Sibos 2023 is here! Hosted in Toronto for the third time in 12 years, Toronto seems cemented as a preferred Sibos venue for North America. Sibos remains the pinnacle of global financial services events. It may not be the largest by number of attendees, but it certainly has a large percentage of executive decision-makers and influencers.
This year my Sibos dance-card was filled well in advance. Bank and technology vendors from Europe, Asia and the Americas are keen to discuss what Celent sees in terms of banking and technology trends. Specifically, I’ve seen great interest in:
- Open banking and embedded finance – not just the use cases and technologies, but also the approach to risk management. Banks large and small have started to feel the wrath of regulators when it comes to risk management responsibilities and processes.
- Virtual accounts – why? My recent research looks at the challenges banks face in driving further adoption of virtual accounts. There’s an opportunity (need) for banks to be more consultative in the sales, scope, and implementation of virtual account solutions. These are not “traditional” banking products – they present so much opportunity for corporate treasury clients – but also a huge impact to treasury operations. Beyond that – there are many new innovative use cases for virtual accounts appearing. This is not just about managing liquidity and receivables anymore.
- Data and analytics – a top priority for financial services technology investment and adoption – often on cloud platforms. With the advent of generative AI, banks and fintechs see new opportunities (and challenges) to adopt AI at scale. Perhaps for the first time, many banks are seeing why investments in scalable, managed, quality data platforms are so important. There’s no sizzle of AI without the hard work of data management and data engineering.
My Celent colleagues, Patricia Hines, Gareth Lodge and Ian Watson still have a few open spots for meetings. Be sure to contact your Celent account team or email us at info@celent.com if you’d like to set something up.
That’s it for the kickoff. I’ll report back later in the week.
