with the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and comply with
additional regulatory requirements.
Competition: The Fintech revolution has been radically challenging
and threatening to banks’ traditional roles as trusted intermediaries.
It has also reduced barriers to entry in the financial industry, thereby
enabling new entrants to compete with banks without incurring the
injection of enormous capital investments. New services such as peerto-peer lending, block chain, crypto currencies, cognitive computing,
mobile and internet banking will certainly change the face of banking
in the future, and I urge members to remain close to these developments as well as to customer demands, in order to be innovative, in
a timely manner, to avoid your businesses becoming obsolete and
extinct.
Already we are seeing several international banks and businesses investing in such technologies. It is worthy to note that the demographics of our customer base is changing and we must cater for Millennials
who are more transaction-oriented and tech savvy. This, of course, calls
for constant reevaluation of the way we interact with our customers.
We should also note closely the development of cognitive computing
which will fundamentally change the way we conduct our business as
it provides sharper customer insights, more timely analysis of complex
data to detect fraud, predict clients’ behavior and manage risk. The
CAB intends to draw on its relationship with a key player in this field
to keep members abreast of this significant development.
Cyber Threats: While these new technologies provide opportunities for banks to offer their services through unique channels, they do
present new risks such as cyber threats. Globally large organisations
such as Mega Banks, SWIFT and certain Central Banks have suffered
from highly sophisticated cyber-attacks. If these large organisati