Fifth annual Salzburg Global Forum on Finance in a Changing World ends in cautious optimism
Fellows of the fifth annual Salzburg Global Forum on Finance in a Changing World“The future is fully as challenging as we thought it was – but it is not without hope!” declared Salzburg Global Fellow and program advisor, Patrick Kenadjian at the closure of the fifth annual
Salzburg Global Forum on Finance in a Changing World,
The Future of Financial Intermediation: Banking, Securities Markets, or Something New? Kenadjian, senior counsel for session co-sponsor, Davis Polk, and member of the advisory board for the annual Forum, closed the 2015 program with a summary that looked positively to the future. “After seven years of dealing with the past, it is time to look to the future and see what we can do to shape the financial markets to meet our goals, not just as market participants but as a society, to decide what we want the market to do, and not just what we don’t want it to do,” remarked Kenadjian.“Sorting out our future requires a serious assessment of the fundamental forces shaping it.”Three of the forces highlighted throughout the three-day program included the crisis of public and regulators’ trust in the banking sector, the demographic wave rolling over the world, and the growing challenge of technological change.The program, chaired by Roger Ferguson, president and chief executive officer of TIAA-CREF together with
Axel Weber, chairman of UBS, featured expert-led panel discussions, with speakers including
Lael Brainard, Governor of the US Federal Reserve; Andreas Dombret, Member of the Executive Board, Deutsche Bundesbank; Douglas Flint, Group Chairman, HSBC Bank Plc; Wim Mijs, Chief Executive, European Banking Federation; Steven Maijoor, Chairman of the European Securities and Markets Authority; Sandra O’Connor, Chief Regulatory Affairs Officer at JPMorgan Chase & Co.; and David Wright, Secretary General, International Organizations of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), examining issues such as the capital markets union in Europe and international regulatory action and market implications; future of financial intermediaries; innovation, technology changes and security issues; and governance and compensation reforms. In addition to the plenary sessions, the high-level gathering of 50 bankers, policy makers, regulators, supervisors, financial and technology consultants, also formed working groups around topics such as:
- What can Europe’s capital markets union realistically achieve? And by when?
- How do we ensure that adequate liquidity is maintained in capital markets in the view of new international standards?
- How should financial institutions and authorities respond to the rise of FinTech players and new innovations (crowdfunding, cryptocurrencies, mobile payments, etc.)? and
- How do changing patterns of financial intermediation impact the policy objectives of financial inclusion and consumer protection?
Recommendations from the working groups – which included improving “financial literacy” in the general public, especially among “vulnerable” populations that might already be beyond formal education; developing targeted measures to move towards universal regulation on insolvency; and increasing co-operation between “FinTech” providers with a focus on information and data security – will be published in full in the session report to be included in the Fall.
The Future of Financial Intermediation: Banking, Securities Markets, or Something New? is part of the multi-year program Salzburg Global Forum on Finance in a Changing World. Read more here: www.salzburgglobal.org/go/552This year’s program was in partnership with Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Ernst Young, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Oliver Wyman, with co-sponsors Cleary Gottlieb, the Cynosure Group, Davis Polk, and Dynex Capital.
