Insights from Finance 2.0

This week I had the pleasure of attending Finance 2.0, which is the leading FinTech conference in Switzerland. In this post, I’ll be sharing the content of the conference from a software developer point of view.

The Customer is King

The slogan of the conference was “Facing a paradigm change: From CRM, the classic Customer Relationship Management, to CMR, a Customer-Managed Relationship.“ That sums up really well what most of the speakers addressed: the customer is in the driver’s seat and if the financial institutions do not cater to their needs, they will lose their reason of existence. This paradigm change has motivated the industry to be innovative and launch products that the users want to use.

The saying “The Customer is King” is no news for software developers. We know that if the app or software we are designing is not what the users want, they will simply not use it. With consumer loyalty on the decline, the financial industry has begun to focus on customer-centric tools just as we have been doing in software engineering.

Open Banking

The topic “Open Banking” was mentioned frequently. More and more banks are letting third-party companies (mostly startups) access their financial institution via open APIs to develop innovative tools. There was a panel about the security risks associated with open banking and how to deal with it.

Open Banking is an interesting topic. The panel discussion clearly showed that a market potential exists for innovative startups or software developers building services in collaboration with financial institutions. As a software agency with a lot of experience in simplifying complex processes, these are interesting prospects.

ICO’s and blockchain

I was rather surprised that there weren’t more speeches about the possibilities the blockchain technology offers for the financial industry. Instead, in a panel discussion titled  “ICO: A bubble or the future of funding?”, it was pointed out how crazy it is for startups collecting millions in investments without having produced anything except an unreadable white paper.

The underlying skepticism proofs that as a producer of digital products it’s not enough to simply groom oneself with the buzzword “Blockchain” to get into business with financial institutions. Only a valid business case can succeed in convincing potential customers.

Living innovation

I was thoroughly impressed by SIX Group and their innovation initiative. Here’s a large player in the financial industry not only talking about being innovative but actually living up to that claim. I particularly enjoyed the pitches from the winners of the SIXHackathon that took place the preceding weekend. The prototypes they developed in only 48 hours were very interesting and the level of (tech) talent from the team members was quite impressive.

Summary

The financial industry acknowledges that the times are changing and that it’s time to focus on the customer and their needs. Digital transformation is only one of the means to take this change into account, but it’s precisely what Simplificator is good at. These times are really exciting for us and we look forward to excelling our partners' businesses and making their customers happy.