Introduction

Dear FS Club Member,
Welcome to the final FS Club Newsletter of 2023. It has been a productive and enjoyable year for us here at Z/Yen, having run 135 webinars, hosted 21 in-person events, and published 11 reports and articles, with thanks to all of you for logging in, coming along, asking insightful questions, and contributing to surveys and discussions. Special thanks to our sponsors, who generously enable us to deliver our programme and thanks to you for being a valued part of our community. We look forward to connecting again in 2024 with more thought-provoking content. Wishing you a very merry holiday season full of enjoyment and quality time spent with friends and family.
Charlotte Dawber-Ashley (Manager, FS Club) & The Team at Z/Yen

Knowledge Miles: The 695th Lord Mayor's Lectures

Z/Yen Group are delighted that our Chairman, Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli, is serving as the 695th Lord Mayor of the City of London for the year 2023/2024. As part of Michael’s working theme, we are running Knowledge Miles: The 695th Lord Mayor's Lecture Series, an online webinar series exploring the connections of the Square Mile and its role as "The World's Coffeehouse" addressing diverse global challenges. Please see the table below for December's lectures and contact Jacopo Moratto if you and your organisation would like to get involved:

Ending The Destruction Of Our Undersea Cultural Heritage Tuesday, 5 December 2023

Making The Future: The Opportunity In Digital Manufacturing Thursday, 7 December 2023

Is Today’s Financial Literacy Education Fit For Purpose? Tuesday, 12 December 2023

Featured Past Lectures

Nick Vineall KC:
Why London Is The Best Place In The World To Resolve Legal Disputes – And How To Keep It That Way

Andrew Jackson CBE:
Adapt, Evolve, Thrive: Keeping The Tower Of London Relevant For Future Generations

Events & Webinars

Events

Innovation Through Collaboration: How Canada & the UK are Championing Life Sciences Wednesday, 06 December 2023

A Tour Of The Historic Pubs Of The City Of London Wednesday, 21 February 2024

Webinars

Financial Centres Of The World 2023: Focus On Bermuda Monday, 04 December 2023

Connect To Epistemically Prosper? The Ethics Of Belief In The Digital Age Wednesday, 06 December 2023

Why Is Culture Divorced From Finance Theory? Thursday, 14 December 2023

If you enjoy our webinars and events, and would like to contribute to our content, we would very much welcome your support as a corporate sponsor, please contact Charlotte_Dawber-Ashley@zyen.com to discuss the various opportunities available.

The Esop Centre’s newspad, is a monthly publication providing in-depth coverage of the main international news in the field of employee share ownership. Read this month’s newspad in full.

News

Bridgeworks: Bridgeworks, based in Lymington, Hampshire, UK, was invited last month to present their award-winning AI technologies to U.S. government and industry leaders to highlight the best in British technology. A key aim was to spotlight the support of the U.K. Government’s Department of Defence and Security Exports, (Department for International Trade), and share insights as an Export Champion. British Ambassador to the United States, Dame Karen Pierce was present to facilitate valuable engagement with the U.S. Federal agencies and U.K. technology partners. David Trossell, CEO and CTO of Bridgeworks, explains: “We invited our customers, OEM Partners, such as Dell Technology and IBM, Spectra Logic and our North American Resellers and System Integrators to share their successes implementing our systems.” Trossell explains: “We were able to present solutions and deliverables and translate those to future business benefits for end users.” Eykyn commends Trossell: “I am not a technical man, but I have always been interested in new technology. With Bridgeworks our WAN and data acceleration products, our CEO and CTO David Trossell, brought all his extensive skills in the storage world to bear, strongly supported by the IBM R&D Storage Establishment at Hursley, who confirmed the need for the AI and machine learning based products David developed and which we now know as PortRockIT and WANRockIT." See their full news item here.

SAP: SAP has a plethora of innovative software offerings to help Financial Services companies achieve their digital transformation goals. Above all we believe that an intelligent, sustainable enterprise is one that consistently applies advanced technologies and best practices within agile, integrated business processes. Speaking with our customers, partners, and SAP user groups, integrated business processes is always front and centre. With our knowledge and technology, we can help simplify every step of your business transformation journey. Our entire team is fully committed to delivering on our promise to help every customer become an intelligent and sustainable enterprise. This can be achieved through holistic integration of data, technology, and business processes to deliver significant value to your business. Benefits for our customers include accelerating the speed of innovation, lower effort for integration, shorter time to value, less complexity of operations, and allowing for real-time insight.
We talk more about our intelligent enterprise vision at our recent flagship event, SAP Sapphire. Here we discussed how now is the time to future-proof your business. Future-proof is a way of operating, and it can be built right into your business with SAP. A great example of us helping a company become future-proof is Barclaycard. Barclaycard worked with SAP to create a virtual card solution called Precisionpay which has enabled customers to turn data into actionable insights. They have invested in numerous SAP solutions as they have realised the importance of integration. Another SAP success story is Standard Chartered Bank harnessing SAP to transform their financial and sustainability reporting. They saw significant process improvements within their finance function to enable them to move beyond standard reporting into predictive reporting using data, systems, insight and analytics. For more information on our thoughts and events around Financial Services, visit our banking and insurance webpages.

GFT Financial Ltd: GFT’s latest Banking Disruption Index examines security and fraud in digital banking: The new GFT Banking Disruption Index, a quarterly survey of consumer sentiment towards digital banking, is now available to download. The new report highlights that younger generations are increasingly becoming victims of fraud and that one in five (22%) victims had to wait up to two weeks to get their money back from their bank. Read the press release and download the full report here. New thought leadership paper ‘Digital sovereignty’ by Scott Holman: Download our latest GFT thought leadership paper ‘Digital sovereignty’ and discover our five-step pathway to digital sovereignty success. This paper (download here) examines how you can ensure the future success of your organisation by defining future data flows, data architecture and future infrastructure needs to support the data architecture. GFT secures AWS API Gateway badge: GFT has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API Gateway Competency Badge. “Gaining #AWS Service Delivery Badges is a fantastic way for GFT to demonstrate our cloud engineering expertise, we will be continuing to build on this through 2024.” – Duncan Cooper, Head of AWS, GFT. Discover more about our partnership here. What's driving growth in the global fintech marketplace? Richard Kalas on Tech Talk podcast: Transformation in the fintech sector? GFT’s UK Client Solutions Director for Retail Banking, Richard Kalas has featured as a guest on a recent episode of the Tech Talk podcast. As digital services are embraced ever more widely we’re looking at ensuring organisations aren’t left behind, stay productive, and ahead of regulation. GFT partners with Engine by Starling to help banks rapidly modernise: Starling Bank is working with GFT, the global digital transformation pioneer, as an implementation partner for its Software-as-a-Service business, Engine by Starling. Engine by Starling provides banks with access to the cloud native, modular and API-based banking platform initially built by Starling’s own in-house tech team to run Starling Bank. Engine is now available to banks around the globe and has recently announced its first two clients: Salt Bank in Romania and AMP Bank in Australia. GFT has been selected as one of Engine’s partners for providing design, integration and implementation services for banks that adopt the Engine platform. Our latest blogs:
GFT @ The European Blockchain Convention by Ricardo Vaz
GFT @ Google Next London by Scott Holman
The need to focus on data quality by Tony Muraki-Hart
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) – a global perspective by Ashutosh Chauhan

AFME: Upcoming Events: To view AFME’s upcoming events calendar, click here.

UDF-Space: UDF-Space's Mission to Democratize Finance: A Visionary Leap Towards Global Inclusivity: Kelly, Co-founder of UDF-Space, unveils a groundbreaking vision in her latest talk, 'Bridging Financial Frontiers'. She passionately outlines a future where financial services are universally accessible, transcending geographical and economic barriers. UDF-Space aims to unify global financial, legal, and investment experts, revolutionizing cross-border finance with unparalleled efficiency and inclusivity. Emphasizing the digital economy's untapped potential, particularly in markets like China, Kelly's vision promises a new era of equitable finance. This transformative journey is not just a dream but a tangible future within reach, set to redefine global finance. Explore how UDF-Space is dismantling financial disparities and democratizing access to financial services in Kelly's inspiring speech, paving the way for a more inclusive global economy here.

Ocorian:Succession and estate planning in the Middle East: five questions, nine trends: MEA Finance spoke to Leevyn Isabel, Business Development Director, Private Client from Ocorian's award winning team about the dynamic landscape of succession and estate planning in the Middle East. Technical insights: diversity & inclusion in the financial sector: On the 25th of September, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) released Consultation Paper CP23/20 which outlined their continued efforts towards achieving a set of minimum standards for diversity and inclusion (D&I) within the UK’s financial services industry. The FCA believe that greater diversity and inclusion can create better outcomes for both consumers and markets and by understanding diverse consumer needs, firms can create healthier working cultures. 7 key factors to consider when navigating trust administration: In the intricate world of trust administration, poor management can have serious consequences. When contemplating the establishment of a trust or the replacement of an existing trustee, there are crucial questions to pose to a prospective trustee. Paul Buckle, Director of Private Client Services, and Tracey Neuman, Private Client Executive, provide their wealth of knowledge and offer invaluable insights to ensure that mismanagement doesn’t come back to create problems for settlors and beneficiaries. Luxembourg’s fund industry adapts and thrives in challenging times: insights from Ocorian’s experts: Global fundraising for private equity funds has seen a slowdown in the past 12-18 months, impacting the industry worldwide. However, Luxembourg has proven to be resilient and adaptable. Ocorian's Peter Corry, Head of Fund Services – Luxembourg, and Paul Spendiff, Global Head – Fund Sales discuss Luxembourg's funds industry.

Sponsorship Opportunities

We currently have opportunities available to partner with Z/Yen as a sponsor for our ongoing research into the development of financial centres. If you may be interested in sponsorship of the Global Green Finance Index or Smart Centres Index, please get in touch with Mike Wardle.

Z/Yen Launches Ethical AI Course with CISI

Register Here

The Chartered Institute For Securities & Investment, in collaboration with Z/Yen Group and The Rt Hon The Lord Mayor Professor Michael Mainelli, have launched a Certificate in Ethical Artificial Intelligence.

The short online course deals with the core definitions and global developments in the field of AI, associated ethical dilemmas, and the implications for financial services.

Find Out More

Before During & After The Lord Mayor's Show

Director Ian Harris documented the festivities this past month as our Chairman Professor Michael Mainelli took office as the 695th Lord Mayor of the City of London.
You can find an outline of November's happenings in and around the Square Mile here.

Pamphleteers Blog

The Pamphleteers Blog features considered thoughts – somewhere between a knee-jerk editorial and a full-blown piece of research. "Write for today and not for tomorrow."

Made Me Think
Chris Yapp:

The Power Of Paradox

Of Great Interest
David Craddock:

Direct Employee Share Ownership: A Catalyst For Social Mobility & Levelling-Up

FS Club Bulletins - Keep Track Of Your Commercial Interests

FS Club provides up to 1,000 weekly bulletins on a variety of topics from Inflation, to Inter-Bank Lending, to the war in Ukraine and its effects on Financial Services. Register here.

Open Banking Cybersecurity

Z/Yen Job Vacancies

Programme Manager
This role will focus on managing and marketing our FS Club Event Programme, supporting our consultancy work and some web development. The various functions include:

• Events management – FS Club online programme (webinars), FS Club networking events, and client events
• Web development – front and back end
• Data analysis and strategy for FS Club
• Occasional client work (financial services)
• Data collection and analysis
• Managing FS Club Sponsor relationships and onboarding
• CRM management
• Email communications
• Social media marketing
• Website content management
• Video editing.

Skills required are enthusiasm, well-developed organisation and time management skills, a proven ability to learn, strong attention to detail and accuracy, and the ability to build relationships with colleagues and external clients. If this sounds like you, please send your CV to Mike Wardle, Chief Executive Officer, at mike_wardle@zyen.com.

Best Of The Finanser

Stirred My Thoughts:

Digital transformation is more to do with inclusion than banking

Grabbed My Attention:

Can AI do comedy?

Membership & Sponsorship

FS Club is the premier global executive knowledge network for technology and finance professionals. Great events, research, and social functions build a buzz for Members and a valuable partnership for Sponsors. Membership of the FS Club is a great way to enhance your professional development, grow your network and profile, and get backing for your ideas, contact: Charlotte_Dawber-Ashley@zyen.com