Challenges of Fintech to the financial industry

Manama : Sael Al Waary, Chairman, Arab Financial Services and Deputy Group CEO of Bank ABC, delivered the welcome address at the FinTech Disruption in the Financial Industry- The first Middle East & Africa FinTech Forum 2017. 

In his opening speech he commented: “Technology is disrupting other industries and it has resulted in winners and losers. This disruption is also finding its way to financial services. FinTech has transformed the way money is managed. It affects almost every financial activity, from banking to payments to wealth management. This is not all hype.” 

He illustrated a number of examples from across the world where fresh start-ups are offering fierce competition to established financial businesses. He gave the examples of Google Pay, PayPal and Facebook.

“This digitisation called FinTech is bringing changes to financial institution with focus on High-volume transaction, low-touch, data-driven, such as payment and lending. More than US$24 billion were invested in FinTech companies in 2016. There is a lot of interest in this pace by investors including banks.

The future is already here. A UK based mobile-only bank positions itself as ‘the future of banking, available today’. FinTech startups understand this shift and are attacking bank service fees and can lead to massive transfer of revenue between banks and themselves,” he noted.

He further added, “I do remember the days when AFS started, as a travellers cheques company and we were the leaders processing millions of checks every day. Then we moved to card processing and we are currently the leaders as well and now we are transforming AFS to become a FinTech enablement company. It is our choice as banks and bankers to participate in shaping what we call at AFS a “frictionless future“… AFS is creating a platform for all banks to start a strategic conversation about how together we can see the future, design the future and become the future.”