Ambar Vitelli-Khosla
Strategic Partnerships
Taking place between 11th July, 2022 to 15th July, 2022, Fintech Week London is an event that brings together the best of finance and tech in London. The event explored a range of topics including Open Banking, Big Tech and Big Banks, and Fintech for Good. Here are our top 5 highlights from the event:
Responsible innovation
Tuang Lee Lim, Assistant Managing Director (Capital Markets), Monetary Authority of Singapore presented the keynote for International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) Roadmap for Crypto-Regulation. He concluded that the financial services industry has traversed the mile from being middlemen of traditional finance sector to being at the centre of P2P culture of crypto asset ecosystem. While the opportunities in crypto are immense, it seems to have reached an inflection point. The apparent volatility, manipulation and thickness in the market is making it unsafe for average customers to participate in decentralised economy. Hence, crypto regulation is the need of the hour.
Inclusive capital
During the panel discussion Maya Ghosn Bichara, COO, Mindstruck suggests that the purpose of inclusive capitalism is to ensure that economic benefits are broadly and fairly experienced by all stakeholders including companies, investors , and the environment. Maya identifies three key trends in the market: there is increasing self-consciousness, emphasis on ESG and market integration. Businesses and investors are beginning to feel responsible for their immediate and long-term impact and are acting to achieve outcomes favourable to all sectors and communities.
Babar Khan, Partnerships and M&A, New Payment Platforms, Mastercard believes that disruptions and tech innovations that were expected by 2027 have accelerated by 5 years and are already here. While tech solutions are available, the challenge is to resolve the mismatches.
Big Tech & Big Banks: Coopetition
Are banks technology companies? While banks work with the best technology, the core profit centre of banks is not technology, but financial services. Financial services companies play a hugely valuable role in delivering products and services like mortgages, credit cards and risk management. The more appropriate way to describe the relation between banks and tech is ‘Banking is what we do, tech is how we do it’.
Ronit Ghose
Global Head of Banking, FinTech & Digital Assets for Citi Global Insights, Citi
Trending in Payments
Customers are always looking for simple and robust payment services. Payment systems that are more connected, foster open ecosystems and ensure frictionless business are in a win-win position. Pietro Candela, Head of Europe Business Development, Alipay explores how banks and fintechs can cooperate to deliver more sophisticated experiences to customers and facilitate customer feasibility, across diverse regions. He observes that being younger, Asian customers are more prone to sharing data, while European demography is more mature and richer and more privacy oriented. However, Europe has the most advanced banking and payment regulations.
Bank Fintech Partnership for the Future of Finance
Partnerships between tech companies and financial institutions are going to be critical over the next three to five years.
Karan Jain, Chief Executive Officer, NayaOne
While customer expectations and markets are changing rapidly, the time taken for partners to get on board is still huge and has an associated opportunity cost. Stakeholders need to partner swiftly, experiment rapidly and look at more than one partner for business capabilities. This is mutually beneficial for companies, banks, tech providers and the end customers.
