July 29th 4:00 PM EST

After a year that’s been disrupted by COVID-19, business owners have drastically altered their financial habits to keep up with evolution in consumer preference. The competitive landscape, meanwhile, is becoming more challenging as digital technology lowers barriers to entry. Our session will explore what the role of banks is in a far more competitive environment and how banks can utilize digital tools for business building, which will ultimately serve as a growth and success engine for their small-business clients.

After a year of disruption in wealth management -- widespread working from home, virtual meetings between financial advisors and their clients, volatility in the stock market -- the world will hopefully begin recovering later this year. Many of the trends the pandemic in finance accelerated may be here to stay. Catherine Keating brings us her dispatches from the front lines of financial advice.

Card payments and ACH transfers were the first innovations in payments, lowering the human cost of transmitting money. However, today it's possible to build direct relationships and economically viable connections outside of these protocols. Trevor Marshall, Chief Technology Officer at Current, will discuss the alternative networks that exist today, including open APIs, open balances via stablecoins and what they mean for the future of payments and banking.