--- title: "Life after RBS and pinBox Solutions | Sanjeev Kumar | Negotiator 36" titleOriginal: "Life after RBS and pinBox Solutions | Sanjeev Kumar | Negotiator 36" episodeNumber: "36" guest: "Sanjeev Kumar" datePublished: 2020-09-09 duration: "23:23" youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0nxN3iynz4" captionsVtt: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep36-elama-rbs-jalkeen-pinbox-solutions-sanjeev-kumar/captions.en.vtt captionsSrt: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep36-elama-rbs-jalkeen-pinbox-solutions-sanjeev-kumar/captions.en.srt originalLanguage: "en" topics: ["investing_markets","finnish_economy_policy"] subtitleMethod: "none" provenance: "Owner page assembled from the MacWhisper raw English transcript, YouTube metadata and the neuvottelija.fi episode record. The transcript carries no timecodes, so no chapter markers or caption files are asserted." fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/42-negotiator-36-life-after-rbs-and-pinbox-solutions-sanjeev-ku" canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep36-elama-rbs-jalkeen-pinbox-solutions-sanjeev-kumar/ --- # Life after RBS and pinBox Solutions | Sanjeev Kumar | Negotiator 36 ## Summary Sami Miettinen's former Royal Bank of Scotland colleague Sanjeev Kumar, based in Singapore, traces his path from running RBS's global corporate advisory business through MUFG to a new chapter — and explains why he joined the global advisory board of pinBox Solutions. pinBox builds digital micro-pension systems for low-income workers, especially women and the non-salaried: live in Rwanda and Kenya, just launched in India. The conversation compares Finland's collective pension system with Singapore's personal-account model, works through the allocation problem in defined-contribution schemes, and lands on why longevity, financial inclusion and impact investing make finance more interesting after the global financial crisis than it was before it. ## What is discussed - **The shared RBS background.** Miettinen and Kumar worked together at Royal Bank of Scotland from about 2010 to 2012, Miettinen as relationship manager for large Finnish multinationals with substantial business in China. Miettinen went on to become CEO of Nordic Trustee; Kumar stayed and ran RBS's global corporate advisory business out of London, covering London, New York, Hong Kong and Sydney, before returning to Asia to run corporate and financial-institution coverage. - **MUFG and Singapore.** After RBS exited Asia, Kumar joined Japan's MUFG, helping build acquisition finance, leveraged finance, sponsor coverage and sector teams, and taking on Singapore coverage. The client base was global rather than Japanese: European and American corporates entering the region, financial sponsors and sovereign wealth funds. He had left MUFG days before this recording. - **pinBox Solutions.** Founded by Gautam Bhardwaj and Parul Seth Khanna, the company is committed to digital micro-pension inclusion — helping low-income workers, especially low-income women, save for a dignified old age. It is live in Rwanda and Kenya, has just gone live in India, and is looking at Latin America. Kumar stresses it is a profitable enterprise, not charity, and that it is investment-agnostic, working with pension funds and other financial providers. - **Financial inclusion in developing economies.** Lending fintechs using their own credit modelling and AI can reach borrowers who previously did not qualify; national ID schemes make onboarding possible; and on the pension side the service simply did not exist at this scale before. - **Finland versus Singapore.** Miettinen sets out the Finnish universal system — roughly 25 billion euros a year in contributions from each side and around 200 billion euros accumulated, funded rather than purely pay-as-you-go, with allocation decided by professional funds and a realised real return of about four per cent a year — against Singapore's individual-account model. - **The allocation problem.** In a defined-contribution scheme the responsibility falls on the saver. Kumar's answer is candid: skew to equities when young and to bonds when older is the standard advice, but there is no holy grail — particularly in a market where technology stocks are running away and yielding assets are scarce or negative. - **Longevity, impact and disintermediation.** Longevity as a component of sustainability; impact investing as a Nordic trend; digital platforms disintermediating banks in payments and lending; AI; Brexit and US–China tension reshaping supply chains; and the reputation of finance after the GFC and through the coronavirus crisis. - **What comes next.** Kumar wants a combination: an executive role in finance — sponsor-related businesses or corporate finance — alongside non-executive and board roles such as pinBox. Miettinen discloses his own advisory board seat at the Finnish-Swiss company Realstocks.io, which tokenises real-estate-backed, cash-like investments on a blockchain. ## Watch The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: [Life after RBS and pinBox Solutions | Sanjeev Kumar | Negotiator 36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0nxN3iynz4). A Finnish edition of this episode is published at [www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/42-negotiator-36-life-after-rbs-and-pinbox-solutions-sanjeev-ku). --- Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — Life after RBS and pinBox Solutions | Sanjeev Kumar | Negotiator 36, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep36-elama-rbs-jalkeen-pinbox-solutions-sanjeev-kumar/, 2020-09-09. For quotes include episode 36 and timestamp.