SEAC will host this talk by Dr. Karen Lai (Durham University) on FinTech in Southeast Asia. Dr. Lai will provide more in-depth observations on consumption and production dynamics in the region with particular focus on data centres and the reframing of financial activities as leisure. The talk is chaired by Prof. Hyun Bang Shin (Professor Geography and Urban Environment; Director LSE SEAC).
Encompassing a new wave of companies that mobilise technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), distributed ledger technologies (DLT), platform infrastructures, and mobile app-based services, Fintech is changing the ways that businesses and consumers make payments, lend, borrow and invest. Over the past decade, Asia has been a particularly active region for FinTech, in terms of funding and innovations as well as rapid adoption and market growth. This seminar highlights two dimensions of how FinTech is reshaping financial practices, and their socio-economic and spatial impacts in Southeast Asia.
The first dimension on consumption examines the ‘gamification’ of finance in which banking and financial activities are being reframed as fun and rewarding, underpinned by a focus on entertainment, lifestyle perks, and social media engagement. In order to deliver on this ‘playfulness’, user experience/user interface (UX/UI) design have become increasingly important to financial services, alongside the traditional suite of legal and accountancy services.
The second dimension on production focuses on data centres. The expansion of FinTech economies has increased the demand for data centres in the region with companies such as Ant Group, Amazon and Zoom setting up data centres in Malaysia, Indonesia and even in land-scarce Singapore. Despite their virtual applications, data centres have specific locational requirements in seeking reliable energy supplies and infrastructural set up for ventilation, cooling, fire suppression, and fibre connections. Although there is increasing interest in the potential of ‘green fintech’, such as how AI and DLT can improve measurement and monitoring of risks and compliance with Sustainable Development Goals, the growth of data centres that underpin these applications have important environmental impacts that are not often accounted for in the rhetoric of green finance.
A video recording of this event is available here.
Speaker and Chair Biographies:
Dr. Karen Lai (@karenpylai) is Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Durham University. Her research interests include geographies of money and finance, FinTech, service sectors and market formation, focusing particularly on issues of financialisation, knowledge networks, and financial centre development. Her current research examines the impacts of FinTech on reshaping socio-economic practices, infrastructures and actors in global financial networks, and reconfiguring financial centre development. She is a founding member of the Global Network on Financial Geography (FinGeo) and serves on the journal editorial board/international advisory board of Geoforum, Geography Compass (Economic section), and the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography.
Prof. Hyun Bang Shin (@urbancommune) is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and directs the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. His research centres on the critical analysis of the political economy of speculative urbanisation, gentrification and displacement, urban spectacles, and urbanism with particular attention to Asian cities. His books include Planetary Gentrification (Polity, 2016), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience (Routledge, 2021), and The Political Economy of Mega Projects in Asia: Globalization and Urban Transformation (Routledge, forthcoming). He is Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and is also a trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation.