Today, I attended the day 1 of the London Fintech Week. It is exciting to have the opportunity to be part of such an event - personally and professionally. I have done my formal work debrief so now want to focus on some reflections.
The first session that called my attention was ‘Is London still the world’s financial center?’. by Nick Murray-Leslie. The speaker was clearly making a case for it but the more he provided the arguments for it, the gloomier I got about the prospects. Talent is key - and the environment is not prone to it as Brexit talks progress. And no, it is not all about Brexit but it certainly does not bode well for people wanting to hire across Europe and for talent looking for exciting opportunities. Moreover, in general terms and outside Brexit, I find that the world will be much less about where you are but rather about where you are connected. In a not so distant future it may not matter if we are based in London or Rome to do many of the jobs that converge in London these days. And even if it matters, the world is moving at a fast pace - London’s divide is widening as the wealthy continue to push prices up and there is no one in between. That was actually a point that the speaker actually brought, it is becoming too expensive for the talent that we want in London to live there. And one that comes from local experience, criminality is severely increasing. There is less money being put in community services, there will be less as taxes collected increase, and the inequality will just continue to foster this. Oh, and shall I talk about the famous millenials and how they may regard Britain’s isolation and the type of opportunities it may (not) offer for the melting pot experience they want to have? So not overly positive I must say.
I enjoyed the passion of Luis Carranza as he introduced the data monetisation idea - the concept that we can all sell our own data that we chose to provide. Now, I buy the idea and I may even go and sign up for the Beta version of Census itself, but the application of it is a challenge. i don’t even know where to start. First, it is not only about data of one person but rather about the aggretation of millions of data points about millions of people and the algorithms behind it. The ability to smartly use this data. And this is embedded in the giants to whom we have been providing this data for years. Which they continue to advance every second of each day. So I struggle to see that the Amazons and the Facebooks would be completely disrupted unless Census has the scale of a FB and can then negotiate head to head with it. Possible, but questionable. Second, there are all sorts of regulatory issues. At this point they can’t even reward people that are signing up for cash as the reg space is grey. And some data is not even allowed to be used as it leads to discrimination such as medical data - where does it stop? Truth be said I got the first question of the day via slido to be mine (geek) and he did say they were staying away from health data as it is too complicated. And then my biggest concern - the ethical part of the more vulnerable people being more at risk as data becomes a source of income, and they may be in countries where there is the list protection and the least amount of transparency and education to deal with it. And what stops the normal consumer and as they alter their behaviour to make them more interesting as the internet will spit out all sorts of hacks for you to make more money from your data, websites you should open, clicks you should do. Merks the quality of the data really... Anyway - I like the concept of control over our data but I have given out that control willingly a long time ago as I still believe the combined ability of the giants to monetize it pays back well above my requirements for the benefit that I take from it. I am much more interested in side applications that you can have in emerging markets and the potential to push out education to targeted groups. But I am not sure Census is the mean for that.
Finally we had a fintech disruptors panel. It was ok but must admit less inspiring. I got awed by the fact that Transferwise is now partnering with banks when their ads were all about bringing down the banks. I understand how it fulfills their mission it they are only reaching 10pct of the international transfers market, but must admit it was still blaaa... I got positive vibes from worldremit’s emerging trends that they need to not only figure out the flows from developed to emerging but also emerging to developed. And that is exciting.
I left the day half the way through to go back to reality, but positive about what the conference can be.
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