This year, SIBOS was held yet again as an online conference in October.
This is in fact a good thing because more people can participate and you are not stuck at your company booth :), so in fact you can attend all the interesting topics.
So here are my notes of things that caught my attention at SIBOS.
Opening speaker
I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Swift Innotribe opening speaker was Michio Kaku. That was a real nice talk about the future of society and future of payments.
CBDCs
CBDCs was a huge topic this year. It was nice that I actually saw some great talks that passed over the hype of the topic. Looks like the Europeans are more concerned of the privacy implications than others and this is a good thing.
There was a nice take from the Head of the Corporate Bank and Member of the Group Management Committee at Deutsche Bank, Stefan Hoops, about CBDC – Digital Euro.
He insisted that in the context of CBDCs we need to think about:
1. What is the use case
2. What is the design
3. What is the tech
He also mentioned the role of the banks in a CBDC driven economy.
Banks’ roles will still need to be:
1. Act as intermediaries
2. Provide credit
3. Perform KYC
4. Provide tokenized deposits (ensured, trusted etc.).
AI
Harnessing the power of community to deploy AI at scale: Thomas Siebel, CEO of @C3_AI Founder of Siebel Systems, Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation, Siebel Energy Institute, and Siebel Scholars. Author of 𝘋𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.
- Interesting idea: create an AML model on DB data then refine it on DocGen data etc. and share the model between banks.
- AI based CRM : churn, upscale, sales etc.
- AI will be used everywhere.
DeFi
Our digital future if it ain’t broke don’t fix it Andrei Kirilenko and Anju Patwardhan tether given as example of why CBDC is needed.
No regulatory overseer and USD peg is very loose.
Stable coins should be regulated like commercial banks created money.
DeFi is challenging for existing incumbents.
CBDC again
The future of money tribal gathering talk with best 1000 points pitch from Dr. Ruth Wandhöfer.
Main ideas:
Anti CBDC argument example using the scene from 5th element movie (one point left on your license).
You can get completely de-platformed in a CBDC world due to some external events like poor Korben Dallas.
Q: What tech today are underestimated in the future of money?
A: Decentralized structures.
India Fintech
Axis bank India given as an example of a bank embracing fintech.
- Can give $7 loans
- Do not outsource banking software – 800 developers in-house
- UPI real time < 2sec, 3 billion transactions per month
- UPI public utility
- Account aggregator, full data sharing of account data between banks (open banking style).
All these utilities are a threat to the banks’ business. Also opportunity to get new customers.
Store any data you generate, you never know how you will use it in the future. (Car producer recorded vibration data of all car components for decades.)
Customer journey:
- IT alignment with customer in view
- Deploy applicable innovations quickly.
CBDCs again
Societe general CEO: crypto by central banks will be part of the future (not private ones).
EBA: Preserve the role of banks as intermediaries for the retail client for CBDC.
Assets of the Future
Instant benefits for the share holder (real time the company knows if you have a share), see Curve Investor card but automatic.
RTGS with CBDC
- Wholesale CBDC
- DLT RTGS – ISO20022
- RTGS interaction with reserves
- RTGS will still be the system to interact with this reserves.
DTL bonds idea, tokenization of all assets Etherium:
- Multiple asses (not siloed assets )
- Always on
- Programmable contracts
At a global level DLT exercise qualities the existing financial system does not have:
- Cross-border is done in USD and settled through federal reserve, In Europe is TARGET.
CBDC should solve:
- Always on
- Cross-Border
- DvP cross-asset problem
- Internal market
CBDC will replace some RTGS functions.
PBOC not using DLT due to the current state of DLT technical limitations.
Multi asset nature of DLT is what is interesting. DLT :
- RTGS(payments)+CSD(smart contract)+ACH(micropayments)+MMS(smart contract)
Unbankable transactions: miscommunication from corporate to institutions.
Programmable money:
- CBDC and crypto are at divergent ends
- CBDC restrictive and managed by central bank
Dystopian view of @iamjohnegan of CBDCs:
Imagine a centrally controlled CBDC in nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa where certain categories are excluded from the economy (lol the elephant in the room here is China).
Dangerous control for government that never existed before.
The members of a certain party cannot vote because their money no longer work.
Some other opinions from the participants are:
Chi:
- Next 2 years more heavy governance will occur.
- Stablecoins for energy will kick off.
Brad:
- More CBDC experiments
- Also bad things
- More crypto regulation
- More experimentation.
John
- What is the question for incumbents:
- Difficult 12-13 years for incumbents: lost talent, management known only defensive posture, more inflation and currency volatility in a context where younger audience is detaching from traditional finance.
- Banks need to put themselves in a position to make decisions.
CLS settlement PvP
My note: how to mitigate by DLT – see lightning for ex.
Data aggregation is very important
- EU
- China
- India
India unveiled account aggregator feature.
FEDs Payment systems are not immune from supply chain issues.Coin circulation basically just stopped.
EUROCLEAR:
Tokenized securities assume also use of CBDCs.
CBDCs in emergent markets can be an accelerator factor for inclusion.
Bank of England (BOE) very critical to cryptocurrencies:
- Crypto assests have no intrinsic values.
- Value is highly volatile due to that.
- Not suitable for payments so used just by criminals 🙂
- Speculative investors can loose money, it is the responsibility of the authorities to protect the financial system.
- 2008 crash affected the stability of the financial system and was 100% fiat.
- What happens if crypto assets fall to 0 how will affects the financial sector.
- Secondary effects: sale of other assets if crypto fails and there is a a run for cash
https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/IOSCO-Stablecoins-Oct-2021-IOSCOPD685.pdf
Future of work
- Future of work is in fact future of living!
- Amazon driver is fully monitored. You are mandated at how many seconds you need to spend you are not allowed autonomous decisions about routes.
- Individuals should be trusted by the team. Sitting in front of a desk is not a measure of productivity.
- Employees and companies have different ideas of what remote work means.
- It is going to be a massive collision of timetables.
- Across the next 18 months we will see the highest company turnover of all times.
- Remote companies will have the best talent.
In the future, the rhetorical question will be:
- What happened to companies that did not embrace:
- Computers in 1990s
- Software in 2000s
- Internet in 2010s
- Remote work in 2020s.