Visa’s Al Kelly, Jr: Multipliers for change - and the questions every good leader asks

This transcript, generated from speech recognition technology, has been edited for web readers, condensed for clarity, and may differ slightly from the audio.

Meet the Leader / Linda Lacina: Welcome to Meet The Leader, a podcast where top leaders share how they’re tackling the world's toughest challenges. Today's leader? Visa executive chairman and former CEO Al Kelly, Jr. He’ll talk to us about financial inclusion as a multiplier for change.

Subscribe to Meet the Leader on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get your favourite podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review us. I'm Linda Lacina from the World Economic Forum, and this is Meet the Leader

Al Kelly, Jr., Visa: With digital payments, no longer does someone who lives in a village have to go to a city to use cash to buy something.

Meet the Leader / Linda Lacina: We can start this episode off with some good news - the world is making progress on financial inclusion. According to the World Bank, 76% of adults now have a bank or mobile account, That’s up from just 51% in 2011.

A bank acount, you may not know, can serve as a ‘tell’ that so many other good things are happening. For instance, employment: a job is a key reason people open a savings account to begin with.

It's also a tell for education. Adults with a primary education or less, especially in developing countries, are less likely to have a bank account.

Those people are left without a gateway into the global economy. For these folks, it’s difficult to save or build wealth for their families. For entrepreneurs, it's harder to get credit or grow their businesses. And for communities, it becomes harder and harder to withstand the next global shock.

Amidst a swirl of challenges we're facing now -- and I'll name them: geopolitical conflict, a humanitarian crisis (with a record number of refugees), the millions displaced by climate shocks, and a potential global recession -- helping people to withstand shocks, and getting payments to people who need them, has never been more important.

There’s still plenty to do - inclusion reveals where digital infrastructure is lacking, for instance, or where regulations need a reboot. But there's cause for hope.

At the 2023 Annual Meeting, I talked to Al Kelly, Jr about that hope. At the time, he was wrapping up his tenure as CEO and as of February 1 became executive chairman. I talked to him about financial inclusion and what’s needed next.

Al also talked to me about leadership -- what makes great public leadership effective, and his early job at the White House, and the lessons that shaped him.

He’ll talk about all this. But first, i’ll let him tell us a little more about what a more financially inclusive world looks like.

Al Kelly, Jr: Well, it looks like a world where consumers as individuals, countries, economies and businesses all thrive. The more we are digital, the more we open up the world to more buyers for people that are selling goods, the more we open up more transparency for governments we make it easier for people to get subsidies if they have that need from governments, it shrinks the world a bit in terms of giving people who are small business owners access to marketplaces and customers outside the borders of their country. In short, it really, really opens up the world to everyone in a much greater way than previously had been the case.

Meet the Leader / Linda Lacina: And what holds it back? What holds back this access?

Al Kelly, Jr: Well, I think it's a number of things, but a couple come to mind. One is we have to make sure that our regulation’s not restrictive. We need to promote open flow of data. We need to promote interoperable standards that everybody follows. (Actually, data localisation isn't the greatest public policy when it comes to actually trying to promote digital payments.)

Advances in infrastructure are really critical. We have to have the ability -- if you're going to get involved in digital payments or the digital economy, you've got to have access to the Internet. In order to have access to the Internet, you have to have broadband. And broadband is something that even in developed countries like the United States, there are still too many people who don't have access to broadband Internet access. And obviously in other parts of the world, parts of South America, parts of Africa, it's even a bigger problem. And we have to continue to advance technology.

Remittances are a huge part of what happens in the economies around the world. About 800 million people a year receive remittances for basic things like food and clothing and education. In fact, the funds flow of remittances is about $770 billion. And increasingly, we want to see more of that be fully digital end-to-end so that nowhere along the way does cash have to enter into the picture. And the reality is, in the last five years, it's moved from 3% of all remittances being fully end-to-end, with no cash in or out, to about 13%, and more to go. And we at Visa are doing a lot to try to enable that. We have a capability called Visa Direct which reaches 7 billion endpoints in the world, three and a half billion debit cards, 2 million bank accounts and one and a half million wallets where people can send money from any point in the world to another point in the world. And it's a digital movement throughout for the entire cycle of the movement of funds.

Meet the Leader / Linda Lacina: Remittances will seemingly be all the more important not just with the current refugee crisis but also with the people who will be displaced by the climate. What other programs are key to support for financial inclusion - for instance things that you might be working on at Visa?

Al Kelly, Jr: Well, one of the things that's really basic in all of this, and probably doesn't get enough attention, is just education. We do a lot of education. We have educational programmes that we deliver in 48 different languages around the world. And we work with governments and universities and other entities to spread that education from farmers in China to refugees in South America and really anybody who needs financial skills. Similarly, we have similar programmes for small business owners where they're a little more sophisticated, they have some of the basic financial skills, but as a business owner, they need to understand more about how to invest more in their business. How does working capital work? How do they gain greater access to capital and credit if they need it to grow their business? So, I think educational-type programmes is something that we put a big emphasis on at Visa.

Linda Lacina: Blue skying it just in a block and tackle way, how would [peoples’] day to day life be different in their homes, in their communities, 50 years from now, if we've solved this access problem?

Al Kelly, Jr: Well, it's a great point. You know, digital is better than cash, and a basic financial account is a start, but it's insufficient. And we really need to get to a point of full participation in the financial mainstream to really feel like we've accomplished what we need to accomplish around the world and uplift literally one and a half billion people who are outside the financial mainstream.

So that means actually moving people into savings accounts, moving people to the point where they get access to credit, that they understand more sophisticated products like insurance, that they actually understand how to move remittance money from point A to point B and from families and friends in a way that's secure and safe.

They need to understand how to get access into all the various marketplaces so that if you're a small business, you're not dependent solely on the people who can physically get to your store or your bodega or whatever it is.

The reality is the entire world is open to all of these people. So, I can be a young entrepreneur and through a good omnichannel type of capability, I can sell my product around the world as opposed to just around my village.

I also think we will uplift many more women and minorities as well, which is critically important in a world where we don't have equality in terms of wealth distribution in any way, shape or form. So that's another, I think, outcome that we're seeking over the coming decades through a growth in financial inclusion and then a deepening financial inclusion from starting with access and deepening the relationship into full participation across the financial mainstream.

Linda Lacina: We just released our Global Risk Report the other day, and of course they've noticed that it's a polycrisis. We have an energy crisis, a climate crisis. But also there's been this sort of drumbeat, a growing likelihood of a global recession. How will that make this idea of access even more critical for people as their economic winds are shifting?

Al Kelly, Jr: Well, I think in good or bad times, we have to stay focused on this. In many ways the pandemic actually helped. It got more people interested in realising the importance of e-commerce and so on. In the last two years, Linda, many more people, millions of people around the world, figured out how to go shop online for the first time ever. And that's a very sustaining habit that got created over time.

But we have to make sure that as economies, as they will, ebb and flow from very robust and strong economies to weaker economies. And certainly, there's a strong sense, I think, amongst leaders around the world that 2023 will be a more challenging time. We have to make sure that we continue to commit ourselves to making sure that financial inclusion is a very important aspect of what we do, because it doesn't pay dividends right away. It takes time and we can't let more time pass. We have to make sure we stay committed to it.

Linda Lacina: Why is it particularly important to you? When you think about this, what's driving you? What motivates you?

Al Kelly, Jr: Well, I think as the leader of a global financial company that wants to see more people participate. I mean, the idea of buying and selling goods is so base to the world and small businesses in general in most countries are a real engine for growth. So, I've always had an incredible passion for the small business owner and the challenges that she or he faces around the world. And I think that for Visa to thrive over time, we need more people into the financial mainstream.

And frankly, it is completely aligned with our purpose as a company. Our purpose as a company is to uplift everyone everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid. And it is that purpose that drives this mission-oriented aspect of our employees, who want to see us not just figure out how to make money, but actually truly try to uplift people everywhere. And, you know, it's so consistent with our mission to drive financial inclusion again, starting with access, but trying to then promote it further and be an avenue. Education is a big part of that.

Linda Lacina: What is the role in your opinion of public leadership? What is the role in this time?

Al Kelly, Jr: Well, I think public-private partnership is critical to try to drive issues such as these. And I think dialogue and collaboration, which are words that we use here at Davos in a lot of discussions, is truly what's required here. Government has to make sure that they are talking to the private sector and making sure that regulations that they are putting in place are actually going to generate better growth in their economies. It's going to cause innovation to thrive. It's going to cause security to be robust and important. It's going to make sure that their particular countries are desirable in terms of places that people want to shop, people want to visit, etcetera. And I think that as the world shrinks, more harmonisation of regulation around the world is going to help the small business owner in particular.

If you're a small business owner and you have to deal with a different array of regulations in different countries, it's awfully expensive for you to figure out how to comply so you actually can contract in terms of the number of places that you feel like you can invest in. And if you're a government that's tougher to do business with, you're going to be on that list of contractions in every small business situation, and you don't want that. And this is where I think global companies like ours who have the ability to work with virtually every government around the world can help governments understand best practices and other initiatives that have helped economies thrive.

Linda Lacina: Events like this one, at their heart seek excellence in public leadership. Everyone wants to be 5% better — how can we do a little bit more? In your mind, what are the maybe a few key must-have characteristics of excellence in public leadership?

Al Kelly, Jr: Well, I think you have to realise that you work for the people, number one. Number two, I think certainly while you have to keep an eye on the urgent problems of the day, you have to have a focus on the important problems of the future and realise that there are things you're going to need to do that might not happen or might not reach full fruition during your time in public service. But you're doing a tremendous amount to help people start to get further uplifted over time.

I think obviously listening and collaboration skills are critical and then frankly, like any other business volunteer, big, small Fortune 500 company, talent is critical. You know, good leaders in government need to put good people in place who can help advance their agenda because a good leader can't do it themselves. It always takes a team regardless. So, I think those are some of the attributes that I would expect and want to see in somebody who's a very strong public servant leader.

Linda Lacina: Yeah, absolutely. And during this time with the polycrisis, how can leaders prioritise? What would you recommend? Is there a framework or a question they should ask themselves to stay on the right path?

Al Kelly, Jr: I alluded to this earlier, the difference between what's urgent and what's important. When I run a big global company like ours, something goes wrong in the world every single day. And if I overly focused on the problem of the day, while it's seems urgent at the time, I'm going to lose the big picture of what is truly important for the best growth of the company and the economies around the world into the future. So, this is where having good talent is in place is important, where they can deal with the urgent issues of the day. And every good leader has to stay focused on what's important for the future and be looking around corners and not getting sucked into all of the day-to-day tactical issues that can suck you in if you allow them to.

Linda Lacina: I wanted to talk a little bit about your background. I read that you worked under Ronald Reagan as Head of Information Systems, and you were just in your twenties, in your late twenties. And I just wanted to ask you, what did that experience teach you about leadership? You're surrounded by leaders you're in the seat of the government. What did they teach you about leadership?

Al Kelly, Jr: Oh, it was a tremendous learning lab for me, Linda. I managed civil servants, I managed presidential appointees and managed professional technical people, many of them at the time, I think I was 27 or 28 when I was there, many of them older than I was. And in the government, you don't necessarily have the same tools that you have in the private sector. And so, you know, I learned a lot and made mistakes in terms of how you motivate people, how you direct people, how you make sure that you are giving them the proper coaching that is helping them continue to develop themselves as professionals. So, I would say it was very formative in terms of my leadership development.

Linda Lacina: And is there something that you do now that would not have occurred to you at the beginning of your career?

Al Kelly, Jr: Well, I've learned two things. One is it's very important to give people context. How does what they're doing every day fit in the big picture of the purpose of a company, the strategy of a company. I think people don't want to just do tasks. They want to understand how what they're working on is actually advancing the purpose of the company, the strategy of the company, how it's tied to the revenue flow of the company, etcetera. So, I think that one of the things that's very important, I put a lot of emphasis on it, is to make sure that we're constantly giving people context. I'm a frustrated professor. I love to explain to people how the basics work and therefore allowing them to see how their work fits into the bigger picture.

The other thing, obviously, is communication. I don't think you can communicate enough, and I try to stay extraordinarily visible in my company. During the pandemic, I started a weekly video and I think I've done 100 of them now and doing them every other week. It was a great way to connect with people while they were home and making them still feel like they're part of a bigger company. And the videos would be very short some weeks they'd be longer, sometimes they'd be very serious. Other times I would be introducing them a bit to my family and sharing pictures, etc. So, they were very, very well received by our employees because I think that people were anxious still while they were home to have that connection to the mothership of the company. And so, I think communication's extraordinarily important part of every leader's job.

Linda Lacina: Is there a habit that you employ during your work day that, gosh, if you didn't do this, everything would fall apart, you just can't work without it?

Al Kelly, Jr: If I don't have a pen in my hand or in my vicinity, I go into convulsions. I think by writing often, actually. And a lot of times I collect my thoughts on little scribbles on a piece of paper before I actually will communicate them orally. And I still use a HP 12 C calculator. I'm very numerate. Get into the numbers and I have a fantastic degree of curiosity, which probably drives people crazy inside the company from time to time. But those are all habits I've had from years.

Linda Lacina: What are you really curious about right now? What's the question or thing that you’re really digging into and learning about?

Al Kelly, Jr: Well, I think every good leader is thinking about the same things. One of them is what am I not thinking about? You know, what am I missing? What, you know, could happen in three to five years that I'm not putting sufficient energy behind anticipating. I think the second thing that most leaders probably worry about is talent. Do I have the right people in the right jobs with the right focus and the right motivation? Because I think if you are thinking about the right things and you put terrific people in place and give them proper context, proper direction, I think that's a winning formula for the most part.

Linda Lacina: Is there a book you recommend?

Al Kelly, Jr: You know, yesterday was the six month anniversary of the death of Dee Hock, who was the founder of Visa, and Dee’s got a book, [One From Many] that I encourage people to look at. It's the story of Visa and I think Dee doesn't get the credit he should get. He is, in my mind, one of the great inventors. The whole idea of the electronic movement of money using interoperable standards around the world was really his dream and vision. And I give him an awful lot of credit. It was for me, a real honour to get to know him over the last six years up until his death last July. And a lot of his thinking, not just on business, but his thinking on leadership resonates greatly with me. And I think it would with many other people.

Linda Lacina: What would they take from it? How would they change?

Al Kelly, Jr: I think there's a lot of elements of what Dee did in terms of engendering real cooperation amongst people, some of his leadership tendencies and characteristics in terms of empowering people, I think would all be things that people could find interesting and take something from.

Linda Lacina: You know, people are here all week. They're talking about solving the world's biggest problems. It’s an inspiring week, and then everyone goes home. How can they make sure that these ideas get sort of spread to all of their organizations and people they work with? What is the one practical thing every leader needs to do when they get home to make sure that this continues throughout the rest of the year?

Al Kelly, Jr: Well, at least for us at Visa, Davos is an extension of what we do every day, which is meeting with clients, listening and advising. And we come here and meet across the five of us who are in our primary delegation probably will see over 100 clients during the course of the week and take rigorous notes and get them back to all of the key people across the organization so that they understand what our clients are saying, what they're thinking, what they need, and therefore we know how to serve them better going forward. And so that's probably our number one objective coming out of a meeting like Davos, is to understand globally, because we get such a great view of what people are thinking globally at a point in time, is making sure we capture what we've heard, share it back with our broader organization, and then that enables us to serve our clients better.

Meet the Leader / Linda Lacina: That was Al Kelly, Jr. Thanks so much to him and thanks so much to you, for listening. A transcript of this episode - and my colleagues’ episodes, Radio Davos and the Book Club podcast - is available at wef.ch/podcasts.

This episode of meet the leader was presented and produced by me with Juan Toran as studio engineer and Gareth Nolan driving studio production.

That's it for now. I'm Linda Lacina with the World Economic Forum -- have a great day.