François Groepe: Regulatory responses to FinTech developments

Keynote address by Mr François Groepe, Deputy Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, at the Strate GIBS FinTech Innovation Conference 2017, Gordon Institute of Business Science, Johannesburg, 22 August 2017.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Introduction

Programme Director, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

I would like to start by thanking the organisers for the invitation to address you at this year's Strate GIBS FinTech Innovation Conference. The conference is timely as we potentially face one of the most severe innovation- and technology-driven disruptions to products and services, particularly in the financial sector space.

Arvind Sankaran, an advisor on FinTech, argues: "We are witnessing the creative destruction of financial services, rearranging itself around the consumer. Who does this in the most relevant, exciting way, using data and digital, wins!" To paraphrase the famous Austrian-born economist Joseph Schumpter: it is the process of industrial mutation that revolutionises the economic structure within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one, a prominent feature of capitalism - which he further describes as the 'perennial gale of creative destruction'.

My address today will focus on regulatory responses to FinTech developments.