Brett King

Brett King (born 24 April 1968 in Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian futurist, author and entrepreneur widely described as the "Godfather of Fintech." He studied at Monash University and went on to teach in MBA programs for the Australian Graduate School of Management in Hong Kong before building a career as a global financial-services commentator and operator. He was inducted into the Fintech Hall of Fame in 2020 and has been named the world's #1 financial-services influencer by The Financial Brand.

His best-known venture is Moven (originally "Movenbank"), which he co-founded in 2011 and which launched one of the first in-app mobile bank accounts. The company raised roughly $2.4M in seed funding (2012) and $8M in Series A (2014) — reportedly over $40M across its life — won "Best in Show" at Finovate 2013 in London, and partnered with TD Bank; King was named American Banker's "Bank Technology News Innovator of the Year" in 2012. Alongside Moven he founded Provoke Media (Provoke.fm) and Provoke Management, runs the advisory firm User Strategy Inc., and has been involved in ventures including Dental AI Technologies and The Futurists events brand.

King is the author of eight books, including the *Bank 2.0 / 3.0 / 4.0* series, *Breaking Banks* (2014), *Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane* (2016) and *The Rise of Technosocialism* (2021, with Richard Petty). *Bank 4.0* won Russia's "Top Book by a Foreign Author" award in 2019, and *Augmented* was famously cited as appearing on Chinese President Xi Jinping's bookshelf. He hosts two globally top-ranked podcasts — *Breaking Banks* (launched 2013, reaching ~180 countries) and *The Futurists* (co-hosted with Robert Tercek) — and has advised the Obama administration on fintech policy as well as regulators in roughly 18 countries, including the UAE Central Bank and the UAE Prime Minister's Office.

An earlier chapter of his career involved the American Academy of Financial Management (AAFM) and its international arms (reflected in the aafm.org and aafm.com.hk email addresses), including a training role based in Dubai/Hong Kong that ended in 2009. That relationship became contentious and was the subject of public disputes; the parties later issued mutual retractions, indicating a legal settlement.

• Operates primarily as a founder-operator and angel/seed-stage backer rather than a formal fund manager; his lens is shaped by two decades inside fintech.
• Core conviction (the thesis behind Moven and *Bank 4.0*): banking is becoming "banking everywhere, never at a bank" — embedded, real-time, mobile-first financial services delivered through technology and experience design rather than branches.
• Strong interest in AI, financial health/inclusion, and frontier "future-of" themes (energy, bioscience, computing, climate) reflected in *The Futurists* and his writing.
• Values distribution, behavioral design and customer experience over incremental product features — recurring themes across his books and talks.