UNS – The Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) Surakarta, together with the Financial Services Authority (OJK) organizes an international webinar on the development of the financial services sector in the digital era, Thursday (25/6/2020).
In the webinar entitled Digital Transformation, Covid-19, and the Future of Financial Service, the Director of Financial System Stability OJK, Sukarela Batunanggar, states that digital transformation making the financial services sector experience massive growth that can no longer be predicted in a linear fashion.
“In the future, the regulator must be more focused on output than the process taken, encourage innovation in the financial service sector, be more responsive, agile, and precise in facing the digital era,” states Batunanggar.
In the front of 200 participants, through Zoom Cloud Meeting, Batunanggar mentioned a number of challenges faced by the OJK as a regulator of the financial services sector in the digital age. “Eliminating the old paradigm, which is the conventional business process, low digital and literacy, as well as improving consumers data protection are some of the challenges faced by the regulator in the financial digital era,” explains Batunanggar.
On the occasion, FEB UNS also invites two international speakers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Southampton University, UK. The second speaker, Prof. Johan Sulaeman from NUS states that business competition is getting tighter. Therefore, the regulator is required to quickly adapt to the era of digital transformation. According to him, currently, customers are forced to use digital services in making transactions or accessing financial services.
“Trust becomes crucial amid the tight competition in financial services. Technology should be considered not only as tools but as a product. Technology needs to improve consumers’ trust because they need to interact with a machine and all digitized features, thus the system needs to be safe from external threats such as hackers,” explains Prof. Johan.
On completely different matters, Dr. Larisa Yarovaya, from Southampton University, UK, is explaining the potential of crisis in the financial sector due to COVID-19, while stating that the current condition has the potential to be a black swan event, especially in the cryptocurrency market. Although cryptocurrency currently only gain small potions of focus from the research in finance, several works of literature found that cryptocurrency had hedging opportunities to save property assets during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The international webinar, which organized by FEB UNS and OJK, was opened directly by the Dean of FEB UNS, Prof. Djoko Suhardjanto. In his remarks, Prof. Djoko hopes that this webinar can provide insights to the participants regarding the digital transformation carried out by the financial services industry during the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, as well as the challenges in the future. Humas UNS/Yefta