Fintech Notes

Finance and technology have been interconnected from the very beginning.
one of the first physical technologies
to develop was money
the simple coin
or thousands of years later,
not long after 1000 A.D.,
paper money.

Money is a form of technology
that allows us to physically handle
the ideas embedded in finance.
today’s fintech,
the modern period of fintech
and financial technology
begins around 150 years ago
and we generally mark the date as 1867.
Why 1867?
1867 was the date of the establishment
of the first transatlantic telegraph cable.
That transatlantic telegraph cable
made instantaneous communication
between the major markets
of New York and London,
or London and Paris,
or even eventually several decades later,
Shanghai, or Hong Hong, and London possible.
This was the basic infrastructure
that underlies all of today’s
not only financial technology
but much of today’s communications
and media developments as well
and it’s somewhat ironic
that in the past five years
more undersea cable has been laid
than in the entire previous 150 years combined.
Why?
Because more physical cables are necessary
to handle the ever greater flows of data
speeding around the world
and underpinning
the development of finance.
Many would say
that the period from the 1860s
up to the start of the First World War
was a first period of
financial and economic globalisation
much like the past 30 years or so from today.
That period of
financial and economic globalisation
was underpinned by technological infrastructure
like the transatlantic telegraph cable
which in fact has been called
the Victorian internet.

Now, if we think about
technological developments
in financial services,
probably our next significant milestone
really comes during the Second War World.
During the Second World War,
significant effort spent particularly
in the context of developing codes
for secure communications
particularly of military and intelligence operations
as well as, significant efforts
to develop systems to break those codes
and it was this process of encoding
and breaking codes that led
to come of the groundbreaking thinking
in computer technology
and in fact,
eventually in artificial intelligence or AI
which is one of the most exciting developments
happening in financial technology today.
But it wasn’t until the period
after the Second War World
as the world economy is rebuilding
that we begin to see progressive development
of those early computer technologies
to eventually lay the ground work
for the sorts of fintech
and regtech developments
which we see today.