EVENTS


IBS Journal April 2018


21


Finovate ME: confidence and innovation in abundance in Dubai


The opening sessions of Finovate Middle East, which took place in Dubai last month, showed that the neuroses which have gripped the financial services industry about the advance of technology show no likelihood of abating soon


Senior Editor Bill Boyle


W


hen Mirna Sleiman, CEO and founder of Fintech Galaxy pointedly said in her opening remarks that the attentive


audience had better learn fast from the Finovate Middle East conference because “at least half of you will be out of a job within the next couple of years”, there was a ripple of applause throughout the audience. But quite a few of that audience were fintechs and while they are challenging they are also growing up and the discussion round the conference was more about collaboration than combativity.


Deborah Webster, CEO and founder of Amani Circle chaired the first demo session, which showcased the offerings of six very different start-ups at similarly different stages of their development. RISQ, Dorsum, Wealth Migrate, ebankIT, Electronic ID and Munnypot all gave live demonstrations of their offerings, demonstrating technology the average bank in attendance would bracket in the same category as something Elon Musk is producing, and so far from what they can achieve at the moment as to make it look like rocket science.


From improving the effectiveness of corporate loan acquisitions, to the introduction of investors to the delights which professional real-estate investors enjoy and how banks and finance houses can improve their commercial omnichannel digital transformations, the fintechs were very impressive in what they were reaching out to achieve.


The problem they all have is the enormously slow decision-making process within the banking community, which still refuses to recognise the huge steamroller of change they still think they can avoid.


This debate rages on


There were some surprising conclusions in these sessions and maybe it was just because they were all shared in one morning, but they add


up to an enormous hill the banks have to climb before they can reap the rewards of the enormous creativity that the fintechs on show at this event demonstrated.


It is now taken as a given that no banks really value their customers. As one of the fintechs, Dorsum, said in its presentation: “What the banks have to do is use the technology we can provide to make the right offer at the right time.” They used the example of someone buying a television for $400 and being given an offer of extended credit or another product. If the offer is in context it will be valued by the customer. Yet few banks have that simple capability.


Tamas Erni, managing partner, Loxon Solutions told us: “The banks should not be looking at how they can deploy technology for its own sake but ask what can we provide our customers; what will make them happy; what are the USPs that will make them stand out? Then they will get the technology decisions right. This is what has happened in every other vertical sector of industry as change has overwhelmed them. It is the only way to get it right.”


Jim Marous, publisher of The Financial Brand, was scathing about how far behind the average bank is: “In the US and the UK the core technology the banks use to interact with their customers is 40 years old. The banks have made going to their branch office something no one wants to do.”


It will be interesting to see how, or if, the debate shifts over the coming months from the general consensus recently that banks and fintechs will develop happily in parallel or whether some of the better financed and aggressive fintechs start to get impatient, which they have every reason to be. As Marous said: “The banks are giving us a rear-view mirror view of our finances from behind when what we need is a souped-up GPS view of how to plan our financial journey.”


www.ibsintelligence.com


David Rodrigo/Unsplash


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