Nadeem Shaikh on FinTech's responsibility to be part of change by using new technology to deliver services for people and increase their sense of financial well-being.
2. My writing on Financial Wellness is designed to
help the Fintech industry think about how to
make change happen and what is needed to
motivate people to reinvent financial services for
the 21st Century. That means developing a
Fintech sector with a social conscience because
it is the right thing to do and because it makes
sense for our customers and therefore our
bottom line.
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Typically, it is said that the qualities that drive
people who want to make change in society
happen are: Engagement, Self-reliance and
Altruism.
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3. You need to know
what change you
want to make it
happen.
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You need to be
able to make
things happen on
your own.
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You need to want
to do it for the
good of others.
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When these
general principles
are in action then
we can achieve
change.
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4. For entrepreneurs, the same qualities
can be applied. Altruism does not
mean that you do not want to make a
living from what you sell but if you are
only driven by greed you will not
succeed.
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You must be driven by the desire to
provide a service, sell a product or
make an innovation that you get paid
for us but that serves a socially useful
purpose. Otherwise, why get up in the
morning.
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5. When citizens take or are given
control over their lives and their
choices and they have these
qualities, then change happens.
When entrepreneurs think
beyond balance sheets and
engage with customers needs,
they create successful companies.
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But we need to add one more to
this list: resources.
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In the current transforming age,
with austerity ending but debt still
very high, with jobs for life
disappearing but the gig economy
not yet fully embedded, Financial
Wellness needs to be at the heart
of the tools entrepreneurs in
Fintech use to create new
products and services.
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When you ask people what they
want, it is generally to be financially
secure, to have their health, to
educate their children and broadly
for their children’s lives to be better
than their own. That is at the heart
of the Financial Wellness that I seek.
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If you are going to become an agent
of change, then the challenge is to
decide for yourselves what your
general principles are. Not to be
undermined by the cynics nor be
less than idealist.
7. It is not sufficient to merely imagine the world as
we want it to be.
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We have to work at ways in which we can make
it like that. To drive Financial Wellness to the top
of the agenda we need to:
• Consult and build coalitions in favour of holistic approaches to
financial security within our industry and more widely
• Treat citizens as self-reliant human beings so that they
behaviour like citizens and with financial responsibility they
become customers
• Embrace new technology as the means of delivering security
and linking social well-being to financial services
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8. These things are
happening in start-ups
all over the world. A
slow revolution in the
Fintech world is
underway.
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You can see me
speaking more about
my thinking on Vimeo
here
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Let me know what
you think. And Join IN.
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