Here.
And forget the distinction between the main track and the parallel sessions: great topics everywhere!
(mine included, of course 😊. I hope I’ll do it justice. First draft of my paper coming soon. Abstract:
‘The use of technology to support the production and delivery of financial services has a long history, spanning from the written records of financial transactions in Mesopotamia, to much more recent developments, such as the first use in 1995 of the World Wide Web to provide online account checking, and the introduction of high‐frequency trading. In the last ten years, however, the adoption of digital technology in the financial sector, generally known as FinTech, has undergone a dramatic acceleration, both in the West and the East. In the latter, arguably, the magnitude of the transformative powers at work is most visible. Ant Financial Services Group, a spin‐out of e‐commerce platform Alibaba, lately achieved a market value of around €127 billion ($150 billion) based on the success of its digital payments system Alipay and money market fund Yu'e Bao. Tencent's popular instant‐messaging app WeChat incorporates an online payment service, WeChat Pay, which is used by a substantial proportion of its one billion monthly users. A strong trend towards mobile payments is also experienced in other countries, such as India. Ongoing transformations in the financial sector are significant and global, which creates opportunities and challenges for consumers, traditional and non‐traditional financial service providers, and regulators alike. Incumbent banks have expressed concerns about the disruptive potential and the dangers of Big Tech, which the Paper calls TechFin adopting the definition of Alibaba's CEO, Jack Ma. While banks brace themselves for potentially unsettling market developments, financial regulators discuss the impact of new technologies on processes and business models, as well as the need for a changed supervisory methodology. The challenge for most financial regulators is to ensure that the multiple benefits offered by these new technologies are realized without hampering consumer protection and compromising the stability of the financial system. The Paper embraces a different perspective and explores some of the likely consequences of FinTech in terms of market structure and competition. Keeping the literature strands on platforms in the background, we analyse the current push towards the “platformization” of banking services. If the financial sector moves towards production and distribution models where the banks see their pivotal role diminished, this is certainly of concern to financial regulators, who should at the very least adapt their supervisory methodologies to the new situation. From a competition policy perspective, however, it is important to identify the types of market structure that could better satisfy consumers' banking and financial needs. The Paper makes the point that the analysis of the possible impact of the FinTech revolution on competition dynamics in the financial sector is particularly relevant especially to make sure that the benefits of innovation are harnessed for the good of consumers. This perspective is solidly ingrained in the “long term” view of competition policy.’)
And forget the distinction between the main track and the parallel sessions: great topics everywhere!
(mine included, of course 😊. I hope I’ll do it justice. First draft of my paper coming soon. Abstract:
‘The use of technology to support the production and delivery of financial services has a long history, spanning from the written records of financial transactions in Mesopotamia, to much more recent developments, such as the first use in 1995 of the World Wide Web to provide online account checking, and the introduction of high‐frequency trading. In the last ten years, however, the adoption of digital technology in the financial sector, generally known as FinTech, has undergone a dramatic acceleration, both in the West and the East. In the latter, arguably, the magnitude of the transformative powers at work is most visible. Ant Financial Services Group, a spin‐out of e‐commerce platform Alibaba, lately achieved a market value of around €127 billion ($150 billion) based on the success of its digital payments system Alipay and money market fund Yu'e Bao. Tencent's popular instant‐messaging app WeChat incorporates an online payment service, WeChat Pay, which is used by a substantial proportion of its one billion monthly users. A strong trend towards mobile payments is also experienced in other countries, such as India. Ongoing transformations in the financial sector are significant and global, which creates opportunities and challenges for consumers, traditional and non‐traditional financial service providers, and regulators alike. Incumbent banks have expressed concerns about the disruptive potential and the dangers of Big Tech, which the Paper calls TechFin adopting the definition of Alibaba's CEO, Jack Ma. While banks brace themselves for potentially unsettling market developments, financial regulators discuss the impact of new technologies on processes and business models, as well as the need for a changed supervisory methodology. The challenge for most financial regulators is to ensure that the multiple benefits offered by these new technologies are realized without hampering consumer protection and compromising the stability of the financial system. The Paper embraces a different perspective and explores some of the likely consequences of FinTech in terms of market structure and competition. Keeping the literature strands on platforms in the background, we analyse the current push towards the “platformization” of banking services. If the financial sector moves towards production and distribution models where the banks see their pivotal role diminished, this is certainly of concern to financial regulators, who should at the very least adapt their supervisory methodologies to the new situation. From a competition policy perspective, however, it is important to identify the types of market structure that could better satisfy consumers' banking and financial needs. The Paper makes the point that the analysis of the possible impact of the FinTech revolution on competition dynamics in the financial sector is particularly relevant especially to make sure that the benefits of innovation are harnessed for the good of consumers. This perspective is solidly ingrained in the “long term” view of competition policy.’)
