The Metaverse is notoriously hard to define. Those definitions which do exist describe a digital facsimile of the physical world, which people enter as avatars by donning headsets and hand sensors. Once inside, they walk around, talk to people, attend meetings and events, visit buildings and buy and sell goods and services, just as they do in the physical world. For businesses, it is the last of these activities that matters. For them, the Metaverse is a new way to find customers and sell them things. Indeed, the fact that Facebook has changed its name to exploit the opportunity has prompted many to predict that the Metaverse will take the manipulation of human behaviour to a whole new level (one comparable, perhaps, to The Matrix) and that users will once again be products rather than customers or creators. Already, Facebook has a digital wallet (Novi) and a Stablecoin (Diem) whose original use-case was to enable Facebook users to buy and sell products and services through the social media platform.

Opening branches in the Metaverse will test bankers as merchandisers

Wherever transactions occur, banks can almost always be found, transmitting money or exchanging monies. Nor is there any reason why the products being sold in the Metaverse (and they are sold rather than bought) should not generate sales of other financial products, such as insurance and asset management. However, unlike Facebook, traditional financial institutions have so far failed to convince themselves that they can profit from the Metaverse. Yet there are some obvious moves to make. The fact that Bank of America is using Virtual Reality (VR) headsets to make its salesmen and relationship managers more effective is not Metaversal: it is just a training aid of the type airlines and armies have used for years. But the next step is conspicuous: close physical bank branches, open virtual bank branches in the Metaverse and replace the flesh-and-blood salesmen and women with virtual reality avatars that customers can engage with instead. In fact, this move is so obvious that Kookmin Bank in Korea has already made it, and other Korean banks and brokers are following its example.

Find out more at:

https://futureoffinance.biz/2022/01/31/how-banks-can-make-money-in-the-metaverse/

Among the topics to be discussed at this webinar are:

Is there a sound definition of the Metaverse?

What does the Metaverse owe to the video-gaming industry?

Is the Metaverse best built on blockchain technologies?

Are crypto-currencies, Stablecoins, utility tokens, payment tokens, security tokens and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) incidental to the Metaverse or central to it?

What financial services use-cases for the Metaverse are there?

How do those use-cases vary between (a) banks (b) asset managers and (c) insurers?

How can the Metaverse avoid becoming a series of walled gardens as opposed to a decentralised network of parallel but linked Metaverses?

How can standards best be developed to facilitate data exchange between Metaverses?

How serious an obstacle to progress are the headsets and sensors?

Does the technology currently support the production of compelling content, especially in terms of speed and scale?

What are the major engineering challenges that the Metaverse poses?

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