It’s always great to attend Franklin Templeton’s unique innovation summit which took place for the third time this week. It brings together all sorts of new FinTech players, established firms, thought leaders and, crucially, outsiders to provide valuable insight into the direction of our industry (the fact it’s in Fort Lauderdale at this time of year doesn’t hurt either!).
This is especially true when you realise that our industry is based upon the ultimate in digitisable assets – information – and the rate of growth in its size and diversity will only increase. Equally, we are all becoming centres of our own information ecosystems and pull (or block) information from an almost limitless variety of sources, curate it in some way and then make it available to others to do with what they wish. Meanwhile, we leave digital foot and fingerprints everywhere we go and whatever we engage with.
This has profound implications for how organisations participate in capital markets and, crucially, how they monetise that participation. Naturally we are all obsessed with the incoming tides of regulation, but it was hugely refreshing to participate in an event where the dreaded R word wasn’t mentioned once.
Congratulations to Bill Stephenson and all the team at Franklin Templeton on helping us think differently about our industry.
