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Will the metaverse simply be “a more efficient way” of selling or buying property in future? ANZ banking lead Nigel Dobson proffered the thought recently.
An online think tank discussing the potential pros and cons of the “virtual and augmented reality” metaverse has highlighted its potential for the banking, broking and property realms.
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As part of an online panel speaking via the Infosys AfterNext Series on “The metaverse age is already here, what is AfterNext?” (13 September), ANZ Banking Group banking services portfolio lead Nigel Dobson outlined its current status and developing possibilities for the financial sector.
Asked to sum up the metaverse, Mr Dobson described it as: “…currently a spectrum of experiences.”
“It’s ranging from that gaming experience all the way through to these totally immersive VR experiences, regardless of your access choices — but the Metaverse differs from that typical gaming experience, we believe, by presenting the user with a persistent virtual world,” Mr Dobson stated.
“I think that continues to exist even when they’re not playing.
“And so this notion of a persistent virtual community — including the creation of virtual assets — is an extremely interesting development, and one that traditional supporters of the digital economy, like banks, should be planning for.
“What’s the hype about? I think we are seeing the ‘hyper cycles’ and I suppose at the moment we’re in this sort of elevated phase of the hype cycle.
“In my experience, where I’ve seen these come and then flatten out eventually, the hype precedes the genuine foundation of business models.
“What’s different about the metaverse that can facilitate commerce? And then who interacts with that commerce?
“For me it’s about ‘let’s find the business models that makes sense and can be sustained and then we’ll probably be past the hype cycle — but for now, it’s a very interesting prospect.”
Will business face-to-face interaction diminish?
With many non-bank lenders and brokers — and perhaps even bank lender representatives themselves to varying degrees — basing their “pitch” to potential borrowers on face-to-face human interaction, The Adviser asked the panel in what ways would this be negated by the metaverse, or how could e-commerce professionals embrace this new technology to enhance their business and growth?
Also, what of any security issues concerning client identification and protection of their sensitive financial data, if hackers were to hypothetically set up a “deep-fake” shopfront for “interaction”, for example.
Mr Dobson explained: “Well, it kind of depends on what you mean by human interaction, doesn’t it?
“The Metaverse redefines human interaction and sort of extracts it from our physical world into the virtual world.
“So if my avatar speaks to [you] as another avatar, around a virtual property — now that virtual property could exist early in the virtual world, but it also could be a representation of [a] genuine physical property in our physical environment…
“If it’s the latter then the metaverse may simply be a more efficient way of you and I communicating, coming to an arrangement, and potentially selling or buying your property.
“I think the other interesting thing about the token economy too, based on that example, is that you can fractionalise; you can tokenise your property and fractionalise it and sell parts of it. Or people could buy parts of different properties.
“So there’s this whole fractionalisation opportunity with Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT).
“In this kind of virtual experience, I think [it] opens up a whole other world for investors, for buyers, and I think the property market is one of those areas that everyone’s watching to see what sort of directions will happen in the future.
“I can’t predict the ball, but there’s a couple of examples where we think there will be development.”
Disruptive change for industry to come
As reported in The Adviser sister brand Mortgage Business recently, the chair of ANZ warned the fast-paced digital innovation across the financial services will disrupt the industry.
Speaking at the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) in Sydney (30 August), ANZ chair Paul O'Sullivan said innovation is occurring at a “faster and faster pace and will continue to do so”.
In addition, he said that DeFi, Web3, AI and new competitors will “radically disrupt our industry”.
“We might not know just how the future will evolve but we do know some… ventures will become very significant, even transformative, and we want to understand, participate and contribute where we can,” Mr O'Sullivan said.
“It will happen whether banks participate or not.”
Mr O'Sullivan said there was “great opportunity” for ANZ in areas such as digital trade finance, smart contracts, the Lygon digital guarantee company and, significantly, the interaction of digital assets and ESG.
Futurist and co-inventor of 3D vector graphics VRML, Mark Pesce, said as the banking and finance industry aims to keep pace in the digital transformation era, the increasing sophistication of identity fraud will result in the death of video and audio identity verification by the end of this decade.
He also countered recent industry analytics that jobs such as finance broking and accountancy, which rely heavily on routine tasks or data inputting, could be replaced by artificial intelligence and automation.
Mr Pesce told The Adviser that rather than being disrupted and replaced, he believed these professions would instead evolve to harness and embrace technology.
[Related: Automation is changing, not replacing, the role of finance brokers]
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