“Adapt or Be Left Behind”: Fintech Speaker Dan Cobley on the Digital Imperative

Dan Cobley is a renowned technology leader and Fintech Speaker, best known for his time as Managing Director of Google UK & Ireland. He has since built a distinguished career at the intersection of digital innovation and financial services.

As co-founder of fintech success stories ClearScore and Salary Finance, and now Managing Partner at Blenheim Chalcot, he has helped scale disruptive ventures that are reshaping the financial landscape.

In this exclusive interview with The Champions Speakers Agency, Dan shares his views on digital transformation, the future of fintech, and why innovation must be embraced by every organisation to remain competitive.

Q1. The past year has accelerated digital transformation drastically—what should brands do now to ensure digital is an integrated and effective part of their marketing strategy?

Dan Cobley: I think it’s clear over the last year that we’ve seen perhaps a decade of digital transformation and adoption happen in a matter of months. So I think the best way to think about this is to think about what you might have hoped you’d have done by 2030—and make sure you do it this year.

Q2. What’s your response to businesses that still believe “digital isn’t for them”?

Dan Cobley: So what would I say to a business that says digital’s not for them?

I’d say bye bye, nice knowing you. Seriously though, I think any business that thinks digital is not for them is a bit like a business 100 years ago saying electricity is not for them. It’s just an impossible way to be a competitive long-term business in today’s world.

I’d say that you absolutely have to get with the programme. You have to digitise the way you communicate with your customers, the way you run your internal processes, and the way you run every aspect of your organisation. Companies that don’t do that won’t be around to answer the question in 10 years’ time.

Q3. In practical terms, how can companies use technology to enhance customer experience and streamline operations today?

Dan Cobley: In terms of small changes businesses can make today, I think it’s about looking at the way your customers live their lives and the things that they do to make every aspect of their daily existence more efficient and more convenient—and making sure that your products and services are working in that way.

So it should be no more difficult, no more frustrating to engage with you as a company than it is for them to do their shopping, talk to their friends, or organise their daily routines. And if there’s a gap, you need to close that gap.

Q4. You’ve highlighted how adoption hinges on feasibility, economics, and market readiness. How has the last year reshaped the market’s readiness for new technologies?

Dan Cobley: Thinking about new technologies, they tend to come to market in a significant way when three things are true: when the technology is feasible, when the economics of rolling it out are viable, and when the market is ready. Usually it’s that third thing that slows down the adoption of new technologies.

But what we’ve seen over the last 12 months is the market getting incredibly rapidly ready for new technologies. The enforced working from home and our desire to be distant from other people has meant that a whole decade of digital adoption has happened in a matter of months. That means there’s going to be a huge stickiness to a lot of the new digital ways of working that we’ve seen in the last year—and I think that’s the world we’re going to be in for the foreseeable future.

Q5. For organisations aiming to foster a culture of innovation, what are the most effective ways to empower employees to think creatively and experiment boldly?

Dan Cobley: In terms of advice that I’d give to companies looking for a more innovative culture—well, I could do a 40-minute keynote on this—but in terms of some of the highlights I would say you need to get the right team in place. That means hiring creative problem-solvers, people who are enthusiastic about attacking a problem because that’s a fun thing to do. The people with that mindset are going to be helping you solve the problems for your business and your customers that take you forward.

I think you need to define the goal, not the path, for that team. People with that kind of mindset enjoy figuring out how to solve the problem, so just make very clear what the goal is and they’ll find a way to get there.

You need to give them some freedom. You need to give them perhaps 20% time, or free Friday afternoons, where they can get away from the day-to-day task list and think more expansively about some of the problems that they want to solve.

You need to be forgiving of smart failure. People who take sensible, calculated risks on things that might be game-changing for your organisation—you need to recognise that, by definition, some of those risks are going to fail. If you know what the answer is going to be already, then it’s not a test, it’s not an experiment, and you’ll learn nothing from it.

But if you give people the freedom to make those experiments and do those tests, then in some cases they’ll be surprisingly positive in the outcome, and they’ll move your business forward.

And lastly, you need to give them the tools to allow them to do these things efficiently. Invest in the digital platforms for data analysis, A/B testing, and things like that, which can give them an accelerated ability to learn, innovate, and bring new things to market.

This exclusive interview with Dan Cobley was conducted by Mark Matthews of The Motivational Speakers Agency.

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