Where Finance Finds Its Future

By Future of Finance

The New Face of Finance, Where Finance Finds Its Future. Future of Finance has one overriding goal. It is to host meetings (at the moment virtual meetings) that bring together long established members... more

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FAQs about Where Finance Finds Its Future:

How many episodes does Where Finance Finds Its Future have?

The podcast currently has 182 episodes available.

Where Finance Finds Its Future episodes:

May 25, 2021 Why is Foreign Exchange so far behind in technology and data?
Despite their importance, size and liquidity the global FX markets have remained largely immune to the digital technology revolution. The reasons for this include their global scale, amorphous and fragmented structure and lack of an over-arching regulatory framework, but the principal cause of the lack of innovation is the domination of the FX markets by a small coterie of large global banks. Even the FX services for consumers developed by household name FinTechs have done little more than reduce the margins banks enjoy in one area of their business. In the wholesale FX markets large corporations, asset managers and asset owners continue to pay high prices for FX execution and hedging. This Future of Finance event engages with a group of innovators that have identified ways to challenge the banking oligopoly in FX.
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1h 7min
May 20, 2021 Wealth managers need to disrupt themselves
On the face of it, wealth managers ought to be full of confidence. An ageing population is about to bequeath its accumulated wealth to a younger generation still at work. The tax system is designed to encourage saving but also sufficiently complex to create the appetite for technical advice. Digital technology is cutting the cost of acquiring and servicing customers. Stock markets buoyed by extraordinary monetary policies mean revenues based on ad valorem fees increase effortlessly. Capital requirements are lower than in banking. Yet wealth managers nevertheless find themselves under margin pressure. Clients are less willing to pay fees, especially for active asset management, but are demanding better digital services, access to environmental social and governance (ESG), social impact, crypto-currency, digital asset and other alternative asset classes. They also want increasingly detailed tax and investment advice. A range of new entrants, armed with new technologies and rich customer data, are taking the next generation business the incumbents once took for granted. And clients, who remain more loyal to their advisers than the firms the advisers represent, are more willing to move than ever before. The burden of regulatory compliance is getting heavier. As a result, wealth managers find their revenues under pressure from the shift to passive investing while investment in new technology, compliance and a different type of talent is driving up their costs. As firms struggle to bring revenue into better alignment with costs, the wealth management industry is consolidating, placing further pressure on the cost structures of the firms that remain independent. This webinar, hosted in conjunction with FinTech Wales, will explore how wealth managers are adapting their businesses to margin pressure, mutating competitive threats, rising demands to invest in new technology and data and the difficulty of combining personal relationships with digitised offerings.
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1h 5min
May 18, 2021 Without Better Data Pension funds cannot possibly fulfil their ESG mandates
Pension fund trustees in the United Kingdom are now under a fiduciary obligation to manage environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks on behalf of the members of the fund. This is not an easy duty to fulfil.

That is partly because pension fund trustees cannot simply choose what they believe to be right in terms of ESG. They must ensure the fund has sufficient assets to pay the promised pensions (in defined benefit, or DB, schemes) or maximise the value of the pension portfolio of the members (in defined contribution, or DC, schemes).

Trustees have somehow to demonstrate that they take ESG fully into account, without causing financial detriment to the fund. Needless to say, there is no shortage of investment consultants and asset managers willing to declare that this is a bogus dilemma, because ESG-driven funds will outperform in future years.
The “wall of money” ESG strategies are attracting may prove them right, even after taking into account the massive transactions costs of transitioning to an ESG-driven strategy.

But proving ESG credentials will take more than ditching managers that buy oil, mining, tobacco and firearms stocks and appointing managers that invest in renewable energy, or adding an ESG fund to the defined contribution pension plan roster, or signing up to the United Nations-backed Principles of Responsible Investment (PRI).

It will take data, not just to choose investments but to convince members and regulators that the fund is fulfilling its duty to take ESG seriously.
The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has told trustees that they ought to sign up to the Stewardship Code published by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). Its purpose is to encourage the “responsible allocation, management and oversight of capital to create long-term value for clients and beneficiaries leading to sustainable benefits for the economy, the environment and society.”

Trustees have since October 2019 had to include in their Statements of Investment Principles verbiage on how they vote at AGMs and how they engage with the companies they invest in – even though the switch to passive investing makes it virtually impossible for some funds to do this.

In addition, trustees must (since October 2020 for DC schemes from 1 October 2021 for DB schemes) report how they fulfilled their ESG responsibilities in the previous year, in online, publicly available statements.

Although there is no shortage of consulting services and ratings from the major investment consultants, and a wide variety of other products from data vendors, rating agencies, technology vendors and global custodian banks – many of which want asset managers as clients, not asset owners – the extent and quality of the data about ESG factors falls far short of what is required to make informed and convincing public statements.

This Future of Finance webinar will explore what ESG data is available, where the most serious shortcomings lie, and what is needed to fix them
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1h 4min
May 13, 2021 The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank joins the CBDC pioneers as DCash is launched
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are happening. On the last day of March 2021, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) became the first central bank in the world to launch a retail CBDC in a currency union. Now being piloted in four of the member states of the currency union, DCash is being used by consumers and corporates in their day-to-day business. Simon Chantry, chief business development officer at Bitt, the FinTech company which helped the ECCB develop its DCash CBDC, talked to Dominic Hobson about the boldness of the ECCB decision, the development of the project and the benefits for the citizens of the eight islands that make up the currency union.
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48min
May 13, 2021 If you think the Internet is useful, just wait till you can use the Datanet
What would happen if we could identify and find and grant access to individual bits of data on the Internet as easily as we can reach people and companies through their internet addresses? What would happen if machine learning algorithms could be trained on data sets wherever they were? And what if we could do both these things without breaching privacy or confidentiality? We would have the power to create digital marketplaces in virtually anything, enable governments, companies and people to work off the same set of data with sharing the raw data, speed up and cut the cost of production processes and supply chains, empower everyone to control and get paid for their personal data without having to share it with anyone, and not only accelerate the adoption of data standards but make it much easier to translate between them. In short, we would have a new application of the Internet: the Datanet. Dominic Hobson asked Philip Treleaven, Professor and Director of the UK Financial Computing Centre at University College, London, how close we are to the Datanet.
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42min
May 13, 2021 Effective RegTech is about data not technology
It is not surprising that RegTech attracted so much money and so many entrepreneurs as the Fintech start-up boom took off from 2012. Banks, asset managers and insurers were hit by successive waves of regulation in the long aftermath of the great financial crisis of 2007-08, and automation of transaction monitoring and reporting, KYC, AML, CFT and sanctions screening checks, data protection, mis-selling risk, cyber-security and even operational resilience was an easy sell. A future in which regulators were just another node on a blockchain network which hosted everything they needed to know seems more distant today than it did in 2017-18, and the RegTech sector is now consolidating. But as Rupert Brown, CTO at regulatory advisers Evidology tells Dominic Hobson, the hard work of mapping and then standardising regulatory events and data flows is now beginning.
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33min
May 11, 2021 The global pandemic has left no aspect of life untouched, and FinTech investing is no exception
The global pandemic has left no aspect of life untouched, and FinTech investing is no exception. Jan Arp, founding managing partner at Montreal-based Holt Accelerator, the leading early stage FinTech investor in Canada, told Dominic Hobson, co-founder of Future of Finance, that although the pandemic has reduced appetite for early-stage risk, investors have not lost their enthusiasm for the sector. The health crisis is accelerating the digitisation of financial services, and interest in fraud-busting cyber-security technologies that can protect financial institutions from compliance risk as well as crime. Interest in start-ups aiming to transform insurance is also rising. But Canadian FinTechs would like to see the local Open Banking initiative regain momentum.
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13min
May 06, 2021 How peer-to-peer lending platform StepLadder raised money, built its platform and went to market
A Future of Finance Case studies: an interview with Matt Addison and Lucy Mullins from StepLadder

StepLadder is a fintech start-up currently embarked on a crowd-funding campaign to fuel its growth as a peer-to-peer borrowing and lending platform for first-time buyers. The company is currently growing its membership by 13 per cent a month and already planning to extend its techniques and technology beyond the housing market. Join the founders at our Future of Finance Case Study at 14.00 London time on Thursday May 6 to find out how they raised the money and built the market, and whether their peer-to-peer platform could help your business grow too.

To learn more about how StepLadder developed its personality and its business, and raised the funding to grow, join our Future of Finance Case Study at 14.00 London time on 21 April. Founders Lucy Mullins and Matthew Addison will both be there to tell their story and answer your questions.
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59min
May 06, 2021 Security token markets primed to explode as FINP2P protocol solves the inter-operability problem
In late March 2021 a path to liquidity and growth opened in the security token markets. The Private Markets Digitization Steering Group (PMDSG), a group of banks, financial market infrastructures, technology vendors and FinTechs formed under the umbrella of Global Digital Finance in the spring of 2020 went public with a specification that will make inter-operable blockchain networks a reality for the first time. FINP2P is a protocol that allows investors to execute token trades on one network and settle and custody them in another, irrespective of whether the networks are built on Ethereum or Corda or any other blockchain technology. This portability could be the decisive breakthrough that capital markets blockchain needs to spark exponential growth. Dominic Hobson spoke to Anthony Woolley, head of business development at Ownera, an institutional-grade blockchain network for security tokens, who doubles as co-chairman of the PMDSG.
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48min
April 27, 2021 Wealth Managers Need to Take a Side on Crypto-currencies and Security Tokens
Crypto-currencies are already an established asset class in the wealth management industry. A number of adventurous wealth managers and private banks have developed crypto-currency brokerage and custody services for high net worth and ultra-high net worth clients. The decision in November 2020 by Ruffer Investment Management to invest £550 million in Bitcoin as a hedge against unstable monetary conditions marked a further step in the steady march to respectability of leading crypto-currencies. The interest of wealth managers in security tokens, an evolution of the blockchain network technology that underpins crypto-currencies, is now rising sharply. As with hedge funds, wealthier investors are the natural pioneers of innovative investment techniques. They also own illiquid assets, such as real estate, fine art and collectibles, whose value tokenisation can realise – without the owners necessarily losing the pleasure of use. Tokenisation is also well-adapted to investment with predictable cash flows and environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials, such as renewable energy projects. Private banks and wealth managers can profit from tokenisation by structuring token issues, investing in tokenisation platforms and acting as brokers or lead brokers on them, providing safekeeping and custody services to holders of tokens, managing and administering token investment funds, and selling data for the development of indexed and derivative products. They can generate revenues in all these areas without having to take any principal risk. However, token investing is still at an early stage of its development, and many private banks and wealth managers are reluctant to engage with an asset class they continue to associate with the Dark Web, the ICO bubble of 2017-18, the DeFi bubble of today and the various defalcations that have taken place at crypto-currency exchanges. This Future of Finance webinar, the second in our series exploring the impact of technology on wealth management, will ask whether wealth managers risk missing an opportunity whose the time has come or losing their reputation and possibly their clients’ money as well.
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1h 5min

FAQs about Where Finance Finds Its Future:

How many episodes does Where Finance Finds Its Future have?

The podcast currently has 182 episodes available.

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