The Lord Mayor of the City of London for the year 2023/24 (the 695th, no less), Right Honourable Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli, is running a series of online webinars under the banner “Knowledge Miles”, which explore the connections of the Square Mile and how its knowledge clusters are addressing diverse global challenges. Michael refers to the Square Mile as the World’s coffee house, tipping a nod to the meeting places where the Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London, amongst other institutions, were originally founded.
The webinars are eclectic and compelling, and are being delivered by a variety of accomplished, celebrated individuals. Importantly, in the true intended tradition of Sir Thomas Gresham (1519–1579), himself a Lord Mayor and founder of the Royal Exchange and Gresham College, they are free of charge and open to everyone, as are the regular lectures from the College itself.
Recently, Chris Skinner, a long-time friend of SAMI Consulting, gave a talk entitled “Intelligent Money: Our Future Is Where We Do Not Think About Money, As Our Money Thinks For Us”.
Chris was keen to point out that he is not a Futurist, but we believe his observations should help to inform some of our futures thinking. After all, money is fundamental to every one of us. Death and taxes may be inevitable consequences of human life, but so is money. How else would the tax be paid?
The title of the talk was somewhat alarming. AI gone mad? And Chris does bill himself as a troublemaker. An alarmist? In fact, his message was more subtle and re-assuring.
Chris has written seven books on technology and finance, his latest being “Intelligent Finance”. What is the future? What’s coming next? Can PEST (Political, Economic, Social, Technological) analysis help us find answers? It’s very difficult to predict and there are always black swans…
Chris’s take is to look at this in the context of finance and banking, not as a Futurist, and there are two big questions. Can you really have de-centralised finance (DeFi), where everything is run by (a network of) the people (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, etc.), or does everything need to remain centralised through government (CeFi) even allowing for controlled cryptocurrencies?
Secondly, Generative AI. What does Generative Finance look like?
There has to continue to be human involvement (in other words, future jobs) and there are four converging critical enablers, heading towards the “Metaverse”: Digital Social Life; Investments; Technology; and a De-centralised Economy.
However, Bill Gates is credited as saying “We need banking but we don’t need banks anymore.” Chris says this is very naïve: “only banks can do banking, but they need to do it digitally.” This has resulted in huge increases in investments in FinTech. Look at the valuations of, say, Stripe, and the number of its customers and employees compared to those of the big banks.
So, what is the bank of the future? Chris says there will always be a place for them and they must be regulated and licensed. They will be digital asset managers and data stores of value. Trust and security must remain top of mind.
“You need the right tools and technologies to build the right bank at the right time” and “AI is only as good as what people put into it”.
Chris gave us a final thought. If you learn digitally alone, the whole thing is seen as a game. There is no exposure to realmoney. Financial literacy is imperative.
Where does this leave us contemplating the future?
At SAMI, this is what we specialise in doing: providing expert consultants who help our clients to use tried and tested methodologies in order to make sensible, considered decisions about possible futures. No-one can tell you accurately what will happen in the future, but the most successful organisations are those who are prepared for what might happen. This is as relevant to the future of money as it is to anything else.
Chris’s webinar has been posted here.
Forthcoming Knowledge Miles webinars are at this address.
Past events can be viewed on the YouTube channel.
Written by Jonathan Soar, SAMI Associate
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily of SAMI Consulting.
Achieve more by understanding what the future may bring. We bring skills developed over thirty years of international and national projects to create actionable, transformative strategy. Futures, foresight and scenario planning to make robust decisions in uncertain times. Find out more at www.samiconsulting.co.uk.
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