Kristo Käärmann

Kristo Käärmann was a management consultant at Deloitte Consulting and PricewaterhouseCoopers, working with European banks and insurers to modernize their processes and systems. Stunned by their inefficiency, he teamed up with Taavet Hinrikus to develop an entirely new system for moving money across borders. Käärmann's defining decision was to prioritize regulatory compliance from day one, registering TransferWise with the UK Financial Conduct Authority before most fintechs considered it a priority. This early compliance focus enabled Wise to build direct banking relationships and eventually gain its own payment rail access, rather than remaining dependent on intermediary banks that could terminate partnerships with 30 days' notice. Käärmann became CEO in 2017 when Hinrikus stepped back to focus on investing, and has led the company through its 2021 direct listing and expansion to 15.6 million customers.

Kristo Käärmann is the co-founder and CEO of Wise plc. Born in Estonia, he moved to London where he worked as a management consultant specializing in financial services modernization. His personal experience of losing approximately $635 in exchange rate markups on a $12,700 transfer to Estonia motivated him to build a transparent alternative to traditional banking. Käärmann's operational philosophy emphasizes doing unscalable things first—manually recording transfers in spreadsheets at launch—to validate demand before building automation. Under his leadership, Wise has grown from a six-person team processing $1 million in monthly volume to an 8,000-person organization moving $184.4 billion annually. He was selected as one of the World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneers in 2015. In June 2022, the UK Financial Conduct Authority included Käärmann on its list of individuals receiving penalties for a deliberate tax default regarding $914,400 for the 2017-2018 tax year; he remained on the list for 12 months starting September 2021. Despite this controversy, he has retained the CEO position and led the company's 2025 announcement of a planned primary listing move to the United States.