The ‘kissing bugs’ of capital markets: How the financial services industry can best evolve

Abstract

Evolution in capital markets can be passive or active depending upon how participants decide to engage in the process. The market will evolve naturally irrespective of active involvement from participants; if rapid (or engineered) evolution, however, is what we seek, then we need to leverage the ‘kissing bugs’ — that is, the forced engineering of horizontal innovation transfer from other industries. This transfer needs to become our DNA — in the way we hire and build work environments, processes, governance and ways of working. Also as practitioners, we need to take long-term business models into consideration while creating short-term strategies and then select the innovation that best supports delivery of that vision. To remain relevant, we need to rebuild, not enhance.