Autumn is the period of industry congresses. On 20.09.2018 the IX International Factoring Congress was held, on 24.10.2018. IX Anti-Fraud Congress, and on 7.11.2018. XIII Risk Congress, an annual event organized by BIK, which was attended by more than 450 guests from the financial world. The 13th Risk Congress was hosted by Dr. Mariusz Cholewa - President of the Board of Directors of the Credit Information Bureau. Among the speakers were representatives of institutions that provided substantive patronage of the event: Krzysztof Broda - Deputy President of the Management Board of the Bank Guarantee Fund (BFG), Dr. Marcin Mikołajczyk - Deputy Director of the Commercial and Specialized Banking Department of the Financial Supervision Commission (FSC), and Krzysztof Pietraszkiewicz - President of the Union of Polish Banks (ZBP).
This year, there were 3 panels addressing issues such as the future of banking, relations with regulators, potential sources of crisis in the banking sector, and issues of new technology and artificial intelligence in banking. Also among the speakers' presentations were bank solvency ratios in Europe, as well as new challenges in risk management. A selection of the speakers' presentations is available at official website of the Risk Congress.
But was the event really relevant to the factoring industry and did it raise issues specific to the future of factoring? In my opinion, rather not. The topic of factoring directly did not come up during the Congress. However, there were people from the industry present, who, after all, largely come from banking. The Risk Congress is undoubtedly primarily a banking sector event. There were topics related to factoring in a strongly indirect way, such as:
- The situation of the banking industry and the possible specter of crisis, capital requirements of banks, contact with the regulator;
- The need to ensure an adequate ROE for the industry, with the goal of a steady flow of capital;
- Integration of the banking sector in terms of the effectiveness of common solutions (e.g., anti-fraud, common databases),
- Sector risks associated with SME financing, high LTV real estate, developers, including fresh starters in the industry;
- What technology will do to the banking sector, the use of AI in banking, blockchain, OCR. Here, for example, Nu Delta's presentation of a sophisticated OCR system that scans entire VAT invoices into banking systems, a solution already used by two major banks and many other companies, could have been interesting;
- HR issues and the flow of people in the banking-fintech relationship, to what extent banking will maintain its attractiveness as a workplace for top talent;
- The future of cooperative banking in Poland;
- sector compliance.
Discussions on factoring directly, factoring as a faction of banking, or the issue of financing SMEs in this way did not appear in the panels. Nor did issues related to factoring risks or factoring fraud appear in the panels.
Whether I actually summarized the Congress proceedings well from the point of view of the factoring industry you can check for yourself. This is because the full proceedings of the panels have been made available online: (1) Transcript of live broadcast by SUDECKA TV PL either (2) BIK TV and a detailed account of the Congress with statements can be found at here.
