Trust in FinTech?: Disruption, Distribution, and Power in Finance and Technology

FinTech, and its sister industry, InsurTech emerged as a powerful yet elusive imaginary after the 2007 financial crisis. The promise is of revolutionary innovations and ‘disruption’ in finance ranging from money creation to payments, from credit risk evaluation to credit creation, from financial ‘robo’ advice to peer-to-peer insurance.

Technological innovations hosted on internet platforms like blockchain, risk evaluation algorithms, the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning for financial data processing, automated interactions with consumers are all part of the FinTech phenomenon.

Together, they have endowed a new generation of evangelistic entrepreneurs with the financial and intellectual resources to ‘disrupt’ banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions. 

But is power really being decentralised in finance away from central banks and giant financial conglomerates towards socially inclusive, rhizomatic cells of providers that create trust through platform transparency? Will consumers trust artificial intelligence, machine learning and expert systems to make decisions for their financial futures?

Who will set and regulate the priorities of financial expert systems? Will the current dysfunctional and unstable finance system be replaced by something more distributed and trustworthy dominated by non-banks and what geographic and political characteristics would it have? What are the cultures, symbols and representations of FinTech and TechFin?  This one-day workshop will bring together a multi-disciplinary group of researchers to discuss their current work on FinTech, InsurTech, blockchain and AI.

This workshop is organised by Ismail Ertürk, Director for Social Responsibility and Senior Lecturer in Banking at AMBS, and Liz McFall, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Open University and joint Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Cultural Economy in collaboration with Journal of Cultural Economy and Manchester Museum. (Money Gallery).  

Participants include:

Reuben Binns, University of Oxford  Sam Dallyn, University of Leicester

Gary Dymski, University of Leeds   Ismail Erturk, The University of Manchester

Inês Faria, University of Amsterdam  Hugo Jeanningros, Sorbonne University

Timothy Johnson, Heriot-Watt University  Paul Langley, Durham University

Liz McFall, The Open University   Nikolay Mehandjiev, The University of Manchester

Duncan Minty, Ethics Consultancy   Rachel O' Dwyer, Trinity College Dublin

Niki Panourgias, Leicester University  Alex Taylor, City University of London

Arjen van der Heide, The University of Edinburg Zsuzsanna Vargha, University of Leicester