EPISODE 211: Marketer of the Month Podcast with Fabian Astic

Hey there! Welcome to the Marketer Of The Month blog!

We recently interviewed Fabian Astic for our monthly podcast – ‘Marketer of the Month’! We had some amazing insightful conversations with Fabian and here’s what we discussed about –

1. Overseeing analytical and business preparedness for digital economy technologies like AI and blockchain.

2. Challenges in digital finance include interoperability and the development of stable digital cash alternatives.

3. Need for control over technology, legal, regulatory, and behavioral aspects to manage risks effectively.

4. The disparity between supply-side readiness and demand-side understanding requires education and demystification efforts.

5. Importance of expansion of digital assets to merge with traditional finance and leverage decentralized finance benefits.

6. Continuous publication of research on AI, digital finance, and their intersections to inform market participants.

About our host:

Dr. Saksham Sharda is the Chief Information Officer at Outgrow.co. He specializes in data collection, analysis, filtering, and transfer by means of widgets and applets. Interactive, cultural, and trending widgets designed by him have been featured on TrendHunter, Alibaba, ProductHunt, New York Marketing Association, FactoryBerlin, Digimarcon Silicon Valley, and at The European Affiliate Summit.

About our guest:

Fabian Astic is a Managing Director and the Global Head of Decentralized Finance & Digital Assets, Cyber Credit Risk, and AI Analytics at Moody’s Investors Service. With over 18 years of experience, he leads the group responsible for Moody’s preparedness for the digitalization of the global economy, focusing on transformative technologies like AI and blockchain.

Tech-Savvy Ratings: Moody’s Managing Director Fabian Astic on their Approach to Market Trends

The Intro!

Saksham Sharda: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Outgrow’s Marketer of the Month. I’m your host, Dr. Saksham Sharda, and I’m the creative director at Outgrow. co. And for this month we are going to interview Fabian Astic who is the Managing Director – Global Head of DeFi & Digital Assets, Cyber Credit Risk, and AI Analytics at Moody’s Investors Service.

Fabian Astic: Great to be here. Thank you.

Don’t have time to read? No problem, just watch the Podcast!

Challenge yourself with this trivia about the exciting topics Fabian Astic covered in the podcast.

Launch Interactive Quiz

Or you can just listen to it on Spotify!

The Rapid Fire Round!

Saksham Sharda: Okay, let’s start with the rapid-fire round. Just to break the ice. The first question is, at what age do you want to retire?

Fabian Astic: Oh, I’ve never thought about retiring. Oh. Do you want just one word? Is that right?

Saksham Sharda: Yes, or one sentence.

Fabian Astic: One sentence. Alright. Sorry. I don’t know yet.

Saksham Sharda: How long does it take you to get ready in the morning?

Fabian Astic: An hour. An hour and 15 minutes.

Saksham Sharda: The most embarrassing moment of your life?

Fabian Astic: I can’t think of any

Saksham Sharda: Favorite color?

Fabian Astic: Purple.

Saksham Sharda: What time of day are you most inspired?

Fabian Astic: In the evening.

Saksham Sharda: How many hours of sleep can you survive on?

Fabian Astic: Can go as low as six hours. Less than that. I can’t

Saksham Sharda: Fill in the blank. An upcoming finance trend is _____.

Fabian Astic: Digital.

Saksham Sharda: The city in which the best kiss of your life happened?

Fabian Astic: New York.

Saksham Sharda: How do you relax?

Fabian Astic: I relax in our country house in Connecticut, in the woods, doing nothing.

Saksham Sharda: How many cups of coffee do you drink per day?

Fabian Astic: Between the espressos and the drip coffee? I would say five to six.

Saksham Sharda: A habit of yours that you hate?

Fabian Astic: I speak too much.

Saksham Sharda: Most valuable skill you’ve learned in life?

Fabian Astic: Synthesizing things to make them simpler.

Saksham Sharda: One-word description of your leadership style?

Fabian Astic: Empowering.

IiSaksham Sharda: Ideal vacation spot for relaxation.

Fabian Astic: The same country house.

Saksham Sharda: Key factor for maintaining a work-life balance.

Fabian Astic: Have a good partner that reminds you when you need to stop working.

The Big Questions!

Saksham Sharda: Okay. Alright, well that was the end of the rapid fire. Now we will go onto the longer questions, which you can answer with as much time and ease as you like. The first one is as the Global Head of Digital Economy at Moody’s Rating. Can you talk about what the digital economy team is and what you guys do?

Fabian Astic: Sure. My group is responsible for both the analytical initiatives and the business preparedness efforts related to the digitalization of the global economy supported by technologies like AI and blockchain. So analytical preparedness, because our role is to tell market participants about the risks and opportunities that come with digital technologies, AI, digital finance, and key risks that come with those technologies, including cyber in particular as it relates to finance and credit risk. And two, business preparedness. Because when our stakeholders tell us that they want us to be with them, for instance, on digital platforms we’ll be ready. But it takes a lot of upstream work to be ready. It’s tech and data work, it’s a process optimization and design work. It’s a lot of risk compliance and regulatory preparedness work. So we have to, do all of that. And, my group is in charge of it.

Saksham Sharda: And so when it comes to preparedness, how are you ensuring the rating agency remains at the forefront of industry developments?

Fabian Astic: Alright, that’s a great question. I have multiple answers to that. So first key ingredient is to make sure that everybody is involved so that you don’t create a team that goes into the future alone, leaving all the others behind. So for that, we created a large matrix organization with different teams, and we have a core team of subject matter experts in AI, data science, blockchain, digital assets, and cyber. These people spend time monitoring market developments, regulatory developments, and technology developments, and they keep all the others informed and trained. My digital economy leadership team is comprised of senior leaders from all the departments across the rating agency so that we’re always aligned concerning strategic objectives. And then we’ll also create a network of champions. They are ambassadors within their business units for all topics related to the digitalization of the economy. Another key ingredient is to start by building a solid foundation first, that you can build on top of afterward within the right risk and control assessment framework so that you can operate safely and soundly so that you can operate in a safe sound environment. It takes a lot of time to set that up initially, but once it’s ready, it helps you ultimately go a lot faster.

Saksham Sharda: So speaking of this digital economy in general, what are the differences when it comes to ratings in a digital world versus a traditional world?

Fabian Astic: Right. So I like to say that a bond is a bond and even a digital bond is just a bond issued through a digital platform, the DRT platform. But that’s just a technical wrapper of it. So when you start your analysis, you start with the traditional primary credit risk drivers that are typically explained in our rating methodologies. And then you think about additional considerations that you may want to look at that are specific to the digital wrapper. If you want considerations or factors that could be reasons why cash flows could be trapped somewhere in the structure, not going ultimately to investors as planned.

Saksham Sharda: And so what are the key challenges when it comes to scaling in the digital finance space?

Fabian Astic: There are a few and I’ll group them in two, three categories. The first category is legal slash regulatory. The second category is technical infrastructure, and the third category is behavioral. So let’s start with the legal bucket. The legal status of digital assets and asset tokens is not clear everywhere depending on where you are in the world. You have some regions like Asia and Europe where there’s quite a lot of clarity. There’s some good momentum in other regions, including parts of Latin America and the Middle East. And then there is very little regulatory clarity in the us That’s for the first bucket. The second one was technical infrastructure. So it’s mainly about the lack of interoperability across digital platforms, but it’s also about the lack of digital cash. So you have a lot of, potential candidates for that, but it’s not ready yet. So for instance, you have unbacked cryptocurrencies, but they’re too volatile to be used as actual cash even though they have a role to play in the digital economy. You have tokenized deposits, but you don’t have enough to do anything at scale to date. You have central bank digital currencies or CBDCs, but except for less than a handful of retail CBDCs that are in production already. All the others are theoretical projects and pilots. So nothing that you can use again at scale. And then finally, you have stablecoins that are available. They do exist, but the vast majority of them are issued in USD and we don’t have a regulatory framework yet in the US for stablecoins. So market participants are reluctant to use stable coins as cash until they know that it is as good as cash. So in the meantime, the market has been thinking about other ways to transfer value across digital platforms using potentially other assets, tokenized assets. The third one. The third bucket was behavioural. And what I mean by this is that there is still a gap between supply and demand in digital finance on the supply side, on the sell side, you have a lot of people getting ready or already ready. You have structures, you have lawyers, you have technologists, and regulators already to look at digital assets on the demand side, and on the buy side, there’s still a lot of confusion. People are still thinking, you know, blockchain equals FTX equals anything digital. And they’re trying to understand what’s in it for them outside of technology aspects. So we’ve been demystifying with our research without ratings, a lot of the digital finance space telling investors and other market participants what it means from a financial and an economic perspective. Moving away from the buzzwords of crypto finance essentially, and making sure that people understand that digital finance is just finance.

Speaker 3: You have the fiat currency, you have the stocks, you have bonds, which is sort of the formalized type of assets. And on the other side, you have cryptocurrencies that you mentioned, NFTs, you have DeFi. In your opinion, what is the problem that this part is trying to solve? Is there a problem or why do you think we have now this trend towards DeFi or a less centralized system? So in your opinion, wha problem are they trying to solve?

Fabian Astic: So maybe too, since, you know, I like buckets. I’m gonna answer that with three buckets of digital finance. So first bucket is what I call digital infrastructure. So it’s 3D finance as you know, with essentially the same market participants, the same workflows, the same assets, and mostly the same cash flows. And that’s in that bucket that I put asset organization in particular. So it’s probably the biggest growth area in digital finance. Then you have a second bucket that I call native digital assets. So that’s all the assets that only exist because there is a blockchain, like multiple blockchains. So it would be things like the unbacked cryptocurrencies I mentioned before, and stablecoins, CBDC to some extent, even though many of them are not blockchain-based NFTs that defy protocols. And then a third bucket is what I call digital infrastructure. So it’s all the existing traditional institutions that are more and more exposed to digital risks, whether it’s because they are directly investing in digital assets or because they’re shifting their business model from traditional to digital. And with that comes everything like contagion risk from traditional finance to digital finance and digital finance to traditional, traditional finance, as well as macro risks and macro considerations. So those different buckets are interconnected. The first one, as I said, is expected to be the biggest growth area, but you cannot power everything in that new kind of newly powered digital finance ecosystem without using digital fuel. And that’s when the second bucket comes into play. And of course, you don’t operate in a vacuum. So bucket one and bucket two do not exist without bucket three. And so you see that all those buckets are interconnected. Now, DeFi itself and NFTs are a very tiny portion of that broader digital finance ecosystem. DeFi, it’s what, $50 billion? That’s it. So for defi to grow and to kind of leverage the benefits of decentralized finance, including efficiency and security you need the other buckets to grow. And until you have more assets to put in digital platforms in the DeFi platform, sorry, DeFi is just cryptocurrencies for the sake of cryptocurrencies, the only thing that you do in the defi space to date is buy cryptocurrencies and you use cryptocurrencies to borrow other cryptocurrencies. But that’s essentially everything that’s going on in the DeFi space. As you see bucket one expand and you start to see more digital assets available, digital tokens available to power defi platforms, then you can see that the two buckets, one and two will start to merge more. Some of the DeFi protocols and some of the DeFi technologies will be more and more integrated into the traditional finance space powered by modern technologies.

Saksham Sharda: So regarding AI and its impact on credit imminent, or is its impact on credit imminent or is it going to take some time before it materializes?

Fabian Astic: Alright, that’s a good question. I think at this stage, it is too early for AI to have a material impact on credit quality overall, except for the couple of sectors that are related to the creation of AI models and infrastructure. So for instance, if you are producing and selling GPUs right now, you’re quite busy and in a good way now, as new AI models, and solutions are developed and released over the next, I would say, three to five years, then the impact of AI on credit quality will become clearer and clearer. And I’m thinking in particular about sectors that are data rich, where market leaders will be able to leverage AI to kind of customize and differentiate their product and service offerings. What’s important if you want to leverage AI efficiently is to embed AI in your product offerings as opposed to people who will grab, I dunno, chat GPT off the shelf like everybody else. So if you want a sustainable competitive advantage, you need to embed AI in your products, and you need to do that with the right risk framework in place as well to control what you’re doing with AI. Now, in terms of what’s next, I’m thinking first about the global media and publishing sector with the sub-sectors of advertising and entertainment content. And all of that is mainly driven by the gen AI subset of AI. Interestingly, this is probably the first technical or technology transformation where knowledge workers are impacted before blue-collar workers. And that’s because of the nature of Gen AI. The next kind of sector will be manufacturing, probably in particular the auto manufacturing sector. And that part is not that much about Gen AI, but it’s also about other aspects of AI including edge computing. So that’s the fact of processing the data that you collect along the way directly where you collect it, as opposed to sending the data to a faraway server processing the data and then, sending it, sending it back to the site where it is needed. So when you think about auto manufacturing in particular, you see how useful it can be to collect, things along the way and improve, safety, driver experience, and also ultimately to help with self-driving cars. Then maybe another sector or group of sectors would be, as I mentioned before, all the data-heavy sectors. I’m thinking about banking and insurance in particular. You already have several AI applications in production in those sectors and thinking about, customer service-related applications, for instance, but also, AI to optimize, trading strategies and, financial solutions fraud detection and claims processing. So you already have a lot of that, in place and will get better and better over time. And because those sectors are, typically high in terms of, labor costs, there are a lot of, opportunities, to kind of automate, and create cost savings opportunities. At least that’s what we’ve observed and heard from market participants.

Saksham Sharda: So are there any potential risks or challenges in integrating AI into credit systems?

Fabian Astic: There are a lot of risks and challenges in integrating AI into everything or anything. You need to control all aspects of technology considerations. You need to consider all legal and regulatory risks and you need to also control for the way those tools are being used. So back to my point on behaviours, it’s almost as important as the technical risks and cyber risks that are underlying those applications. But the way people use them to use the tools is extremely important to keep an eye on.

Saksham Sharda: So I’ll just ask you one final question of personal kind. What would you be doing in your life, if not this?

Fabian Astic: That’s a great question. I don’t know. Maybe I would be teaching math or maybe I would be a singer, I’m not sure.

Saksham Sharda: And another bonus question, what advice would you have for job seekers looking to work in your Industry?

Fabian Astic: I would say to not, do not focus solely on the technology part of digital finance, nor solely on the digital or the finance part of digital finance. You need to be curious and think about both. You need to keep learning. You need to keep looking out and outside of your environment and be creative.

Speaker 3: With the implementation of AI, specifically generative AI in finance, it’s clear that the approach varies by country, right? Some regions, like the EU, are about to release the AI directive very soon. Now I’m a little lost. Other areas aren’t considering regulation as much. So, in your view, which regions do you see driving the transformation in generative AI in finance?

Fabian Astic: In terms of regions and countries? Yes. It’s really hard to say without making enemies.

Speaker 3: Where do you see the most advanced at the moment?

Fabian Astic: So there is quite a lot of regulatory clarity in a few regions, including China that pretty much studied first with regulatory frameworks. And with the EU with frameworks that are published and quite clear in other parts of the world, it’s not clear yet. You have Guidance documents that have been published. You have a lot of bilateral agreements. You have a lot of global summits and global cooperation. But I don’t know that there is a right way to do it. Some people would tell you we need regulatory clarity so that we know what we can and can do, and so that we can innovate safely. Other people would tell you that at this stage, it’s too early to be part of a or to be subject to a regulatory framework. And that instead you should let companies innovate first. And once you have a longer track record of what can be done with those technologies, at that point, you start to regulate. I don’t know what the right answer is. I just know that at some point it will stabilize anyway. And again, we’ve seen we, we’ve heard both from market participants, people that are very excited about, clear and existing regulatory frameworks and others that are, hoping that it’s not gonna be too fast and too restrictive.

Let’s Conclude!

Saksham Sharda: Thanks, everyone for joining us for this month’s episode of Outgrow’s Marketer of the Month. That was Fabian Astic who is the Managing Director – Global Head of DeFi & Digital Assets, Cyber Credit Risk, and AI Analytics at Moody’s Investors Service.

Fabian Astic: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Saksham Sharda: Check out the website for more details and we’ll see you once again next month with another marketer of the month.