The closing keynote is always a highlight of the last day of Sibos and this year’s features survival expert and adventurer Bear Grylls, while new technologies, digital assets and sustainability also headline the day’s proceedings.</em></p> For those unfamiliar with Bear Grylls OBE, this year’s closing keynote for Sibos 2022, the outdoor survival expert and champion for sustainability is all over YouTube and streaming sites, although some of his adventures require a strong stomach to view.</p> Grylls will take to the stage to share his tales and advice on remaining resilient to succeed in times of adversity. His experience navigating some of the harshest conditions in the world will serve as a lesson to all as we tackle our own challenges as an industry.</p> One group looking to become champions in their own arena on Thursday will be the hackathon finalists on the Innotribe stage, who will present their solutions under the theme 'Digital Assets: Exploring interoperability and ownership' and answer a series of questions from Swift’s judges in the morning of the last day, with the winners being announced at the end.</p> They will tackle two challenges. First around interoperability – how might we achieve interoperability between multiple digital asset platforms to achieve scalable, secure, irrevocable exchange of assets against payment? The second will be surrounding ownership and achieving traceability of ownership of digital assets across multiple ledgers on multiple technologies.</p> On the topic of digital assets, custody banks BNY Mellon, Northern Trust, and State Street will discuss the matter in the panel ‘Servicing digital assets: Who will win the battle?’ joined by market infrastructure providers, Clearstream and DTCC.</p> Digital assets have been earmarked by securities services providers as an area of focus following client demand for these services. Whereas incumbent custodians have been active observers and commentators on the subject for some years, the past 12 months have seen the largest banks enter the fray with business units dedicated to the burgeoning sector. </p> Digital assets will also be discussed during the day on panels including Spotlight on ‘Digital Value: No, an NFT is not a security. Or is it?’ and ‘Digital Assets and the next frontier for Standards’.</p> New technologies are certainly the most reoccurring topics on the Thursday of Sibos, with sessions touching on artificial intelligence, decentralisation and Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs). The former features in ‘Enterprise AI: Measuring new value and driving tangible results’ as the deployment of AI at scale has led to enterprise applications being recreated and reinvested in with AI at their core. In this context, the panel will deep dive into the industries and use cases that are leading the way, understand the drivers and enablers for incorporating AI, and look at the commercial results they’re delivering, while exploring how AI-driven outcomes are being understood, quantified and measured in order to provide best practices on how to generate the business case for scaling up your AI investment. Experts will also discuss where the next wave of AI will be delivered, and what the implications are for the next generation of financial services.</p> On the matter of ‘Should global trade finance go decentralised?’, an all-star line-up will explore the potential ramifications of decentralised finance for global trade and the best way forward for facilitating access to financing for the real economy. Moderated by The Banker’s Asia Editor Kimberley Long, the discussion features individuals from, Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Microsoft and Standard Chartered.</p> While the day is sprinkled with digital assets and new technologies, there is also plenty of sustainability discussions that mark an appropriate send-off - with all three likely to be repeat topics in the years to come.</p> Despite new regulations expected to bring more stability and resilience in the ESG landscape, are we still any closer to achieving a comprehensive global baseline of ESG standards? And how easy is it for an investor to interoperate with a myriad of global issuers, regulators and ESG service providers? </p> A session moderated by Swift’s Head of Capital Markets Strategy, Vikesh Patel, looks at the role a centralised technical platform could play in connecting ESG data consumers and service providers.</p> Shortly after, in ‘Managing the new risks to Banks: Climate Change Litigation Risk and the new Due Diligence Risk’, Professor Brian Scott-Quinn OBE will present findings from his latest research on risk management of climate change risk and discuss the way we must adapt our way of thinking to achieve this greater good. He will also examine how climate change risk is very different from traditional credit risk, how we need to watch out for the Inevitable Policy Response (IPR) and new accounting disclosure rules that affect everyone.</p>