How can 'big tech' step up and make a real difference?
There has been something troubling me about tech, and in particular Fintech. In my recent keynote at 24 Fintech in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), here's what I shared...
What you will get from this post:
A glimpse of some of the thoughts shared in my keynote at 24 Fintech in Saudi Arabia
My views on the ever increasing pace of innovation
A ‘call to arms’ for us all to take a step back and think bigger
We’ve all had our lives changed by tech - and the pace of that change has been simply mind-blowing over recent times. I remember quite a few years ago I heard Tony Robbins talk about this on one of his audiobooks.
The fact I heard this on a CD audiobook kind of says it all…
He talked about the product development cycle. It was fascinating to hear the difference in cycles between VHS and DVD players. Whereas VHS players were updated every few years, DVD players were updated in the space of months.
When we think of tech today, in particular software, that comparison seems almost antique! We live in the age of always on updates, constant innovation, and a never ending path to a ‘greater good’.
Or do we?
I had the honour of being invited to keynote the inaugural 24 Fintech event in Riyadh. Hosted by the organisers of LEAP, probably the most impressive event I’ve spoken at, I was certain that it would be the kind of event that would have the smartest minds in the industry there. On that side of things, they didn’t disappoint. It was a wonderful event, wonderfully well organised, and as a keynote speaker they made it a pleasure to be part of.
But, I had a disappointment to share on stage.
My disappointment in what the ‘greater good’ is.
Side note - this may feel like an oddly specific post as you read on. And it is. If you’re not in Fintech, you may wonder what this has to offer you. In life and in business, we sometimes need to step back and take a helicopter view.
Is your ladder leaning against the right wall? If the excitement of climbing isn’t quite there, maybe you need to think about what you want to do when you get to the top of it…
Now, I’ve been an observer of the fintech world for far too many years. I’ve sat on all sides of the table - I’ve been a very early customer of embryonic SAAS solutions, I’ve been a (failed) fintech founder, I’ve advised fintechs of all shapes and sizes, I’ve served fintechs as a brand ambassador, and have had the privilege of a peek behind the curtain working with a scale up in the space.
In the early days, this stuff was full of excitement.
I remember how painful the very first online accounting tools were, and the sheer excitement when dial up internet was replaced by broadband, so that transactions could be entered into a system without a five minute wait. I remember the groundbreaking innovations such as the implementation of bank feeds, the use of API’s to share data between applications, and even the ditching of the offline portals which were used by many applications - presumably due to the primitive nature of the underlying tech platforms and the innovation that was yet to happen.
In fact, to really hammer this home, it’s probably worth sharing why I stepped down this path. It was really simple. Floppy disks and CD Roms were getting broken in the post! Most readers probably haven’t heard of such ancient relics of a previous world…
This whole thing felt like a step into a much bigger world. A world full of unknowns, but with ‘greater good’ at the end of it. This greater good was never really defined, but it was there. We felt it.
Here’s the thing. The ‘greater good’ is still not defined. And we’re not feeling it.
Now with my keynotes, particularly one such as this which is rather niche compared to my usual ‘bread and butter’, I like to plan. I never script, and to be honest I tend to work around some core themes and have a conversation from the heart. But I do plan. I spend time reflecting on the world in which my audience sit. I want to understand what’s going on - everything from the day to day of their jobs, through to the macro stuff that they don’t even think about. I want to get a taste of what it was like ten years ago, and what it will be like ten years from now.
That’s the stuff I have to obsess about. Because, there’s no point in me being booked if I can’t help them fix something or make something better.
Surprisingly, despite the fintech world being something that I’ve floated around for many years, I hadn’t taken this helicopter view. I hadn’t taken the opportunity to step back and dwell on the ‘greater good’.
And when I did, boy was I disappointed.
We’ve gone from a world of unlimited possibilities, to a world of incremental improvements and shaving a microscopic fraction of a percentage off of payment fees.
Instead of widening, we’ve deepened.
When I’d worked out the ‘nagging feeling’ that in truth, I’d been carrying around anyway, I decided to then research some statistics. Now, I know that it could be argued that the statistics I found and shared were from a point of bias - after all, I’d decided my big picture stance and it would’ve been quite frustrating to have that proven wrong! - but, I tried to be as balanced as I could and to both prove and or disprove my views.
Perhaps the most staggering fact was that according to the World Bank, 24% of adults globally are unbanked. Further, I know from work that I did with Intuit back in c. 2018 on a brand ambassadorship campaign around the use of digital technologies by small business showed that a quarter of small businesses in the UK had only one form of digitalisation.
For context, in this report the definition of digitalisation can include anything from email, social media, online banking, and so on - right through to the things that you might think of, such as business process automation and CRM systems.
Simply mind-blowing. Well over a billion and a quarter of us unbanked. Well over a million and a quarter UK businesses - a ‘leading economy’ - behind where the group think is.
It could be argued that fintech solutions are preaching to the converted. More tools, flashier tools, quicker tools, to a captive market.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if that greater good could be the eradication of poverty?
It might seem like a fluffy greater good for commercial businesses to focus on. Indeed, let’s be honest, I’m not entirely sure which income line is going to be filled by a business focusing on this. Indeed, I’d imagine the board will have a torrid time justifying it to their shareholders.
But I’m sure there are ‘CSR’ (corporate and social responsibility) activities that could actually prove to be a win win. I’m not gonna give all my answers away here - frankly, I don’t have all of the answers, and even if I did, there’s little point copying my homework as they could well be wrong. Having said that, the ones that jump out to me are the activities that fintech companies can do around supporting new markets, improving financial literacy, and generally being good guys. Thinking about how marketing spend can be diverted from tube adverts to YouTube education. How investment can be diverted from new shiny buttons to new but rusty markets.
I’ve not even started to share the crazy stats around global fraud. Fun fact, if 40% of fraud was eliminated, it’s the same as the combined GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of 174 countries. I’m not going to say how many countries there are as that may unleash a geopolitical hand grenade - but this is broadly 90% of the countries out there!
So. It’s not for me to answer whether the ROI stacks up insofar as reaching for a greater good. Or indeed, if this is feasible. But it might inject a whole load of excitement into fintech that was last felt circa 2012!
Side note - this wasn’t the key focus of my keynote, just a section that I felt particularly passionate about, alongside others which I may share more about later. If you’d like to learn more about my keynote speaking, you can either visit the speaker section of my website or speak to a member of my team.
Carl Reader is a WH Smith Bestselling Author and international keynote speaker with a real passion for helping people do better. There are two ways to learn more about Carl! You can either follow him on Social Media if you’re just curious (@carlreader on most platforms), or if you’d like to learn a little more about what he does on stage, through content and in the media from a commercial perspective, you can visit his website.
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