Patrick Harker, Speech: Fintech in a Changing World

“Fintech, in other words, can help foster financial inclusion. That’s undeniable. But that is far from inevitable.”

“Like all tools, fintech can be used for good, ill, or somewhere in between. Just as fintech can foster frictionless legitimate transactions, for instance, it can foster frictionless fraudulent transactions as well. Fraud is an example of where a little bit of friction can be a good thing.”

“Fintech has developed a lot over the six years we’ve been hosting these conferences, and the discussions like those we will have over the next two days have moved out of the largely theoretical and evermore into the realm of the empirical. We have increasingly rich data sets here in the United States and abroad that provide important insights on how fintech is reshaping credit markets.”