Microsoft's director of financial services: the future of fintech lies in AI

If there's anyone who can talk about the rise of fintech (financial technology) and where the sector is going, its Microsoft's director of financial services, Richard Peers. He's been working for the legacy tech company for the past 21 years, and it's given him some advantages. And one of the advantages of being around for that amount of time is as the industry changes, you can change your roles," he told Verdict. Six years ago he was working with Microsoft's teams that were working with the banks developing mobile apps. In doing that, I met the whole wave of the need to modernise banks, the need to improve the customer experience, deal with the frustration employees had with the systems, and what was being done to improve the operational capabilities. Ahead of his speech at Lendit Europe 2017 next week, Peers (left) spoke to Verdict about the rise and future of fintech, why banks need to learn from Chinese tech companies and his thoughts on artificial intelligence (AI). "After the banking crisis, you had a lot of computer science graduates who couldn't get jobs and a lot of bankers who really understood banking were being made redundant or choosing to leave.