Lily Fang is Finance Professor at INSEAD. We discussed Lily's fascination with Finance, innovations in the field like FinTech and the results of our survey among listeners on the impact of remote working in Finance and the opportunities this may present for FinTechs.

We talk about:

What drove Lily to become an academic after her Ph.D. at Wharton
Trends in education (MBA, EMBA) since the early 2000s
Lily's main research interests focus on financial intermediation, financial institutions, asset market, media, financial markets, and China and how the rise of FinTechs fit into all of these
Our survey we have done in November on the remote work in Finance and opportunities for FinTechs. The make-up of our respondents:
- Over 40% worked in various Finance functions, another 15 % in FinTech and 15% in VC or PE roles, and 10 % in Investment banking.
- Over 75% of responders have working experience of 10 years and more.
- They come from a mix of independents and small companies (35%) and large companies (30%) and the rest in between.
- Nearly 60% are in senior roles (Director, MD, or Partner).
- Lastly, nearly 60% are based in Europe, over 20% in Asia, 10 % in the Americas, and the remainder in Africa and Australia.
We asked the respondents about how remote working, made more commonplace by the pandemic, impacted their work in Finance:

- Were you impacted by remote working a lot or not?
- Do you think it's temporary or permanent?
- Where do you see the biggest impact (e.g., teamwork, leadership, creativity or productivity)?
- Do you prefer a home office or not? Why?

Then we focused people's attention on how to turn these changes, which seem to have a profound impact on the way we work for the years to come, into opportunities for FinTechs:

- Where do you see the biggest opportunities for FinTechs if remote work for Finance professionals becomes more extensive and permanent than before the pandemic? E.g., client onboarding / KYC or CRM, automation/insights or cloud-native core banking systems/cybersecurity?
- Are these opportunities global, or do they highly depend on the local culture in your view?
- How long will it take for some of these innovations to take hold?
- Would commercialization of the biggest opportunities you see be best achieved by cooperation with incumbents or disruption from outside?

Listen in for the results and Prof. Fang's commentary.

Research and teaching priorities for 2021 and the best way to reach out. #1 priority: INSEAD's new online FinTech course starting in March 2021!