Welcome to Future of Finance, where Fortune asks prominent people at major companies about their jobs, how their firm fits into the crypto ecosystem, and what this all means for how we use money.
John Oliver has spent more than two decades at PwC, where hes a partner and U.S. fintech trust services co-leader. Over the past few years, the firm has made a bigger push into fintech, which increasingly has meant a bigger push into blockchain and crypto.
We discussed everything from improving the efficiency of payments to creating opportunities for the unbanked to, perhaps most important, using blockchain to eliminate the filing of corporate expense reports. Also: There may be a silver lining to American politicians failing time and again to pass meaningful crypto legislation.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
How do you describe your job to people?
I wear many hats, so it depends on who Im talking to. I co-lead our fintech practice. Im a career auditor with PwC. Ive been in our banking and capital markets group. We decided a little over three years ago to create a fintech practice combining our technology folks with our financial servicesspecifically bank and capital markets folksand have one team that I co-lead with a partner of mine in our technology practice. And crypto has become a much bigger component of what the tech really is.
So, just to be clear, there was a fintech push, and later its come to include crypto and blockchain, or was that originally part of the thinking?
Id say it was a fintech push, and crypto has become increasingly dominant as part of what fintech really means. When we first started this, it was people looking for faster pay rails. And what has emerged as the answer, in some ways, is crypto. I remember probably about 2 1/2 years ago, I was like, This is really emergingyou know, fintech is becoming crypto.
I saw you completed a blockchain class at Wharton. What were some big takeaways?
I took the course when I first came into this role. Basically, I knew enough about crypto to be dangerous at the time, and I really wanted to find an immersive experience. It was a great program, with a group of other individuals, and we really learned from each other and pushed each other further and further.
So it was mostly financial professionals in the class?
They were there, but clearly there were also crypto natives kind of coming at it the other way, wanting to learn the financial side. And I think there were some attorneys. Peoples different experiences blended together made the course that much richer.
How has this translated into helping clients? What trends are you seeing?
Id say the demand was much higher on the crypto-native side nine months ago. The VC/private equity space was flush with capital going to crypto natives, and crypto natives were in the capital markets. So the stock markets were opening up, there was kind of this rush to, Lets get ready and go public.
We were getting a lot of requests to help build controls, help make sure the accounting is right, help build infrastructurethen last fall that really dropped off a cliff. And not only did it drop off in what we saw in public markets, but funding froze. There is limited funding going into crypto right now, so more requests are coming from traditional financial institutions who are taking this opportunity to build out their own infrastructures. Theyre building proprietary blockchain systems that theyre using within their own customer networks.
If I can give you a tangible illustration, Consensus, one of the bigif not the biggestcrypto conferences, was a couple of weeks ago in Austin. If you sat in a chair and watched people walk past you, the volume of sport coats this year versus last year was dramatically increased. Thats traditional money. That dynamic has changed quite a bit.
Youve named one of the notable trendstraditional financethats among PwCs top five for the industry this year. After the FTX collapse and several other bankruptcies, is it fair to say were already seeing TradFi play a bigger role?
Yeah, right now the most prevalent is companies starting out with intercompany payments. Theyll start with, Can we create a blockchain and digital payment mechanism for our own intercompany settlement processes? In fact, were looking at that at PWC. Once we master that, and work the kinks out, then well in turn take that to our customer network. And then once we master that, we can broaden it out and potentially go to a decentralized blockchain network.
Then, number two is on the custodial sidemajor investments in security, risk management, and working on how we can get to some sort of proof-of-reserves statement to validate to people that assets are safe.
So after mastering some of these concepts internally, you can then take them to customers?
More than that: Weve implemented a new travel system with a provider using a blockchain. Its a phased implementation, but weve begun, and the way it works will eliminate the need for employees to file expense reports. If I book a flight, then take the flight, it gets recorded on the blockchain. Now its known. It also goes to the airline. So we eliminate the need for employees to do expense reporting, and we eliminate the need for a separate payment structure to exist between us and the airline. Were not going through a travel agent.
Going back for just a second to the five 2023 trends noted by PwCwe discussed the highlights of TradFi a bitis there one of the five that perhaps isnt quite where you thought it would be at this point?
Id have to start with regulation. Its not where I thought it would be. I say that, and I feel a little foolish, because I probably should have known we wouldnt have made any headway with regulation. Ive thought a lot about, Is our lack of regulation hurting us?
When I really think about how the history of America has evolved, in any innovation cycle weve had, we have not had regulationregulation usually lags. I actually think that fosters innovation. And while I know theres a lot of people who want itand I want it as well, as I think its creating some barriers for usI think it also is a means to foster innovation.
Would getting one bill through Congress create some kind of snowball effectother laws could follow more quickly?
No. Just watch the way Congress is working right now. Theres no snowballing of anything. I dont think that would be the catalyst. Its going to be a hard push, and Europes ahead of us at this point, Britains ahead of us, Singapore is.
What does that mean for the future of finance?
The large players that exist today in finance, I dont see them being disintermediated. I see them adopting and innovating and acquiring and being part of the future of finance. There always are a handful of new players that really come to the forefront, but I think, by and large, the traditional big, big names are still gonna be there.
What I think is fascinating, and people dont seem to be latching on to, is what we just went through. We went through a crypto wave, then this metaverse wave, and now were on to generative A.I. And there may be another thing after those things, but theyre going to start to converge. And the real future is a digital experience with digital assets as the exchange mechanism, accelerated by generative A.I. Were living through it right now. Were seeing a little of it. I dont know about you, but I dont carry a wallet very much anymore. I pay with my watch, my cell phone. Were not that far away from completely digital assets. When I think of the future, there is no paper money.
Is there anything else our readers should know about what PwC is doing in this space?
Were starting to do some stuff thats interesting with bringing together the ESG concepts and blockchain. We did a project to evaluate the carbon footprint of a particular blockchain, and we were actually able to show if you use it appropriately and integrate it with the companys financial systems, with the systems you can eliminate, youre net carbon negative. Theres been a big wave of Cryptos horrible because its using all this electricity, but weve moved on from that.
From a social finance standpoint, how can we bank the unbanked? How can we get resources into the hands of people that cant get financial resources without paying exorbitant fees? It can turn crypto from, you know, a greedy thing to a social good, and I want to be a part of that.
