The Global Trends Track launched successfully on Thursday, August 19, 2021, the third and final day of the 11th annual MPC conference.
Leaders from the USA, Canada, Asia and Europe had intense and informative discussions on ESG, global payments developments, digital wallets and attractive overseas opportunities as summarized in the following synopsis by Tracy Lai, curator of the Global Trends Track, FinTech consultant and Partner at Lystar Group.
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Key Trends
A keynote speech by Emmanuel Daniel, Chairman of The Asian Banker kicked off the Global Trends Track, providing insights on ESG, a globally trending topic. In his Introduction, Emmanuel addressed background and nature of the carbon market, and other considerations in building a commercially viable ESG agenda with an overview of trending initiatives in the financial industry. He also explained the intriguing concept of green swan versus black swan. In addition, Emmanuel shared a corporate carbon exchange success story. His deep insights and unique perspectives on this and related topics can be further explored by listening to interviews available online and reading his upcoming book on the topic.
Following the keynote speech, Amisha Parekh, a sustainable finance leader, led a panel discussion on impact investments, exploring a variety of perspectives with distinguished panelists Irene Chan, Director of Accounting Advice at Swiss Re; Nancy Matta, Senior VP of Wealth Management at UBS and Dr. Shaurat Chopra from Hong Kong City University. The panel clarified definitions of ESG and sustainable investing while highlighting current challenges related to ESG themed investment funds. In the course of the discussion, it became increasingly clear that much work remains to be done on data quality and consistency in what companies are reporting, Additionally, there is pent up demand for education for consumers, investors and institutions on how to analyze and interpret ESG related information and data. The panel closed the discussion with an outlook on developments, possible solutions and opportunities to support and drive continued growth in the sector.
The mid-morning Global Payment Developments session, led by Eagle Yi, Angel Investor, FinTech executive and former head of WeChat Pay North America, energized the audience. Eagle brought the audience up to date on six key trends of the global payment space, underscoring the stunning acceleration of developments in payments due to COVID-19. He then led the panel discussion with leading experts on the topic. During a discussion on trending issues, Michel Tjoeng, SVP Sales & Marketing at ChatLabs, discussed the role of sales agents in steering shoppers to payment links instead of website links during the pandemic. And Jeremy Belostock, Head of Advanced Payment Methods at Verifone, explained that “digital wallets become more popular based on trust that has been generated via social feeds”. These revelations further amplified by Jeff Fish, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships from Salesforce, who said, “in the cross-border payment sector, organizations are starting to become more distributed on operational model from a compliance and execution perspective”. Raymond Qu, CEO of Geoswift Limited, concluded the panel discussion with advice for the cross-border sector, stating, “we should not only focus on the culture of the country but also on the big generational changes, how to meet expectations and how to bring value to consumers will be critical”.
Late in the morning, Todd McDonald, Co-founder & Chief Product Officer at R3, delivered a keynote address on blockchain developments related to payments. He specifically shared views on payments, money, and assets on the distributed ledger respectively and an outlook in the future state on a more open financial system. His inspirational views on the future state triggered intense panel discussions led by Aly Madhavij, Managing Partner, Blockchain Founders Fund on digital wallet and privacy protection. Insights were given on the meaning of privacy, the difference between privacy and secrecy during financial transactions. The expectations on what needs to be kept private, public, or secret during financial transactions, the impact on the environmental impact when keeping the transaction private, etc.
Warren Paul Anderson, Vice President, Product, DiscreetLabs, Ricardo Correia, Had of Global Central Bank Digital Currency, R3, Michael Sung, Founder & Chairman, CarbonBlue shared their insights on above questions respectively.
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Opportunities
Last but not least, the Global Trends Track wrapped up the morning’s events with the Overseas Opportunities panel. The session, led by Miao Cao, Principal, C.M. & Associates, and former head of McKinsey Talent Network in North America, began with an outline of opportunities from a Hong Kong and Luxembourg perspective, shared by the Anna Fan, Director, Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Douglas Lee, Head of Investment Promotion, InvestHK and Mattia Musetti, Business Development – Head of US & Canada, at Luxembourg for Finance. To provide hands on business know-how, Dorian Selz, Co-founder & CEO, Squirro, then shared his ventures expansion experience in Asia, Europe and the USA. The panel discussion gave the audience an opportunity to hear about tangible and current possibilities and overseas expansion options. Real life experiences shared by the panelists gave the audience excellent reference points and potential roadmap for an ambitious post-pandemic corporate growth strategy.
In summary, each of the seven sessions of the Global Trends Track provided broad and still quite specific perspectives on key topics related to digital transformation, global payments, blockchain and overseas opportunities as inspiration for successful business growth.
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AUTHOR
Tracy Lai
FinTech Consultant
Partner at LYSTAR GROUP
Tracy Lai provides strategic and business development solutions to executives, and entrepreneur. Her professional experience includes work at Fortune 500 companies including Intel and RBS, and startups. Her expertise covers business development, risk management, project management and investor relations, in Financial Services, FinTech, Innovation, Technology and Education. As management consultant and FinTech advisor, she holds multiple senior roles with focus on cross border and cross industry collaboration, including projects in US, Asia and Europe.
