IIF Authors

Status: Will be live at 09/18/2020 04:30

FRT Episode 76: The Digital Economy -- What’s Next?

The economy has been adapting and digitalizing rapidly in response to COVID-19, both in financial services and beyond. IIF economist Jonathan Fortun joins Brad Carr and Conan French to look forward at what this means not only in financial services, but also for SMEs to keep pace with tech firms in a competitive eCommerce environment.

The challenge of balancing the need for efficiency with customized and personalized services is a conundrum that faces large banks and small businesses alike. We look at the role of Cloud and Digital Identity technologies in ‘democratizing’ access.

We also examine the anticipated consequences from some notable transactions, including the American Express acquisition of Kabbage and the Ant Financial IPO, the outlook for US-China technology tensions, and the taxation of digital services. We conclude with exploring both the philosophical dilemmas and practical considerations with stablecoins and digital currencies, and how a range of long-term policy considerations have suddenly been fast-forwarded.