Future of Finance Conference

Dear Friends,
Ladies and gentlemen,

A warm welcome to the Palais des Nations, the home of operational multilateralism marking soon its 100th anniversary!

I am happy to be able to be with you today for this timely discussion.

Let me first of all thank the HLCM Chair and the Finance and Budget Network for bringing together - and bringing to Geneva - such a distinguished group of speakers from across the spectrum of international organizations, government, and the private sector.

It is particularly fitting that we meet in Geneva – as I said, the operational hub of the multilateral system, the Palais des Nations’ largest service center, and last but not least, the home of key actors in the global digital space.

Our group of speakers today is exactly the kind of diversity of backgrounds and expertise we need to meaningfully engage a topic as unwieldy and fast-moving as the nexus between technology and finance.

One of the most fascinating things about cutting edge technologies - beyond the sheer wonder of what they enable us to do - is the speed at which they develop right now.

They move at lighting speed - from science-fiction to reality; from experimentation to the mainstream.

Technologies like blockchain or Artificial Intelligence are everywhere, helping to buy and sell shares, helping to diagnose illnesses, and even - as I just experienced myself one week ago in China - replacing TV anchors.

That experience was a stark reminder of the extent of technologies’ impact on the job market.

In the 1990s, the American management consultant Warren Bennis predicted - only half in jest - that the “the factory of the future will only have two employees: a man and a dog. The man to feed the dog. And the dog to keep the man from touching the equipment.”

By now, of course, we have realized that it’s not just factory workers that face automation - the disruption of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is much broader and much deeper than that.

It includes us, here, at the United Nations, and it includes finance functions.

Here as elsewhere, the potential gains of technology and innovation promise to be huge.

From global shared service centers and digitization to Robotics Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence tools - technology is enhancing the ways in which finance officers can do their job:

̶ To improve efficiencies towards the optimal cost/service balance
̶ To strengthen financial controls to better manage risk
̶ To provide accurate, tailored information in real-time

Yet great as those benefits may be for the organization, we also face heavy challenges.

Ensuring that innovation does not pass us by is one.

Ensuring that technologies are compatible - and not duplicative - across organizations is another.

And third: remaining agile and responsive enough.

I am thinking for example about the very real risk that the rapid advance of Robotics and AI could outpace our ability to put in place a global shared service center in time for it to be useful.

But the biggest challenge, to my mind, is to ensure our staff - including in finance and budget functions - are prepared for the disruption ahead.

The classic story of starting your career with routine manual tasks to learn the details of the job and then gradually increase your role and responsibility within the organization - that story is unlikely to repeat itself in the future.

What matters now is not to learn things but to learn how to learn things; because adapting to new technologies is, above all, a process of continuous learning.

Existing jobs will disappear, but exciting new roles will be created - and it’s our task to help our staff retrain and learn and embrace these new opportunities.

But in all our discussions about technology - and let me close on that more general note - we must keep one thing in mind: which is that technologies are neither good or bad in and of themselves. At the end of the day, it’s our use of them that determines what they become.

Which means that it’s we who are still in control. And that is ultimately why I am confident about the future.

With that I wish you a successful and inspirational afternoon.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you.