading institutions are investing in their card portfolios, data infrastructure, and customer experiences to build differentiated, network driven insights that power better products and deeper engagement.
Takeaways:
• Owning your data — and the card programs that generate it — is a competitive advantage.
• First party card data is the gold standard. Issuer native transaction data is cleaner, richer, and more structured, enabling accurate budgeting, personalization, and guidance.
• Open banking is access, not strategy. Aggregator data can add noise, weaken categorization, and limit differentiation. It’s a supplement, not a foundation.
• Winners will own their data experience. Institutions that invest in their own card programs, data infrastructure, and customer journeys will outperform those that outsource insight to third parties.
Sponsored by Spade Banking US/Pacific
