Progress report: With AI to innovation and sustainable growth

As a member of Germany’s AI Plattform Lernende Systeme it is very inspiring to read this progress report and learn what has been achieved by Germany’s best experts in this field.

Please find the LINK TO THE REPORT HERE

Concept and aims of the Platform

Self-learning systems are increasingly becoming a driving force behind digitalisation in business and society. They are based on Artificial Intelligence technologies and methods that are currently developing at a rapid pace in terms of performance. Self-learning systems are machines, robots and software systems that learn from data and use it to autonomously complete tasks that have been described in an abstract fashion – all without specific programming for each step.

Self-learning systems are becoming increasingly commonplace supporting people in their work and everyday lives. For example, they can be used to develop autonomous traffic systems, improve medical diagnostics and assist emergency services in disaster zones. They can help improve quality of life in many different respects, but are also fundamentally changing how humans and machines interact.

Self-learning systems have immense economic potential. As digitalisation takes hold, they are already helping companies in certain sectors to create entirely new business models based on data usage and are radically changing conventional value creation chains. This is opening up opportunities for new businesses, but can also represent a threat to established market leaders should they fail to react quickly enough.

Developing and introducing self-learning systems calls for special core skills, which need to be carefully nurtured to secure Germany’s pioneering role in this field. Using self-learning systems also raises numerous social, legal, ethical and security questions – with regard to data protection and liability, but also responsibility and transparency. To tackle these issues, we need to engage in broad-based dialogues as early as possible.

Plattform Lernende Systeme brings together leading experts in self-learning systems and Artificial Intelligence from science, industry, politics and civic organisations. In specialised focus groups, they discuss the opportunities, challenges and parameters for developing self-learning systems and using them responsibly. They derive scenarios, recommendations, design options and road maps from the results.

The Platform aims to:

  • shape self-learning systems to ensure positive, fair and responsible social coexistence,
  • strengthen skills for developing and using self-learning systems,
  • act as an independent intermediary to combine different perspectives,
  • promote dialogue within society on Artificial Intelligence,
  • develop objectives and scenarios for the application of self-learning systems,
  • encourage collaboration in research and development,
  • position Germany as the leading supplier of technology for self-learning systems.

Technological Breakthroughs: A Beacon of Hope for the Future

After a challenging 2022 this year ends with HOPE due to a rally of technological innovation breakthroughs. Technological progress has the potential to help address many of the challenges facing the world today, including the energy crisis, the need for better education, and financial inclusion. Three of them shall be brought to your attention: 1. CLEAN ENERGY – Breakthrough in nuclear fusion technology; 2. EDUCATION – ChatGPT is changing the way to experience artificial intelligence; 3. PRIVACY & FINANCIAL INCLUSION – New compliant pathways for privacy and security in the blockchain-based financial ecosystem

Breakthrough in nuclear fusion technology

One area where technology is helping to address the energy crisis is through the development of nuclear fusion as a potential source of clean, abundant energy. Nuclear fusion is a process in which atomic nuclei combine to release energy, and it has the potential to provide a virtually limitless source of energy with low carbon emissions. While significant progress has been made in developing fusion technology, it is still in the early stages of development and has not yet been fully commercialized. However, the potential for nuclear fusion to help address the energy crisis makes it a promising area of research and development.

In December 2022 the National Ignition Facility (NIF) has successfully sparked a fusion reaction that released more energy than went into it. Even though there’s still a long way to go toward fusion as a clean energy source, this step can be considered as a major step forward.

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BREAKTHROUGH IN THIS FUSION TECHNOLOGY MARATHON

ChatGPT changes the way you experience artificial intelligence

ChatGPT, also known as OpenAI’s GPT-3 Chatbot API, is a natural language processing (NLP) tool developed by OpenAI. It is based on the GPT-3 model, which is a large, advanced AI language model that is capable of generating human-like text.

Overall, ChatGPT is changing the way we experience and interact with AI by making it easier to build and deploy chatbot applications that can understand and respond to user input in a natural, human-like way.

ChatGPT can be used to build chatbots and other NLP applications that can understand and respond to user input in a natural, human-like way. It is designed to be easy to use and integrate into existing systems, allowing developers to quickly build and deploy chatbot applications without the need for extensive training data.

One advantage of ChatGPT is its ability to understand and respond to a wide range of inputs and topics. It is trained on a large dataset of text and has the ability to generate coherent and contextually appropriate responses to a variety of inputs. This can make it a useful tool for building chatbots and other NLP applications that need to handle a wide range of queries and topics.

(Text has been created by ChatGPT)

CHALLENGE ChatGPT YOURSELF AND BE AMAZED. FIND OUT MORE HERE

New compliant pathways for privacy and security in the blockchain-based financial ecosystem

Innovation in blockchain privacy can bring a number of advantages to the financial ecosystem, particularly in terms of increasing the security and confidentiality of transactions. By combining this innovation with a 100% collateralized stablecoin, it is possible to create a more secure and stable digital currency that can be used for a wide range of financial transactions.

One advantage of using a 100% collateralized coin is that it is pegged to a specific asset, such as a fiat currency or commodity, which helps to stabilize its value and reduce price volatility. This can make it more attractive to users, as it reduces the risk of loss due to price fluctuations. The German Digital Cash GmbH just announced to have issued the first 100% compliant, central-bank-money-backed, Made in Germany, Euro-coin on UniSwap, called Digital Cash Euro (DCEUR). READ MORE ON THE DCEUR HERE

In terms of privacy, a blockchain-based stablecoin that incorporates innovative privacy features can help to protect the confidentiality of transactions by making it more difficult for outsiders to track and monitor them. This can be particularly useful for financial institutions and individuals.

Researchers from German crypto blockchain-based payments fintech etonec and other organizations have proposed using zero-knowledge proofs to ensure regulatory compliance and privacy in stablecoins. They have created a design that allows fiat-based stablecoins to be used like cash, within limits.

Dr. Jonas Gross, states on December 15, 2022 to CoinTelegraph: “How can privacy for digital payments be preserved, while ensuring stability and regulatory compliance? In this feasibility study co-authored by @etonec_gmbh@MinaFoundation@Privatbank1796, and @SnT_uni_lu we show how it can be done.“ FIND THE THE FULL STUDY HERE

Overall, the combination of a 100% collateralized stablecoin with innovative privacy features can bring a number of benefits to the financial ecosystem, including increased security, stability, and confidentiality.

Conclusion

Overall, technological progress has the potential to help address many of the challenges facing the world today, and it will likely continue to play a crucial role in finding solutions to these problems in the future.

December 2022 seems to be a good month in this respect. A month that shall give hope.

X-VOLUTION: Technologie und Gesellschaft – Ein Plädoyer für Aufklärung

Sascha Adam befragt im Schlußplädoyer die Teilnehmer des X-Volution Tech-Talks über ihre persönlichen Aussichten zum Thema technologischen Fortschritts und seinen Auswirkungen auf Wirtschaft, Unternehmen und unsere Gesellschaft.

Jochen Werne, Chief Visionary Officer von Prosegur German, Managing Director der Prosegur Crypto GmbH und mehrfach international ausgezeichnet für sein Engagement in International Relations antwortet mit Zuversicht und einer Reflexion für die internationale Politik.

Sascha Adam in his interview with Jochen Werne

In his closing statement, Sascha Adam asks the participants of the X-Volution Tech-Talk about their personal outlook on the topic of technological progress and its impact on the economy, companies and our society. Jochen Werne, Chief Visionary Officer of Prosegur German, Managing Director of Prosegur Crypto GmbH and winner of several international awards for his commitment to international relations, answers with confidence and a reflection for international politics.

Das gesamte Interview finden sie hier:

TIME of MISTRUST

A plea for trust in a time of mistrust. Trust is the foundation on which monetary systems are built. Trust forms the basis of international diplomatic relations and is the foundation for all progress.

But what happens once trust is shaken?

The diplomatic dispute over a multibillion-dollar submarine treaty – which took place three months before the Russian – Ukrainian war, concerns about a new cold war, and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system exactly 50 years ago are the manuscript for this maritime-themed French-American story about money and trust. It is an object lesson for our times, where we are witnessing the emergence of crypto-financial markets and thus stand on the threshold of a new form of money.

TIME OF MISTRUST

by Jochen Werne

After the traditional long summer vacation, France awakens in September from its brief self-created slumber, as it does every year. Life begins to take its usual course, even if some are still reminiscing, perhaps enjoying the first harbingers of post-Covid worry-free life. Not so Philippe Étienne. For him, on the other side of the Atlantic, in Washington, which is actually picturesque at this time of year, autumn begins with a diplomatic thunderstorm. A storm that must have been new even for the 65-year-old gray-haired eloquent ambassador of France. 6160 kilometers away, at the Élysée Palace, Président de la République Emmanuel Macron decides to call his top diplomat in the United States, along with his Australian counterpart Jean-Pierre Thebault, to Paris for consultations. The unprecedented act in Franco-American history is justified by Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian with the “exceptional gravity” of an Australian-British-American announcement, and impressively underlined with the words “lie,” “duplicity,” “disrespect” and “serious crisis.”

At the heart of this crisis is the surprise announcement by the aforementioned countries to enter into a strategic trilateral security alliance (AUKUS) with immediate effect. An alliance that also provides for the procurement of nuclear-powered submarines for Australia, effectively putting to rest a 56-billion-euro French-Australian submarine order already initiated in 2016. The conclusion of the agreement comes at a time when U.S. President Joe Biden has asserted to the UN General Assembly, “We do not seek – I repeat, we do not seek – a new cold war or a world divided into rigid blocs.” However, experts, such as renowned historian Niall Ferguson, have been talking about this so-called “new cold war” between the U.S. and China since 2019, and it is not about nuclear arms races, but rather about technology supremacy in cyber security, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Even though nuclear-powered submarines are at the center of the diplomatic dispute, one is quick to note in the AUKUS agreement that cooperation in the aforementioned fields is one of the most important components of the treaty. An objective that is perhaps also congruent with French interests. But the dispute between the old friends is less about the “what” than about the diplomatic “how” – that is, about the breach of trust that is triggered when close allies are simply presented with a fait accompli. Facts that also affect them financially and personally.

Because money and trust are closely interwoven. The trust of a bank that the creditor will repay its debts. A citizen’s trust that the currency in which he or she is paid their salaries is stable. A state’s trust in a currency system that the agreements made there will be honored by all. Georg Simmel, in his “Philosophy of Money,” sums it up this way: “Money is perhaps the most concentrated and pointed form and expression of trust in the social-state order.”

Last year marked the 50th anniversary of another French-American trust-busting melodrama with a maritime backdrop. Benn Steil, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, describes the moving events of August 6, 1971, in his book, The Battle of Bretton Woods, as follows: “…a congressional subcommittee issued a report entitled ‘Action Now to Strengthen the U.S. Dollar` that concluded, paradoxically, that the dollar needed to be weakened. Dollar dumping accelerated and France sent a warship to pick up French gold from the vaults of the New York Fed.”

At first glance, this dramatic gesture by then French President Georges Pompidou in the final act of the collapse of the Bretton Woods system seems as strange as the withdrawal of ambassadors today. The basis, however, is similar and lay then as now in an equally shaken trust between the great nations that were nevertheless so closely intertwined. Without going deeper into the new monetary order created after World War II, with the U.S. dollar as the anchor currency, it is important to understand the reason for the French revolt evident in the “White Plan.” The plan provided that the U.S. guaranteed the Bretton Woods participating countries the right to buy and sell gold indefinitely at the fixed rate of $35 per ounce. The dilemma of this arrangement became apparent early on. For by the end of the 1950s, dollar holdings at foreign central banks already exceeded U.S. gold reserves. When French President Charles de Gaulle asked the U.S. to exchange French dollar reserves for gold in 1966, the FED’s gold reserves were only enough for about half that amount. The ever more deeply anchored loss of confidence forced the American president Richard Nixon on August 15, 1971 to cancel the nominal gold peg and the so-called “Nixon shock” ended the system as it was.

And where something ends something new can or will inevitably begin.

Today we live in a world where the stability of our currency is based on our confidence in government fiscal policy, the economic strength of our country, and the good work of an independent central bank. However, we also live in a time when new currency systems are already looming on the dense horizon. The basis for this was laid in 2008, not surprisingly, by one of the most serious crises of confidence in the international banking system that modern times have seen. And the new systems are being implemented with the help of cutting-edge distributed ledger blockchain technology. The new, with its decentralized nature, is challenging the old. While many of the new currencies in the crypto world, such as bitcoin, are subject to large fluctuations, stablecoins promise a link and fixed exchangeability to an existing value, such as the US dollar or even gold. However, the old Bretton Woods challenge of being able to keep this promise at all times remains in the new world. Millions of dollars in penalties imposed by the New York Attorney General’s Office on the largest U.S. dollar stablecoin, Tether, for not being fully verifiable do little to help trust, especially when less than 3 percent of the market capitalization is actually deposited in U.S. dollar cash. As always with new ones, trust has to be built up. This can be done privately, perhaps with a stablecoin backed 100% by central bank money, or by the state, with well thought-out central bank digital currencies, such as the digital euro planned by the European Central Bank.

We live in a world of perpetual rapid change and trust is, as Osterloh describes it, “the will to be vulnerable.” Without trust, there are no alliances, no togetherness, no progress.

Philippe Étienne was back in autumnal Washington after just a few days and has since been working again on what diplomats are best trained for – building trust.

Sources

Billon-Gallan, A., Kundnani, H. (2021): The UK must cooperate with France in the Indo-Pacific. A Chatham House expert comment. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/09/uk-must-cooperate-france-indo-pacific (Retrieved 24.9.2021)

Brien, J. (2021): “Stablecoin without stability”: Tether and Bitfinex pay $18.5 million fine. URL: https://t3n.de/news/stablecoin-tether-bitfinex-strafe-1358197/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=news (Retrieved: 9/30/2021).

Corbet, S. (2021): France recalls ambassadors to U.S., Australia over submarine deal. URL: https://www.pressherald.com/2021/09/17/france-recalls-ambassadors-to-u-s-australia-over-submarine-deal/ (Retrieved 9/25/2021).

Ferguson N. (2019): The New Cold War? It’s With China. And It Has Already Begun. URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/opinion/china-cold-war.html (Retrieved: 9/30/2021).

Graetz, M., Briffault, O. (2016): A “Barbarous Relic”: The French, Gold , and the Demise of Bretton Woods. URL: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3545&context=faculty_scholarship p. 17 (Retrieved 9/25/2021).

Osterloh, M., Weibel, A. (2006): Investing trust. Processes of trust development in organizations, Gabler: Wiesbaden.

Steil, B. (2020): The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the new world, p. 377.

Stolze, D. (1966): Does de Gaulle defeat the dollar? In ZEIT No. 36/1966. URL: (https://www.zeit.de/1966/36/besiegt-de-gaulle-den-dollar/komplettansicht (Retrieved: 9/26/2021)

The Guardian Editorial (2021): The Guardian view on Biden’s UN speech: cooperation not competition URL: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/22/the-guardian-view-on-bidens-un-speech-cooperation-not-competition(Retrieved: 9/29/2021)

Unal, B., Brown, K., Lewis, P., Jie, Y. (2021): Is the AUKUS alliance meaningful or merely a provocation – A Chatham House expert comment. URL: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/09/aukus-alliance-meaningful-or-merely-provocation (Retrieved: 9/24/2021).

Time Online (2021): France sees relationship in NATO strained. URL: https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2021-09/u-boot-deal-frankreich-australien-usa-streit-nato-jean-yves-le-drian?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fmeine.zeit.de%2F (Retrieved: 9/25/2021)

Jury Stevie Awards

Jury Chair 2022

It was an honor and a great pleasure for me to chair the jury of the German Stevie Awards 2022 together with my esteemed board colleague and COO of Prosegur Germany Hasan Celebi.

Together with all jury members for the categories “Management, HumanResources, Customer Service, Support and Covid-19-Handling” we are very pleased to judge the outstanding achievements of the applicants for this year’s award.

Follow the news at https://stevieawards.com/gsa

Preview: COLD HISTORY. HOT REALITY.

SECURITY BRIEFING. The battlefields of the past as a lesson for the protection of crypto assets today.

COLD HISTORY. HOT REALITY is a contribution to The Yearbook 2022 “Treasury and Private Banking”, edited by Roland Eller. The book is a well-known platform for building the bridge from the traditional to the new decentralised financial world.

COLD HISTORY. HOT REALITY by Jochen Werne is a plea for openness to new technologies, embedded in a historical-social security briefing on money, power and the indispensable need to protect assets. The battlefields of the past provide the framework for lessons on protecting crypto assets in our technology-dominated world and help us gain a basic understanding of the opportunities and threats in our new cyber reality.

COLD HISTORY – HOT REALITY was particularly inspired by conversations and articles from the following thought leaders, to whom I am deeply indebted.

Raimundo Castilla – CEO Prosegur Custodia Digitales, Ghislain D’Hoop – Ambassador of Belgium to Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Roland Eller – Founder and CEO of Roland Eller Consulting, Niall Ferguson – Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Christoph Impekoven – Co-Founder micobo GmbH, Benon Janos – CFO flatexDEGIRO Bank AG, Lior Lamesh – Founder & CEO of GK8, Bernd Lehmann – Historian, Commander of the German Navy (ret.), Rakesh Sharma – Author, Thomas Vartanian – Author and Counselor, Heath White – CEO Prosegur Germany, Johannes Winter – Managing Director of the Platform „Learning Systems“ – Germany‘s AI-platform

Preview and excerpt from Chapter I of “COLD HISTORY – HOT REALITY”

WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE

Impressive and powerful, the words “What is past is prologue” are chiselled in white marble at the foot of the statue in front of the National Archives in Washington D.C.. The famous quote from William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” is a haunting reminder to everyone that history provides the context for the present.

We live in a present that is changing at breathtaking speed. This fact concerns us daily, but if we do not take the time for a little history lesson, we are doomed to painfully repeat the mistakes of the past. More than aware of this realisation is the former CEO of tech giant Alphabet, Google’s parent company. He dedicated the following note to the New York Times bestseller, “The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook”: “Niall Ferguson … brilliantly illuminates the great power struggle between networks and hierarchies that rages around the world today. As a software engineer familiar with the theory and practice of networks, I was deeply impressed by the insights of this book. Silicon Valley needed a history lesson and Ferguson delivered.” Not only is Eric Schmidt impressed, but many of the thoughts in this article are inspired by Niall Ferguson’s illuminating papers and lectures.

The beauty of the past is that everything that has already happened, successes and failures, can always be explained in detail and serve as lessons for future challenges. Successful leaders use this knowledge to develop solutions to the problems of the future and to develop communication strategies to make their visions understood by others.

This article was written at a time when humanity is in the final stages of a global pandemic that is saddling countries with an unprecedented debt burden. At the same time, a “New Cold War” is emerging and an arms race for technological supremacy has begun. With new possibilities, the old equilibrium is shaken and a new, albeit familiar, competition for power and money begins. All this at a time when crypto-blockchain-based monetary systems are rapidly becoming a new reality.

The article, with its historical analogies, aims to give the reader a better understanding of how money, power and security are closely intertwined. This helps to put quite complex issues into perspective and gives a clear view of the dangers and opportunities of our changing reality.

The world and change are not to be feared, but understood.

Jochen Werne

The new YEARBOOK will be available in Spring 2022. Find out more HERE

Hot off the press: POINT OF NO RETURN: TURNING DATA INTO VALUE

INAUGURAL EDITION
of the
JOURNAL OF AI, ROBOTICS and WORKPLACE AUTOMATION

It was indeed a great pleasure contributing in co-authorship Dr. Johannes Winter & Jochen Werne to the Henry Stewart Publications and we are pleased to present the article:

POINT OF NO RETURN:
TURNING DATA INTO VALUE

The Cambridge Dictionary defines the point of no return as the stage at which it is no longer possible to stop what you are doing, and when its effects cannot now be avoided or prevented. Exponential advances in technology have led to a global race for dominance in politically, militarily and economically strategic technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital platforms. A reversal of this status quo is hardly conceivable. Based on this assumption, this paper looks to the future, adding the lessons of recent years — the years when the point of no return was passed. In addition, the paper uses practical examples from different industries to show how digital transformation can be successfully undergone and provides six key questions that every company should ask itself in the digital age.

The article includes key learnings and/or best practise examples from e.g.
acatech – Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften
Plattform Lernende Systeme – Germany’s AI Platform
Prosegur
Tesla
Waymo
Google
Amazon
relayr
Ada Health
Fiege Logistik
Westphalia DataLab
Satya Nadella
Microsoft
TikTok
Facebook

INTERVIEW. After the lockdown: gastronomy and retail will reopen with more efficient processes

Interview with Jochen Werne, CDO/CVO Prosegur Germany, on more efficient processes after the lockdown

In his expert interview, Jochen Werne sheds light on central aspects from the perspective of gastronomy and retail for more efficient processes after the lockdown.

Read original interview by Prosegur Germany: LINK HERE. Translation by DeepL.com

Mr Werne, what are your personal observations regarding the economy and society after a year of crisis?

Of course, every crisis first of all brings suffering and a pandemic naturally brings suffering for the individual and his or her relatives when the fate of the disease triggered by the virus befalls him or her. Everything else is like a chain reaction. Starting with the state, which has the sovereign task of protecting its citizens and, in the case of a pandemic, also enforces this by shutting down social life. This, in turn, results in drastic losses of income for closed companies while costs continue. If liquidity is insufficient, this then leads to insolvencies, job losses and, in the worst case, an economic crisis. Historically, however, every crisis – and this one is no exception – has also led to the economy becoming more efficient and technological trends experiencing an acceleration.

At the moment – in this situation that is so difficult for many – I observe an incredible and inspiring creativity. It starts with small and medium-sized enterprises, which are trying to adapt agilely to what feels like a new situation every day, to improve, to optimise costs and to position themselves optimally for the time after the crisis. This gives us hope for the time after the crisis and it is a great motivation to be able to contribute with a fantastic team.

Every crisis demands a certain resilience from companies. The National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) presented an impulse paper entitled “Resilient Pioneers” at the German government’s digital summit in November. In it, Prosegur with its digital smart cash solution is named as a best practice example for a future-oriented and cost-optimised cash management for retail and gastronomy. How does Prosegur Smart Cash work?

Link to the acatech-paper


With Prosegur Smart Cash, restaurateurs, retailers or wholesalers can insert cash directly into the Smart Cash device for safekeeping. The special feature – in contrast to a simple safe – is that once inserted, the device automatically takes over the daily counting and accounting of the cash. The time and thus cost savings in our customers’ internal processes are sometimes considerable. The device has a communication protocol that allows the value of the collection to be transferred to the client’s bank account within 24 hours. Once the money is in the device, the responsibility and management lies with Prosegur Cash’s specialised team, which is responsible for transporting and holding the money to the bank branch. This also eliminates the sometimes daily and not harmless trip to the bank branch.

What are the advantages of Prosegur Smart Cash?

In summary, it saves our customers time and money and creates more transparency and security. Prosegur Smart Cash customers can store their cash quickly and securely, reducing unknown losses. Prosegur Smart Cash enables time savings by automating the counting process and in the daily settlement of cash. In addition, thanks to Prosegur Smart Cash, the customer does not have to go to the bank to deposit the cash, as Prosegur provides security in managing and handing over all the cash to the bank, which avoids dangerous situations for the customer and helps them save time so they can devote themselves fully to their business. In addition, a Smart Cash solution reduces the frequent and expensive phenomenon of the so-called “unknown loss”.

What is “unknown loss”?

This is the loss of inventory or other business resources due to a variety of factors, such as internal and external theft, administrative failure, fraud or cash flow errors. This situation is often a key problem for restaurateurs and retailers.

What do you observe, in terms of their customers and how they prepare for the time after the lockdown?

There is an unbelievable longing to finally be able to get in touch with their customers again, to be able to passionately offer them their own services again. Many small and medium-sized companies, not to mention the big ones, have invested massively in hygiene concepts and tried to use the time to optimise their own processes in terms of costs.

We ourselves have never had so many consultations regarding smart cash solutions as we do today. This has increased even more after clear statements and studies by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Bundesbank pointed out that the hygienic cleanliness of cash is at least equal to that of card payments and that the risk of infection in relation to our daily payment methods is minimal in both cases.

Interestingly enough, we have also noticed a high demand for efficiency lifting among companies with small cash volumes and have used the time to be the first company in Germany to develop a corresponding very cost-effective digital solution for this group as well. A crisis always forces everyone to become more efficient and, in my opinion, there is nothing better than doing this together. This is the only way to emerge stronger from a crisis.

Book recommendation: Robo-Advisory: Investing in the Digital Age

Edited by Prof. Dr. Peter Scholz; published by Palgrave Studies in Financial Services Technologies. Buy a copy here

Congratulations to Peter Scholz for publishing this excellent book on new technological investment methods. It was an honour for me to write the foreword and I wish every reader enriching insights into this new field of investing in the digital age.

Jochen Werne
Prof. Dr. Peter Scholz

This book is the first to provide comprehensive answers to these questions in a fundamental, decisive, detailed and nuanced way. It clarifies the basics, the technology and the tactics behind those clever, financial machines, gives insights into their previous track record to date and much more. Looking ahead, it provides a preview of what is and may be yet to come. As a matter of fact, so far only a relatively small percentage of the global investment community have more or less relied on robo-advisors, depending on their respective culture. It is also a fact that we are only at the beginning of development. We have all borne witness to how exponentially fast things can move forward. One such example is the evolution of smartphones—which by the way have been around for just a little longer than robo-advisors.

THE 50 MOST INFLUENTIAL GERMANS ON THE TECH SCENE

The Tyto Tech 500 Power List is an objective, data-based survey of various technology sectors in Germany, France and the UK. The study is the first of its kind to measure who has what influence in the tech sector on the basis of various key figures from the online and offline world.

It is a special pleasure to be ranked #35 (Jochen Werne / Prosegur) in the just published Top50-List 2020 of the most influential Germans

DIE 50 EINFLUSSREICHSTEN DEUTSCHEN DER TECH-SZENE

Die Tyto Tech 500 Power List ist eine objektive, datengestützte Untersuchung verschiedener Technologie-Bereiche in Deutschland, Frankreich und dem Vereinigten Königreich. Die Studie ist die erste ihrer Art, die auf Basis verschiedenster Kennzahlen aus der Online- und Offline-Welt misst, wer welchen Einfluss im Tech-Bereich hat.

Es ist eine besondere Freude in der soeben veröffentlichten Top50-Liste 2020 der einflussreichsten Deutschen den Rang #35 (Jochen Werne / Prosegur) zu belegen und dies neben Persönlichkeiten wie (nach Ranking):
Sascha Dolling, Jens Pöppelmann, Oliver von Wersch, Sven Bornemann, Sven Stuehmeier, Carol Starr, Bastian Krüger, Norman Wagner, Miriam Thome, Maike Abel, Nico Winkelhaus, Naren Shaam, Robert Jacobi, Ramin Niroumand, Claudia Kemfert, Mallikarjun Rao, Matthias Reinwarth, Ben Shaw, Tessa Niemann, Maren Wulf, Miriam Wohlfarth, Karin Libowitzky, Afseneh Afsaei, Dr. Oliver Vesper, Tim Sievers, Milos Rusic, Felix Falk, Markus Forster, Martin Schmid, Alen Nazarian, Hartmut Giesen, Peter Altmaier, Murat Vurucu, Chris Bartz, Eduard Singer, Alexander Schott, Ritavan ~, Joachim Hensch, Tim Höttges, Dr. Jan Kemper, Andreas Schierenbeck, Hans-Dieter Kettwig, Jost Backhaus, Jens Spahn, Paul Gauselmann und Frank Puscher