On the third day of the Gaidar Forum, on the panel dedicated to Financial Control and Banking Supervision in the Digital State, enthusiasm for digitalization and the upcoming blockchain revolution was quickly replaced by disappointing prophecies.
The gloomy forecast, in particular, was expressed by Alexey Minin, executive director of the Institute for Applied Data Analysis Deloitte. In his opinion, there will be no banks in their current form on the horizon of 2030.
By this time, "we will not need" in such a number of financial intermediaries to provide liquidity for companies, and those credit institutions that will use "good algorithms for data analysis" and understand the risks of their clients better than others will benefit. He believes that "consolidation" of the banking market is inevitable, "the winner will take everything", and the losers will have to leave. At the same time, due to the development of digital technologies, not only bankers, but also auditors and accountants will not be needed in such numbers.
At least those who work in ordinary positions and do not have unique knowledge.
From the words of the participants in the discussion, it followed that new technologies had already proven their effectiveness in practice: they allow analyzing the state of banks much better than auditors do.
Alexey Minin said that the model, built on the basis of open data on the Central Bank website and other information from external sources, without any insider information, allows three months before the revocation of the Central Bank's license to accurately predict in 81% of cases the appropriate decision by the regulator. At the same time, those errors that occur in the program, he explains, among other things, "inside the market."
As the head of FBK Alexei Terekhov said during the discussion, given such a rapid development of digital technologies, "the middle staff in this part is becoming completely unpromising and unnecessary." In the near future there will be a high demand for completely different employees - the so-called "intellectual auditors". These unique specialists will be able to "identify the real world with the digital space."
Promotional video:
According to the head of the Federal Treasury Roman Artyukhin, technologies give rise to new opportunities for supervisors, but also greatly increase the requirements for competence. Tatiana Blinova, auditor of the Accounts Chamber, said the same thing. According to her, there is already a great need for “universal soldiers”, that is, auditors who, in addition to their main specialty, have legal knowledge and are familiar with IT technologies.
The onset of "numbers" on banks on the market has long been noted. The head of Sberbank, German Gref, said that Google and Amazon became competitors of the largest Russian bank, Sberbank, because of the interest of these companies in financial services.
“We need to be as armed with technology as these players are. Next year we will see various financial organizations of these tech giants in the world,”Gref noted.
To compete with Google and Amazon, banks will inevitably have to change their development model, automating many processes and cutting costs. As a result, the functions of ordinary employees will be performed by robots.
According to Gref's forecast, literally in 3-5 years the "bots" in the bank will take over the functions of personal financial advisers answering typical questions of the bank's clients. As the head of the largest bank noted last year, now 99% of credit decisions for individuals are made automatically.
The head of the Analytical Credit Rating Agency (ACRA), Ekaterina Trofimova, in an interview during the Gaidar Forum, noted that "openness, the format of work" and adherence to the "mainstream" already influence the assessment of banks by rating agencies.
“It's just that the scale of this phenomenon does not have a direct impact on the financial profile of even such large players as Sberbank. But we understand that in two or three years it will be a fundamental factor in their competitiveness,”she explained.
According to Trofimova, no methodological changes will be required. Because, indeed, new terms have appeared, but the general trend, like informatization, working with data, has existed for a long time, and "is already present in our methodologies."
At the same time, the stress due to the rapid development of new technologies in the near future will have to be experienced not only by bank employees and auditors. Experts previously noted that due to automation, demand will fall for call center workers, cashiers, drivers, accountants and other professions that do not require high qualifications.
Even State Duma deputies noted concern on this issue. Leonid Levin, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications, said that it is very important for our country to oust the workforce by artificial intelligence. According to him, there are more than 1.5 million security guards in Russia, sooner or later they will be replaced with an automated system, and 2% of the country's working population will splash onto the market.
Vladimir Gimpelson, director of the HSE Center for Labor Studies, reassures that in 2018 Russians are unlikely to be unemployed due to their displacement by robots. “The process of large-scale robotization of production will be long, in the short term, and even more so in the coming year, it is hardly worth expecting,” he says. However, inevitably, gradually some professions will die, and some will appear, the expert agrees.
How Blockchain Will Replace Banks and Resellers
The new technology will protect your money transfers from fraudsters and will allow you to check if the purchased car turns out to be stolen. It is a way of encrypting electronic money and any information that changes business in the same way that electricity changed production 100 years ago.
Internet commerce is becoming more popular every year, but the threat of hacker attacks and mistrust of partners prevents it from competing with traditional businesses. This problem is solved by a new database technology - Blockchain. These databases do not have a single control center, operations are confirmed by other network participants, so they are invulnerable to hacker attacks and allow you to check the veracity of partner information - this is the future of online commerce. Top Lead experts have prepared an article on the impact of Blockchain on the economy, and we reprinted this article.
Blockchain is a new kind of databases without a single center
Blockchain is a database, that is, an electronic storage of information, similar to records in an Excel file. For example, the bank databases record how much money is in the accounts, and the police database - who and when violated the rules. The principle is similar here, only unlike traditional databases, in the Blockchain information is not stored in a single repository, but is recorded on each computer participating in the network. Blockchain technology registers transactions in such a way that they cannot be deleted or rewritten later, the information is only updated sequentially. Therefore, the data is written as a chain of updates, not a table. You deposited $ 100, and a data block with this information appeared in the database. Then you sent $ 50 to someone and deposited another $ 100. But in the first block, the information on the amount of money will not change by 150 - two new blocks with updates will be added. Each of them has its own code indicating the connection with the previous and next blocks.
The so-called miners collect and update this information - active users who receive fees for their work with the Bitcoin cyber currency.
Blockchain data cannot be faked
There is daily news that some hacker has stolen money from bank accounts or hacked into a celebrity's email. This is because the information is easy to access. And Blockchain makes stealing information impossible. If a hacker inserts a fake one between the existing blocks, the system will notice the substitution - the code of the new block will differ from the sequence of others. Changes in the blocks themselves also affect the code, and thus any changes are immediately noticed by the miners. It will not work to rewrite the entire chain, because Blockchain is a distributed database, and information is stored simultaneously on thousands of computers. Even if the information changes on one, other users will notice the substitution - they have saved the original data.
Information protection is especially important for banks: they store money in the format of numbers in the cells of databases. If an attacker changes this data, he can steal money from accounts or disrupt the bank.
New technology will allow money transfer without intermediaries
When a seller and a buyer plan to complete a transaction, they look for an intermediary to ensure the integrity of the agreement. The bank acts as an intermediary in financial transactions: it guarantees that the money will not go anywhere and will go from the payer to the recipient. The bank also issues a confirmation of payment - no matter whether it is about paying a gas bill or buying a plant. To do this, financial institutions record information about transactions in their databases. We use their services because this is the most reliable mediation option.
But Blockchain data storage technology makes it possible to do without intermediaries. Imagine you want to pay for an item from an online store and make a transfer through the Blockchain. A record will appear in your data chain that the money has been transferred to the store, which means that you have confirmation. The money transfer will be "seen" by all network participants, and it will be reflected in the update of your data. During the transfer process, it is impossible to steal money or erase a record, because the system is invulnerable to hacking. The store also knows that the translation is real, because if you faked a block of data, the system would notice this and delete the fictitious record. Everything is the same as in a bank, but you do not need to pay an intermediary for services. With this approach, banks are not needed, and given the increasing popularity of online commerce, Blockchain is able to become a competitor to traditional payment systems.
Blockchain will allow verification of trading partners and registration of personal data
In March 2014, a new version of Blockchain was released, which allows not only fixing payments, but also recording information. It can be used to compile open databases - for example, land cadastres, or registering contracts online, because an open database allows you to check partner information.
It is also possible to register goods and other values in the Blockchain. For example, a buyer of a car would receive a car databank code from the seller to ensure that the car was purchased legally and not stolen, bail, and so on. In these cases, Blockchain will replace the services of intermediaries, notaries and even government agencies for business. But for the replacement to be equivalent, users must be sure that the database contains all possible information.
Banks also plan to develop a new service
Although Blockchain is one of the competitors of traditional banks, they have invested $ 850 million in this technology over the past two years. Bank owners are attracted by the transparency of operations, which can be monitored by all participants. Another possibility is customer identification and protection against hacker attacks. The banks created the R3 concern to develop a separate blockchain modification, the data of which is confidential to unauthorized users. State bodies can also use Blockchain: startups create applications on its basis for registering refugees and determining ownership of works of art.
Blockchain will not replace Google
Proponents of the new technology call it Google's replacement, but Blockchain will not change the way people search for information on the web. We will still choose truthful information from the stream of fakes and unverified data. Yes, Blockchain can be used to check the veracity of anything, but no one will regulate Internet encyclopedias and news sites in this way, because it is commercially unprofitable. After all, no one certifies translations of news from the English-language media with a notary.
Blockchain will not "replace the state" as proponents of this technology believe. After all, even apartments and cars bought thanks to the new database will have to be registered with government agencies, but banks still work officially. But this technology is another step towards the digital state, because it makes Internet services no less reliable than traditional ones. For Ukraine, Blockchain is still exotic, but in our country the IT sector is well developed and the problem of Internet fraud has not been resolved. Therefore, in the future, Blockchain is capable of changing the economy of our country. Ukrainians will trust online stores and electronic payment systems more, because the new technology allows you to verify information and protects against theft of money, so the popularity of such services will increase. A new market will open up for IT companies: the development of online platforms,capable of replacing intermediaries - for example, to confirm ownership of goods and authorship.
New technologies are increasingly taking their place in our lives. When starting a business, businessmen often do not turn to banks, and increasingly use alternative sources of attracting investment.
We are talking about an ICO - an analogue of an IPO, only in the use of cryptocurrencies. This is not some super exotic way. As mentioned above, many startups around the world raise funds in this way. I must say, a lot of money.
This method looks especially relevant in conditions of extremely high interest rates on loans. The key rate of the Bank of Russia is now at the level of 9%, respectively, loans from banks are about twice as expensive.
If there are still those who are skeptical about the development of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, they will most likely have to change their minds.
According to the founder of the Waves Platform, Alexander Ivanov, the entire financial world has already realized that cryptocurrency is a new type of financial instruments, relatively stable and very promising, into which funds can be transferred for one purpose or another.
These are not just words. A striking example is the crowdfunding investment campaign ZrCoin raised almost $ 4 million for the construction of a plant in Magnitogorsk. From 11 to 25 May, $ 3.7 million was raised, with a plan of $ 3.5 million to launch the production of synthetic zirconium. The collected funds allow us to launch production with a capacity of 400 tons / month in 2018.
Thanks to blockchain technology, it was possible to attract funding in a short time. The bold decision to offer a new investment tool, backed by the product that we plan to produce, was met with interest, said Andrey Nikonorov, co-founder of ZrCoin.
Meanwhile, the Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs under the President of Russia Boris Titov and the founder of the Waves blockchain platform Alexander Ivanov announced the creation of the People of Growth ICO generator.
Indeed, if a tool works and allows you to attract funds, it needs to be developed and invested in. The world is changing, you need to change with it.
By the way, Boris Titov, in his economic strategy "Strategy of Growth", presented to the president, paid a lot of attention to the development of digital technology. Now this part of the strategy is being finalized. It is quite possible that the world will change so quickly that we will not have time to notice the transition to a new stage. Another thing is that while blockchain technology is not yet so productive and is unable to withstand very large volumes, platform developers are improving their developments every day, so progress will be visible very soon.
Waves is a decentralized platform for crowdfunding and digital value issuance. The crypto platform aims to issue, trade and exchange assets / native tokens on the blockchain. One of the main features of the project is its focus on ease of use and mass adoption. Proof-Of-Stake is supposed to be used as a consensus algorithm. In June 2016, Waves completed its ICO, during which it raised more than $ 16 million. In terms of crowdfunding investments, it entered the top 5 most successful blockchain projects.
By 2026, banks will disappear due to the development of blockchain technology (blockchain, distributed database - approx. "Lenta.ru"). This was stated by the vice-president of Sberbank Andrey Sharov, reports Rambler News Service.
“In 10 years I am afraid that there will be no banks and I will have nowhere to go to work. Nowadays, peer-to-peer lending platforms are actively developing (issuing loans without an intermediary in the person of a bank or other credit organization - Lenta.ru note), payment technologies based on blockchain technology are developing,”the agency quotes him as saying.
He recalled that the Bank of England has created a consortium of 50 financial institutions that are completely rebuilding the blockchain business model.
On September 17, 2015, the head of Sberbank, German Gref, said that blockchain technology provides tremendous opportunities for the secure exchange of information. According to him, there are expert proposals to transfer the entire registration system to blockchain technology - registration of rights, legal entities, rights to real estate and so on. Gref also admitted that he owns bitcoins. At the same time, he complained that the cryptocurrency rate fell more than the ruble rate.
Blockchain is used as a repository of information about transactions with the bitcoin cryptocurrency. It records all movements within the system. The technology can also be implemented in banking - crypto technology can greatly reduce the time for large transactions (issuing loans, trading shares, and so on). According to the Spanish investment fund Santander InnoVentures, thanks to the blockchain, investors will save about $ 20 billion per year by reducing the associated (intermediary, regulatory) costs in financial transactions.