When Galileo said the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around, he was placed on house arrest. It wasn't just because his idea sounded crazy but it defied the logic of scientific and religious thought at the time.
Fast forward to three centuries later, unusual - and therefore historic - occurrences like a scientist debunking a fundamental view have now become commonplace. Thanks to persistent and radical developments in technology, the unthinkable happens practically everyday.
Take for example the idea of mass-scale financial planning. Only a few years ago, only high net worth investors could have access to professional financial advice but thanks to software innovations such as the one at CARM (page 27), mums-and-dads can now have access to good advice at a click of a button.
There are also new trends emerging in electronic bond trading (page 31). In Galileo's time, debt transactions were written on paper and delivered by hand. Today, fixed income trading can be done on computers and delivered electronically.
Nothing new there except the prevalence of electronic bond trading signaled another unthinkable, the unprecedented globalisation of fixed income instruments.
There's another technology lexicon that entered the financial services industry of late. It's called Web 2.0 (page 55). Talk to teenagers and they would tell you that Web 2.0 is old news but social networking, once a not-for-profit exercise to communicate online, has the potential to transform the way a company engages with its customers and gather business intelligence.
Put another way, if Web 2.0 existed during Galileo's years. His house arrest wouldn't have stopped him from showing his scientific studies to the rest of the world.
In short, one way to remind ourselves how much technology - and ongoing developments in technology - allow companies to raise their benchmarks and do the unthinkable is to go back more than three thousand years ago at a time when the world's best and brightest had to live without it.
For example, a mid-size bank handles more than 1500 business events per second (page 13). Complex events processing is the new thinking that will enable financial services providers to handle those events efficiently and collate that information in a way that will help them improve customer service and boost their profits.
In this edition of the journal, we highlight new financial services technologies that dare to accomplish the unthinkable. The technology experts behind them might not receive the same acclaim as Galileo but for the record, the impact of their thinking are just as phenomenal.
We hope you find this journal insightful and as always, we welcome your feedback and contributions.
