Sochi plays host to Finopolis-2017, forum of innovative financial technologies

Between 4 and 6 October 2017, the forum attracted about 1,400 visitors who participated in 4 plenary sessions, 6 open lectures, 13 sectional discussions and 8 roundtables.

Sergey Shvetsov, Bank of Russia First Deputy Governor, chaired a plenary session dedicated to the financial market's ecosystems and technology-driven business model transformation. As Sergey Shvetsov opened the discussion, he spoke about the initiative of creating a national financial transaction registration system. ‘This system will be connected with a remote identification system, public web-services, the Federal Tax Service; it will also interact with payment systems. ‘As the very core of the initiative, all financial market transactions that our citizens pay for will be recorded in a single repository. ‘A record of a financial service will provide legal grounds for consumers or their counterparties to defend their interests in court; it will also help the mandate of the financial ombudsman and will be used for filing complaints with the Bank of Russia,' said Sergey Shvetsov. He also noted that this new framework will foster growth in consumer confidence in respect to financial products and services.

The forum participants also discussed the prospects for the application of artificial intelligence and its impact on the labour market, in the course of the ‘Star Wars, or Alternative Approach to Payments’ roundtable. The roundtable participants tried to predict which payment services and technologies of the future will win over clients given that the competition is tight. There was a separate discussion about Russian fintech growth points and the development of a fintech startup support ecosystem. The forum's annual agenda also includes a competition among fintech startups, between teams offering innovative financial technology solutions and promoting electronic interaction in the financial market.

Awards were presented to the winners of the past year's competition held at Finopolis-2016.

• The first prize and a 3 million grant went to the theWAAY team (a profiling automated client communication system based on both conventional channels and a new lifestyle assistant).
• The second prize and 2 million rubles were awarded to HeedBook (a neuronet to analyse service quality and customer satisfaction in real-time mode, powered by cognitive services using information from frontline staff's web-cameras).
• The startup, Robin, came third and received a grant of 1 million rubles (the startup is a client identification service based on voice recognition with 97% accuracy).

The forum also held a sectional discussion dedicated to various scenarios for digital currency development and regulation in Russia for the next five years.  Wrapping up the discussions, First Deputy BoR Governor Olga Skorobogatova highlighted that, jointly with involved authorities, the regulator needs to define, first and foremost, a legal framework for digital currencies, introduce appropriate legal terminology and specify the legal consequences of various regulatory requirements in the field. ‘We really need to champion [new] technology; there is no escaping the changes we can see unfolding in the world. The practice of applying [various technology] differs from country to country. Today's discussion has laid bare the whole spectrum, from advantages to drawbacks [of the use of new technology]. There are different approaches to the technology per se and private currencies; discussions are still ongoing about the feasibility of a national digital currency. Ultimately, however, once all the issues of technology application are solved to the consumer’s and state's benefit, we will benefit from improved quality of life, user-friendliness and new opportunities’, Olga Skorobogatova concluded.

Parallel discussions and roundtables were dedicated to the digital revolution in insurance, challenges and opportunities related to Big Data and Smart Data, the social aspects of financial inclusion and access to financial services for people with disabilities in the light of new technology; participants also talked over teaching fintech at universities and the issues of distributed ledgers.