The industry phenomenon known as blockchain/distributed ledger technology (DLT) will be a major catalyst for change in the financial services industry, says Elliot Noma, Ph.D., managing director for Garrett Asset Management.
“I see it as a tremendous agent of change,” Noma says. “There’s a possibility of revolutionizing a lot of different segments, especially the operational part of finance.”
Noma spoke with FTF News during a break in the action at FTF’s SecOps event in Boston, this past June. He was a panelist in the discussions “Blockchain/DLT Gets Real for Post-Trade Ops” and “Time to Hire a Post-Trade Robot?”
The SecOps session on DLT focused on the excitement over blockchain/ DLT is cooling into multiple proof-of-concept (POC) and other initiatives that could become the first steps in the evolution toward a new world dominated by these systems for key post-trade processes such as settlement and reconciliation.
The other session focused on other major industry disruptors such as artificial intelligence (A.I.) and machine learning technologies that have been quietly advancing while other IT trends have been grabbing the headlines. In fact, A.I.-based systems for reducing fraud and fighting crime are taking hold at financial services firms and are replacing manually-intensive processes. Some forms of reconciliation and the management of unstructured data are benefitting from A.I. and machine learning technologies.
While expectations are high, Noma acknowledges that there are some challenges ahead in the acceptance of DLT-based solutions for key securities operations.
“I think the main challenge and the main downside is the change in organization that needs to take place both in terms of the structure of the organization: who has power, the people employed there; and the training of people to keep up with the technology,” Noma says.
CREDITS:
Video Production: Janene Knox and William J. Poznanski, Jr.
Interview conducted by: Eugene Grygo, chief content officer, FTF News
Co-Producers: Sarah Hathaway, vice president, Financial Technologies Forum (FTF) and Eugene Grygo
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