Money20/20: Pace of Covid-opportunities has created industry challenges

By Sunniva Kolostyak

The financial services industry has been given an ‘incredible opportunity’ by Covid-19, but the speed at which the changes were needed has created challenges, Tracey Davies, President of Money20/20, said.

Opening the digital MoneyFest conference, the replacement for the annual Money20/20 event in Las Vegas, Davies told Business Reporter Tanaya Macheel, who chaired the welcome session, that the current state of FinTech is certainly not where the industry expected it to be.

“What we have seen is just a massive acceleration of the acceptance of the digital payment and other forms of digital banking etc., and the speed at which it’s come is just incredible,” the president said.

“We have seen a massive uptick in e-commerce, we are all grocery shopping online, we are paying for yoga classes online, whatever. And obviously, the industry has had to react to that, because the concentration, the speed at which that transformation has come.”

She noted that welcome as the opportunities and transformation is, the speed has added challenges when it comes to traditional financial services and older generations, as well as for the ecosystem of startups.

“I think if you’re an established startup right now, there’s a great opportunity, but if you are less established, and you’re still finding that path to profit, access to capital is quite difficult,” Davies said. “What we’re hearing is that, of course, it’s very exciting – the growth and the acceptance of the transformation, but it is also very overwhelming. We are in uncharted waters, there isn’t a textbook for managing businesses in global pandemics.”

Financial institutions and business managers have had to manage attacks from multiple sides, keeping their customer in focus while working remotely and managing shareholders and stakeholders.

Meanwhile, customers are expecting to be taken care of, so looking after your customers is no longer an added dimension – and, according to Davies, this has also been the case for the Money20/20 team.

“We have certainly learned to be humble, to be agile, to be flexible. We have learned an awful lot of resilience – I mean, we run a physical live event business, we have had to learn a lot of digital skills quite quickly. So, you know, we too, like the industry, have had to embrace a lot of new learnings really, really fast, and we have had to focus on our customer in order to do that,” Davies concluded.