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A Fintech & Regtech Conference was recently staged at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Bahrain to highlight how the ‘bankers of the future will be very different from the bankers of today’ as a result of the rapid transformation of the financial world being ‘significantly impacted’ by the digital revolution.
More than 200 people attended the event staged by the CFA Society Bahrain, a non-profit membership organisation with a mission to advance the interest of the local investment community.
Members and candidates heard some tough-talking from prominent industry professionals on the impact of block-chain technology on financial institutions and the need for regulatory technology and cyber security initiatives to keep pace with technological advances.
Mohammed Hassan Saduddeen, senior manager - acquiring business strategy, at Arab Financial Services, said: “As in any field, those who do not adapt to change or do not innovate, will fade away and be relegated to the band of losers in the history of FinTech.”
Ashar Nazim, FinTech investor, advisor and managing director of Finocracy, urged all those involved in the sector to work closer together. “As a starting point we need to understand the implications of FinTech solutions - including commoditisation of cost base, location of profit pools, platform ecosystem, changing customer experience and financial regionalisation to name a few,” he said. “This has implications for incumbents, FinTech start-ups and regulators.
“Collaboration is the only way forward. As professionals, each one of us needs to reinvent our skills base if we are to stay relevant in five years’ time.”
Khalid Saad, CEO at Bahrain FinTech Bay, believes that although still in the early days of understanding how best to implement blockchain, the backbone technology underpinning digital currencies, in financial services, it will nonetheless ‘completely transform the industry as we know it with time’. “We are starting to explore the use of Blockchain here in Bahrain already,” he added.
Lan Filipic, COO/ CFO of Sofitto which aims to bring the benefits of the blockchain technology to an average user, said: “Most FinTech companies focus on front-end development and customer engagement. Blockchain projects focus on building new infrastructure, which has been underserved for the past couple of decades.”
