VIDEO INTERVIEW | As the founder and CEO of Firebrand, a research and advisory services firm that specialises in the financial market, Virginie O’Shea is familiar with helping companies transform. Fresh from a full schedule of three speaking sessions at Sibos 2023, she shares with us varied insights on some of the top-of-mind topics that have kept this year’s conference abuzz, from tokenisation to T+1.
Practical outcomes and delivering value to end investors are some of the key priorities Virginie O’Shea has observed from her numerous conversations with industry insiders about the adoption of technology in finance. Referring to her session from the second day titled “Tokenisation: The future of securities or just a digital dream?”, she says, “There was a much more practical conversation about not just the experimentation, but how is it actually delivering value to the end investor.”
“It’s not just about a conversation around technology. It’s broader than technology. Technology’s just an enabler – it’s not necessarily the be-all and end-all. We shouldn’t focus on the technology if we were thinking about it from the consumer perspective.”
She fleshes out her point with an analogy: “If we were thinking about an app on a phone, you wouldn’t really care about the technology underlying the app. You wouldn’t even notice if it was cognitive technology. The same applies in post-trade. Does it matter what the technology is as long as it delivers value to the end investor and the clients?”
Virginie O’Shea was moderator for three sessions at Sibos 2023, including a “Meet the experts” session by Digital Asset titled “How exchanges are harnessing digitisation to unlock market potential”, where she was on stage with:
Max Cunningham, CEO, FCX,
Steve Everett, managing director Cash Management & Payments, Lloyds Banking Group,
Yuval Rooz, CEO and Co-founder, Digital Asset, and
Tae Yoo, managing director, co-head of Asset Accumulation, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited.
Sibos 2023 played out in Toronto from 18 to 21 September, with about 9,000 registered delegates. We were there, producing mainly video interviews, but also some text pieces. Overview our coverage here.