Nearly 70 decision makers from the financial industry where eager to know more about digital disruption through different presentations and keynote speeches. The event was also promoted by WebID Solutions GmbH, CRIF’s strategic partner, which has allowed CRIF to enrich its identity verification solutions by video conference.

During the first part of the event, Tobias N. Ruland, Senior Consultant, CRIF GmbH Germany, showed how the EU Payment Services Directive (PSD2), which aims to enhance consumer protection, promoting innovation and improving the security of payment services across the European Union, will lead to completely new customer authentication and secure communication services in compliance with XS2A (Payment Initiation and Account Information Services). Thomas Schwalbe, Senior Key Account Manager, Bürgel Wirtschaftsinformationen, explained how banks can prevent fraud using a closed information system like the Deutsche Schutzportal, which leverages information sharing. Agnes Schneider from Austria Wirtschaftsservice GmbH gave interesting presentations on the benefits and insights of a new rating solution developed with CRIF. To conclude this session, Massimo Gentilini from CRIF illustrated the disruptive potential of blockchain technology.

The second part focused on a panel discussion with the two founders and CEOs of WebID Solutions GmbH, Frank Stefan Jorga and Franz Thomas Fürst, who explored the end-to-end digital process, from identification to contract conclusion, and speculated on future outlooks.
Special guests who shared their stories included Dalibor Kostic, who illustrated the T-Mobile Austria case study and fraud prevention tools already in use today, such as digital fingerprinting. The highlight of the conference was surely the keynote speech of the ‘innovation punk’ Jean-Philippe Hagmann, who clearly showed the reasons why innovation is so difficult to achieve and what successful companies do differently.