Finance’s future rests with technology to create health, wealth and wisdom
- Modern banking was created to protect farmers from risk and is now helping shape a healthier society
Modern finance has its origins in medieval Italy. To protect and foster grain farmers, finance was arranged to start the growing process and cover a farmer’s losses. These exchanges can be traced back to Venice in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and helped build an economy that became the hub of global trade. As the practice of money lending was institutionalised, the bank emerged. The word comes from banca, Italian for the benches where the trade took place.
What those Venetian moneylenders could not possibly imagine is that the money business would become so ubiquitous and so convenient in 2019. In Hong Kong, about 85 per cent of today’s consumer-bank interactions are through an ATM, mobile or online channels.
A pound of flesh, as demanded by Shylock, a Jewish moneylender and principal antagonist in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, is no longer required. With a fingertip, today’s citizens are not just able to borrow money but also trade stocks, buy insurance and more.
Bespoke services
Online lending is hardly the cutting edge of financial technology, or fintech. Where financial services businesses can develop a competitive edge is surely in personalisation and customised user experiences.
