This year's FinovateEurope showcased some of fintech's most cutting-edge solutions and minds to date. Overlooking London's financial district, Canary Wharf, we were blessed with two-days of great weather filled with ample networking opportunities and in-person connections. With over 70 expert speakers and 35 demoing companies, FinovateEurope painted a picture of the leading trends and technologies driving the industry.
Companies from all over the world came together to showcase their unique technologies with real-world applications for financial institutions and consumers. This year's conference featured a diverse class of fintechs, ranging from a subscription management platform (Subaio), to a global identity verification technology (Trulioo), an embedded finance solution (mmob), a wealth tech solution (Finicite), as well as some AI-driven platforms. We even saw a company that offered lending solutions in the metaverse (fyndoo). Notably, WMA Client Mambu demoed their partnership with Persistent, aggregated in the desire to help banks and FIs transform their products and operations through digital acceleration and cloud-native banking technology.
Best in Show
Among the five of the companies that won best of show, Dreams Technology and Finshape particularly stood out to us due to their innovative products.
Dreams Technology offers financial institutions a unique way to engage with their customers rooted in cognitive and behavior science. Finshape enables financial institutions to provide their customers with personalized summaries of their banking activities in a form similar to Instagram stories. Engaging and easy to access, finshape drives account holders to their online banking accounts multiple times a day. Both companies exemplified the type of groundbreaking technology showcased at Finovate events.
Panel Discussions
As expected, FinovateEurope had a great lineup of speakers, from some of the most prestigious organizations around the world. Panels included professionals from the following companies:
- Big European Banks – Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC, RBS, NatWest Group, ING, and others.
- Game-changing European Fintechs – Monzo, Klarna, Revoult, and others.
- Investment Banking – Citi Ventures, Raymond James, Fintech Capital, JP Morgan and others.
The panels covered the main trends within the finserv and fintech industries both in Europe and in the U.S., with topics ranging from open banking to financial wellness. There was also a focus on the need for legacy players to digitalize their offerings and implement a culture of innovation to remain competitive in the market, with an emphasis on creating industry partnerships with fintechs to accomplish this goal. Additionally, panelists discussed the demand for personalized banking solutions and the increasing focus on delivering a great customer experience. They also covered the technologies that everyone is talking about, namely artificial intelligence (AI), software-as-a-service (SaaS), cloud, and embedded finance.
Moreover, it was interesting to hear what fintech investors are looking to invest in this year. Three areas that stood out were embedded finance, tokenization technologies and payments.
D&I
As we have seen with other 2022 events, there was an emphasis on diversity and inclusion throughout the entire conference. Notably, an all-women panel discussed how the industry can work together to offer equal opportunities for everyone. Overall, the ratio of women to men on the panels was largely equal, representing the push toward inclusion within the industry.
The Big Themes
The overall themes throughout the conference generally remained the same as in U.S.-based events. However, two additional areas stood out as being a particular focus for the industry in Europe.
First, there was strong attention to sustainability/ESG. Almost every fintech that demoed gave an example of how their platform is sustainable or how they can help financial institutions, and their customers, become more sustainable. Many of the panels also touched on this subject and we even saw an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) focused panel. Sustainability being at the forefront of the conversation is something we aren't really seeing yet in the U.S., pushing Europe ahead of the game on this topic.
Another regular theme was compliance with regulations. Although discussed at U.S. conferences as well, we saw a big focus on consumer privacy at Finovate Europe, triggered by the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
FinovateEurope did not disappoint. If this acted as a preview for Finovate’s 2022 U.S. events, we anticipate big things are headed our way.