The inaugural meeting of the FinTECH4Life Steering Committee met in Central London at the end of January to discuss, topics, content and agenda for the upcoming event. The inevitability of aging is one that will affect all of us. Developing financial products for those later in life is a is not a niche market – it is part of the over all, multi-stage aspect of being human and being a part of society.
We sat down with Tina Woods, CEO & Founder, Collider Health after the meeting to discuss her thoughts.
You just took part in the inaugural steering committee breakfast or FinTech for life. This is a conference and event that’s going to look at the over 55 market. Why is this market important?
Well, this market is very important partly because it’s the third largest market after US and China. It’s a pretty amazingly huge market I’d pay attention to and has a lot of unmet needs. It’s hugely underserved and there’s a lot of money in this space. It is a huge societal imperative to look at this much more closely and develop products and services that will really help people live longer, healthier and happier.
A lot of people at the breakfast talked about this idea of the hundred year life. Can you explain to us what is ‘the hundred year life’?
The hundred year life is really a concept that’s been coined recognizing that many of us will be living to that age. In fact there are 10 million people in the UK might now who are going to live
to a hundred so it is reality that’s facing us all.
I think what it tries to address is the societal impact it will have and how we live our lives, the changing nature of the course of life towards a sort of multi-stage aspect of our lives. In the old days one thought of our lives in three stages: education, employment and retirement. Whereas now we have to think much more of flexibly and creatively.
I’m in a multi-stage where we’re learning throughout our lives. We have recreational interests that we develop. There is this whole sense around purpose. That’s what keeps us young. So retirement is not like it used to be in the way that we thought in the old days, where you sort of put up your feet. Some of us might want to do that, put our feet up on the sofa and watch telly! But I think there are many of us who are very healthy, very active, very mobile and want to continue to do what we want until the day that we die.
All these things have to be reflected back into policy and how we think about pensions, insurance, how we save, how we spend our money in retirement, and how we keep well and healthy and mobile.
These are all really important aspects and I think this whole concept of lifelong learning is one that needs to be thought through in a way that will release the huge potential that we have as we grow older, which at the moment isn’t being tapped as it could.
FinTECH4Life comes to London on May 15 at Barclays Rise. Register now!