AI, Banking and Payments roundtable, hosted with Lloyds Banking Group, as part of FinTech Challenge Leeds: Write-up
Ryan Walsh / 19th May 2023
On the 17th of May 2023, FinTech North was delighted to bring together representatives of various Northern FinTechs and Lloyds Banking Group’s commercial banking and LDC (private equity) teams, for a lunchtime roundtable discussing AI, Banking and Payments, as part of our FinTech Challenge Leeds – sponsored by Lloyds Banking Group and NEXUS.
This is the 5th roundtable we’ve hosted as part of the FinTech Challenge Leeds initiative, following its official launch at NEXUS on the 20th of April, which saw the establishment of 5 challenge areas that pertain to specific business issues faced in the sector or a certain hot topic in FinTech and Financial Services. This includes: Financial Inclusion (hosted by Transunion), Home Ownership (hosted by Leeds Building Society), Equality, Diversity and Bias (hosted by NEXUS), Green Finance (hosted by NEXUS) and AI, Banking and Payments (hosted by Lloyds Banking Group).
At the Iberica Restaurant on East Parade in Leeds, we were joined by attendees from Northern FinTechs whose proposition impact the AI, Banking and Payments space, namely; Answer Pay, Access Pay, inicio.ai, rebuildingsociety.com, Compleat, AI Tech North and PRINSIX Technologies alongside Lloyds Banking Group. It turned out to be a fascinating discussion, covering a whole range of themes, such as the application of AI in banking and payments, the importance of ethics in frontier technologies, collaboration, the future of payments, business challenges and more.
It was fantastic to provide a platform to build cultural engagement and rapport around ideas and to connect our innovators with our established institutions. FinTech North is delighted to share a write-up of what was discussed at the roundtable:
The application of AI in banking and payments:
“Changing anything with payments is like changing an engine on a jumbo jet, mid-air.”
“How do we work with partners/innovators and let them into our estate?”
“Banks provide reliability.”
“Sometimes payments are designed to add friction.”
“It’s important to balance speed and efficiency, with regulation and customer care. Human intervention is a good thing for society.”
“With ATMs – people thought banks would disappear. The truth is, humans will always flourish and adapt.”
Importance of ethics in frontier technologies:
“There’s a huge need for ethics and tech to be in the same room – to understand each other.”
“There has to be guidelines around AI technology. How many jobs will be lost to AI? How many jobs will be created by AI?”
“Smart ethics – perhaps the creation of a banking ethics framework is needed.”
“What is the impact of philosophy and AI implementation on society?”
“Ethical AI is a super-power. It’s your chance to differentiate.”
Regulation:
Highlighted the importance of metrics, measurements, guidelines and speed and scale.
“Who has the power to regulate AI worldwide? AI has the potential to get out of hand.”
Positive impact of FinTech:
Application of KYC, AML
HealthTech – “It’s highly regulated and showing great progress. It’s application is a game-changer. What can we learn from this? It’s a great use case for AI and FinTech.”
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Trust, reliability, regulated application, collaboration, and the future of payments (VRPs and request to pay) also came out as strong themes that were discussed throughout.
Thank-you to Lloyds Banking Group for sponsoring the FinTech Challenge Leeds. Thank-you to all participants for their fascinating contributions.
We’re really looking forward to moving the FinTech Challenge Leeds initiative forward with all of our challenge owners. We can’t wait to continue providing a valuable platform for our FinTechs and established financial services brands to connect and share ideas.
