The goal of FinovateFall Digital was straightforward: combine the dynamism and excitement of a Finovate conference with the flexibility and scalability of an all-digital event.

And if the response from attendees is any indication, the result was a job well done by all parties: event planners, event participants, and event attendees.

FinovateFall took the idea that the future of finance is digital to heart. For five days, via a blend of live addresses and panels on the one hand, and pre-recorded, on-demand discussions and presentations on the other, FinovateFall Digital was built to bring not only the kind of insightful commentary and innovative technological demonstrations our attendees have come to know and expect, but also something more.

For example, we all know that Finovate VP Greg Palmer spends a great deal of time working with demoing companies to ensure that they are able to put their best foot forward when the lights come on and it is their time to shine on stage. This year, by adding an interview component to the fintech demos, we get to learn about more than just the demoing technology. With an engaged interviewer as part of the presentation, we get these insights not from a stranger, but from someone who has spent the time to get to know the innovators and their vision as well as their innovation. The end result is something that is in some ways quite different from what Finovate has ever provided before.

Our all-digital format also provided greater access to our conference speakers and panelists. The increased availability throughout the day and the ability to schedule meetups digitally helped us provide the kind of socially-active environment that has always been a key part of the Finovate experience. Features like Meet at the Cafe, sponsored by Google Cloud, gave attendees, speakers, and analysts the opportunity to hangout before the start of each conference day, chat about the top fintech news and trends of the day, and make new connections. And our Scavenger Hunt incentivized attendees to check out a wide variety of FinovateFall Digital’s of live and on-demand content.

With FinovateWest only a few months away, we’re already looking forward to coming back with a whole new slate of innovative fintech companies. We’re also thinking about a new bunch of clever ways to ensure you get the most out of our conference and accentuate “the social” part of finance’s digital future.

Learn more about our upcoming, all-digital, FinovateWest event! And for a recap of some of the themes and conversations of this month’s conference, check out our daily summaries, Best of Show announcement, and more below.

FinovateFall Digital Daily Summaries

• Monday: Digital, Demos, and Reinventing Fintech
• Tuesday: Delightful Experiences and Fair Deals for Consumers
• Wednesday: Building Consumer Trust and Creating a More Open Ecosystem
• Thursday: Open Finance, Black Swans, and the Return of SME Banking
• Friday: Collaboration, Mobile Security, and Fintech’s Bright Future

FinovateFall Digital 2020 Best of Show Winners Announced

The morning’s first panel, Strategic Partnerships and Collaboration Between Banks and Fintechs, brought insight into what large banks look for when it comes to partnering with a fintech. The top suggestions for fintechs looking to make themselves more appealing to banks included offering scalability and using industry standards for things like data sharing.

Google’s Mike Burr took the stage next to deliver the keynote: Redefining the Approach to Mobile Security in FinTech (and why it works). Burr considered the root concern that banks struggle with when it comes to protecting Android devices. He examined the top ways data becomes exposed and how to get the tools to ensure data security for compliance needs.

The afternoon breakout stages tackled issues on topics across payments, future technology, wealthtech, and banking. These recorded panels, along with all of the content on the main stage, are available in the On Demand section of the event platform through next week so be sure to catch what you may have missed there.

Our afternoon panel, Latin America – The Future of Fintech, and the Dawn of a New Opportunity, considered the range of opportunities in Latin American markets. The group discussed that the region’s diversity makes it ripe for investors and explained how entrepreneurs are reinventing financial services at a local level.

Closing out FinovateFall 2020 was Neri Tollardo, Head of International Relations and Partnerships at Tinkoff, who spoke on how fintechs can remain profitable in a COVID-19 era. Tollardo’s address offered a ray of hope for banks and fintechs. He expressed that the path to profitability is not mutually exclusive of growth. His points of advice included embedding profitability in the culture and the organizational structure, understanding their business, investing in good talent, and searching out verticals that generate returns.

I’d like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who participated in the event, from our demo companies, to our speakers, panelists, and–of course– to our audience. We wouldn’t be here without you!

Photo by McKayla Crump on Unsplash

We opened Day Four of FinovateFall Digital with a panel looking at the future of innovation in a post-COVID world. Among the highlights of the conversation was a discussion of the challenge in distinguishing between permanent and temporary shifts in customer behavior as a result of the pandemic. Our Deep Dive also discussed the positives, negatives, and uncertainties about the rise of platforms as players on the fintech scene. Lastly, the group emphasized how the rise of borderlessness creates new challenges and opportunities for companies looking for both new customers and new markets.

Our second panel on Day Four looked at the phenomenon of Open Banking. Here our panelists considered open banking as a subset of open finance, and noted that while open banking began in many ways as a regulatory initiative, progress increasingly has been driven by consumer behavior. This last point was especially relevant for fans of open banking in the United States, where any effort to encourage cooperation between banks and third party financial services and fintech providers is more likely to come about via customer demand rather than by legislation from Washington.

Day Four also marked the beginning of our Discussion Days content which offered a variety of special, themed tracks covering topics in banking, financial crime, payments and digitization, wealthtech, and futuretech. With an eye toward how technology is shaping innovation in these areas, our Discussion Days tracks looked at the rise of banking-as-a-service, the role of biometrics and identity in an increasingly digitized society, and the latest applications of cutting edge technologies like conversational AI and natural language processing in fintech and financial services.

The fourth day of FinovateFall Digital also featured our Best of Show awards. Our attendees selected five companies – Finzly, Horizn, Lendsmart, Monit, and Q2 – to receive Finovate’s highest honor. Read more about our FinovateFall Digital Best of Show winners in our announcement post.

And, of course, we started the day with our Meet in the Cafe interactive morning hangout – sponsored by Google Cloud. This morning featured a number of interesting insights and observations from cafe visitors including the idea of data itself as being as important as any enabling technology like AI or the blockchain when it comes to fintech. Those gathered also discussed the idea of the pandemic as a Black Swan event that has helped smaller financial institutions, such as credit unions, get back in the business banking game.

Sound interesting? Join us tomorrow morning at 9:30am Eastern for our final installment at Meet at the Cafe!

Finovate came back strong this morning, with excellent keynotes and a solid round of fintech demos.

Sarika Sangwan, Global Head of Strategy and Marketing- Financial Services at Pinterest kicked things off with her keynote on building consumer trust in the age of doubt. She illustrated that the best way to build trust is with intentionality and purpose. Sangwan encouraged banks to put the customer first and allow that to drive every decision they make.

The next keynote of the morning featured Tom Feher, Banking Industry Executive of U.S. Financial Services at Microsoft, who spoke on coming together to respond, recover, and reimagine during COVID-19. Feher showcased a range of solutions to help firms return to in-person operations in the midst of the pandemic. He pointed out that low code and no code solutions can not only help organizations respond to issues faster, but also reduce costs.

Today’s final keynote speaker was Paul Rohan, Head of Business Strategy- Finance at Google Cloud on how open banking is 21st century branch banking. Rohan’s discussion combined technology, sociology, and history to consider how banks can change their belief systems (as well as their computer systems) to move into a more open approach that embraces third parties.

Following this was the last set of demos:

• Authoriti showcased the Authoriti Network that helps create new ways of preventing identity theft, fraud, and misuse of data.
• Cirrus Secure demoed its cloud-based collaboration hub that impacts a lender’s bottom-line by creating efficiency in place of document chaos.
• KioWare presented its touchless kiosk environment that enables kiosks to be converted to touchless operation without expensive new hardware.
• Cinchy showed off its real-time Data Collaboration Platform that helps financial service providers solve data integration, data access, data governance, and solutions-delivery challenges.
• Lenderfit demoed how it helps lenders close more commercial loans faster.
• Glia showcased its digital customer service platform that connects financial institutions to their customers using chat, voice, video, cobrowsing and AI.
• Illuma Labs demoed passive voice authentication for call centers to help banks elevate the user experience, enhance security against fraudsters, and improve operational efficiency.
• Envestnet |Yodlee presented its data aggregation and analytics platform that provides innovation and insights for financial service providers.
• Microsoft showcased tools to help firms protect their workforce during each phase of the return to the workplace — and beyond.
• Horizn demoed how it helps financial institutions dramatically accelerate digital adoption with customers and employees.

Wrapping up today’s show were the Mastercard Priceless Pitches, three-minute pitches from Mastercard’s Start Path participants, including:

• Previse showed how it leverages AI to power B2B payments and make B2B commerce more efficient.
• Doconomy presented how it helps consumers calculate the carbon footprint of every transaction they make and offset and reduce their carbon footprint.
• Enveil showed how it protects data-in-use to enable secure and private data sharing, search, and analytics.
• vCita presented how it powers small business by offering them tools to manage their money, time, and clients to grow their business.

Tomorrow we’ll kick off our discussion days with another conversation at our interactive networking session, Meet at the Cafe. Afterwards we’ll feature insightful keynote presentations and breakout panels. Stay tuned!

With welcoming remarks from Finovate VP Greg Palmer, Day Two of FinovateFall Digital got underway on Tuesday with a pair of addresses that looked at ways that fintechs and financial services companies can make the most out of the current health and economic challenges.

In his opening keynote, HSBC Head of Innovation Jeremy Balkin emphasized that understanding how the current environment has changed customer behavior is critical for businesses looking to adapt to both those changing behaviors and the needs they represent. This has been underscored during this quarantine/lockdown/shelter-in-place era. But Balkin is quick to note that these behavioral changes have impacted not only consumers, but workers and employees, also.

“We spend a lot of time thinking about the customer experience. We need to think about the employee experience, as well,” he said.

He also talked about the historical tendency to think of partnerships and “borrowing technology” as an initiative of last resort. Balkin pointed out that successful companies have turned this idea on its head to put collaboration and partnership at the forefront of their efforts to better serve their current clients and engage new potential customers.

Our Mastermind Keynote featured Adam Dell, Head of Product for Marcus by Goldman Sachs. Dell discussed how the adoption of digital tools is accelerating and compared the current moment to other recent instances of rapid technology adoption by the public. He pointed to a “vibrant demand for digital banking services,” and said that the winners will be those that can offer a delightful digital experience, a fair deal for the consumer, and the lowest cost means of delivery.

“Individuals who sit in the value chain and don’t create value really risk being eliminated,” he said.

Dell also discussed the opportunities created by the convergence of banking services and PFM. This comes as Goldman Sachs announces that Marcus will now feature a suite of PFM tools to complement its digital banking functionalities. Marcus Insights, as the new offering has been dubbed, was spearheaded by Dell, founder of PFM innovator Clarity Money which was acquired by Goldman Sachs in 2018.

After our noon break for lunch and networking, we began the day’s round of technology demos.

Q2 demonstrated its partner marketplace and app store that solves the challenge of banks and fintechs working together.

Monit presented its mobile predictive cash flow and financial optimization solution that gives small business owners the personalized insights into and guidance on their finances they need to manage their business successfully.

payever demonstrated its solutions that help small businesses access and take advantage of the same technology that big companies do.

Obsecure showcased its technology that authenticates digital actions to ensure that digital experiences are as safe and simple as in-person interactions.

Mostly AI demonstrated its synthetic data platform that enables companies to take advantage of AI and Big Data while maintaining customer privacy protections.

The second round of demos slated for today– including Glia, Illuma Labs, Envestnet | Yodlee, Microsoft, and Horizn— have been rescheduled for tomorrow due to technical difficulties. Stay tuned for more details on timing.

We would be remiss not to mention that Day Two began with our new interactive, networking session, Meet at the Cafe. Sponsored by Google Cloud, our first edition Tuesday morning featured a spirited, interactive conversation on Klarna’s $650 million fundraising, the fate of challenger banks, and the impact of new customer behaviors in the age of COVID-19.

Meet at the Cafe returns Wednesday morning, with a special guest: David Andrzejek, Head of API Ecosystems with Google Cloud. So meet us at the cafe and join in the conversation!