Last month, Suntera Digital’s Head of Fintech and Virtual Assets, Kyle Brits, attended one of the year’s most insightful events in London – Fintech Week. Here he responds to questions on the key takeaways from the week…
Q: How important is Fintech Week for the fintech and cross border finance industry?
Kyle Brits (KB): Fintech Week provides a fantastic opportunity for traditional financial services leaders and practitioners to trade thoughts and ideas with established fintech businesses. The event has a focus on London but, importantly, it also addresses global themes impacting the sector more broadly.
It is also a great way for professionals to glean a greater understanding of ancillary markets and how such operations can support and boost their own specific business functions to facilitate their ambitions.
Q: What was the audience for this year’s event, was it well attended, and what was the overall sentiment of those in the room?
KB: With more than 400 physical attendees, the event has significant appeal and attracts high calibre professionals with more than 70% being decision makers from banks, insurers, fintechs, service providers and VCs while it is also attracts representatives from regulators and government.
Notably, there was a strong presence of founders and start-ups such as Fintech North and Fintech Wales providing voices beyond that of London, which can still dominate in the sector.
CEO of Standard Chartered, Saif Malik, in particular provided some thought-provoking ideas during his excellent keynote speech, ‘The Tipping Point for Finance and Digital Assets’. He pointed to the positive steps in which the bank has approached digital custody and OTC trading but more broadly hypothesised on how tokenisation stands to transform traditional financial services by prompting a fundamental shift in how value is perceived and managed. His belief that tokenisation is far from a fleeting trend provided definite food for thought – one which financial institutions and providers ignore at their peril.
Q: What were the two key messages to emerge from the event – AI, virtual assets, payments, regulation, fraud etc?
KB: The geopolitical climate currently is one where the prevailing theme is uncertainty, especially with crucial elections impacting much of the western world in 2024. If a new government is installed in the UK, then it is likely to bring with it the potential for change to tax and regulatory policy that will affect fintech business and, in particular, cryptocurrency, causing many to hold their breath before deciding what to do next.
Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, the topic of AI threaded throughout all conversations and is considered to be pivotal, not just to those industries most closely associated such as fintech, regtech and data but across all financial service providers. Undoubtedly AI will facilitate time and cost efficiencies while a new generation of clients will come to expect greater digital capabilities from those supporting their endeavours. In this respect, service providers must keep pace with the AI juggernaut if they are to remain relevant.
Q: How does Suntera’s proposition support this year’s conference key themes?
KB: Suntera Digital is fully equipped to meet the requirements of this driving trend towards AI as well as supporting digital businesses to realise their global ambitions.
Meanwhile, our consultancy services provide substantial breadth of expertise while our multi-jurisdictional offering means we can support businesses to create new structures that are complementary to those already established but in jurisdictions with greater regulatory certainty, financial benefit, and operational excellence. This will be absolutely key going forward.
For more information about our core corporate services for the digital sector, visit the Suntera Digital overview page or get in touch with Kyle using his details below.
Key Contact:
HEAD OF FINTECH AND VITUAL ASSETS, SUNTERA DIGITAL