“The state must remove barriers — for talent, capital and the market”
What is FIND’s mandate and what are its objectives?
According to its mandate, FIND acts as a central public contact point for financial innovations in Switzerland. It promotes exchange between stakeholders such as start-ups, investors, authorities, and research to improve the framework conditions and strengthen the innovative power of the financial sector in the long term. This is based on the Federal Council’s Digital Finance Report 2022 and its area of action 12: “Strengthening the potential for innovation of the financial sector in the long term by means of an innovation platform”.
The report “Pathway 2035 for Financial Innovation — Your Navigator” highlights various technologies. Which do you see as a priority?
We clearly had the right instinct with this collaboratively written publication — even the World Economic Forum reported on it. All the technologies it highlights are important, especially in combination. We therefore drew on international best practices to develop specific recommendations for action, e.g. on the exchange of structured financial data via APIs to harness the potential of AI or on protecting against quantum computing attacks.
FIND promotes networking within the financial innovation ecosystem. How successful has it been so far, and what do you expect in the future?
FIND has been running as a pilot for 18 months. I am proud of our small team, which has already been able to celebrate a number of successes thanks to excellent partnerships within the federal government and support from the science and private sectors. This enabled us to launch Swiss- Hacks, the first state-initiated hackathon in Switzerland with an exclusive focus on financial innovation. With the second edition, we celebrated an increase of over 100 percent with more than 500 applications and 200 accepted participants! Our workshops with industry, university and government representatives on staking, Customer Journey 2.0, Innosuisse’s FinTech portfolio and scalable data usage for intelligent financial services providers have also led to in-depth analyses and specific recommendations. If the FIND pilot were to be discontinued in its current form, I hope that our pioneering work will have set certain priorities and laid the groundwork for the long-term strengthening of our financial sector.
In your opinion, how important is the role of the Swiss government in actively promoting financial innovation?
The state plays a key role by creating optimal framework conditions for the ecosystem and consistently and regularly analyzing and eliminating barriers in access to talent, capital and the market. The state should also ensure that disruptive new players are admitted to the market within a reasonable time frame and at a reasonable cost — by striking a balance between competition and innovation on the one hand and protecting vested rights, mitigating risk and ensuring security on the other.
As head of FIND, what would you like to see in order to further strengthen our position as a leading location for financial innovation?
If I could wish for three things from the world of financial innovation, they would be:
1. More courage and openness towards new perspectives and technologies.
2. More resources for a more consistent and collaborative implementation of the visions in the Federal Council’s strategy papers “Digital Finance”, “Sustainable Finance 2022” and “Policy for a future-proof Swiss financial center”.
3. More smart governance — not to be confused with regulation. For example, in the area of financial innovation and smart data sandboxes or practical guidelines that enable the entire financial ecosystem to test, learn and implement. And at the same rapid pace as technology is advancing.
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