Sibos 2018 Day 3: still going strong

Wednesday’s highlights

Participation is the name of the game! More than 250 runners, joggers, and walkers turned up this morning to take part in the Sibos 5K run & walk, sponsored by Oracle, which wound around the Darling Harbour waterfront from Metcalf Park.

The Breakfast keynote with Dr Ayesha Khanna went down a storm. Diving into how to leverage the potential of Artificial Intelligence, she advised audience members to “see every problem as an opportunity for financial innovation.”

The Big Issue Debate, ‘ Disruption in the payments landscape ’ provided a forum for lively dialogue from multiple points of view. Leila Fourie , CEO Australian Payments Network, said, “Regulation tends to lag behind new solutions – seat belts were invented well after the car. It is a real conundrum in an industry like payments.”

The Future of Work session on the main conference looked at how the evolution of technology, the payments industry, and all cultural changes are forcing traditional organisations to respond rapidly to remain relevant in the future. “AI will take over jobs in the workplace but will also create new ones,” said William Borden , Head of GTS Strategy, Advisory and Strategic Solutions Delivery in Global Transaction Services at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Innotribe’s Future of Money (FOM) session, now in its seventh year, focused on big data, Artificial Intelligence, and powerful computing and their potential to transform customers’ experiences by delivering contextual banking. Industry innovators Udayan Goyal , Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Apis Partners; Brett King , CEO and Founder of Moven; Jie Song , Senior Director, Ant Financial Service Group, and Neal Cross , Chief Innovation Officer at DBS, delivered a fascinating vision of a future that may be closer than we think.

The third annual Student Challenge culminated in a close-run final with two teams of the brightest minds from Australia’s universities presenting their solutions for data privacy in an open banking world to the panel of judges in a bid for the grand prize of AUD 30,000.

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain, two of the buzzwords of the conference, were discussed at a dynamic Lunch & Learn session in the Discover Zone, with complementary sessions across the programme on regulating the new distributed services that promise to re-make our infrastructure.

There’s still time to make a meaningful contribution to this year’s Sibos charity partner, the Girls & Boys Brigade , which supports children and young people in need of a helping hand by providing education, recreation, and activities that build their life skills. Visit the SWIFT stand for a commemorative photo with a Sydney-themed backdrop that can be used as a postcard – each card earns the Girls & Boys Brigade EUR30 from SWIFT.

Coming up today

Start Thursday off right with our third Breakfast Keynote at 9am in the Plenary Room, featuring Australia cricket legend and philanthropist Steve Waugh . Tap into a top sportsperson’s insights on the habits and mindset needed to become a winner and how to sustain that career.

At 11am in the Plenary Room, the final Big Issue Debate, ‘ The rise of Asia Pacific as a source of innovation ,’ will examine the region as a cradle for fintech invention and an engine of global growth. APAC’s booming e-commerce sector and growing middle classes are driving new financial services products to meet a demand for coverage and growing risk appetite – how do we participate?

Innotribe looks to hacking, data security and prevention for its daily theme, with a live cyber exercise: join Daryl Kellison from the SWIFT Red team to witness a cyber-attack in real time at 11am in the Discover Zone. The Curated Networking session is led by Duena Blomstrom , and there’s a Sensemaker session on the future of privacy with Cecilia Boschini . Save some energy for the Innotribe closing including a fireside chat with blockchain pioneer Joseph Lubin . It’s at 3:05pm in the Discover Zone – try to be early!

It’s your last chance to take a tour of the exhibition – you never know who you’ll meet among our diverse global gathering of exhibitors, or what products or solutions may catch your eye.

The Sibos 2018 closing plenary takes place at 4pm in the plenary room. Alain Raes, CEO of Asia Pacific and EMEA at SWIFT and Stephan Zimmerman, deputy chairman of the board of directors at SWIFT will take a look at the highlights of the Sibos week. This will be followed by a keynote delivered by cultural anthropologist, technologist and futurist Dr Genevieve Bell which promises to be a fitting end to a great week. And it wouldn’t be Sibos without a good party: the closing event will start directly after the plenary in the Grand Ballroom on L5 where we will Celebrate Sydney in sight of its iconic Harbour. There will be live music and refreshments – with fireworks at 20:15.