“Banking is necessary, but banks are not”. This sentence uttered by Bill Gates in 1994 sounded rather obscure to the majority of the public, even in specialist financial circles. At that time, the process of change that is currently sweeping the world of banking, financial and insurance services was still in its infancy and it was really difficult to imagine, except for an ‘interested’ visionary like Gates, the developments and dimensions of the announced phenomenon. Today, digi-tal technologies are invading the world of finance in a way that is as pervasive as it is inevitable, so much so that a neologism was born to describe this process:
Fintech.
Fintech is a world that is not, however, limited to the banking sector alone, but involves various players, widening the perimeter of competition and making the boundaries of markets uncertain, as they tend to merge into a single macro-mar-ket, where the user experience has become fluid. The emerging phenomena of Open Banking and API (Application Programming Interface) are introducing elements of great innovation and are difficult to predict in terms of the dimen-sions they will assume.
In Open Banking, for example, the old paradigm of reference changes com-pletely: the customer’s information, until yesterday jealously held by the banks, is shared by the customer with third parties, giving rise to new shared business models, building a real network that exploits the potential of a digital platform that can support the methods of distribution and monetisation of the service.
The world of fintech also includes so-called Robo-Advisors, consisting of soft-ware that replaces and in some cases supports traditional financial advisors, con-stituting real ‘virtual financial advisors’ (1). All this has been made possible by the strong acceleration of automation processes that have driven digital innovations in the financial sphere, regardless of which party develops and delivers the prod-uct or service.
To give an idea of the size of the phenomenon, bringing it back from the sphere of the futuristic to the current dimension, we can use some data taken from the recent report (2019) of the Osservatorio Fintech e Insurtech (companies that
(1) Consob has taken an interest in robo-advisors by framing the phenomenon in the context of the automated advice service and subjecting it to a specific authorisation. See CONSOB, La digitalizzazione della consulenza in materia di investimenti finanziari, Quaderno FinTech, 2019, No. 3.
apply digital technologies to the insurance world) of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with Nielsen Italia (2). In our coun-try, an estimated 11 million users have tried at least one digital innovation service applied to the financial and insurance system. In other words, about one in four Italians has had this experience, with a sharp increase (+54%) compared to the previous year. The startups in the Fintech and Insurtech category that have de-veloped in the last ten years amount to 1210 units and have channelled about one million dollars of funding in the last two years alone, for a total of 43.7 billion raised (+66% compared to the number of startups two years earlier and +70%
in terms of investments).
This fast-growing phenomenon has undoubtedly been further accelerated by the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has given a further boost to digitalisa-tion and contributed to triggering new trends in the world of work through new ways of providing it, first and foremost remote working, which has in fact given rise to the phenomenon of the ‘dematerialisation’ of the workplace.
Returning to Bill Gates’ phrase, this appears less obscure today, the profound changes outlined above shed light on the concrete declination of the scenarios then ‘prophesied’ and on the pervasive conception of digitalisation that was in Gates’ mind. In all this change that is affecting the banking world, the debate revolves around the real future of banks, the new paradigms of service provision that will develop, what future traditional bank branches will have and the new relationships with users of financial services.
We have to consider that future customers (the ‘millennials’) will be increasingly tech-savvy and eager for simple, fast, cheap and, above all, increasingly person-alised services. They experience their relationship with financial companies more and more as ‘prosumers’ (3) rather than taking on the passive role of the tradi-tional consumer, they will feel that they need to be understood by financial insti-tutions and not the other way around.
In this congeries of changes, the trade union is responsible for finding new in-struments to defend and enhance work and workers, so that this wave of changes can be governed and not suffered, so that new solutions can be found that can give substance to the appeal also made by Pope Francis for the construction of a new Humanism that places man at the centre of production processes and the economy in general.
In the face of the dematerialisation of the workplace and the new ways in which work is carried out, a fixed point is Framework Directive 89/391/EEC, Art. 6 (General obligations of employers) of which states: “adapt work to man”.
(2) OSSERVATORIO FINTECH,INSURTECH, Rapporto 2019, School of Management - Politec-nico di Milano, 10 december 2019.
(3) The definition of ‘prosumer’, a crasis between consumer and producer, was coined in 1980 by Alvin Toffler to indicate the mutation of the consumer figure from passive to active subject.
See Si veda A.TOFFLER, The Third Wave, Morrow, 1980.
This is the context in which First Cisl’s idea of tackling the issues outlined above was born, through a research project and a census of existing good practices at European level to be developed with the help of scientific bodies able to provide a strong and independent methodological basis.
This led to the collaboration with ADAPT, a prestigious Italian research centre on industrial and labour relations, with CELSI, a Slovakian research centre spe-cialised in the same field, with FIOH, a Finnish research institute in the field of health and safety at work, and with WageIndicator, a Dutch research institute on the global labour market.
The project also benefited from the cooperation of 11 financial sector trade un-ions from 10 European countries and one employers’ organisation, Federman-agement. The project activities were funded by the European Commission (grant agreement VS/2019/0097) and took place over a period of 30 months, more precisely from 1 April 2019 to 30 September 2021.
I therefore invite you to read this interesting book edited by Domenico Iodice, which, in addition to a description of the various stages of the project, offers the reader a series of stimuli and suggestions ranging from a constructive critique of the European regulatory framework relating to the MiFID II directive (‘Markets in financial instruments directive’, 2014/65/EU) for the protection of savers, to a proposal to revisit the instruments to strengthen the defence of workers at a time like the present of great change.
The book ends with a series of proposals, the so-called ‘policy recommenda-tions’, drawn up on the basis of the results of the activities and research carried out. Among all of them, I would like to highlight the one that, in the philosophy of a new humanism in the world of work, hopes that the European Union can develop a sort of MiFID directive for the protection of those who work in the world of banking and financial services on a daily basis.