Two Days in Chicago @ MoneyLIVE North America

As someone who closely watches events in banking, there are a few important takeaways from MoneyLIVE North America that was recently held in Chicago at the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel September 14^th and 15^th.

Who was in the room?

On stage, most sessions included perspectives from large banks or credit unions; for example, Bank of Montreal, M&T Bank, Bank of America and BECU all participated in the programming. Industry insights came from people I trust, including Jennifer Tescher, Founder & CEO, Financial Health Network; Jen Guidi, CEO of ProSight Financial Association; Sean Banks, Partner of TTV Capital; and Theodora Lau, Author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence: Navigating the Realities of AI in Financial Services.

Out of the 30 or so sponsors/exhibitors, including small or emerging providers, seemingly all have a large bank experience and orientation. KPMG was the “Headline” sponsor, and notable exhibitors included Amazon Web Services (AWS), Equifax, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Nasdaq Verafin and Plaid.

In the audience, of the roughly 700 people, 50-60 percent were from financial institutions. Events that tightly manage the banker to non-banker ratio tend to have satisfied sponsors, a key to continuity.

Key themes included:

• Fraud, financial crime & risk (vendor concentration risk, payment fraud, AI in cybersecurity)
• Experience-led banking (agentic conversational intelligence, financial wellbeing, self-service journeys)
• Next-gen credit strategies (embedded SME lending, cash-flow lending, AI underwriting)
• And yes, there were stablecoin discussions.

Coolest thing seen had to be the Ellipse dynamic CVC chip for physical cards. In short, the CVC number on the back of a credit card changes after every transaction because of the chip (and platform) built into the cards.

Next year the event will be in Atlanta, which is good for me, but it will be close to FintechSouth assuming TAG keeps the timing consistent.

Shoot me an email if you want to go deeper on my experience at MoneyLIVE.