1105: The Steady Climb: Scaling with Purpose in FinTech | Rene Ho, CFO, SAP Taulia

It’s a reality Ho doesn’t resist—instead, he works to make those connections scalable. That mindset reflects a broader shift under his leadership. “We’re also embedding our technology more and more into the SAP technology,” Ho tells us, noting that when he joined, the two platforms were sold separately. Now, integration enables “more of a single sale,” smoothing the go-to-market motion.

While SAP Taulia continues to align its tech stack, one area remains purposefully independent: the financing operations. “We don’t use our balance sheet to finance the invoices,” Ho says. Instead, more than 30 financial institutions and non-bank entities fund those transactions.

Managing that arm requires a distinct skill set. “The people that manage that part of the business are former bankers,” he tells us. Integrating them under traditional SaaS leadership would risk diminishing their value. “That gap would be so huge they wouldn’t necessarily know how to make the best of them.”

Still, Ho ensures confidence remains high. While Taulia doesn’t underwrite credit, it plays a critical role: “We gather (the data), we can synthesize, assess,” and support underwriters. The company’s risk team exists to do just that—build trust and deliver insight where it counts.

CFOTL: Is there any piece of the business where the Taulia contribution is best kept independent? Has maintaining some independence remained essential to operating slightly outside of SAP?

Ho: I think the most independent part of our business is the financing piece. We don’t use our own balance sheet to finance invoices—we work with over 30 financial institutions and non-bank FIs who provide that funding. The people managing this part of the business are former bankers. They come from payments and banking operations backgrounds. For a former senior banker to be managed by someone from a traditional enterprise SaaS background… that gap would be too large. The SaaS manager likely wouldn’t know how to bring out the best in them. So that part of the FinTech—our funding operations—is the most challenging to integrate.

CFOTL: I also want to ask about risk management in today’s macro environment. How do these offerings help balance growth investments with the need for liquidity and capital efficiency?

Ho: That’s a good question. First, we don’t take credit risk ourselves. We provide information to the entities that are underwriting the credit, but we don’t make the lending decisions or assume that risk. What we do is power that process with our technology—we gather the data, synthesize it, and assess it. But the formal decision is left to the funders. We do have a risk management team to ensure there’s trust in the system. It’s our job to give the underwriters confidence in their decisions—to be a trusted party in enabling sound risk assessments.