Everyone’s been saying for quite a while now that drones are going to take over, the technology will be used for flying cars and we’ll be delivering almost everything via drone, but is that really the case or are we too excited to see the obstacles ahead? William Sachiti, The Academy of Robotics explains to Finance Monthly that there is a more realistic perspective.

Drones are the future of home delivery! Or at least that is what I used to believe. They appear to be an efficient means of transporting items from one location to another. My mind ran wild, picturing a drone superhighway! I was keen to establish a dedicated airspace for drones to self-navigate, and to deliver packages to customers.

But… and there is a big but. Such a big one, I no longer believe drones are the future. The issue is not technical – it is social.

The Social challenges

The more I researched, I began to realise the safety defects of a cluttered airspace, peppered with flying machines, often controlled by amateur operators. Not to mention the cost of achieving this drone superhighway in the sky.

These issues have already been encountered by Amazon, which is currently leading the way with drone delivery. For example, the retail giant must house drones near to population centres in order to be more efficient than road-based delivery.

Now imagine your neighbour’s daily impulse-buys being delivered by a very loud drone, the novelty would fade fast. Imagine the sound of a washing machine spinner at full-belt during unpredictable hours of the day, waking up your kids and spooking your spaniel. Take it a step further and imagine living near a big retailer’s drone delivery centre. The noise and intrusion could be worse than living under the Heathrow flight path.

I had initially overlooked our roads – thinking of them as ‘the past’ and drones as ‘the future’ – but I no longer believe that to be the case. Ultimately, road-based delivery using driverless vehicles is far safer, quieter and more cost effective than the seemingly futuristic, yet comparably less-practical drone courier services.  It is easy to forget that we haven’t fully tapped the potential of our road networks – public, unmarked and residential. And autonomous vehicles present the opportunity to tap into and make better use of the infrastructure we already have.

So what form will deliveries of the future take?

Judging by early designs and models, autonomous delivery vehicles, will take diverse forms.

Italy’s Piaggio Fast Forward - a subsidiary of Vespa manufacturers, Piaggio - has invented a cylindrical luggage compartment capable of tailing its owner by a few metres, while holding up to 18km of cargo.  This clearly shows the value of wheels on the road.

Mole Solutions is ignoring both road and air for something completely different: below-ground freight capsules. Thrown into the delivery mix, such an invention could help to reduce road (and air) traffic congestion, as well as keeping out of sight.

Pelipod on the other hand, is seeking to cater specifically to businesses that need efficient, secure and direct delivery. Bypassing post offices, courier firms and depots, the firm is pioneering delivery pods that will travel straight to the destination. Integrated electronic systems will grant access to only authorised users, and provide proof of delivery.

And Kar-Go, the driverless delivery vehicle from my own Academy of Robotics, will autonomously navigate unmarked roads such as residential areas, and use an intelligent package management system to deliver packages to retail customers, day or night.

So, road vehicles will still be the primary force for delivering packages but they’ll come in all shapes and sizes.

Delivery beyond the physical

Looking beyond the first incarnations of autonomous vehicles and towards the far-future of delivery, I believe product delivery will be digital. Driverless vehicles, and smart devices in general, will benefit from 5G mobile technology. With so many devices feeding data into the Internet of Things (IoT), devices are able to communicate and act in unison.  Autonomous vehicles for instance, will be able to communicate with one another, and other road users.

Let’s put digital delivery into context. 25 years ago, the only way to send a document to someone was to have it physically delivered. With a little help from technology, the same document could, just a few years later, be sent via fax; scattered into bits of information, sent across the world and re-assembled in a matter of minutes.

As technology improved, sending a document moved from minutes, to seconds to an instant. So, if delivery of physical goods continues to incrementally improve over time, it’s not unrealistic to imagine that your latest smartphone could one day not be physically sent to you at all.

Instead, it could be purchased via a digital download and, through some 3D printer/fax machine-hybrid, be re-assembled in your living room. Of course, we can’t expect to see such an invention anytime soon. Technological advancements – despite accelerations in the digital age – are gradual.

And finally

With giants like Google, Tesla and Uber counted among the early adopters of self-driving cars, you can bet that the overwhelming majority of future vehicles, whether transporting people or packages, will be driverless.

When consumers are ordering compost from the garden centre, supermarket groceries or pretty much anything from the online superstores, you can bet that, regardless off the type of delivery vehicle, the driver will be digital.

PwC's head of research and analysis of fintech, Aaron Schwartz shares his views on what areas are more likely to attract investors' attention in the future. He talks to The Banker's Silvia Pavoni during Swift Business Forum New York.

Right from the beginning decision makers in business played a vital part in progressing revenue, whether in ancient Greece or today, but they weren’t always the same guy that took care of the books. Here Tim Vine, Head of European Trade Credit at Dun & Bradstreet delves with Finance Monthly into the history of the CFO, and the prospects of financial management for the future.

Corporate structures have changed dramatically over the last 150 years – and so too have executive roles. Even in the last few decades, we’ve seen CIOs go from being a rarity to a mainstay in the board room, and now we’re even seeing the growth of new positions like the Chief Digital Officer and Chief Information Security Officer. The CFO role has changed dramatically, as well. From financial guardian to strategic partner and key adviser on the future direction of the business: the role of the CFO has come a long way in a short space of time. So, how is the current business environment shaping the role of the CFO and what will financial directors need to focus on in the future to secure business success?

The history of the CFO

How has the CFO role shifted over the years? For most of the twentieth century, the CFO position didn’t actually exist. Instead, financial managers oversaw bookkeeping and were responsible for annual budgets. They were, for the most part, removed from the decision-making process, and only became more influential when financial regulations became more complex. The position of CFO first emerged in the 1960s and became much more common in the decades that followed. Financial leaders now occupy a key role at the heart of most organisations, and are expected to keep tabs on the big picture as well as the minutiae of every department. No other senior position offers quite the same degree and breadth of strategic insight.

Over the past decade, much has been said about the changing role of CFOs. Long gone are the days in which CFOs were tasked solely with financial management and reporting; instead, the responsibilities of today’s financial officers can stretch from investor relations to strategic growth.

The evolution of the CFO

The drivers for the increase in scope of the CFO role are as plentiful as they are diverse. From increasingly stringent regulations and the impact of globalisation to the transformation of business and industry, the evolution of the CFO role has been a necessary response to the growing demands of a rapidly changing world.

A natural consequence of this evolution has been the need for CFOs to expand their scope. They have had to step up and bear the burden of increased responsibility. Although their role may have become more integral to the success of the business, expectations and pressures to deliver have also multiplied.

More recently– over the past three years, to be precise – CFOs say they have experienced a “significant” (53%) or “some degree” (44%) of change to their roles according to our latest research. Many (59%) respondents reported an increased array of duties, noting that their role now necessitates greater prediction and management of risk and compliance issues, or that they are increasingly being asked to drive the bottom line as well as the top.

As a result of this increased pressure to take on a larger breadth of responsibility, the plethora of the CFOs’ responsibilities now includes everything from taking a more strategic role in their business and working in a multidisciplinary function to analysing customer data and leading strategic mergers and investments.

The current state of play

As CFOs’ roles continue to expand, they cannot to neglect the day-to-day responsibilities that have previously defined their function. When asked to make a like-for-like comparison between their primary obligations now and three years ago, CFOs provided little evidence that they are under any less pressure to perform their ‘core’ tasks, despite growing expectations about what else they can deliver. Our research found that when listing what CFOs see as their main responsibilities both three years ago and today, they identified only slight changes between the two. The usual daily accounting and treasury tasks are just as relevant today as they were a few years ago, but compliance rising in rank to occupy third place and controllership falling to eighth.

While organisations seem to be increasingly reliant on the expanding skillset of the CFO to help them deal with external pressures, many respondents suggest that they aren’t being provided with the requisite level of support to conquer those challenges. Our research highlighted that resource issues are one of the biggest struggles facing CFOs. They do not have a large enough team to carry out all of the work, and time pressures inhibit them from completing the tasks effectively. Moreover, more than a third feel that they are struggling under the pressure to find new growth and revenue opportunities, with 31% noting that they are asked to be experts in too many fields. CFOs suggest that an increasingly broad remit is making it difficult to focus and ensure the direction of the finance function. In fact for many (56%) feel that their employees don’t have access to the tools and technologies that could help them, in spite the fact that a significant majority (84%) say technology solutions are vital to their data analysis and smart decision-making.

What is also evident from the research is that CFOs are concerned with having to meet the seemingly unrealistic expectations which the board has on the finance team. This is further compounded by a trend in team size reduction, with almost two-thirds of respondents sharing that their team size has decreased in recent years. Essentially CFOs are being asked to do more than ever before, all while seeing their resource levels shrink.

Looking into the crystal ball

Looking ahead, data is going to play an integral part of the CFOs’ role in years to come. It is true that the importance of data has already been established; more than a quarter of respondents say that data analysis has become an increasingly vital part of their responsibilities. Many suggest that analysing data it is now one of their day-to-day tasks – and this is only going to increase.

As it stands, over 90% of CFOs state that data is either “extremely” or “somewhat” important in helping them make smart decisions and forecasts.

But data isn’t just about forecasting. It can help finance leaders to better understand customers, gain a better understanding of the market in a globalised world, and improve the organisation’s operational efficiency. Data is also essential in helping identify new revenue opportunities.

Setting the scene for success

The role of the CFO is undoubtedly in a state of change. As it continues to evolve, conflicting priorities, growing expectations and shortfalls in essential resources are creating a high-pressure, high-risk environment: one in which the consequences of poor decision making are becoming ever more significant, such as was the case with General Motors and Enron for instance. In fact, over half of CFOs surveyed feel that it is just a matter of time before a serious mistake is made due to a lack of staff and resources. Providing finance leaders with the data, tools, time and technology to do the job to the best of their ability should be a boardroom-wide concern, given the critical role they play in an organisation’s success.

Commercial real estate industry leaders participating in The Real Estate Roundtable's Q2 2017 Economic Sentiment Index report that market conditions are stable and will maintain slow, but steady growth over the next several months – yet many respondents are also less optimistic about future conditions due to uncertainty in domestic policy and the geopolitical landscape.

"As the Trump Administration and Congress continue to consider ideas for tax reform, infrastructure investment and financial regulatory overhaul, The Roundtable's Q2 Sentiment Index is tempered by anticipation about what consequences the details of any eventual legislation could have on commercial real estate," said Roundtable CEO and President Jeffrey D. DeBoer. "We continue to remain engaged on the policy front to communicate the vital economic role that CRE provides to communities throughout the country and the industry's ability to create jobs."

A recurring concern among respondents to the Q2 Sentiment Index released today is uncertainty about the prospects for domestic policy and how volatile geopolitical situations may influence the economy.

The Roundtable's Q2 2017 Sentiment Index registered at 52 — three points down from the last quarter. [The Overall Index is scored on a scale of 1 to 100 by averaging Current and Future Indices; any score over 50 is viewed as positive.] This quarter's Current-Conditions Index of 53 decreased two points from the previous quarter, but rose two points compared to the Q2 2016 score of 51. However, this quarter's Future-Conditions Index of 50 dipped five points from the previous quarter – but is up two points compared to the same time one year ago, when it registered at 48.

The report's Topline Findings include:

• Many participants suggested they view market fundamentals as stable, despite potentially destabilizing factors, and predicted a continued period of slow but steady growth.
• With the new administration in Washington encountering challenges implementing their policies, there is not the same level of economic optimism as was expressed in the Q1 report. However, participants were nearly unanimous in their belief that the current real estate cycle has room left to run.
• In certain markets, asset pricing is at or near equilibrium. Retail stands out as the most challenging property type to price, followed by multifamily, which is seen to be near peak pricing.
• Capital is plentiful for the best deals. Equity and debt sources are employing greater levels of discipline for riskier investments. In what many feel is a healthy market environment, riskier deals are more expensive and may require multiple sources of capital.

Although 31% of survey participants report Q2 asset prices today are "somewhat higher" compared to this time last year, only 15% of respondents said they expect values to be somewhat higher one year from now — reflecting the view that the current market cycle is reaching a state of equilibrium. Additionally, 48% of Q2 survey respondents said they expect asset values in one year to be "about the same" as today. Many also noted a healthy availability of capital, predicting that inflows of private capital one year from now will be similar to today's healthy conditions in the equity and debt markets, dependent on the quality of the property.

(Source: Real Estate Roundtable)

Against the backdrop of evolving business demands and rapid technological disruption, the Robert M. Trueblood Seminars for Professors enhance accounting and auditing education to build the next generation of accountants and auditors to meet the needs of today's capital markets. For more than 50 years, the annual seminars, hosted by the Deloitte Foundation and the American Accounting Association, have provided cutting-edge resources and hundreds of case studies that keep university faculty and their students connected to the real-world issues and challenges currently facing the audit and accounting professions.

"The auditors of the future are not siloed to financial reporting," said Tonie Leatherberry, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and president of the Deloitte Foundation. "Future auditors will need up-to-date technical and data science skills to go along with their deep industry and cross-functional expertise. Moreover, they will need to sharpen their analytical skills and ability to interpret data, and demonstrate strong business acumen, superior communication skills and leadership. The Trueblood Seminars continue a long-standing tradition of assisting those charged with developing curricula that is futuristic and embodies the spirit of innovation."

This year's seminars marked a continued focus on audit innovation as technology continues to change the face of the profession. The proliferation of data analytics and artificial intelligence has enhanced the audit process and has helped open the door to transforming the manner in which an audit is conducted. The result is a new type of auditor and deeper insights that can benefit companies being audited and provide value to capital market participants. Additionally, there is an appreciation among business leaders for the opportunities audits can provide to help companies improve business performance.

Participants analyzed case studies on leasing arrangements, accounting for cross-hedging instruments, business combinations, revenue recognition, and understanding and evaluating control deficiencies during an audit, among others.

"Case-based discussions are a critical component of the seminars because they present realistic, complex, and contextually rich situations that encourage critical thinking and professional judgment," said Michael Iselin, 2017 Trueblood co-chair and accounting professor at the University of Minnesota. "Faculty are able to return to their universities and use Trueblood case studies as an excellent tool to foster critical thinking skills in the classroom."

More than 2,100 professors from across the country are registered users of the Trueblood case studies.

The 2017 Trueblood Seminars were held at Deloitte University in Westlake, Texas. More than 60 leading accounting and auditing educators and professionals attended the February and March sessions. The program featured guest speakers from the Financial Accounting Standards Board, accounting professors from several colleges and universities, plus Deloitte subject matter leaders. Deloitte professionals also discussed innovative audit technology and approaches, and shared their experiences through the case studies to illustrate the evolving skillsets needed in the field.

"The skills required to complete a high-quality audit five to 10 years ago are not the same as the skills you need today," says Leatherberry. "It's an exciting time for educators to encourage tech-savvy audit professionals to join the wave of innovation as 'big picture' thinkers."

Through this lens, the Trueblood Seminars continue to give accounting and auditing professors curriculum resources they need to educate the auditors today's business world demands.

The Robert M. Trueblood Seminars have been held annually since 1966 under the auspices of the Deloitte Foundation. In 1975, the American Accounting Association joined the Deloitte Foundation in administering the seminars. Through the years, more than 2,400 professors have attended the program.

(Source: Deloitte)

Written by Paresh Davdra, CEO and Co-Founder of Xendpay & RationalFX

2017 is an exciting time to be alive. Along with the various socio-political developments, it is also a period heralding monumental strides in the human way of living. The bug has bitten the financial industry as well, which is now converging with the tech space to co-create what we see as the future of handling the world’s wallet and forex. Across payment gateways to remittances, we are being pushed to bring in an element of the ‘instant’ and ‘now’ – a fast and easy world of immediate money transfer and delivery. Markets are no longer convened by pockets; the change is multi-lateral and multi-layered. For instance, in the developed markets we are engaging on a platform of routing forex transaction buoyed by political uncertainty, while simultaneously upgrading the business models in developing markets to suit economic experiments such as the recent demonetisation drive in India.

The tsunami of tech inspired disruption that the payments industry has seen over the past few years has given birth to multiple business concepts and ideas like digital remittance services, e-wallets, digital payments and ecommerce have burst to envelope the current narrative. While the developed markets across the west and east have embraced new forms of ICT enabled currency handling, the developing markets hold immense potential as they begin to experience revolutionary changes in their systems. For example, China and India are the world’s largest cash economies which spend millions of dollars printing and minting physical currencies. In such markets, there is scope for bountiful improvements and value additions using ICT enabled services.

In the case of India, the government had all of a sudden on 8^th November 2016, demonetised the 500 and 1000 rupee notes, taking them out of circulation and rendering them no longer valid legal tender within a window of 3 days. For a country with 86% of cash transactions, the ensuing confusion and panic nearly brought the country to a standstill for a week. However, necessity turned to opportunity, and during that period of cash crunch, e-wallets and payment gateways pushed themselves forward to recalibrate their business model to expand their offerings in a new cash deficit environment. About two months since the demonetisation exercise, a leading e-wallet company generated a huge market share and elevated its business operations to amass enough collateral to become a payment bank! While India is now onwards to digitalise its economy, countries such as Sweden and Norway operate their economies with less than 5% in cash; while Australia’s Citibank had very recently announced to stop accepting paper money altogether.

The past couple of years have been particularly interesting for the payments world, and if we look back at 2015 – around February is when the initial trend in payments start-ups became more pronounced. This period also saw a boom in other forms of payments than the conventional cash transactions, and with the development of a cashless economy, more protruding questions on the trust and security factors around e-payments started to solidify booming the frequency of use, creating a new market that gradually became its own bionetwork. One year later, we witnessed major progress in investments in the FinTech sector in the UK and Europe, which inundated the sector as insistent tech developments in the sector marched on and harvested gravity defying momentum. Trial, adoption and application entered the day-to-day routine in the industry and almost each passing day experienced a new breakthrough.

From then on, the focus shifted towards the consumer experience. Now, in 2017, we are bound to witness a thriving increment in the numbers of consumers whose lifestyle and purchasing parity will pave way for change, and witness more consumers gearing up to ride the technological wave their way. As digital payments have already become the norm in the developed world, the slow seepage of structure onto the eastern world will systematically affect how transfer of value is carried out – the incredibly fast pace at which new businesses and solutions are emerging has created a cat-mouse chase between innovators and regulatory sector. Consumers now have to keep pace with the movements in the tech sector. The sector is urging more technologies into the mainstream, especially protocols like the Blockchain technology.

More importantly, the FinTech developments are becoming more or less very disruptive and will continue to dent the establishments and empower the common man. For instance, the forex trade largely involves banks and corporates which act on market movements to operate on the remittance space.

When a customer wants to transfer money back home, they are bound for a three day wait as the bank or company explores for a favourable trade for themselves before completing the transfer. Companies such as ours are challenging this very lethargic and age old status-quo, to promote instant money transfer without implementing middlemen or brokers. We are truly empowering the end consumer with a fast and easy system on their fingertips. Why? Because it is 2017!

Besides these key points, transparency has been playing a pivotal role in consumer sentiment; as this generation of consumers have high expectations when it comes to flexibility and sharing of information and data. This factor encapsulates the trust element of an organization. Upcoming firms should take a note of this trend to focus on strategies that implement transparency and flexibility when it comes to communicating your value proposition to the customers.

This year will witness a world of instant digital payments with immediate validation, acknowledgement, and exchange of transaction data between the point of transaction and the seller’s ledger. This is against the 2016 idea of “near real time,” which pertains to accelerated sets that may range from minutes to hours or even more days, real time would be truly, absolutely instantaneous dispensation and processing of information. Lastly, it should be noted that payment systems are crucial to any economy considering their vital role to enable the intermediation process, a core requirement for financial stability. Upcoming technological applications and adoptions like the Blockchain protocol will most likely serve as a key factor in facilitating immediate intermediation, due to its seamless process automation capabilities to keep a ledger sound without human intervention.

Flashback 20 (or so) years to 1996. Kodak, seen at the time as one of the world’s leading technology innovators, was worth $38billion and employed 140,000 people. That’s an average worth of $270,000 per employee.

Skip forward to recent times. YouTube sold for $1.65 billion and employed 65 employees - placing each employee’s value at $25m. Instagram then sold to Facebook for $1b with just 13 employees (each worth a cool $77 million). WhatsApp then blew both out of the water - selling for $19 billion and in the process, if you apply the same formula, making its 55 employees worth a staggering a $345m a head.

Technology has allowed the emergence of a term coined exponential organisations - these are exponentially fast-growing companies that leverage technology. They require less employees but more tech savvy ones. More and more companies are trying to replicate this model - that is: hire less but more tech savvy people - and as this happens, job roles are slowly being replaced by skillsets. Employers require their staff to have an ever-growing number of skills.

A McKinsey report from late 2015 stated that 45 per cent of the activities individuals are currently paid to perform could be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technologies. It’s not just checkout operators or baggage handlers who are being replaced, either. They discovered that even the highest-paid occupations in the economy, such as financial managers, physicians, senior executives, including CEOs, have a significant amount of activity that can be automated.

A World Economic Forum summary about the future of jobs found that by 2020 - just three years from now - a third of desired skill sets of most occupations are not considered crucial to the same jobs today. A direct side-effect of this rapid change in such a short amount of time is a major digital skills shortage crisis, which the UK’s Science and Technology Committee published a report warning of mid last year.

All of this paints a rather grim picture for the amount of jobs available in the future and the number of people with the required skillsets available to do these jobs. But, the good news, according to London’s first monthly growth marketing course provider, Growth Tribe, is that you can future-proof your career and your own skill-set.

Master the fundamentals and you can master the rest. Below are five things you can do right now to get ready for the future - which is already kind of here!

Self-learn

Learning doesn’t stop after you leave university. Some, like billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel, are even arguing that it shouldn’t start there in the first place. The Shadbolt Review of Computer Sciences Degree Accreditation and Graduate Employability from last year also found a clear disconnect between what employers need and what universities teach.

But you needn’t panic. It’s never been as easy to take education into your own hands. On and offline courses are readily available and affordable. You can take learning how to work better with technology into your own hands.

Learn the coding basics. Learn about behavioural psychology and automation tools. Play with data and think about how your company could use technology to improve user experience. Stay curious, seek out relevant training and use the resource in your back pocket to upskill on the go.

Start a company

Perhaps one of the greatest ways to learn about business is by starting your own. Investing in and starting your own business forces you to solve problems, grow, learn and adapt - if you want to succeed, that is.

You’ll be future-proofing yourself without even realising as you work to create your own website, social media strategy, app, marketing and sales channels and plans, etc.

You also don’t need a million pounds to start. Noah Everett, Twitpic and Pingly founder said: “Don’t worry about funding if you don’t need it. Today it’s cheaper to start a business than ever.” In the UK, online accounting firm FreeAgent found that the majority of UK freelancers and micro-business owners were self-funding their start-up costs rather than relying on external funding. Almost half (44 per cent) of respondents didn’t require any funding to get their business venture started, while 43 per cent had only used personal savings to do so.

Solve problems

There are little day-to-day issues all around us, every day, that could be made easier with the use of technology. Think about contactless payment, for example. We mightn’t have thought it could get much easier than punching a few numbers in at the till, but hey presto, we use contactless pay for a few a months and all of a sudden we’re at a place where having to key your pin in seems like a bit of a pain.

Apps like Be My Eyes don’t rely on overly sophisticated tech, but they do solve a really simple problem. In this case, it helps visually impaired and blind people around the world. Using the camera functionality on a smartphone and the assistance of an able-sighted volunteer anywhere in the world, visually impaired people can quickly check that they’re choosing the tin of tomatoes as opposed to that of beans, for example. It means they don’t have to wait until an able-sighted friend or family member is available and they can quickly get on with their life. It’s a really simple idea but for those benefitting from the app - it’s a game changer.

Develop a growth mindset

If you have the desire and the mindset, you can learn anything. A “growth mindset”, a term famously coined by psychologist Carol Dweck, refers to a person’s self-belief about their own abilities. Those with a growth mindset believe that their most most basic abilities can be developed with dedication and hard-work.

It’s quite empowering when you think about it - you are no longer bound by preconceived perceptions about your own intellectual abilities!

Famous examples of people with a growth mindset include Richard Branson, Malala Yousafazi, Elon Musk, Brian Balfour… think about any inspirational person that you associate with entrepreneurialism or who in some way is pushing boundaries and punching above their weight. Chances are it’s not because they were born with any special gift or ability more impressive than most of us - it’s because they have a finely tuned growth mindset - they’re willing to try, to fail, to learn and to keep growing.

Create

Finally - start doing. David Arnoux says: your greatest credential in this era is your output of stuff. The skills listed on your CV are just words without proof. There are cheap and easy to use tools which allow you to build, create and showcase. Think of it as a live CV and proof of your awesomeness.

It might not quite be an app (or it might) - the choice is up to you. Use what is available to you to build a website, a blog, a prototype, a simple data model... build stuff and showcase it.

“Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning, followed by a period of working. Very soon this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives and to reinvent themselves repeatedly,” says Yuval Noah Harari.

(Source: Growth Tribe)

It’s a question on everyone’s lips at the moment, and though we know what trends are emerging, the progress therein is rapid and you might just miss it, so what does the future hold for the fintech sector? Nicholas Gill, Founder & Strategy Partner at Team Eleven, gives Finance Monthly his thoughts on the matter.

Living in a world that is rapidly evolving, all business sectors need to be able to innovate and adapt to keep up with changing and exacting consumer demands. This is no different, and perhaps some may say, even more crucial, in fintech. The rate at which this sector is developing is mind-blowing. Fintech is becoming an increasingly important part of how traditional banks are trying to gain competitive advantage. It is no longer possible for them to survive on sentiment and legacy and they face the constant challenge to prove their transparency, ethics and efficiency.

The smartest operators are driving investment for tech-based start-ups, have embraced the bots and are actively trialling innovations like blockchain. Blockchain was initially designed to make financial transactions quick, cheap, easy and most importantly, trustworthy between people who don’t know or trust each other. It is now increasingly being implemented, acting as a further assurance of safety and privacy.

Fintech has already come a long way since its infancy in the 1950s which saw the early incarnation of the credit card. It took almost two decades more before we saw the next big innovation - ATMs descending onto our highstreets. Since then the change within the financial sector has been rapid especially after the introduction of the World Wide Web. This paved the way for online stock brokerage websites, massively changing the fintech structure into what we now use every day. Post the introduction of the internet, the pace of change was unheralded – it feels a long time ago that we were wary of online financial transactions, and only a very few were even using online banking, let alone apps.

Those early and rapidly evolving changes underline the financial sector is all about developing and building on previous trends. Take social media platforms Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, there was a time when they were keen to direct their users straight to the purchasing website if they saw a product they liked. Twitter quickly changed its mind though and killed the instant buy button after taking notes from research suggesting consumers wouldn’t take notice. However, following the success of Amazon, and how the one click buying has evolved into a hugely successful mobile platform for the company, Instagram is now keen to develop the idea itself. When a brand as big as Amazon makes it work, it changes the consumer mind-set and consumers’ expectations adapt accordingly, so the investment from Instagram is not surprising.

We live in a society where everybody wants the latest tech products, whether it’s from the newest phone to the latest VR headset, so why should it be different when it comes to our finances? Consumers look for much faster shopping experiences, whether it be online or in store with the introduction of contactless payments.

As consumers’ behaviours change, we increasingly expect similar advances in our working lives, and fintech is now making strides in the B2B arena. The huge spend from Intuit in the UK on QuickBooks is a great example. I run a medium sized ad agency with billings approaching £2m using QuickBooks. We don’t have a Financial Director, but I am comfortable with the information available to me online via my mobile app. I can give accurate forecasting information in meetings from my app, and even submitted a quarterly VAT return from the gym.

More and more, fintech is helping consumers manage their finances themselves with millennials being a driving force for the shift from in-branch to digital channels. With increased competition and demand, this is set to accelerate in 2017. To be able to compete with the likes of Paypal and Apple Pay, traditional banks must optimise their digital channels. Already, the start of 2017 has seen Paypal introduce its first bot which enables Slack users to make payments without leaving the conservation. As consumers become better acquainted with the new trends, their confidence increases with the process of using these intelligent robots. This already started taking place last year as UK banks began adopting AI to speed up processes. RBS for instance started implementing intelligent robots online to help customer interactions. This year will definitely see an influx of bots into our lives, especially within the finance sector, whilst humans start taking a step back.

Another advance that is going to see less human involvement is the development of blockchain. Created a few short years ago, blockchain is already being used in many different ways, including by the Estonian Government. They are using the new technology to secure all of the country’s health records which will ensure everyone’s data is retrievable and will eliminate the potential for doctors or the government to cover up any changes to healthcare records. Again, this new technology will cut out the middle man, creating equal opportunity and distributed value through decentralisation. For instance, artists will be able to receive more than 90% of their income, without the need for managers, production companies, record labels etc.

Consumers are leading the way in how services need to be orchestrated and it’s up to the brands to make sure they keep up with them if they are to retain their competitive advantage.

Traditional banks were arguably late to the party, but innovation now seems finally to be at the top of their agenda, and not for its own sake. They are listening to consumers and are beginning to partner with tech start-ups to open their digital channels which will also keep them relevant to many of their customers.

But these big, household name brands have built their reputations on security and privacy, so their innovation must also reassure their traditional consumer. Blockchain scores highly in this area as it is one of the most secure services to date, which is key to all consumers whether they are early adopters of tech or not.

By the end of the 2017 the fintech sector will have massively changed again as technology and consumer demand accelerates - and I for one look forward to seeing the progress.

On the importance of technology in the workplace, Finance Monthly hears from Gary Turner, UK Managing Director and Co-Founder at Xero.

Small business in the UK is booming, with 2016 accommodating the birth of 500,000 new businesses across the country. The entrepreneurial spirit in the UK is defiant in the face of an uncertain 2017, an attitude I am wholeheartedly impressed by. What makes each of these 500,000 businesses unique is that, with their start, a culture is born. This is naturally built around the entrepreneur’s style and impacts every aspect of the day-to-day work.

The development of culture is often overlooked, and more new business owners should take into consideration how they can mould a culture that will benefit both the company and the employees themselves. That’s why I believe a commonality amongst SMB owners should be to teach and offer opportunities for their employees to become fluent in technology. The business world is becoming increasingly digitalised allowing for a more efficient work process, as well as offering employees the flexibility to work online from anywhere. As such, I believe today and not tomorrow is the time to get the culture at your office to become tech savvy. Here’s why:

1. Future-proofing your workers

First and foremost, the cloud is how almost all businesses will be working within the next 5 years. If your business is yet to be on the cloud, I recommend you search online or speak with peers on what software best suits your business needs, from managing payroll and employee time to invoices and balance sheets, cloud programmes are making the process incredibly simple. Getting your employees in the cloud will teach them skills that will pay dividends as they rise through the ranks in your business, and at which point they will become aware of cloud technology trends themselves and be making suggestions on moving the company forward.

2. Number savvy will benefit you all

Alongside familiarising your staff with the cloud, you will need to teach them how to read and analyse the numbers associated with your business. Employees will have access to the data and be able to recognise the performance of the company, identify shortcomings and where to optimise potential as the software will offer insights. This in turn, will get your employees showing initiative – a skill that is invaluable and difficult to teach.

3. Builds trust

Showing that you’re actively investing in your employees will help them believe that you’re there to help them improve and further their careers. A distant relationship between employer and employee will lead to a low staff retention rate and damage your company’s reputation for potential recruits. It also shows that you trust them with sensitive company data and, referring to my earlier point, will give them the opportunity to learn what makes a business tick and how they can act on their initiative to make suggestions based on the data provided.

4. A shared level of understanding

It takes a unique personality to be an entrepreneur, you allow the pressure to rest on your shoulders and have careers dependent on your success. However, allowing your workers to operate on the cloud and work with you, it provides the opportunity for more opinions and insight. Sharing insight can offer perspective; this can lead to great success.

Cloud is now the mainstream, so create a culture where operating on the cloud becomes mainstream too.

With CEO’s citing growth as top priority for the coming years, CFOs are to be strongly impacted. Finance Monthly here benefits from an exclusive outlook on the future of CFOs by Mark Nittler, VP Enterprise Strategy at Workday, who discusses the changing role of finance and how CFOs can better prepare themselves for the future.

The role of the CFO is going through a period of significant change. It’s no longer just a numbers game, but CEOs are calling on the finance team to play a bigger role in decision-making, technology, and data governance.

CFOs need to ensure they’re ready for such major levels of change, which are only exacerbated further by an intensely competitive digital business landscape. And despite CFOs now needing a more strategic approach to decision making, recent research suggests that many still rely on gut feel rather than hard data. Many also admit they neglect innovation and process improvement, and have not mastered how to manage and analyse the volume and variety of business data available to them.

So what are the business priorities impacting the focus of the finance function? This article looks at how CFOs can best prepare themselves – and their teams – to become a more strategic partner able to meet the changing needs of a modern organisation.

Multiple growth strategies

It will come as no surprise that many CEOs cite growth as their top priority for the next three years, a move set to strongly impact the CFO. It’s now expected that CFOs will play a core part in driving growth strategies across the company, which makes good business sense given the insight they have into every part of the organisation.

This growth will be the result of numerous different approaches – from organic growth to geographic expansion and acquisition – so the CFO will need to drive multiple growth strategies. In today’s dynamic business environment this will be no easy task, but it’s vital CFOs embrace this new role, supporting the CEO in the pursuit of growth and becoming a strategic partner to the business.

Regulation, regulation, regulation

The CFO has an important part to play when it comes to the regulatory environment. This not only applies when considering how to adapt to new regulations but also to ascertain where the potential value lies for the business. CFOs have the ‘big picture’ view and should look at incoming regulation beyond the core issue of compliance – how these could potentially provide more insights into the business or streamline additional processes, for example.

One example here comes from the changing reporting requirements within financial services. These requirements led to more standardisation across the industry, and a new focus on building data-warehouse environments to meet these regulations. For many organisations, this actually presents an opportunity to better understand the company’s data and in turn grow the business.

CFO decision making

Modern businesses are under constant pressure to operate quickly and efficiently, and CEOs are demanding more real-time data from their CFOs in order to make the best possible decisions. In turn, they’re looking for analysis and insights from the finance function, as well as guidance on future strategy.

As a result, the finance organisation will need to spend more time on insights and analysis, and less time on processing transactions than it has done in the past. Looking at historical data alone is no longer enough. Finance now needs a holistic view of the business, combining various streams of live and historical data, if they’re to better understand the business as a whole. They will then be able to provide insights into how various parts of the business – such as HR and finance – impact each other, and advise on future strategies based on these insights.

Ongoing transformation

A recent KPMG report found that one in three CEOs see experience with transformation as one of the top attributes for a CFO. And with business leaders focused on beating the competition and ensuring their products or services stay ahead of the curve, the pressure is on for CFOs to support in business innovation and transformation efforts.

Organisations are being disrupted from all sides, whether it’s changing consumer demands, new regulation coming into effect, or innovative competitors coming onto the scene. This also comes largely from changes within specific industries – from the growth of omnichannel in retail to the evolution of connectivity in the automotive industry.

These changes often push businesses to innovate if they’re to remain competitive and continue to grow, and the CFO can support considerably on this journey. The CFO and finance team can identify growth opportunities and inform key business decisions by providing the relevant insights and data they have access to. The finance function should also be able to scale quickly – entering new markets, for example – in order to support certain areas of growth.

The current burden of transaction processing and audit and control tasks felt by many finance teams leaves little room for strategic partnership and the ability to influence decision-making. As such, it’s vital that organisations across the globe embrace new ways of thinking about the role of finance in today’s highly disruptive business landscape, and that CFOs keep these considerations front of mind if they are to be successful with new future growth strategies.

Speaking on the developing relationship between consumers and the financial sector, here Tracey Follows, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer of The Future Laboratory, offers her take on the future of the consumer finance sector.

Money. It is something that is in the back of most normal people’s minds most of the time.

But the brands involved in money are not generally amongst the public’s favourite or most salient brands. Stop anyone in the street and ask them to name their favourite brand, and it is not likely to be a bank, an insurer, or an aggregator. And if people are happy with their bank or insurance, they don’t talk about it.

What does peak consumer interest though, is the prospect of making something onerous or boring a little bit simpler, quicker, more convenient or better value. And it’s around these benefits that we see the consumer finance sector pivoting and changing.

The arrival of so called FinTechs, companies offering new technology and ways to manage money – Apple Pay, PayPal and Circle, or Bot based automated savings services like Digit – is changing our relationship with money and finance. And with 40% of Brits believing that the image of big name banks has deteriorated in the past year, it’s no surprise that money clubs and a new generation of digital alternatives are beginning to be used in place of the traditional banks.

As the march towards a cashless society continues, and as new entrants and non-financial brands begin to offer real replacements to traditional financial services, the traditional finance brands are going to have to adapt.

So how fit are the category players and their brands to face the future?

The Future Laboratory has identified six key behaviours that make a business ‘fit for the future’. These include: Long Term Planning, Brand Stretch, Innovation, Conscious Business, Thriving Employees, and Agility.

Within the sector of consumer finance there are some very different types of business. Traditional banks, Insurers, and payment firms such as PayPal, Visa and Mastercard are all there. But there are some common themes and challenges despite their obvious differences.

For the purposes of comparison, we’ve looked at the brands in this sector in two broad groups: Banks and building societies and ‘Others’ – a more eclectic group made up of insurers, aggregators and payment gateways.

All the brands in this sector score above average on Agility, a measure of the brand and businesses ability – in financial terms, to actually make its ideas come to fruition. Only eight of the 45 brands making up these two groups fall outside the top 50% of all 547 brands in this study. To be expected, given the nature of these businesses.

Where these groups start to pull apart is when you look at Brand Stretch and Conscious Business. The last couple of years has seen consumer trust and the reputations of banks fall away as tales of scandal, collapse, failure and huge salaries have been paraded through the media. While some individual brands fare better than others, as a group every single brand falls well outside the top 50% of all brands in the study on Brand Stretch with banks being pulled down by poor reputation scores.

Presumably, in an attempt to correct their failing reputations and to answer to ever greater calls for transparency and honesty in the sector, these same banking brands score very well on our Conscious Business behaviour. This is a measure which assesses if a company or brand is behaving in an ethical way that doesn’t have adverse effects on people, wherever they are in the world. Consumers understand that they are part of a “whole system” and they increasingly don’t want to buy from companies that are having a bad impact on the environment or on people. They increasingly expect brands to publicly own their impact on both.

On this measure, the overwhelming majority of banking brands are fully compliant with the GRI – the global reporting initiative that provides a method for companies to assess and report their impacts on the environment and society.

The other, non-banking business and brands simply haven’t faced the same pressures and it shows when you look at their Brand Stretch scores, making allowances for the general apathy to finance brands, they score much better.  They are much less concerned with ethical behavior (and so far, haven’t had to be)

The comparison between PayPal and Halifax – the two best brands in each sub group within consumer finance – shows that each group needs to learn from the other if they are to be fit for the future.

The traditional retail banks need to look towards servicing their consumer and future consumer in ever more innovative ways while continuing to rebuild trust, reputation and therefore their brand.

The others can’t afford to ignore the lessons of the last few years and that includes the drivers of Conscious Business. They could bolster their brands by doing so and help to insulate themselves against any future scandal in the eyes of the ultimate judge – the consumer.

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) were popular topics in 2016 and the industry is now considered as the technology of the future. The development of AR technology is changing the way people see and learn. According to a research report published by Zion Research, augmented reality market is expected to reach approximately $133.78 billion by 2021, with an annual compound growth rate of 85.2%. The research indicates that High penetration of smartphone and escalating convergence between AR and wearable devices continue to drive demand for the market.

The revolution of Augmented reality applications brings people a different kind of living experiences. For example, TryLive by Total Immersion changes consumers' shopping experience by enabling virtually try-on glasses, clothes and many accessories. Wearable display glasses enable people to run applications. The gaming sector benefits the most with AR technology, but the technology now is used in many other fields, like aerospace & defense, education, tourism, retails and e-commerce.

Vuzix Corporation is a supplier of Smart-Glasses, AR and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies and products for the consumer and enterprise markets just announced earlier today that, "the Company has completed, passed, and filed with the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC) all of the (FCC) emission's requirements for its next generation M300 Smart Glasses. Vuzix expects to commence shipping of the M300 Smart Glasses to customers in the USA and Canada within days of this filing. With FCC filings now in place and the recent certification for shipments to Europe completed last month, the Company is now positioned for the full commercial launch to its largest initial markets. Other major regions of the world should follow with submissions of their required regulatory filings through the first quarter of 2017, enabling Vuzix to expand its M300 offerings near worldwide.

The new Vuzix M300 represents the next generation of smart glasses, designed to address customer feedback from more than three years of productive use of the earlier M100.  This field experience has led to the addition of many empowering, barrier-reducing features such as improved ergonomics, modern security capabilities, enhanced Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and industry leading video streaming. These improvements are just some of the many that allow the M300 to be a central communications platform to and from a client's remote workforce, connecting their corporate data and IOT field devices in real time to the people in the field who need them.

The work over the last six months to establish the Vuzix VIP application software partner program has resulted in a significant pipeline of customer budgeted and approved projects awaiting the arrival of the M300. Vuzix will begin with production M300 shipments to these EU and US VIP partners who have been pre-allocated units for immediate deployment to their existing client base. In addition, we have many orders from customers that have taken advantage of the M100/M300 migration program and/or placed pre-orders for the M300.

These order pipelines are significantly greater than when the M100 launched and the Company expects that it will continue to enjoy robust growth in smart glasses revenues, as clients accelerate volume deployments.  "We are now set up to ship the M300 to the hundreds of US customers that represent the beginnings of volume roll outs," said Paul Travers, President and Chief Executive Officer at Vuzix."

Cloud infrastructure and business mobility company, VMware Inc. announced the addition of new smart glasses management features to VMware AirWatch(R). According to the statement, the update will bring a consistent management platform to streamlined onboarding experiences, network setup and application deployment to organizations seeking to leverage augmented and mixed reality devices to transform business processes. VMware is the first unified endpoint management solution to extend into wearables, enabling customers to manage their smart glasses alongside existing desktop and mobile endpoints.

VMware is also working alongside with APX Labs, Atheer, Intel, ODG and VUZIX Corporation to help provide wearable management and application delivery solutions.

American multinational semiconductor and telecommunications, QUALCOMM Inc. company subsidiary along with developer and manufacturer of mobile head worn computing and augmented reality technologies and products, Osterhout Design Group announced that R-8 and R-9 will be the first announced devices powered by the Qualcomm's Snapdragon(TM) 835 processor, which uses 10-nanometer FinFET process technology to enable a new generation of premium consumer devices in small form factors with breakthrough performance and superior power efficiency. R-8 is Osterhout Design Group's consumer mobile Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality smartglasses, and R-9 is for a wide variety of wide field-of-view experiences from light enterprise.

Global semiconductor company, STMicroelectronics reported that its LSM6DSM 6-axis Inertial Measurement Unit is now to be used in next-generation mobile devices running with Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) high-performance virtual-reality platform, Google Daydream, along with a platform that maps 3-Dimensional space enabling it to be overlaid with virtual objects, Tango. "Certification of ST's 6-axis motion-sensing device for operation with Daydream and Tango for amazing virtual- and augmented-reality experiences demonstrates our abilities to design and deliver an exceptionally accurate and power-efficient IMU," said Aymeric Gisselbrecht, Vice President Global Key Accounts Sales, and STMicroelectronics. "Our long-term developments in sensing and actuation, along with our work with Google, are contributing to making mobile applications incredibly immersive and even more fun."

(Source: FinancialBuzz)