Fintech visionary Leda Glyptis, a true Sibos Insider, is the resident blogger for Sibos 2020, offering her unique take on this year’s event. Read her second blog, part of a series released daily throughout the week.</em> </p> Who do you learn from?</h2> I am serious.We all left school behind a long long time ago. Where do you learn from? And whatever your answer, are you learning fast enough? And when does your learning go from ‘ah interesting fact’ to compelling force? The thing you know and, because you know, you now do. Do more. Do differently. Do.</p> Because I must admit that I left the Contrarian views session asking that about myself.And I curated that session.I worked with Innes and Louise and Theo on the topic. And the cadence. I was in the session rehearsal. I know the story and the punchline. I knew what we were trying to do and how. And yet I was still gasping for breath.I knew this stuff. And yet listening to Lou and Theo, I learned this stuff afresh.</p> ‘We are exposed in front of all of our customers’ </strong>With grounded understanding and compassion, Dr Louise Maynard-Atem pulled no punches when she asked the question we all know we need to ask but we don’t because we can’t answer it. We’ve been at this transformation malarkey for 10 years. If it took a pandemic to get us accelerating, what have we been playing at all this time? Without doubting that work was done, she asks what did we think the ballgame was, if not to prepare for a time when digital is the whole thing? Chew on that for a second while I throw you the next one.Our processes, she says, involve a capable human stepping in to deal with anything that isn’t vanilla happy path client requirements (spoiler alert: that is almost everything). COVID exposed this to be the terrible idea we always knew it was. We always knew we would have to fix this. We just thought the inflection point that forced our hand would be commercial, not a humanitarian crisis. But that is what we got.Even if it is true, that we couldn’t predict how resilient we would need to be, it is also true that now we do know.And the world knows we know.So. Now what?</p> Right. And as if that wasn’t uncomfortable enough, there is more.</p> ‘We have a responsibility to create solutions that matter. We have a responsibility to be responsible’.</strong>COVID didn’t create inequality, but it sure as hell highlighted how deep and wide disparity is in all our societies, the world over. And it exacerbated the profound impacts of division in our societies. The poorer, marginalised and disadvantaged suffered the most through this pandemic as they do through everything else and Theo Lau won’t let us look away.The internet, she says, was meant to connect ideas and create solutions. Today 54 million people are food-insecure in the US alone. Of those 18 million are children. Will you really tell me that opening an account in 5 clicks rather than 15 is what matters most?If you are uncomfortable, buckle in, because there is more.COVID, says Theo pointing to the dancing elephant in the room, has created opportunity. Millionaires have been made in recent months and good on them. But what happened to us, the fintech kids, being different? What happened to democratising access? What happened to making finance more inclusive and more purposeful?</p> Empathy and compassion are not ‘nice to have’s. They cannot and should not be a language veneer applied to PR and marketing collateral.The DNA of a company, says Theo, needs to be imbued with values. We need to have a purpose. Fairer lending. Meaningful steps for inclusion that go beyond endless current accounts. We have been talking about all this for a while.Who has fulfilled that promise?We need intentionality. We need regulatory guardrails. And we need a realisation that ‘the best of our intentions won’t get us there, no matter how well-intentioned we are’. Action is needed. Purposeful, intentional, ethical action to take responsibility for changing finance, not just our own financial position within the market.</p> I don’t know where you learn from.I don’t even know what you consider ‘learning’.But for me it’s that thing that takes facts - known or unknown - and turns them into an unstoppable force propelling me to do something with the thing I now know. Or now know I know. It’s that voice that keeps you up at night. Saying what have you been doing? And what will you do next?So… where do you do your learning?And what will you do next?</p>