The World Economic Forum published its report “The future of Financial Services: How disruptive innovations are reshaping the way financial services are structured, provisioned and consumed” and within this global context, we wanted to examine how the South African banking sector was embracing this digital revolution.
Fintech is rapidly becoming a topic of conversation as financial institutions embrace the first real opportunity for innovation since the global financial crisis. Technology is largely unregulated and with the global objective of making the financial sector, in particular the banking industry, more resilient to external shocks, combined with the focus on shadow banking and the threat to financial stability, we wanted to include a conversation around how regulators will be responding to this new technology.
The South African banking sector is highly competitive and sharing their digital strategy with us was not easy, so we are indeed appreciative of the many contributors who made this report possible. We are also grateful to Jesse McWaters of the World Economic Forum for his advice and insights into the compilation of their reports.
The project was done by a team at Genesis Analytics under Bavani Naidoo and they interviewed all the contributors and drafted the report.
We also express our gratitude to The Banking Association South Africa for providing the funding for this research.
