The annual Sibos in Toronto next year will be one of the most anticipated gatherings since Swift, the bank-backed cooperative utility, organized its first one 40 years ago in Brussels. With 300 participants in its inaugural year in 1978, the annual gathering has grown to attract over 8,000 participants in Geneva this year with an increasing number of bank technology providers taking up space at the exhibition hall.

 

But 40 can be an awkward time. For some, it marks the beginning of midlife. Hollywood has depicted the challenges of being 40 through movies such as The 40-year-old Virgin, Judd Apatow’s first directorial debut in 2005. Subsequently, he followed it up with another, This is 40, released in 2012 about a couple played Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann who are about to turn 40, their kids are not getting along, both of their businesses are struggling, they’re about to lose their house and all of which are putting a strain on their relationship.

 

If it sounds familiar, delegates who attended this year’s Sibos in Geneva prefer to discuss the somewhat similar challenges facing banks and the industry in hushed tones. Indeed, this year’s theme at Sibos, Transforming the Landscape, seemed like a brave call to try and distance the financial services industry from its travails in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. With Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Standard Chatered and Wells Fargo still very much in the news for the wrong reasons, it has not been easy.

 

Meanwhile, fintechs and their youthful and bright leaders are taking on banks at their traditional offering. Cyber-criminals on the other hand are constantly trying to hack into secure banking platforms. Throw in the regulators toughening capital and liquidity requirements, the industry has to still somehow move forward and look to better days ahead.

 

Here are five questions (and answers) to provide clarity ahead of Sibos at 40.

 

The answer is yes. Thomas Jordan, chairman of the board of the Swiss National Bank puts it plainly – new technologies are leading the way for new financial services. While there are certainly some interesting innovations in the offing, it is important to recognize that many of the financial industry’s core functions will largely remain unchanged.

 

A couple of years ago, there was a real concern that these young and somewhat brass start-ups (upstarts to some) could uberize the banks. But at Sibos Geneva, a gentler version of fintech is emerging. “We like the banks,” says one. “We are going to collaborate,” says another. Regulatory constraints especially in payments have hit home and just as the banks, fintechs will need to figure out an appropriate response as they chase their dream of making things simpler, faster and better for consumers.

 

Our industry is under attack, declares Yahwar Shah, chairman of the board of Swift. The issue is no longer about the security of the banking infrastructure. Rather as one cyber-fraud expert shares, the issue is protecting the protected infrastructure and building enough query points along the way to prevent cyber-criminals to use the Swift infrastructure to transmit fraudulent payments as in the case of Bangladesh. Finding a foolproof solution is much like finding the needle in the haystack.

 

No one is expecting too much.

 

It is a matter of survival, says one banker describing why his bank is re-modelling the business to better align its interest with that of its core customers. It is also about extracting maximum efficiency via technological application available today. Data analytics is big especially intelligent intuitive data. Getting it right sets a bank for when businesses rebound sometime in the future.