About Kristo Käärmann

Kristo Käärmann, Financial services enterpreneur, ex-consultant with a computer science and maths background. Enjoys making something out of nothing. Co-founder and CEO of Wise, global tech company building the best way to move money around the world. Prior to starting Wise, Kristo Käärmann was a management consultant with Deloitte Consulting and PricewaterhouseCoopers. He worked with European banks and insurers to modernise their processes and systems. Stunned by their inefficiency, he teamed up with Taavet Hinrikus, then Skype's director of strategy, to develop an entirely new system for moving money across borders. Kristo was selected as one of the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers 2015. Kristo Käärmann started his first business, an online investments tracking portal Investor.ee in 1999, when he was 19. Although the service was popular at the time, it never turned a profit and was acquired a few years later for an undisclosed amount (read: very little). Kristo Käärmann is also involved in the organisation of Young Scholar Grant, where grants are given out to the brightest prospective university students of Estonia to study abroad in Europe’s best universities. Specialties: Retail finance, online services, data warehousing, cloud computing, risk management, insurance, actuarial modelling and regulation.