Fabio Panetta: Fintech and banking - today and tomorrow

Speech by Mr Fabio Panetta, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Italy, at the Harvard Law School Bicentennial Annual Reunion of the Harvard Law School Association of Europe, Rome, 12 May 2018.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

1. Introduction

Technology and digital transformation are radically changing people's habits and firms' activities. They are changing the ways in which people produce, buy goods and services, and interact with each other.

Our daily activities increasingly depend on connectivity. In 2016, about 95 per cent of businesses in OECD countries had a broadband Internet connection and more than 75 per cent had a web presence. Half of the adult population had purchased goods or services online, compared to 36 per cent in 2010.

Innovation has had a remarkable effect on mobile devices. The smartphones in our pockets have a computing capacity far greater than that of a 1960's supercomputer, they are a hundred thousand times lighter and ten thousand times less expensive. Last year 1.5 billion smartphones were sold globally - that's one fifth of the world's population. Mobile technology and services are estimated to have contributed $3.6 trillion or 4.5 percent to global GDP in 2017.