Two Banking Conferences

Two Banking Conferences Last week I split my time between two conferences focused on banking and FinTech: two very different worlds that have more common than not, as this series of quotes show.

It would be too easy to characterize the Next Money conference and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Payments Symposium as the new v the old, and there’s truth in that. Yet the similarities and convergences are more interesting than the conflicts of startup v legacy, challenger v incumbent, revolutionary v traditional, and a host of others.

My coverage of the two conferences takes the form of quotes I collected. The themes—at least the ones I noticed—show the ongoing convergence toward partnership while highlighting the differences between technology and banking cultures.

For instance, all of the Next Money speakers and nearly all of their companies had Twitter accounts. I tweeted from that conference. Fewer Federal Reserve speakers have Twitter accounts, and I did not send any tweets there. For ease of identification, individual links below go to LinkedIn profiles.

I’m interested in your reactions, especially on the startup firm v incumbent financial institution characterization, which is my preferred characterization. I’m looking for alternatives.

Brett King, Moven
Embedded technology services is where banking is going to live.

Uber got rid of the friction in creating a bank account and became the largest acquirer of SME accounts.

Cyrus Bhathawalla, KPMG
Payment is friction. Once you remove that you can see how banks can facilitate (consumer) transactions.

Competitive examples like Venmo may be a reason for banks to get out ahead of faster payments.

JP Nicols, Next Money
Banks have three choices: partner, acquire, or copy technology.

Partnering is the fastest. Fintechs need the revenue. So it's a marriage made in heaven.

Ron Shevlin, Cornerstone Advisors
Most financial institutions less than $50bn do not have the resources to meaningfully partner with fintechs.

Partnerships (banks-fintechs) cannot scale to cause any meaningful change in financial institutions.

A new business model called platforms is what's emerging instead.

Bank platform providers are trust brokers, filling the gap in tech skills that banks need.

Kris Kovacs, Constellation
It is our hope to preserve community banking by providing sophisticated technology.

Duena Blomstrom, Temenos Marketplace
We hope to be the middle of connecting everyone to everyone. These are weapons we are trying to get in the hands of banks.

Steve Ledford, The Clearing House
We built a faster-payments infrastructure that others can use to deliver solutions on our platform.

Sam Maule, 11FS
We come down hard on FinTech companies on compliance, banks say they face too much control, but what have we really learned since 2008?

Peter Tapling, Early Warning
Real-time payments are here. Organizations have to move quickly to figure out the fraud and risk.

KYC and network connectivity must happen in real time to support a faster payment environment.

Jonathan Frieder, Accenture
Data quality is the top challenge in regulatory compliance at financial institutions.

Ryan Zagone, Ripple
Customers now expect cross-border and domestic payments to have the same experience.

I don’t think there will be one solution that solves all problems but interconnected solutions that do.

Nishu Thukral, Pangea Money Transfer
Consumers want to use a mobile device, press a button, and money moves instantly and is available immediately.

Beth Horowitz Steel, Glenbrook Partners
It’s all about creating user experiences that are delighting consumers.

Bradley Leimer, on Twitter
Mark my words. Banks that solve & automate the day to day spending and savings to multigenerational wealth management game will win it all.

BLOCKCHAIN WATCH

IMF head: Cryptocurrency could be the future. Really. At a Bank of England conference in London: "In many ways, virtual currencies might just give existing currencies and monetary policy a run for their money," Christine Legarde said. . . . "It may not be wise to dismiss virtual currencies," she told the audience. "Instead, citizens may one day prefer virtual currencies."

Boston Fed VP: Blockchain will wake up Swift and other middlemen. "Any incumbent that's a middleman-which the Fed is, stock exchanges are, Swift is, The Clearing House is-I wouldn't say that the fintechs are going to put us out of business, necessarily. What they will do is wake us up in some cases to be a little more innovative with our systems in a way that's positive."