"If You Want to be an Innovator, You Need to be at Finovate"

The highlights from FinovateSpring

Fintech innovation continues at a blistering pace, and the opportunities for financial institutions to harness new technologies and embrace digital transformation have never been greater. In San Francisco, FinovateSpring brought together 130 expert speakers; 60 cutting edge demoing companies and 1,100 attendees to explore and debate a path to change in the brave new digital world. We pride ourselves on bringing together players from across the fintech ecosystem with a huge range of experiences and perspectives and FinovateSpring did not disappoint.

Two days of over 60 live demos once again put innovation front and center on the stage. Our unique demo model showcased the most transformative solutions currently being created across the whole fintech value chain and gave the audience the chance to speak to the innovators behind the most exciting tech in finance.
Our main content day started with a fascinating review of the key messages to take from the 2019 demos from Steven Ramirez, CEO of Beyond The Arc. His number 1 takeaway? It all comes back to customer experience and if financial institutions don’t take any action they will lose the war to new competitors. This thought was echoed in our ever-popular analysts all-star session by Paul Berg, Senior Managing Consultant at Gallup: “Only 1 in 5 customers is emotionally connected to their bank – this is a huge opportunity and a massive threat”.Following on from Steven, we had a sit up in your seat keynote address from the renowned author Tim Urban, of Wait But Why fame. Tim’s topic was The Rise of the Machines – The Artificial Intelligence Revolution And The Road To Super Intelligence, and he took us on a fascinating journey of the milestones of Artificial Intelligence and how we are on the road to AI teaching itself; very soon the smartest thing on earth will not be a human but a computer. His rather scary conclusion? “The stakes are high – Artificial Intelligence is the last invention we’ll ever make; the last challenge we’ll ever face”.

"Only 1 in 5 customers is emotionally connected to their bank – this is a huge opportunity and a massive threat"

Paul Berg, Gallup

A panel of those at the vanguard of digital change - from Wells Fargo; Marcus by Goldman Sachs; Ondot Systems; Alliant Credit Union and HSBC - debated how financial institutions can capture the fintech opportunity and partner with start-ups. Their advice? Creating partnerships will always be challenging because of legacy systems; legacy culture; internal stakeholders and regulation so, before you start on the journey, make sure you have picked the right partner. Dave Mooney, President & CEO of Alliant summed the challenge up brilliantly: “Pick what (and what not) to do and focus on management attention and intent….to avoid innovation theater.”Across the main content day and the 2 summit days we covered a myriad of topics – from payments to lending; community banking to cyber security; investing in fintech to financial inclusion. Time and time again we came back to the critical importance of customer experience; the ability to harness data and the need to embrace new technologies for real business reasons not for window dressing. Four packed days culminated with the always popular Accelerator Showcase where leading accelerators brought along their newest start-ups – these are the people reimagining how fintech can transform financial services and are undoubtedly some of the rising stars of the future. FinovateSpring ended on an optimistic note; opportunities abound for financial institutions who have a roadmap to embrace meaningful change to face the challenges that lie ahead.

"FinovateSpring ended on an optimistic note; opportunities abound for financial institutions who have a roadmap to embrace meaningful change and to face the challenges that lie ahead."

Here are some of my favourite quotes from the show. See you next year!

“10 years ago at Finovate the fintechs were going to eat the banks’ lunch – that’s no longer the case. Fintechs and banks need each other; they have to partner and they have to do it well.”

Dan Latimore, Chief Research Officer, Celent

Small business lending will see transformational change and what has made this change possible is technology.

Karen Gordon Mills, Former Adviser to President Obama

What I love in my entrepreneurs is people who are coming at fixing financial services from a different discipline but they have a deep understanding of the end user of financial services.

Mike Sigal, Partner, 500 Startups

Payments are being looked at very differently by the next generation of entrepreneurs; payments are being seen as a means to a greater end.

Ramneek Gupta , Managing Director, Citi Ventures

Enough of the scare talk. Good news, banks: we have customers. At Umpqua Bank, we sold Pivotus to Kony to focus on our people. We know we can compete and win with customers on how we use tech with our people.