Fintech expert Leda Glyptis, a true Sibos Insider, is resident blogger for Sibos 2022, offering her unique take on the event. This blog is part of a series - look out for daily updates throughout Sibos week.</em></p> It’s Sibos y’all.</p> In person for the first time in years. We’ve been waiting for this moment for so long and yet there is no pretence that ‘we are back’. From the opening moments of the event the tone was set.</p> We are back. But it’s not a return. It’s a reunion, a re-kindling. But not a return.</p> We have lived through a pandemic. We are in the midst of war. Supply chains the world over are shot to pieces. And although the words ‘financial crisis’ are not quite uttered, we all know what we mean. This is the context we are coming back together in. And it’s good to be back. But this is hard.</p> We’ve had a tough few years. And we rallied.</p> Did we innovate enough?</p> Did we show ourselves to be resilient enough?</p> Did we do enough?</p> H.M. Queen Máxima of the Netherlands</a>, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA), doesn’t think so.</p> She was kind about it. She didn’t point any fingers. But her message, when she took the stage to talk about financial inclusion and fairness this morning, was clear.</p> In a world where infrastructure is key, where access and connectivity become interchangeable concepts, where there is a lot of work to be done, what has already been done is not enough.</p> There is a lot of work ahead but frankly… we know it. We know there is a lot of work to be done and we know what that work is. And sometimes it’s easier to try and move onto the next thing.</p> But that is both the easy way out and not helpful.</p> Trying to always find the next shiny thing is not what this is about.</p> We don’t need innovation for innovation’s sake, said UNSGSA Queen Máxima.</p> We need to think about long term growth. Safety. Fair competition and inter-operability for</em> scale.</p> We need to think about the rails needed for profound, lasting and transformative change.</p> What does that mean? It means that she thinks you should stop designing products seeking short term results.</p> She thinks that looking after your customers yields long term growth because financially healthy customers are better customers.</p> The Queen has spoken.</p> And her words were very much still ringing in my head still as I rushed to the Innotribe stage to get mic-ed up and ready to host the Future of Money: Tribal gathering.</p> And Lisa Moyle comes on the stage and she opens with ‘10% of the population own 76% of the world’s wealth’ and the 10 richest men in the world doubled their wealth during the pandemic.</p> So yeah we need to talk about money. And the tone for the day is very much set.</p> What is there to say about money though, that we haven’t already said?</p> Well.</p> Three things.</p> One: Fairness is our responsibility and our gift. It’s not a government job. It’s an everyone job. It’s the thing we can</em> seek to achieve through our pricing choices, infrastructure investments and business priorities. It’s a choice we get to make. Us, the people attending this conference right now.</p> Two: Exchange of value is exactly that. Exchange of things of value. That’s what money was meant to represent: a way to move our economies away from the constraints of barter.</p> But now we have technology that allows us to ‘barter’ all over again. You may call it tokenisation. Lou Smith in her impassioned pitch called it true exchanges of value. Beyond money and unhelpful abstractions.</p> Another thing we are actually able to do. With the tools we have right now. With the tech we have right now.</p> Whether it gets done or not is a matter of choice and leadership.</p> A choice we</em> get to make.</p> And one last thing.</p> The way we talk about this stuff. The language we use.</p> The language itself is an avenue, it’s a door, said Lou. Do we speak in ways that empowers access? Do we make this stuff understood? Even more poignantly, do we speak about this stuff in language of abstraction, reserved for the few when it affects the many? Making its real and direct impact on people’s lives hard to grasp in the sheer abstraction of the language?</p> Lou Smith left us with that thought and won the Future of Money Debate.</p> What more is there to say?</p> Your Queen has spoken.</p> Who wins in the future? Who loses?</p> Many of the choices that determine the story yet to be told are made in offices and halls the world over by the people you will cross paths with this week. That’s the magic of Sibos.</p> And that’s the reach we can have.</p> The Queens have spoken.</p> Your move, Sibos crowd.</p> </p> You can watch highlights from day 1 in Amsterdam in the Sibos TV recap</a></strong>.</em></p>