Last week we held Finovate’s first-ever fully digital event. And while the networking hall looked a little different this year, the quality of the discussions remained the same.

The event took place over the course of five days and focused on key trends within the fintech industry, including AI, lending, blockchain, and regtech. One overarching theme– COVID-19 and the shadow it casts over the entire industry– pulsed throughout each discussion.

Given this global turn of events, there is a lot to talk about in financial services. And while some of the themes appear to be the same as last year (customer experience, for example), we now have an entirely new way of looking at things.

With that in mind, below is my take on the top themes at FinovateAsia last week:

Digitization

COVID-19 has brought with it the need for many companies to move online. The financial services sector is no exception. Many discussions examined the do-or-die need for banks and fintechs to digitize their operations as much as possible.

The takeaway
Digitization is no longer an option. And in order to attract new customers, firms must not only fully digitize the user experience; they must humanize it.

New opportunities

New challenges always bring new opportunities, and the coronavirus is no exception. Many discussions at the event agreed that there will be clear winners and losers that result after this crisis.

The takeaway
Those who continue on with “business as usual” will not only lose customers, but will also miss out on potential new areas of expansion that will result from the public health crisis and economic downturn.

Customer centricity looks different but is still core

Last year everyone was talking about focusing on the customer experience. And while discussions are quite different this year, many speakers brought up the need for customer centricity. They pointed out that shifting the focus to the customer will help preserve the client relationship, which is always cheaper than acquiring new ones.

The takeaway
Even if you were previously an expert on customer centricity, it’s time to re-think your strategy. It’s more crucial than ever for banks and fintechs to meet clients’ needs, and much of that revolves around offering a digital-first approach.

One continent, many differences

One topic that arose multiple times throughout the conference was a reminder of diversity within the Asian continent. Not only does each country offer varying challenges and opportunities, but also regions within each country are equally diverse. Many of these differences are not only due to culture, but are also the result of governmental intervention and regulations.

The takeaway
Though it may be challenging to conduct business across borders because of the difficulty in dealing with a myriad of regulatory hurdles, each region offers a different opportunity.

Regardless of what the biggest trends of FinovateAsia were, one thing remained clear: there is work to be done.

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Photo by Jordan Graff on Unsplash

How have customer expectations changed as financial services companies around the world rush to embrace digital transformation? How can technology be leveraged to provide more personalized financial solutions without violating privacy or adding unnecessary complexity? What is the role of digital identity technology in making the online and mobile worlds safer places for all of us to work and live?

On our final day of FinovateAsia Digital, these are some of the questions our fintech industry experts answered – often with surprising responses. From the rise of “the offer you can’t refuse” in customer experience to negotiating between the helping hand of government and its ever-present regulatory arms, our experts bring a wealth of experience and insight into fintech’s most urgent themes.

If you missed any of the conversation from FinovateAsia Digital this week, then you’re in luck. You can still register and gain access to an entire week worth of informed commentary and lively discussion on the biggest trends shaping fintech in Asia.

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On the opportunities in digital and the rise of new customer expectations

I think if you look at what happened in the first few months of this year, I tend to call this the biggest digital training course the world has ever seen. We had to turn to digital for every aspect in our life. And we learned the benefits of digital, like working from home. Sometimes it’s really fun and sometimes it’s really challenging. But it’s part of our day-to-day life and it won’t disappear soon.

I think we’re at the beginning of a new phase of customer experience. Customer expectations will change. I think that in the last ten years, we mainly saw an evolution of digital convenience, and many companies understood that and became really big because of that. I think that situation has matured. In my opinion, we’re at the beginning of a new curve, of new customer expectations that will be formed thanks to new technologies like AI, IoT, 5G, quantum computing, robotics, the general purpose technologies … But it’s not going to just be technology that drives new customer expectations, it will also going to be personal dreams and wishes, and also the challenges the world will be facing.

–-Steven Van Belleghem, Author, Customers The Day After Tomorrow

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On leveraging advanced technologies to deliver more personalized solutions

I’m a techie. And that’s true for the rest of our team. We love our algorithms, our data models. And one of the things we’ve learned is that sometimes (with) personalization, the best one (solution), the most engaging one, does not come from the most clever models that you come up with, but instead comes from fairly simple rules. So it should not be underestimated: you should not fall in love with your beautiful, artificial intelligence and data science models to the detriment of simplicity, because sometimes simplicity is what is bringing the most engaging content.

Another (lesson) we learned as well very early on is to make sure that customers and users are in control. And that whatever bite-sized, personalized piece of content you are delivering to them is going to give them them the option to say “stop” or “give me more” or “give me less often” … (to put them) in control of that feed of information they are receiving.

–Olivier Berthier, CEO and Co-founder, Moneythor

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On the challenge of providing digital identity solutions in an increasingly globalized world

If I was to look at the way that digital identity is changing the landscape, I think actually what we’re seeing at the moment is really the proliferation of a lot of intermediating layers. So there is quite a number of different platforms that are evolving, platform players that are actually doing a lot of the heavy lifting for a lot of the companies in the fintech space. So whether you might be talking about somebody like Onfido or any of their competitors, there’s been this whole big wellspring of different types of companies that are actually doing that integration work.

And I think they have been carrying off the back of a lot of the actual governmental work that’s been happening to come up with different digital identity models. These are very complex problems, but I think given that the last decade or so, a lot of trade has been increasingly globalized, payments have been increasingly globalized, it’s become very difficult for people to keep pace with the change of all of these different governments coming up with different types of systems and experimenting.

–Danielle Szetho, Fintech Client Advisory, Standard Chartered Bank

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Available On Demand for five days after the end of the conference week, FinovateAsia Digital is a unique opportunity for those interested in learning more about fintech in the Asia-Pacific region. Browse our all-digital presentations, interviews, and discussions; network with fellow attendees; and gain key insights into the trends driving fintech innovation in critical, emerging markets. Visit our FinovateAsia Digital Hub and register today.

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From the arrival of disruption to the shores of the wealth management industry to the eagerness of Asia’s large e-commerce platforms to bring credit to the region’s overlooked consumers and small businesses, Day Three of FinovateAsia Digital continues to provide some of the most insightful commentary on fintech trends in the Asia-Pacific region. Today we share some of the highlights from the third day of our online conference.

Our all-digital event, FinovateAsia Digital, continues all week. Join us live or On Demand and access hours of insightful commentary and conversation on the trends shaping fintech innovation in the Asia-Pacific region. Visit our FinovateAsia Digital hub and register today.

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On fintech’s role in creating value at a time of change in the wealth management industry

Connectivity to fintechs is often a high priority when asked to create new and additional value to the client’s overall proposition. When I was a panelist at Finovate in Berlin back in February, I noticed there were few fintechs representing asset management – which is surprising given the tens of trillions of assets which impact every single one of us whether you are investing yourself or someone does it on your behalf.

Why was this sector late to the disruption party? Or was it happening without us noticing? Little did any of us know that, in the following months, asset management, like many other sectors, would experience an acceleration in embracing change and wonder about its relevance and role in the Now and the Next Normal.

— Simone Vroegop, Head of Strategic Partnerships for FinTech, Brown Brothers Harriman

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On key insights from case studies in the optimization of fintech solutions in the cloud

You want to be very disciplined when you look at your online architecture, your solution, or any cloud provider’s platform. You don’t want to get distracted by a lot of existing native services, or third party services. That’s great. That’s the nature of the cloud. But you have to be very disciplined, and every time you introduce a component, you have to rationalize it, why you need it, and how to keep this new component that you’re going to introduce as reliable and as efficient as possible.

You also have to have a very rigorous test plan in place. You don’t exercise this plan toward the end, when you have built everything. That could be too late. You want to start doing some of these rigorous tests early on, using either a prototype or proof of concept, so you can mimic some of your market conditions plus your system conditions.

–Harry Tong, Senior Solutions Architect, InterSystems Corporation

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On the importance of large e-commerce platforms in Asia’s digital lending landscape

Micro, small, and medium enterprises have traditionally struggled to access capital. Many lack an existing banking relationship or detailed financial record. And obviously incumbent banks in China favor corporate lending as smaller businesses fail to meet their credit check standards. Again, the larger e-commerce platforms have been enthusiastically filling the gap left by inadequate lending from incumbents. And by avoiding all those traditional evaluation processes that require substantial credit history, in favor of more data-based appraisals, platforms have demonstrated to incumbents that they must reform if they wish to compete across that sector of lending and to bring that experience to more businesses.

In rapidly growing countries with populations the size of China’s or India’s, the ability to lend vast sums of money to millions of SMEs places those platforms in a position of really significant power. How incumbents respond to this shift will determine the future of lending in this whole region.

–Louise Beaumont, Chair, Smart Data, Open Banking & Payments Working Groups, techUK

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Available both live (Singapore time) and On Demand during the conference week, FinovateAsia Digital is a unique opportunity for those interested in learning more about fintech in the Asia-Pacific region. Browse our all-digital presentations, interviews, and discussions; network with fellow attendees; and gain key insights into the trends driving fintech innovation in critical, emerging markets. Visit our FinovateAsia Digital Hub and register today.

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The second day of FinovateAsia Digital focused on a pair of themes – digital payments and futuretech – that are increasingly intertwined. Both offer solutions to the challenge of liberating consumers and communities from their “cash addiction” by combining industrial applications of the Internet of Things with the processes of the financial services industry. It is clear that the nexus of payments and advanced, enabling technologies is one of the key frontiers of fintech innovation today.

Below are a few insights and observations on these topics from our speakers on Day Two of our conference. And remember, to join our all-digital event – live or On Demand – visit our FinovateAsia Digital hub to register and begin enjoying all the content we have to offer.

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On the persistence of cash, and the urgency to bring alternatives to communities that rely on cash

The newspapers are full of stories about how some communities are being left without ATMs, and people are finding it hard to access cash. You can see why that is because as the number of cash transactions falls, the cost of cash infrastructure – not just ATMs, but every shop with its tills and counting up cash and depositing it and vans full of cash driving around all over the place to fill up the ATMs, security guards – all of that infrastructure falls on fewer and fewer transactions, so the per transaction costs goes up.

So how to you protect people who need to work in cash? Well, (innovation in ATMs) seems to me to be an expensive way to do it. The alternative would be to find ways of moving them away from cash, not finding ever more expensive ways of allowing them to continue their cash habit. It’s the people who are trapped in a cash economy that face the highest transaction costs anyway.

–David Birch, Director of Innovation, Consult Hyperion

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On the value of artificial intelligence to those business leaders who have implemented the technology

Thirty percent of the (business) leaders who have adopted and integrated artificial intelligence into their business models are very convinced that AI will deliver (on) their core strategic business decisions. So, in other words, 30% of those who have already deployed artificial intelligence believe that artificial intelligence must sit at the core of their deliverables in business strategy.

45% of these leaders invest three times more in this type of technology than the late adopters or the laggards. And 7% of the leaders record more revenues and savings than the late adopters of this technology. So as you can see, these numbers speak volumes. It’s also interesting to understand that these numbers compound over time. And the speed of compounding this growth and acceleration will be translated in a higher market share, better customer deliverables, and improved market reach in different jurisdictions. In other words: stronger business.

— Clara Durodié, Chief Executive, Cognitive Finance Group

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On the enabling power of the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 for payments and other financial services

Once we have the ability to connect devices and large industrial systems into financial services we suddenly have interesting opportunities, for example, in enabling real-time payments and machine-to-machine payments. So we are talking about creating a payment ecosystem and financing capabilities based on data streams and digital representations of physical assets in the industrial landscape.

This, of course, opens up a lot of questions. We need to think about, first and foremost, the trust model that has to be established. For example, when you create a digital representation of a physical asset, if we want to give that asset or a machine a payment capability where they are able to exchange value with other machines, we have to define a structure for a machine identity. You could almost argue that we need to establish a “Know Your Machine” process instead of a “Know Your Customer” process.

– Ville Sointu, Head of Emerging Technologies, Nordea Bank

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Available both live (Singapore time) and On Demand during the conference week, FinovateAsia Digital is a unique opportunity for those interested in learning more about fintech in the Asia-Pacific region. Browse our all-digital presentations, interviews, and discussions; network with fellow attendees; and gain key insights into the trends driving fintech innovation in critical, emerging markets. Visit our FinovateAsia Digital Hub and register today.

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How has COVID-19 affected fintechs in the Asia-Pacific region and their ability to grow and expand into new channels and new markets? Who is better positioned – fintechs or banks – when it comes to managing the global health pandemic? What role does the public sector play in supporting fintech innovation in the different countries of the region, and how has the coronavirus impacted those relationships?

In keynote addresses, fireside chats, and roundtables, our fintech experts and analysts began FinovateAsia Digital today with the topic that is most central to everyone fintech right now: what can the fintech industry do now to best prepare for the “New Normal” on the other side of COVID-19?

With a focus on startups and digital transformation, here are a few highlights from some of the day’s conversations from our first, all-digital, Finovate conference. To join us live – or to watch the program On Demand during the conference week – visit our FinovateAsia Digital Hub to register.

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On forming partnerships and building relationships between startups and incumbents at a time of social distancing

For us the pre-dominant fact was that we had to move everything online for the very first time. We have always run our programs face-to-face. This is where we believe innovation and magic happens: when people are in the same room and brainstorm together. This has been a great challenge to show our corporates and our startups that this is possible online as well.

It does require a bit more structuring, so that has been keeping us busy as the incubator management team. It’s something we have been focusing on for quite some time: to identify what are the right tools that we are going to use that both engage the startups and the corporates. (Many startups) typically can access Zoom and all those tools. But our corporate partners on the other hand have a bit more of a challenge to bring their businesses online – or even to communicate online.

–Lisa Schroeder, Operations and Progamme Lead, F10

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On crisis presenting opportunity for fintechs in Asia and how these companies rose to the challenge

If fintech every had a “moment” in its life, it is now, in this crisis. Because the whole fintech narrative has been: we can deal with situations, crises, far better than traditional, incumbent banks because we have technology, we can interact with the consumer more directly, we have algorithms which can understand risk better … Now we had a perfect storm to go and look at all possible stress scenarios and find a way to serve the consumer the best. So from a fintech standpoint, they had a perfect environment to go and succeed. And we saw very strong evidence of such in Asia.

If I look at the growth of e-payment services … if I look at the demand (from) people who are looking for lending from alternative platforms – it just went through the roof … There are other data points which strongly show that if you are a fintech and you have a mature product during the crisis, you tend to gain a lot. For example, the graph of fintech investment in Singapore from April, May, and June went up like a hockey stick. And the biggest beneficiaries of these investments are the fintechs which are serving the small and medium enterprise, and the fintechs that are helping banks digitize faster.

–Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer, Monetary Authority of Singapore

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On how the global health pandemic signals a shift in the pace of digital change in fintech

Traditional financial institutions are moving toward a collaborative, partnering, co-creation model, where they are partnering with the startup companies. And this partnership is a bit like a parent and a child. The parent, which is the financial firm, wants resilience, reliability, security, stability. The child wants to change the world, it wants challenge everything, it wants to kick down the walls and break down barriers and do everything differently because they want the world to change. And it is changing, because “the parent” is now having to work with “the child” in order to do things differently.

And that’s where this world of fintech today is really interesting because it’s not a simple one. It’s one where the mentor is the traditional financial firm who’s investing in the disruptor, which is the new startup technology firm. And the coronavirus pandemic has actually turbocharged (the) change, because traditional financial firms that were prevaricating and thinking about “maybe we should do more on digital” have been forced to suddenly overnight wake up and do digital.

–Chris Skinner, Author, theFinanser, and Doing Digital: Lessons from Leaders

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Available both live (Singapore time) and On Demand during the conference week, FinovateAsia Digital is a unique opportunity for those interested in learning more about fintech in the Asia-Pacific region. Browse our all-digital presentations, interviews, and discussions; network with fellow attendees; and gain key insights into the trends driving fintech innovation in critical, emerging markets. Visit our FinovateAsia Digital Hub and register today.

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Photo by Alaric Sim from Pexels

With so much uncertainty these days, it’s nice to have something to be sure about. One thing we’re sure about is that our new digital format for FinovateAsia is going to rival the in-person version.

That’s right — FinovateAsia 2020 is now a completely digital event called FinovateAsia Digital. Given health concerns around COVID-19, running the event digitally ensures the safety of our attendees, speakers, and sponsors. It also enables attendees outside of Southeast Asia to participate, bringing more (and more diverse) opinions and perspectives to the event.

What will FinovateAsia Digital look like?

• Extended dates
  The number of sessions will remain the same, and we will still feature all 100 of the original speakers of the event. The schedule, however, will be adjusted to make it easier for people to participate remotely. Instead of a two-day fintech immersion, everything will be spread out across five days. That means the event will now take place July 6 through July 10. With this extension, the content will be shorter each day and more manageable for digital participants.

• Time zone
  The event will run on Singapore Time. The online agenda has been updated to reflect the new schedule so that you can see exactly what’s on when.

• Engagement
  The digital nature of the event will make it even easier for individuals to interact with speakers. Attendees will be able to engage with the event in real-time, through Q&A with speakers, audience polling, and chat features.

• Networking
  Making personal connections is one of the most valuable elements of an event, so we’ve worked hard to preserve it! To make sure everyone has ample time to connect with their fellow attendees, our networking app will run across all five days, helping you find and engage with others. All meetings will take place virtually via video call. To accommodate multiple time zones, the networking app will allow meetings to be scheduled 24 hours across all time zones.

Come join in the experience! If you previously booked your ticket, our customer service team has been in contact with you regarding details. If you have any questions, please reach out to register@informaconnect.com.