Digital Assets- the Next Generation of Finance? Webinar Write-up
Rachel England / 5th December 2023
On the 28th of November, FinTech North, in partnership with GFT, hosted an insightful webinar titled ‘Digital assets – the next generation of finance?’ The webinar, chaired by Ashutosh Chauhan, Principal Consultant at GFT, aimed to explore the transformative potential of digital assets in shaping the future of the financial industry. The session commenced with a brief introduction by Joe Roche, Engagement Manager at FinTech North, outlining our objectives, before transitioning to Ashutosh who discussed the work GFT is doing in the space and skillfully moderated the panel discussion.
The webinar garnered massive interest from the FinTech community, with over 200 sign ups, over 100 attendees throughout the session, and 80 people in the call at its peak. The audience actively engaged with the topic, posing over 10 questions that further enriched the conversation. Overall, the webinar proved to be a dynamic and informative exploration of the evolving landscape of digital assets in the financial sector.
For those who couldn’t make it to our webinar, we have produced a write up summarising the key details. You can also watch the webinar recording on our YouTube channel:
The panel comprised experts in the field, including Prashant Malik, Senior Technology Lead- Digital Assets at HSBC, Sam Weeks, Emerging Trends and Technology at Google, Alyssa Kong, Product Manager, Coin Systems at JP Morgan, and Georg Schneider, Head of Financial Engineering at Digital Asset. Each speaker contributed valuable insights, and key quotes from the discussion included a shared vision for the future emphasising interoperability and client adoption.
Georg Schneider highlighted the agility and innovation prowess of FinTechs, noting that
‘FinTechs are more nimble, can innovate, often banks don’t have appetite or ability to build in house’, and that ‘If you can get half a dozen banks building a use-case, you can out pace them’.
Prashant Malik opened the discussion, speaking about HSBCs in-depth involvement in the space. Alyssa Kong drew attention to the disruptive trends in the payments space, while Sam Weeks emphasised Google’s commitment to enabling innovation by allowing developers to build on top of the Google Cloud platform.
Ashutosh Chauhan provided a comprehensive summary towards the end of the webinar, underlining the importance of tokenisation in digitalising the entire value chain. He noted that this process could bring in more liquidity and offer opportunities to expose financial instruments to new customer segments. However, he also acknowledged the accompanying regulatory challenges.
The panelists delved into regulatory considerations further during the discussion. Alyssa emphasised the significance of atomic settlements, particularly in cross-border payments, and suggested the possibility of forming peer-to-peer networks among different banks and institutions. The idea of blockchain-based accounts was also explored. Sam Weeks stressed the need for robust audit systems in the blockchain space, and Georg Schneider discussed the tools that networks employ to assist customers in leveraging distributed ledger technology (DLT).
The overarching question throughout the webinar was whether we are witnessing the next generation of finance, and the speakers collectively addressed this query. The discussion also touched on the potential impact of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and the necessity for more use cases in the distributed ledger and blockchain space.
