Exploring the Future of Digital Money at the Citi DigiMoney Symposium

This year marks the third annual Digital Money Symposium, hosted by Citi and Imperial College London at London's City Hall. Together with my colleagues, I was glad to welcome over 170 delegates to explore our progress in advancing the digital money agenda, its associated benefits and, indeed, its challenges. Digital money holds the promise of significant benefits for businesses – as well as the public sector. It not only provides efficiency gains from the lower cost of cash handling, but it also provides significant gains for those that play a pivotal role in the evolving digital money ecosystem.

This year the Symposium was entitled, 'From Far Afield to Near Field: Stories of Progress', and was opened by Jamie Forese, Co-President of Citi and CEO of the Institutional Clients Group. In his speech Jamie outlined how innovative technologies are challenging traditional industries and their ways of working.

The Symposium provided a platform for industry leaders to discuss their awareness, readiness and adoption of digital money across multiple sectors. To understand the opportunity and reap the benefits, businesses must tailor their strategies to the state of readiness within the markets they operate. The agenda featured presentations from Citi business leads as well as external thought leaders in the space. For a full list of speakers, topics and video highlights please visit the Digital Money Symposium website.

Another exciting development at the conference was the launch the 2015 Digital Money Index. The Index provides a 90-market perspective on digital money readiness and the benefits of digital money adoption for governments, businesses and consumers. In addition, a companion research report entitled, Digital Money: A Pathway to an Experience Economy was released. This report explores how and when industries should invest in digital money and why the journey is worth taking.

While the benefits of digital money adoption are undeniable, it is important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to increasing adoption across markets. Factors such as market maturity, consumer demand and corporate capabilities all factor in to the success of individual markets. And partnership is essential. An opportunity of this magnitude – where we see a convergence of commercial, economic, social and policy goals – is rare. If we are to truly deliver against it, then we have to recognise that we can all offer a set of core attributes that can be advantageous at different stages of digital money readiness – but that no single player can do it alone.