digitalisation

Technological dominance is the new geopolitical battleground. Companies and countries alike must embrace artificial intelligence if they don’t want to be left behind. This is part six in Investment Officer’s seven-part special series on geopolitics and investing.

In the Luxembourg financial and innovation sectors, blockchain is often discussed a key element in the financial industry’s future, mentioned alongside artificial intelligence as a way of promoting digitalisation and cutting unnecessary costs. But some who are familiar with the technology as part of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency have said that blockchain is a poor choice for this sort of application.

There is still no uniform European investor protection as envisaged by MiFID II, according to research conducted by Ronald Janssen of Ortec Finance and Tom Loonen of the Free University of Amsterdam in a survey of 25 European private banks. Their research shows that private banks in Europe have different approaches to the concept of Know Your Customer (KYC) and use different levels of detail in implementing it. Also, that none of the banks has a fully digitalised process.

At the moment, the healthcare sector is still underdeveloped digitally, while the world population is getting older and more chronically ill. Nevertheless, this sector is also slowly but surely embracing the Internet of Things. Henk Grootveld sees this as a reason to invest in digital healthcare.