At the most recent CIO group meeting, we had a roundtable discussion on all there is to know about FinTech. I would like to take a second to thank Mohammed Hanif and Oasis Financial for hosting our roundtable. It was a great opportunity for everyone to come together and discuss the emerging financial service called FinTech!
Fintech revolves around the use of technology to provide financial services. Financial technology innovations led by new, technology-driven startups and companies are currently disrupting the financial world. Since the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the term has expanded to include any technological innovation in the financial sector, including innovations in financial literacy and education, retail banking, investment and even crypto-currencies like bitcoin. Financial products and services that were once the realm of branches, salesmen and desktops move toward mobile devices or simply democratize away from large, institutions. We asked the group, “who does their stocks through a broker?” Not one hand was raised! Everyone acknowledged the fact that the middleman has been eliminated, and this process can be done by yourself online.
Mohammed then asked the loaded question, “Who’s using Blockchain?” It didn’t take very long to understand that nobody had blockchain “figured out”. Blockchain, also known as a digital ledger in which transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency are recorded are not being used in many companies. George Wang kicked the conversation off by stating, “the state of Illinois is using it for Healthcare Records and Academic Transcripts as well as Deeds.” Kari VanderVeen added that her company was testing it for the use of car rentals, to get to know the background of who’s renting and to speed up the process. It’s still in a testing phase and hasn’t been implemented. Lastly, Roman Domiak added that it’s hard to get companies to partner with Insurance companies and the adoption of blockchain is very difficult. In the end, everyone agreed that their companies “have very little implementation and are just dipping their toes in.”
FinTech, is no doubt, the buzzword in the financial industry. Before we know it all paper processes and human interaction will be eliminated, cutting out the middleman for software and applications. Thank you to all that joined us for the roundtable discussion, and to Oasis Financial for hosting. We look forward to seeing everyone at the next meeting.
If you are interested in learning more on what was discussed, you can review the slide deck, here. To learn more about Think IT, click here!