Banking & Technology at the SFI Annual Meeting 2022: "We Must Disrupt Ourselves"
The 17th edition of the SFI Annual Meeting took place on Thursday, 10 November 2022, with top-class speakers, and a large audience in attendance. Renowned keynote speakers from the Swiss financial industry Ralph Hamers (UBS Group) and Dr. Andréa M. Maechler (SNB) and representatives of the academic world in the person of British economics professor Franklin Allen (Imperial College London) and the host, Prof. François Degeorge (Managing Director of SFI), met on a sunny November day at Zurich's Lake Side. The theme of this year's annual conference: Banking and Technology.
The topic chosen for the 17th SFI Annual Meeting could not have been more appropriate. On the evening before the conference began the distress sale of the crypto exchange FTX.com was announced. The resulting uncertainty in the crypto world led to a considerable fall in the price of Bitcoin—the most impressive manifestation possible of the link between banking and technology. Against this backdrop, it was not surprising that all keynote speakers focused in one way or another on the trust and reliability component of financial center players, including central banks and digital marketplace operators.
In the context of wealth management, contributors discussed future generation of customers who, as so-called digital natives, have high expectations of the financial industry regarding the digitization of banking services and the consistent use of new technologies. If long-established financial center players do not succeed in meeting these expectations, they will sooner or later be displaced by innovative neo banks or Fintechs. Or as one keynote speaker put it in a nutshell: "We must disrupt ourselves".
The conference also looked closely at the Fintech industry, whose enormous potential for change is putting the established business models of traditional banking institutions under pressure. Fintechs are increasingly focusing on the profitable areas of the value chain, gaining a competitive advantage through attractive pricing and fee models, as the example of Revolut shows impressively. Regulators, meanwhile, are asked to protect the customers of Fintechs from financial risks and to prevent undesirable developments by the implementation targeted regulatory measures. As it turns out, this requires something of a balancing act. Effective countermeasures must be taken to mitigate the growing cybercrime dangers that arise in a digital world. But too tight a regulatory corset prevents innovation. Both the Swiss financial center and Singapore are repeatedly cited in this context as pioneers of moderate but effective regulation.
The keynote speakers came together for a panel discussion, moderated by Carolin Roth, based on the recent SFI Roundup "Fintech—A Fast-Moving Frontier" and supplemented by contributions from SFI Professor and coauthor of the Roundup Jean-Charles Rochet (University of Geneva), before SFI Chairman Dr. Stefan Seiler (UBS AG) wrapped up the 17th edition of the SFI Annual Meeting with a brief closing note.
"Fintech—A Fast-Moving Frontier" can be found here.
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