As the audience was primarily councils and utility companies the presentation focused on the possible demographic changes that clients with debts may face over the next 10 years

The key points were:

• Futurists main role is to help people think through pictures of the future while still ensuring that clients understand that the picture will be incomplete.
• That it is important to have a set of frameworks to better assess the impacts of technology while understanding that these frameworks are only ways of thinking.
• That output from thinking about the future should be a picture of multiple futures with sets of signals or signposts to be monitored to see which of these possible futures, or mix of these possible futures is coming into existence.
• That over the long term people with debts to councils and utility companies will be affected by the changes in the nature of work, including automation of tasks, and the move to higher numbers of people in the gig economy. Councils and commercial companies should be constantly assessing the demographics of their customer base and the effects of changing work on their incomes, and volatility of incomes.
• That the long-term move to transport as a service will allow large numbers of people to save money on their transport needs and reduce the lumpiness of costs associated with insurance and maintenance costs. Councils and energy companies in particular need to consider accelerating the process of transport as a service in their areas, and the education of customers in saving money by adopting such a service.
• In the shorter term changes to services from the use of data, and machine learning will lead to the augmentation of the capacity of staff to deal with issues. Examples include machine learning systems that can extract the data from the best interactions with clients and coach staff in real time in how to respond to clients. Combinations of machine learning and approaches from behavioural economics are likely to improve the capacity for automated systems to improve the financial literacy of clients. 

As usual our presentations are designed to be an experience for those that attend and do not contain lots of detail (we hate bullet points on PowerPoint with a passion). If you are interested in an online meeting presentation with an overview to see if the presentation might work for your organisation then contact us and we will organise a time for an online webinar

Client Response

We recently engaged Paul to speak at an event we put on for our clients and he was received very well. From the outset he had the audience engaged and interested with his entertaining and humorous style and we were challenged to think differently with his insights as to what the future may hold both in general and for our industry. He planted seeds that flowed into interesting conversations and debates way after the event had ended, which is exactly what we wanted from a speaker. I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending Paul as a ‘think outside of the box’ speaker at any event. Thanks Paul – you were integral to making our event a great success!

Nikki Dennis
Sales Director

Australian Receivables Limited