Only the paranoid will survive cybercrime, according to Javier Perez-Tasso, CEO of Europe and the UK at SWIFT, speaking at the SWIFT Business Forum in London.
In his opening remarks, Perez-Tasso outlined how firms would have to use detection and prevention to tackle cybercrime.
Alongside cybercrime, collaboration and innovation featured heavily at this years’ SWIFT Business Forum, as did discussions on how the financial technology industry can prepare itself for a new era.
One panellist at the morning’s plenary discussion, which covered transformation through collaboration’, said that some clients are “divinely discontent” and that the two main bodies—regulators and clients—expect more from servicing the industry.
Another panellist said the nature of collaboration is changing “from point to point deals to a more leveraging ecosystem of deals, with multiple parties to achieve an outcome”.
Creativity was said to be needed when dealing with customers and regulation, because in the age of financial servicing, both clients and regulators need quicker technology, with quicker efficiency. According to one panellist, the only way to solve this is through collaboration.
Another panellist said that surrounding this creativity would be predominantly those in financial technology. One panellist stated that the financial technology industry must work together on innovation, as there are “no competitive advantages for a bank to work against each other to prevent crime”.
At the conclusion of the panel discussion, one panellist, a representative from the Bank of England, said that SWIFT itself could do more to surround itself with more financial technology.
He said: “SWIFT can afford to get more out of this movement, I encourage very strongly that SWIFT itself gets closer to this technology, as [they] would like the banks to do so.”
SWIFT's moderator stated: “It’s not there yet, but yes, we can do more, but what I have seen is extremely promising.”
