This past week has been my time of realization that things are all coming together, from the technology front and then translating to my halftime career development journey.
Over the last 2 years since I had stopped working full time, I had been pursuing 2 goals. One, to reskill and learn about the things that interest me and what I believe will be the future of things to come. Secondly, it is to see if I can use my past work experience to pivot into a new niche, leveraging on my newly acquired skills.
With the timely introduction of the Skillsfuture initiative, I had been able to become a relatively successful part-time student. I started my learning journey by subscribing to all the courses (online, classroom) that interest me. It began with an intermediate wine class I did with 3 good friends and soon branched off to many exciting topics like aquaponics and starting a small business.
Soon, the focus for me became clear that the technology revolution is the future. I dived headfirst into the most challenging course yet – a Specialist Diploma in Business Analytics. It was a year of night classes and project work that stretched me as a student as I was one of the oldest and non-tech savvy uncles in the class of 26. To be honest, I eventually enjoyed the course tremendously. It brought me up to date on what I have been missing for almost 30 years since I graduated. It opened my eyes to what is possible now with Artificial Intelligence and Machine/Deep Learning.
Fintech is AI, Blockchain, Cloud and Data. The time has come that technology had finally caught up to make all of these pillars possible. Together, the sum of all the parts are much bigger and a quantum leap is enabled. With 5G coming, autonomous cars become a reality. AlphaGo by Google’s DeepMind beat the best Go player in the world and AI took a big step forward. China saw the trend immediately and realized that Big Data is the new oil.
I went to Hangzhou last year to attend the Alibaba new e-commerce business trip to witness first hand what China had achieved to date. It blew me away. They are developing technologies that will change the world and leapfrog over other countries like America. I also attended a Blockchain course in Seoul last month and could sense the excitement and buzz where all the fintechs were racing towards a big breakthrough.
This week, another big light bulb was turned on for me and it suddenly made my journey even brighter. Thanks to my ALCO consultancy role in Myanmar, the CEO signed us up for a 2 days Microfinance forum in S’pore. While it was a good opportunity for MFIs to meet lenders, it was the main theme that struck me.
Microfinance is traditionally very labour intensive and requires a lot of work to manage. The loan amounts are tiny and a company has to juggle between helping the unbanked get out of the poverty trap and making a profit. With the introduction of smartphones over the years, every citizen in countries like Myanmar now has a powerful computer in their hands. The ability to reduce friction to provide banking services efficiently is now a given.
Fintechs have also been struggling to break into the financial sector. Big banks are famous for silos and protecting jobs. A fintech that wants to change the world will have very little chance to survive once it is absorbed into the bank’s ecosystem.
So it is a perfect marriage made in heaven when the forum introduced microfinance to fintech. Both sides have strengths and weaknesses which compliment each other. Both sides want to save the world and make it a better place for the underprivileged. The union between the two will be so powerful. Using AI for credit scoring, chatbot, cloud-based core banking systems, epayments and geo-tagging are some of the ways microfinance can be revolutionized.
We followed our CEO for another talk he attended at GrowAsia, where they were also encouraging the marriage of Agriculture with Technology. Our Myanmar company is fully into rural agriculture and we had just started executing our roadmap on the digital transformation of our business. It was perfect timing to see that we were not the only ones embarking on this same path!
Separately, this was my 3rd week into my other bank consultancy role at Deloitte. The prior 1st two weeks were confusing as I grapple with working full time again, enduring massive headaches and panic attacks in the first few days. There was a tight timeline to achieve the application deadline by the end of the year for the new digital banking licenses and I came in many weeks behind. To be able to work with one of the foremost fintech companies in South East Asia as a client is a privilege for me.
Yes, indeed everything is coming together for me. My 2+ years of preparation is starting to bear fruit. When it rains, it pours. I am not complaining. I am now in a unique position to witness the eye of the storm that is approaching the world. I count my blessings and thank the Man upstairs for the guidance. I started this journey with no end in mind. I did not have a roadmap to help me navigate my path. I just know that I had to move forward or I will be left behind.
Halftime is what you make of it. You can continue to fight or be consumed by negativity and retreat into a cocoon. I have seen a number of friends going into the latter. S’pore has the longest mortality rate in the world now, standing at 85 and it will move towards 100 soon with technological advances. I still have many more good years ahead of me. My dad is 90 this year and still very healthy.
What path I want to take from here at 53 is entirely up to me. I will plot my own roadmap. Wherever it takes me, I am in control. I am excited to be swept up in the latest technology trends, to see the future now.
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