EVENT COVERAGE: ABF SUMMIT 2022
Sustainability, ESG, AI, NFTs, and more discussed at the ABF Summit 2022
Attendees heard from the industry’s finest experts and bank executives on where the future is headed.
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inancial service institutions (FSIs) are hurtling towards a new frontier in the financial industry, navigating drastic changes in regulations and customer demand, new sustainability-related risks, and intensifying competition. And in order to thrive, FSIs must learn to embrace the new, from emerging technologies that enable more personalised customer experiences to collaborating with the disruptors. These are just some of the key insights that hundreds of attendees learned from the recently concluded Asian Banking & Finance Summit 2022. The three-day event, held from 15-17 June, gathered the region’s top banking executives and market experts to share how to thrive in the current financial space. DAY 1 Boston Consulting Group’s Managing Director Tushar Agarwal kicked off the summit with a keynote address exploring the evolving space of cryptocurrency and decentralised finance (DeFi). Agarwal notes that financial stakeholders have every right to be skeptical of crypto and DeFi due to risks on reputation and monetary
36 ASIAN BANKING & FINANCE | Q3 2022
Benjamin Tan
Wolfram Hedrich
True loyalty is achieved when a customer feels emotionally connected to the brand
risks involved. However, with the right factors, crypto and DeFi present great opportunities for banks to better service their future consumers—which “literally live in a different world” from what banks are familiar with—and existing consumers, who remained underserved by current services. It can also help lower costs. “Blockchain technologies have already proven that there are various ways to reduce KYC costs, and also implement a lot of work that happens in the back office to actually reduce significant amount of cost and leading banks are investing significant amount of money, behind the space,” Agarwal said. CIMB Singapore’s Head of Commercial Banking, Benjamin Tan, followed with a speaking session on sustainability, setting CIMB as an example of how one of the ASEAN’s biggest banks. CIMB has over 33,000 employees and 18 million customers in the region. “We have launched our GCP or green social sustainable impact products and services framework. Since then we have dispersed over 10 billion ringgit offerings with a target of 30 billion ringgit in sustainable
financing by 2030,” Tan shared adding that CIMB is establishing ways to help small and medium-sized businesses become more sustainable. True customer loyalty Collinson’s Daniel Cantorna, Vice President, Data, Insights and Technology, Asia Pacific, discussed how FIs can establish customer loyalty, calling for FIs to step beyond the historically transactional loyalty tactics—rewards points and discounts—that nowadays is only driving consumer apathy and concerns regarding data security. “True loyalty is achieved when a customer feels emotionally connected to the brand,” Cantorna noted. “We need to ensure that we are providing a value exchange over time. And this enables us to build rich customer profiles and create in turn better, more relevant experiences.” Elisha Harrington, Senior Director of Innovation Office, APJ at ServiceNow discussed the sustainable finance transformations of banks, financial companies, and insurance firms. “In essence, adhering to an ESG framework means your future proofing your business,” Harrington said. “That’s what we mean about business resilience. And the future of financial services will absolutely revolve around how sustainable finance is rolling out through markets and how you can capitalise from a revenue perspective on these new opportunities.” Harrington, Agarwal, and Cantorna join the first panel discussion with Frederic Tardy, Chief Strategy and Customer Officer for Home Credit, one of the region’s leading buy now pay later (BNPL) providers. Ernst & Young Advisory’s Wolfram Hedrich, Partner, Financial Services Consulting followed with a speaking session on net zero in the financial sector. He advised banks to leverage their credit departments and engage their front office early on, and ensure that
