Returning to ‘a great city’

Lynn Mathews has been going to Sibos for nearly 20 years. He has been a SWIFT director since 1998, after joining the Australian National Member Group when he worked as head of payments, products and industry policy and strategy in the Global Transaction Services Group at Westpac Banking.

Mathews didn’t attend Sibos’ first visit to Boston in 1994, but did make the trip in 2007, when the conference “went extremely well”.

In the past 20 years of Sibos, Mathews has seen the conference grow in both the number of exhibitors and attendees, and the conversation has changed to cover higher-level topics from when he first attended in 1996.

Broader appeal “It has attracted an increasingly senior level of participants and a much broader level group of participants across the banking sector than at the beginning,” he says.

“People who attended Sibos in the past tended to be more operationally focused. This has changed, with a number people attending from across the sector as well as corporates.”

The business of payments has also changed through the years. “It’s no longer just a processing warehouse – it is a true business component of the organisation with its own P&L.”

He remembers a time when the board considered whether Sibos should continue to run on an annual basis, but the idea wasn’t supported. “There was also concern about whether it could continue to evolve, or whether people would become tired of it.

Enormous value “What we’ve seen over the years is that it continued to grow because the industry gets enormous value out of Sibos,” Mathews said.

“In terms of the exhibitors, they get commercial value out of the conference and that commercial value is substantial.”

Looking forward to this year’s event, he expects Sibos will again succeed in two aspects: “People will be able to take up the networking opportunities and get to see people they don’t see over the year.

“It’s also a great opportunity to engage in debate about topical issues the industry is facing.”

For Mathews, Boston is one of the greatest cities in America. “I see the economical advantages of returning to a city that works and people know, and if there is a city to visit again it would be Boston,” he said.