This year I was lucky to attend AMP’s Amplify Festival in Sydney. My first session is ‘Emerging Shifts for Money and Wealth’ with Dr Tim Jones. Some notes on Tim:

“Tim is Founder and Program Director of the Future Agenda – the world’s leading open foresight project… Tim is a recognised expert in innovation and future growth. He is the author of numerous articles and eight related books and is a regular speaker at corporate events and public conferences on innovation leadership, growth platforms and future trends. He has a PhD in Innovation Performance and Masters Degrees from Cambridge, Imperial College and the Royal College of Art in London.”

Dr Tim starts off his talk, focusing on the difficulty of predicting and anticipating future changes and trends:

“Organisations increasingly want to identify and understand both the anticipated and unexpected changes so that they can be better prepared for the future”

He says you can’t predict what will happen, but you can anticipate what might.

Tim makes the interesting observation that Banks and Financial Institutions have spent the last decade essentially digitising their existing business model. Now, and in the future the focus will be on what could be done differently – real innovation that leverages social and mobile.

Lifespan and birthrate

We are an aging population, and fertility rates are also decreasing. Since 1975 Australia’s birth rate has been below natural replenishment rate. This means we need to work longer, harder, have more babies, or increase immigration.

This extended lifespan has also created new life cycles, with different requirements. Simple marketing models of peoples stage of life are becoming less relevant.

Alternate Investments

People are investing in passion investments (art, wine, collectables), Tangible Assets (gold and property) and the family network (education and health).

“Trusted storage vehicles beyond cash are on the rise”

Over the last 10 years, what has performed best? Unbelievably its Classic Cars 375%. Thanks for this stat Tim, I always hoped my car hobby was more than just a money pit!

Increasing Levels of Personalisation

People want ever increasing levels of personalisation. Successful businesses will be able to do this on a mass scale.

Money and Your Mobile

Money on your mobile – unbelievably it’s already working in Africa – very successfully, despite their low tech phones.

Tesco’s HomePlus – with a mobile, virtual shopping centre that you interact with whilst waiting for the train. This part was really interesting, worth researching further.

“You are your SIM card”

 

Access vs Owning

Access is not necessarily owning, shared access – ZipCar etc.. community based sharing. Tim explains that people don’t necessarily want to own stuff, they just want access to it. We are so used to buying that we view the world with this paradigm, but this will change.

Dynamic Pricing

Using your mobile as payment and location tracking, you can then have dynamic charging, for example on the train, get charged by the time of the day, and also how long you are actually on the train.

Longitudinal Financial Product

Tim also talks about the idea of a ‘Single Longitudinal Financial Product’, such as intergenerational mortgages. An example of this is a structured financial product to replace the existing ‘parent gives some money towards their kids mortgage’.

New Global Currencies

The idea of currencies that are not official currencies – such as the latest craze bitcoin, but includes google wallet, paypal, etc. In Africa they are transferring ‘minutes of airtime’, and it has become a de-facto form of currency. Phone companies there are even paying interest on this bank of minutes.

Tim says there is a system out there, that could be a global replacement traditional form of currency. Governments are very worried about this from a taxation perspective.

Summary

Tim’s talk highlighted five big trends, that forward looking businesses and startups need to consider:

• Pervasive mobile
• Access is not owning
• Dynamic pricing
• Longitudinal products
• Alternative currencies

Change is inevitable. Thanks Dr Tim Jones, great talk on Emerging Shifts for Money and Wealth.