Day Three of the FSC Annual Conference: Yahoo!7's crystal ball

What does the future of digital hold?

Day three of the Financial Services conference saw Reg the Goldfish (@RegTheFSCMascot) having an aspro and a quiet lie down on the bottom of the tank - as the plenary volume was cranked up.

After a robust political debate between MPs Deborah O'Neill (@deborah_oneill) and Paul Fletcher (@paulwfletcher) and a pacy plenary from CBA economist Craig James (@craigjamesoz) delegates heard from Rohan Lund of Yahoo!7

Lund's predictions for the decade include the following:

• Data geeks will become rock stars
• Mobile will become the dominant platform - already more searches are done on mobile devices than computers
• Advertising that's more relevant to users (contextual) will increasingly be seen as content, not advertising

At the same time ivory towers may have their foundations shaken by the three things driving structural change.

Top 3 trends

• Internet speed - every second equals revenue. Why are people transacting online? Because it's faster.
• The social graph - Facebook knows more about us than we do ourselves. If it can predict that pet owners are better at repaying their debt...what else can the social graph tell marketers about us?
• Proliferation of mobile devices - as a replacement, ultimately, even for our wallets and house keys.

How to be sustainable as a business to the financial services industry?

A few tips from Lund include:

• Using the power of the big data we have as financial services institutions
• Work out how to make the consumer trend towards collaborative consumption work for your business
• Look for opportunities to make life easier, faster for consumers...where, how and when they want it.

The bottom line?

Deliver more utility to consumers, says Lund. Not more "stuff". We just don't need it.