Mike Bodson, DTCC President and CEO, addresses the audience at DTCC Fintech 2019
Describing a bold vision of how infrastructure will be transformed in a digital world, DTCC President & CEO Mike Bodson opened the DTCC Fintech 2019 Symposium with a call for the financial services industry to embrace new technology and new service models to prepare for the future.
“We’re at the start of a great transition for financial services,” Bodson told a sold-out audience in New York. “It’s the dawn of a new technology revolution in which the emergence of digital platforms, the rise of APIs, an oncoming generational shift and advances in organizing data under management are transforming expectations, reordering priorities and altering the complexion of the industry.”
Bodson noted the speed of change since the first fintech event in 2016, as well as the need to rely on “time and patience” before much of the change will be realized, despite the “technology hype cycle.”
The move to digital platforms and the development of application programming interfaces (APIs), which enable data the to flow seamlessly between systems, will have a profound impact on the industry, he said. The key will be developing APIs that give clients the flexibility to conduct business the way they prefer, and not be limited by the firms that create the APIs. In the future, especially given the growth of client-empowered finance, “it’s much more likely that providers will create the digital platforms and APIs that will allow clients to interact with each other the way they want to do it,” Bodson said.
DTCC already has begun leading this transformation, and is preparing to establish an external API Marketplace that will offer our clients a single, central location to access APIs into our products and services.
Expanding the use of digital platforms and APIs will be increasingly important as the industry prepares for a transformational generational shift, as Gen Z workers succeed millennials in the industry. “They’ve been immersed in technology since their earliest days and it’s all they have ever known,” Bodson said. “More and more, young entrepreneurs are turning to crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter to raise capital, bypassing banks entirely… (these are) transformational changes that will have long-term implications on financial markets, financial institutions and society itself.”
“It’s the dawn of a new technology revolution in which the emergence of digital platforms, the rise of APIs, an oncoming generational shift and advances in organizing data under management are transforming expectations, reordering priorities and altering the complexion of the industry.” – Mike Bodson, DTCC President & CEO
Along with the generational shift, Bodson said the industry must focus on “prioritizing diversity and inclusion” to attract top talent now being lost to Silicon Valley. The video that opened the conference only featured senior women at DTCC because “they’re among our most dynamic leaders, and they’re driving innovation in how we’re using fintech to tackle some of the toughest operational challenges facing the industry,” he said.
The significance of data intelligence and technology, including applied machine learning and artificial intelligence, and DTCC’s commitment to helping clients understand their data will be critical for future success. “Data is the lifeblood of any successful organization and to put it simply, firms that understand their data, understand their clients,” he said.
As Bodson finished his remarks, he described the coming years as a “period of dramatic change,” but one that also will offer “an extraordinary opportunity to adapt and embrace new technologies to meet the needs of our clients.”
Read the full speech by DTCC’s Bodson.