Sedric's Remy Rosen sits down with Annie Delgado, Chief Risk Officer at Upstart, to unpack how AI can expand access to credit while staying fair, explainable, and compliant.
Annie shares why Upstart prioritized model explainability years before it was table stakes, how to go beyond adverse-action “model forms,” and what first-principles frameworks (think the AI Bill of Rights) look like in practice.
They dig into navigating a fragmented regulatory landscape, building trust with regulators, and turning compliance into a strategic partner for product and marketing. Annie closes with pragmatic advice for leaders: show up early, come with solutions, and learn the tech. A clear-eyed look at responsible innovation in consumer finance.
In this episode of Beyond the Fine Print, host Remy Rosen unpacks the “Grey Zone” of compliance—where brand voices, affiliates, and finfluencers can unintentionally create regulatory risk. Through the cautionary tale of Klarna’s influencer campaign, we explore how tone and message drift can lead to costly consequences. Then, Stacey Onyido, Global Financial Promotions Oversight Manager at eToro, joins to share insights on balancing creativity with compliance in high-growth, highly regulated environments.
Welcome to the very first episode of Sedric's Beyond the Fine Print—a podcast for the people who keep innovation safe, smart, and sustainable. Hosted by Remy Rosen and brought to you by Sedric, this show is for compliance and risk leaders across financial services, fintech, AI, and other tightly regulated industries. It’s also for those who aspire to grow into these roles—people who understand that in high-velocity, high-risk environments, leadership isn’t just about ambition. It’s about foresight, systems thinking, and integrity.
In this premiere episode, Remy introduces the voice, purpose, and philosophy behind Beyond the Fine Print. You’ll hear why Sedric launched this podcast, what makes compliance leadership fundamentally human, and how thoughtful oversight can become a strategic advantage—not just a regulatory requirement.
Then we explore a story that’s become a watershed moment in the world of fintech compliance: the collapse of Synapse.
Synapse was once a promising middleware platform powering some of the most recognizable neobanks and fintech apps. Its promise was simple—connect startups with regulated banks, abstract the complexity, and let innovation flow. But when Synapse abruptly shut down in 2024, it left hundreds of thousands of end users unable to access their funds. The damage rippled through the industry: frozen accounts, unanswered support tickets, public confusion, and mounting scrutiny from regulators.
This episode goes beyond the headlines to examine what really happened.
Remy breaks down how the collapse wasn’t caused by fraud—but by fragmentation. No unified ledger, no centralized oversight, no real-time compliance intelligence. The system had data—but no synthesis. Risk signals existed—but they weren’t surfaced, contextualized, or escalated in time. We look at the gaps exposed by Synapse’s failure, from multi-party dependencies to regulatory blind spots, and the increasing expectation that infrastructure must be auditable, explainable, and adaptive.
More importantly, we ask: what would it have looked like if Synapse had used a tool like Sedric?
You’ll hear how an AI-driven compliance platform could have detected red flags early, reconciled inconsistencies across bank and app layers, and empowered teams to act before trust broke down. We discuss how modern oversight tools allow risk and compliance professionals to scale their intuition, not replace it—to catch complexity before it metastasizes, and to turn insight into early intervention.
Finally, this episode zooms out to explore the broader landscape.
What does it mean to lead in a world where oversight needs to be real-time, data-informed, and emotionally intelligent? What skills will define the next generation of risk and compliance leaders? And how can we move from reactive rule-following to proactive integrity design?
Whether you’re a Chief Compliance Officer at a global bank, a Head of Risk at a fast-moving startup, or someone curious about building a more ethical, trustworthy tech future—this episode will leave you with a new lens on what leadership looks like beyond the fine print.