Until very recently, financial services have been relatively immune to the technology-enabled disruptive innovation that has swept through other industries over the past decade or so. This is now changing for a number of reasons, both technological, economic and societal:
* continuing advances in communications and information technology - in particular ubiquitous cloud computing and smart devices - is enabling economically viable new approaches to delivering all types of financial services (payments, risk management, investing, banking, insurance...)
* demographic change is creating a large addressable population of financial services consumers who have a different expectations (in terms of transparency, control, etc.)
* the financial crisis of 2008 has broken many of the bonds of trust that contributed to significant customer inertia wrt financial services providers.
This is opening up one of the most important sectors of our economy to new entrants with new ideas, new approaches and new technologies.
Proposed draft agenda for workshop:
(1) Scene setting:
* financial reformation video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khRKBrky5Lo (4min)
* Sean Park to present (updated version) of "The New Financial Stack" presentation, outlining a framework with which to think about innovating in financial services https://prezi.com/kxkvzl_bl-rh/reinventing-financial-services-lift11/ (30min)
(2) Ideastorming:
* create groups of 4-6 people to go off and "invent" a new component in the financial stack; perhaps by giving each group (drawn at random?) a broad 'topic' to focus on eg. payments, insurance, savings/investing, retail banking, SME banking...etc. (30min)
(3) Review and take-aways:
* have each group present/pitch their idea concept (2-3min each, depending on numbers) (25min)
* group voting and/or comments on ideas (15min)
Goal is obviously not to come up with world-beating investable ideas/companies so much as to:
* expand horizons as to how people think about financial services
* explore the way people think about finance and what are the key value drivers
* explore how technology can disrupt this industry to drive positive outcomes for the economy
