Growth in the working-age population is slowing, and participation rates are declining. As these changes work their way through the population, they will have a dampening effect on trend labour input. 6 As well, the dependency ratio is likely to double over the next 20 years. 7 The demographic challenges that we have been worrying about for years have started to arrive.
I welcome you all to the AFS Fintech conference. This conference will discuss a very important and topical subject – financial technology and its impact on the banking and financial sector. AFS deserves our appreciation for arranging this conference. We are living in an era of unprecedented changes mainly brought about by technological advancement. Technology was once the backoffice function of a bank.