The Finance Industry Will Change Profoundly in the Next Five Years, Says Credit Suisse Exec

The next five years will engender more changes to the finance industry than the past 30 years have seen, Philippe Cerf, a managing director in the investment banking and capital markets division of Credit Suisse, said Monday.

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Speaking at a fintech conference held in Tel Aviv by Calcalist, Bank Leumi’s tech banking arm LeumiTech, and accounting firm KPMG, Cerf named digitalization and regulation as some of the major challenges faced by leading companies in various industries looking to overcome the frequent changes of the past few years.

The digital savviness of customers is becoming clear and clients expect their service providers to give them high-quality digital services, Cerf said adding that evolving regulation forces companies to constantly adapt and change their products and services.

Banks are trying to keep up by hiring vast amounts of information technology professionals, Cerf said. Another method he mentioned for dealing with these challenges is consolidation in the fintech industry, with the number of mergers and acquisitions significantly rising in the past few years. According to Cerf, this trend is here to stay.