Azleen and the Securities Commission Malaysia invited Matthew to give the keynote at its annual SCxSC event, where financial services organisations, fintechs, investors and regulators from across Asia come together to share the latest breakthroughs and thinking in financial services.
His session, "Fintechs: Enablers or Disruptors?", examined the role fintechs have played, play today and will continue to play within the global financial services ecosystem, and whether we should think of them as disruptors or enablers in the new world order.
"While many fintechs think of themselves as disruptors, when all is said and done their legacy may very well be the culture change that they forced on the industry."Matthew Griffin, Malaysia, October 2021
Matthew's answer carried an irony. Many fintechs think of themselves as disruptors, but when all is said and done their legacy may be the culture change they forced on the industry. Incumbents with no previous motivation to change the status quo were suddenly faced with a "Flight or Fright" decision unlike anything they had experienced before.
He closed on the next turn of the cycle. Just as banking incumbents are looking over their shoulders at the fintechs camping on their lawns, fintechs are starting to look over their shoulders at new decentralised finance players, who play by an increasingly alien playbook. And so the cycle of disruption and transformation continues.
