In financial services, three voices dominate the conversation: regulators, institutions, and technology.

 

Julia Chin believes there’s a fourth voice we need to hear more clearly: the human voice trying to make sense of it all. 

 

Julia Chin, financial crime fighter and founder of JFourth Solutions joined me on Get Ready Before Life Happens to talk about why financial crime prevention must start with human understanding, how financial resilience protects families from scams, and why financial literacy is one of the most powerful tools for navigating today’s financial systems.

 

Key Takeaways

 

🔹 Financial systems often focus on rules, products, and technology while overlooking the human perspective.
🔹 The PULSE framework emphasizes people, undertaking, leadership, structure and ecosystem to protect people, not just tick boxes.
🔹 Financial resilience starts with buffers like emergency savings.
🔹 Scams target vulnerability and can affect anyone.
🔹 Financial knowledge helps people recognize risks and push back when something feels wrong.
🔹 Financial inclusion and dignity help reduce exposure to financial crime.
🔹 Curiosity, caution, compassion, and creativity help people navigate an AI-driven financial world.

 

💭 Tony’s Take: Financial systems work best when they protect people. When we build resilience, stay curious, and understand the risks around us, we strengthen our ability to navigate an increasingly complex financial world. Financial resilience is about protecting ourselves and the people we care about.

 

 🎥 Watch this episode below: 

 

🎧 Listen to the podcast below or on your favorite podcast app. 

 

Connect with Julia Chin: 

 

• JFourth Solutions Website: https://www.jfourthsolutions.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pekyee-julia-chin/
• Tripwire Newsletter (Substack): https://thetripwire.substack.com/
• The Fourth Perspective (LinkedIn Newsletter): https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7421859851661877248/

 

Referenced: 

 

• Dignity and Financial Literacy on The Get Ready Money Podcast with Peter Kwadwo Asare Nyarko (YouTube)

 

Bio: 

 

Julia Chin has spent 36 years fighting financial crime , not with a badge, but with knowledge. From audit rooms to boardrooms, she's seen how financial systems can both protect and exclude the people they're meant to serve — and how financial criminals exploit that gap. Today, through JFourth Solutions, her newsletter Tripwire (co-authored with her partner in crime, Ren Chang), and The Fourth Perspective on LinkedIn, Julia champions financial literacy as protection, helping individuals and professionals ask the right questions, spot the red flags, and build the kind of resilience that survives life's shocks. Her belief: everyone has a role to play in making our financial world safer - no badge required.

 

This episode is a collaboration with The Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards (the MAIAs) which celebrate the increasingly important work being done to help people understand money better. Learn more: https://www.maiawards.org.  

 

👉 Start Your Financial Readiness Plan: A free, practical plan that helps you create your in-case-of-emergency Financial First Aid Kit, organize what matters, and prepare before life happens. Start Your Free Financial Readiness Plan  https://www.tonysteuer.com

 

👉 Support the Mission: Become a Get Ready Insider and receive access to the Get Ready Library while helping support my mission to help people prepare before life happens. Become a Get Ready Insider  https://www.tonysteuer.com/get-ready-insider

 

 

Episode Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Tony: What if financial resilience and financial crime prevention were part of the same mission?

Welcome to Get Ready: Before Life Happens.

Today, I’m joined by Julia Chin.

Julia, welcome to the podcast.

Julia: Thanks so much, Tony. I’m so glad to be here.

Tony: It’s great to have you.

Tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story, and how did it lead you to focusing on the human side of risk?

Julia: I’ve spent more than 30 years inside financial systems, working in audit, banking, forensic investigation, compliance, and risk management.

I’ve seen money from almost every angle and worked my way through just about every corner of the financial world.

But the most important lesson I ever learned about finance didn’t come from a boardroom or a textbook.

It came from when I nearly lost everything.

Life happens.

Now, through my consultancy, J4 Solutions, I help organizations build risk and compliance cultures using a framework I developed called PULSE, which stands for People, Undertaking, Leadership, Structure, and Ecosystem.

The aim is to protect people, not just tick boxes.

I tend to write and speak about the human side of financial crime and financial resilience.

For most of my career, I was looking at money from the inside out, from an institution’s perspective.

How do we protect the bank?

How do we satisfy the regulators?

How do we manage risk?

Then COVID hit, and everything flipped.

I lost my job.

I was a single parent with three kids depending on me.

Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about compliance frameworks or regulatory requirements anymore.

I was sitting at the kitchen table at 2 a.m., unable to sleep, doing arithmetic.

“If I pay the electricity bill, can we still afford groceries?”

“If the car breaks down, what do we do?”

I had knowledge that most people don’t have, but none of that mattered because I had no buffer, no emergency fund, no cushion to absorb the shock.

That’s when I recognized the difference between financial access and financial resilience.

They’re not the same thing.

Everything I had learned about protecting institutions needed to be translated into protecting people.

Real people.

People like me in that moment: educated, experienced, and still completely vulnerable.

That’s what drove me to talk more about the human side of financial systems.

I’ve now been on both sides: as an expert in the boardroom and as a human being, a mom sitting at the kitchen table.

That’s where I am today.

Tony: That’s incredibly powerful.

I think a lot of us who are professionals in the business, especially those who’ve worked with regulation or corporations, can become disconnected from what consumers and the people we serve are actually going through.

It’s easy to say, “We need to pass this law,” or, “We need to enforce this action.”

Then there’s the reality of what people are actually dealing with.

I think that often gets overlooked.

Julia: Absolutely.

A lot of times when we talk about money and financial systems, there are three voices that dominate the conversation.

First, you have the regulators.

They’re saying, “Here are the rules. Here’s what’s allowed. Here’s what’s not allowed.”

Then you have the institutions: banks, insurance companies, financial services firms, and payment service providers.

They’re saying, “Here’s our product. Here’s what we’re selling. Here’s how you can give us your money.”

Then you have technology: fintech, crypto, blockchain, stablecoins, apps, and platforms.

They’re saying, “Here’s how to do it faster. Here’s how to do it on your phone. Here’s how to automate everything.”

All three voices are important.

But I think something has been forgotten.

There’s a fourth voice.

That’s why I started The Fourth Perspective.

It’s the perspective of the human.

The person who is actually trying to make sense of everything around us, protect their family and loved ones, build their future, and avoid getting tripped up in the process.

It’s about putting the human back at the center of the conversation.

Tony: I love that: putting the human back at the center of the conversation.

I’m writing that down because I think it’s so important.

When we’re working on regulations, talking about enforcement actions, or discussing product sales, there are all these things happening in the background.

Yet sometimes we don’t talk enough about the actual people and how these decisions are going to affect them.

One of the things you and I talked about before the show was financial resilience.

Can you go into a little more about what financial resilience actually means?

Julia: There’s a framework I’ve heard described as three financial modes: everyday, rainy day, and one day.

When we talk about financial resilience, the question is: At any point in time, are we able to withstand financial pressure?

Are we living hand to mouth in everyday mode?

Do we have some buffer so that if we lose a job or something happens, we’re able to withstand that pressure?

That’s rainy-day mode.

Then there is one-day mode: one day we can own a house, one day we can achieve a longer-term goal.

That means having an even longer buffer.

To me, being financially resilient means having a buffer.

It’s useful to think about which mode we’re currently in.

Tony: When we talk about a buffer, that can mean many different things.

You read one place that you should have 90 days of expenses, and somewhere else you’ll see another recommendation.

But life isn’t always that clear-cut.

What advice would you give to people thinking, “I want to become financially resilient. I want to be set up”?

How should they think about building that fund or coming up with a plan?

Julia: You don’t build that buffer overnight.

Life happens, so we may not be able to create a rainy-day fund immediately.

We need to start by understanding budgeting so we can begin building that rainy-day buffer.

We also need to understand debt and how to avoid the traps that keep us stuck in everyday mode.

We need to understand scams so we can protect ourselves and protect what we’ve already built.

One of the biggest concerns today is that someone may have built a rainy-day buffer, and it can disappear overnight.

I’ve had friends and loved ones experience that.

Even a one-day savings goal, a nest egg, can be stolen through fraud and scams.

We also need to understand our rights so we can push back when something is wrong.

If all of us had more of that understanding, it could create a ripple effect.

If we’re financially literate, we model it for our kids.

We can spot when our parents might be targeted.

We can be the person our friends call when something doesn’t feel right.

Knowledge and financial literacy don’t just help us protect ourselves.

They help us protect our entire circle.

Tony: I completely agree.

Having knowledge does help protect you.

Let’s use something outside of finance for a moment.

If you know something about grocery shopping and prices, you’re more prepared when you go shopping.

If you know that eggs normally cost a certain amount and somewhere is charging five times as much, you know that might not be a good deal.

Sorry, I brought money back into it.

But having some knowledge does tend to protect you.

Julia: Yes.

It’s about knowing whether something seems reasonable.

And it isn’t only whether the price is high or whether you think something is a good deal.

It’s also about sharpening your instincts so you can recognize when something feels off.

If something sounds too good to be true, chances are it is.

It works both ways.

Tony: Exactly.

If something sounds too good to be true, there’s probably an issue.

I’ve seen that in my own work.

Sometimes people buy into a story.

They think they’re a little smarter than everybody else.

That’s something scammers work on.

“Julia, I have this great deal. We’re the only two who know how this works, but don’t tell anybody else because it’s a secret.”

I’m sure you’ve seen that playbook before.

Julia: Yes.

That’s a very typical one.

We call it isolation.

One saying I like is: If you haven’t been scammed, it may simply mean that the scam designed for you hasn’t found you yet.

That sounds harsh, but there’s truth to it because scammers don’t target our intelligence.

They target our emotions.

Interestingly, some of the same techniques that help people build good financial habits can also be used by scammers: small steps, emotional engagement, trust-building over time, and urgency.

You mentioned, “Don’t tell anyone because it’s only you and me.”

Those kinds of techniques are part of the scam playbook.

Scammers are not necessarily smarter than their victims.

They’re often simply better at exploiting emotions.

Tony: That’s it.

It’s about psychology and manipulation.

As you point out, anybody can get scammed.

Some very wealthy and smart people have been victims.

We can go back to Bernie Madoff in the United States, who took advantage of some very sophisticated people.

These things happen.

As you said, sometimes it’s simply because you haven’t been targeted by the scam that is right for your particular vulnerability.

Knowledge gives you another layer of protection.

One of the other things we talk about is financial inclusion.

You’ve mentioned that financial inclusion can also help reduce financial crime.

Can you go into that?

Julia: I think this is especially important when someone is in everyday mode and worried about whether they can put food on the table tonight.

That’s when people can become more vulnerable to exploitation.

Take a parent with a sick child who is already in everyday mode.

Someone approaches them and says, “Can I use your account to transfer money through? For every $1,000 I put through your account, you can keep $100.”

Would that parent say yes?

If my child were sick and I desperately needed the money, I might.

That’s why financial inclusion and financial crime are connected.

Tony: That’s very powerful.

When somebody is under that kind of pressure, I don’t want to use the word desperate, but when you’re trying to protect your child, you’re more likely to do something you think will help them.

You might overlook a warning sign because you really need the opportunity to work out.

That’s where it gets scary.

It goes back to what you were saying earlier about vulnerability.

Scammers find the vulnerability in your defense and attack it.

It makes me think about sports.

I used to play basketball, and you look for a vulnerability in the defense.

Is the defender leaning one way so you can go the other?

That’s what scammers are doing.

They’re looking for that opening they can exploit.

Julia: Exactly.

The vulnerability can take any form.

It can be emotional.

It can be financial.

A parent may simply need the money.

Something else we’ve been talking about over the past couple of years is giving people the choice to live with dignity.

Being able to put food on the table for their families.

What does that look like?

I would say the first thing is to give people jobs.

Tony: It’s interesting that you mentioned dignity.

My most downloaded episode is called Financial Literacy and Dignity.

By far, it’s my most downloaded episode.

I think there’s a lot to this idea that we can provide people with dignity.

As we talk about financial systems, what advice would you give organizations and regulators about providing people with dignity through their work?

Julia: One of the challenges right now is that people are being displaced as organizations adopt AI.

I wrote about this recently.

Think about the timber industry.

In some countries, if you cut down a tree, you are required to replant.

Is that happening with people who are being displaced from their jobs?

Are those people being retrained and prepared for the future of work?

I use the concept of “replanting” people.

Are we helping people get themselves back into meaningful work?

Tony: I love that.

Are they being replanted?

I don’t think we’re addressing that very well as a society.

These changes are coming incredibly fast.

We can look back at manufacturing and the Luddites destroying machinery because they weren’t able to adjust to the new technology.

But those changes happened over a longer period.

Now we’re seeing displacement happen incredibly quickly.

There hasn’t necessarily been enough organizational planning around how societies help people adapt to those changes.

That ties directly back to financial inclusion.

Julia: That’s why I find this conversation thought-provoking.

We know something needs to be done.

The next question is: How do we solve it as a society and as a community?

It isn’t just about organizations saving costs by using AI.

It’s also about how we build the entire society together.

Tony: That’s such an important issue.

We need to come together in our individual countries and globally to begin addressing it.

This is a global issue.

I don’t know whether any single country can solve it alone.

My own feeling is that AI may break down some traditional borders in certain ways.

We really don’t know how it is going to develop or how it will affect people.

Julia: I’m not very tech savvy, and AI still feels like a black box to me.

But I’m not against it because it helps me work faster and more effectively.

It helps me brainstorm.

It helps me get information and data much faster than I could on my own.

But yes, I think there’s still a lot we need to understand about AI.

Tony: I also think it is unfortunately going to drive financial crime.

It gets back to what you said earlier: you may simply not have been hit by the right scam yet.

AI is already being used to make scams more personalized and potentially more effective at exploiting individual vulnerabilities.

And that can happen at scale.

Before we wrap up, I want to touch on what individuals working in financial literacy can do.

A lot of the audience for this podcast includes financial literacy advocates around the world.

Some are building nonprofits.

Some are regulators.

Some are educators.

What advice would you give them about building financial resilience within their communities?

Julia: Every community has its own nuances.

I would encourage people to think about what I call the three Cs of human superpowers.

The first is curiosity.

Stay curious.

Stay cautious.

There isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all solution or a silver bullet for financial resilience.

Stay curious and stay observant.

The second is compassion.

By compassion, I don’t mean only empathy.

I also mean contextualization.

Something that makes sense to me in Asia may not make sense to somebody in Africa, the Americas, or Europe.

Compassion also means understanding the context.

The third is creativity.

Creativity isn’t only about being able to draw.

It’s about being able to connect the dots.

Whatever happens with technology, humans still need to train our minds to do these things and remember that we are human at the end of the day.

Then there is a fourth C, which may be the most difficult: common sense.

It isn’t always so common.

It may sound conceptual, but if we think about these as human superpowers, the idea is simple:

Stay human.

Stay curious.

Stay creative.

Stay compassionate.

And use common sense.

Tony: I love that.

Common sense is a huge part of it.

For me, curiosity is central to my own work because I want to help people ask better questions.

That also protects people from scams.

Scammers generally don’t like to be questioned.

One way to catch a scammer is to keep asking questions.

Sooner or later, they may stop wanting to answer.

That itself is a red flag.

If you’re dealing with a legitimate financial professional, they should be willing and able to answer reasonable questions.

When someone starts avoiding questions or doesn’t want you talking with other people, ask why.

Who?

What?

Where?

When?

Why?

How?

Those are useful questions to bring into financial decisions.

For a lot of people, financial services and products are overwhelming, and that can make it harder to practice those human superpowers.

Julia: When you talk about asking questions, it reminds me of something that happened to me in the early days of bots, probably about 12 years ago.

I somehow stumbled onto a bot through Skype and started chatting with it.

At first, I didn’t know it was a bot.

I kept asking questions.

I kept asking, “Why?”

Eventually, I managed to jam the bot.

It started repeating questions and comments it had given me earlier.

I wish I had kept some screenshots because it was quite funny.

That’s what staying curious can do.

Tony: I don’t know if you can do that to a bot anymore because they’ve gotten amazingly sophisticated.

I use AI to help with the show notes for this podcast.

One time, I forgot to provide a guest’s title and occupation.

The AI very confidently invented a title, occupation, and company for the guest.

None of it was true.

It confidently filled in the information it thought I wanted.

That’s something to keep in mind.

And there’s an interesting parallel with scammers.

Scammers fill in information they think you want to hear.

Julia: Exactly.

It’s about understanding hallucinations and remembering that AI is a double-edged sword.

It can work in our favor, but bad actors use it too.

We use psychology and behavioral science to encourage people to save and make good decisions.

Those same tools can be used at the other end to manipulate and scam people.

The same capabilities can be used for different purposes.

Tony: Unfortunately, that’s true.

But it gets back to those human superpowers.

Julia, to wrap up, I have what’s called the Get Ready Hot Take Trio.

These are three quick questions I ask all of my guests.

The first one is: What’s one myth about scams that you’re trying to break?

Julia: The myth that scams only happen to gullible people.

That is one of the most dangerous beliefs out there.

People think, “I’m too smart to fall for a scam.”

That overconfidence can be exactly what makes them vulnerable.

There is also a shame factor.

If someone has always believed they could never be scammed and then it happens, they may be less likely to tell anybody.

That contributes to fraud and scams being underreported.

Then mental health issues can follow.

So the myth I want to break is that scams only happen to gullible people.

Tony: That’s something I’ve heard from so many people I’ve had on the show.

Scams happen to very well-educated, smart, capable people.

Overconfidence can be a vulnerability.

I’ve also seen people who are very skilled and knowledgeable in one area assume they’re equally knowledgeable about money.

That’s where the danger comes in.

You need to understand your limits.

Julia: The moment you think, “It could never happen to me,” may be the moment you’re most at risk.

Tony: Exactly.

Julia, let’s get out the time machine for a minute.

If you could go back in time, knowing what you know now about scams and financial resilience, what advice would you give your younger self?

Julia: Two things.

Build your rainy day before the storm.

And have a seat at the table.

What I mean by having a seat at the table is that I wish I had spoken up more.

This is very personal.

I was painfully shy when I was younger.

Too introverted to speak out.

Too hesitant to talk.

I gave myself a lot of excuses to stay in the background.

I would tell my younger self: Your voice matters.

The concerns you’re afraid to raise are often some of the most important ones.

The questions you think are stupid may be questions somebody else in the room needs to hear.

Take a seat.

Ask the question.

And ask for help.

Asking for help is not a weakness.

Tony: Asking for help is not a weakness.

And what you said about thinking a question is stupid takes me back to school.

We didn’t want to raise our hands because we were afraid everybody else would think we were stupid.

But usually there were other people in the class wondering the same thing and also afraid to ask.

It’s worse not to ask the question.

Julia: Especially today, when you think about the number of investment scams out there, it’s important to ask the question.

Maybe even talk to a friend and say, “Does this make sense to you?”

Tony: Exactly.

That gets back to why scammers isolate people.

They don’t want you to run the opportunity by somebody else who might say, “Wait a minute. I see a hole here.”

That other person isn’t being manipulated by the scammer, so they can bring a different perspective.

Julia, the final question is: What’s your number one insight to help people get ready before life happens?

Julia: Know which mode you’re in and protect the transition point.

Most people don’t realize how close they may be to slipping backward.

It could be someone going into the hospital.

Someone losing their job.

Something unexpected happening.

Take the time to honestly understand which mode you’re in.

Otherwise, you may suddenly find yourself at the kitchen table at 2 a.m. doing the maths.

Tony: Unfortunately, it can happen to anybody, and it can happen very quickly.

That’s why preparation matters.

Julia, where can people learn more about you and your work?

Julia: I’m very active on LinkedIn, and I would love to keep the conversation going there.

I regularly post about financial crime, financial resilience, and the human side of money.

Please connect with me.

I love hearing feedback and people’s stories.

The Fourth Perspective is my LinkedIn newsletter.

It comes out fortnightly and explores the human lens of financial systems, including a lot of what we’ve talked about today.

People can also find me through my website at J4Solutions.com.

There’s a story behind the name, but you’ll find that on the website as well.

Tony: Fantastic.

You also have a Substack.

For everybody watching and listening, there will be links in the show notes to Julia’s LinkedIn profile, newsletter, website, and Substack.

Julia, thanks for joining us on Get Ready: Before Life Happens.

Julia: Thank you so much for having me, Tony.

We’ve all got this, and we don’t have to figure it out alone.

Tony: We’re not alone.

That’s fantastic.

Thank you, everyone, as always, for tuning in to this episode of Get Ready: Before Life Happens.

If this conversation made you rethink how you view risk, inclusion, and resilience, please be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend.

You can also go to my website at TonySteuer.com to join the Get Ready Movement and get access to my newsletter and other resources.

Because when life happens, the way you think about money matters.