The global summit of financial technology innovation is held every year in London. The upheaval of historical landmarks is just beginning. “More data was created in a year than in any previous year.” No truth could better set the scene for this Fifth Fintech World Summit than Mark Carney’s opening speech. The Governor of the Bank of England’s speech was of great pleasure to the few hundred technology and finance professionals at the Guildhall. Their goal is precisely to shake the walls of high finance.
When the guarantor of monetary and financial stability greets with such goodwill – or resignation? – the imminence of the fourth industrial revolution, they can only be optimistic about their economic model and enjoy this sweet euphoria to sign contracts, attract capital or find customers, which is the primary goal of this gathering. Carney’s analysis is all the more credible because it coincides with the one formulated regularly by the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, who also urges financial players to prepare for unprecedented upheavals. The industry needs automata, especially those who read faster than our eyes. That’s what Martin Goodson, CEO of the London firm Evolution, says. His slogan hits the nail on the head: “Our software reads documents so humans do not need to, and with such artificial intelligence, you no longer need to impress your customers with a complex organization, partnerships, and massive staff to tell them that you can handle 4 million documents a year. ” This frenzy, however, is paradoxical as it confers on industry players a new power of analysis and calculation … but at the same time exposes itself more and more to the risk of fraud or attacks.
When the legal and financial intelligence was entirely human, it was in some way impenetrable. Now, the advent of artificial intelligence means the end of the inviolability of human thought, its calculations, its strategies, its opacity. Financial corporations have been prospering for centuries behind thick walls. They are now progressing behind walls of glass, transparent or almost. Never have they been so vulnerable, and this vulnerability will be proportional to their mass. Industry in the industry will benefit that of cybersecurity. Charlie Delingpole is the young CEO of ComplyAdvantage, a London-based firm specializing in the creation of tools to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. In five years, this thirty has already convinced 350 customers around the world and hired more than 200 people. “A lot of it last year,” he says most naturally. Delingpole created his first start-up at the age of 16 in the family’s family room, and detonates in a London financial environment were not to wear the suit and tie, for a man, is still moderately appreciated.
When asked if he feels more in the shoes of a developer than a financier, he hesitates, almost embarrassed, aware that he embodies a new wave of professionals in finance, radically different from the previous ones. According to him, the structures of traditional institutions are so worn out that their disappearance is in any case programmed, with or without massive attacks. “It is useless to ask them to transform themselves because they will have to rebuild everything in parallel in order to adapt to the new norms, with the inevitable loss of market shares.” The margins of the big banks are already eroding from year to year, and they’re going to lose money and then disappear, in fact, that’s already happening. “
