John Wiley - Learning Practical FinTech from Successful Companies

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Copyright 2018 by Yoshitaka Kitao. All rights reserved.

Originally published in Japanese in 2017 by Nikkei Publishing Inc.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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ISBN 978-1-119-52372-7 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-119-52370-3 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-1-119-52380-2 (ePub)

ISBN 978-1-119-52376-5 (obk)

Because I would like this book to be different than introductory books written by academics and commentators in the field of finance, I have focused on corporate managers that struggle day and night to bring about a FinTech revolution.

I consider these people warriors trying to achieve this revolution. I decided to have these warriors (managers) describe their visions of the future and candidly write about what types of strategies and weapons (technologies) they will use to realize them. I am not an editor and have not given contributors to this book any instructions or expressed my opinion to them in advance.

I wrote Chapters 1 and 2 and decided to make these chapters extremely strategic and practical because I am a part of the SBI Group management. I did not have other contributors read my drafts because I did not want them to feel influenced by them.

Even when the drafts for all chapters were completed, I purposefully put off writing the preface because I waited with bated breath for the appearance of concrete evidence that indicates how close this revolution is to affecting all of us.

That evidence is the successful completion of a verification test conducted by a certain consortium. The results were announced on March 2, 2017, and were widely covered by various media outlets the following day. Efforts were led by the Japan Bank Consortium, of which 42 banks (61 banks as of the end of December 2017), more than one-third of Japanese banks, are members. This group successfully conducted a verification test of RC Cloud, a settlement platform that makes use of blockchain technology for low-value, high-frequency payments, and is working to commercialize the platform within this year.

This platform is a cloud-hosted next-generation settlement infrastructure developed by US-based Ripple Labs Inc., an SBI joint venture partner, and is the first such platform in the world. The platform makes it possible to make low-cost (about one-tenth of traditional costs) payments in near real time. Work is currently underway to develop a payment app for mobile devices, and a true payment revolution is set to occur in 2018.

This coincides with the dramatic growth of the robo-advisory service offered by WealthNavi Inc. in partnership with SBI SECURITIES. Applications for accounts exceeded 37,000 in only a little more than a year since the service was launched at the end of January 2017, and customers have deposited more than 28.1 billion yen in assets.

These two developments definitively show that unless financial institutions are quick to introduce the latest technology and increase customer convenience, they will become less competitive and find it difficult to survive.

All financial institutions must be aware that the FinTech revolution will have an impact that vastly exceeds that of the Internet revolution. Our customers are also sure to abandon loyalty to traditional individual financial institutions and become extremely focused on increasing their own benefits.

There will probably be a steady outflow of customers from financial institutions that cannot quickly adapt, and the existing financial order will be destroyed within a short time. This will add to the financial revolution that is occurring simultaneously throughout the world.

The 17 managers who contributed to this book, including myself, have renewed our resolution to write our own future, and we are confident that the full realization of this revolution will be for the good of all people.

I would like to express my deep appreciation to all those who were involved in publishing this book.

Yoshitaka Kitao

Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, President, and CEO
SBI Holdings, Inc.
(Preface, )

Kazuhisa Shibayama, Founder and CEO
WealthNavi Inc.
()

Yosuke Tsuji, Cofounder and CEO
Money Forward, Inc.
()

Hiroki Maruyama, Cofounder and Representative Director
infcurion group, Inc.
()

Masami Komatsu, Founder and CEO
Music Securities, Inc.
()

Yuta Tsuruoka, CEO
BASE, Inc.
()

Russell Cummer, President and Representative Director
Exchange Corporation K.K.
()

Yoshiki Yasui, Founder and CEO
Origami Inc.
()

Yasuhiro Kuda, CEO
Liquid Inc.
()

Kariya Kayamori, Cofounder and CEO
QUOINE Pte. Ltd.
()

Takashi Okita, Representative Director
SBI Ripple Asia Co., Ltd.
()

David E. Rutter, CEO
R3
()

Hironobu Yoshikawa, CEO and Founder
Treasure Data Inc.
()

Tomohiro Amino, Representative Director and CEO
GiXo Ltd.
()

Ryosuke Konishi, Representative Director and CEO/CTO
Generic Solution Corporation
()

Daisuke Sasaki, Representative Officer
freee K.K.
()

Naofumi Tsuchiya, President and CEO
Goodpatch Inc.
()

Kiyokazu Okubo, Executive Officer