Surveillance lessons learnt and plans for 2019

All else considered, 2018 for me has been a good year, January we had the opportunity to assist the Reserve Bank with their surveillance activities this was a highlight mainly because of the extent to which we involved banks and other reporting entities in the renewal process.

As technology continues to develop at exponential rates, the advanced, or, the innovators being the smaller payments/ tech companies in particular- are forced to report using ancient mechanisms because of the legacy systems that are still in place within central banking, the result of is that tech bears costs that could be diminished should the watchman streamline their reporting requirements.

What this essentially means, in the South African surveillance context, is, the likes of Home Affairs, SARS, CIPC, DTi and other governmental firms reporting into the Reserve Bank need to integrate instead operating in functional silos. Statisticians also need to be collaborative, thus allowing for micro-matching activities to take place and therefore, giving us way better surveillance, improved efficiency in government organisations as well as, perhaps, less of a FICA strain on banking.

I'd also like to touch on our card providers, mainly VISA and MasterCard. Boy are they sitting on some valuable information. I'll leave it at that.

As a consultant, I am privileged in that I get a bird's eye view of an industry and it's ecosystem which gives way to far better judgements, it also gives me great pleasure to relay some of the information I get from the bottom to the top and visa-versa, this can either be from business to tech, from operations to the board or, in this case, the banks to the Governor.

This year, 2019, I plan on involving myself more on the banking side, I am currently researching banking and insurance costs across geographical locations in South Africa and by how much they vary, particularly in the merchant space. I will also be focussing on job readiness as well as using my network to place graduates as well as professionals in the work spaces they feel best suits them.

I am wishing you all the best during the year of the pig!