As FinTech Connect Europe returned for its eleventh year, we explored the industry’s most prominent trends and discussion points, reflecting on 2024 as well as looking to the future.
FinTech Connect 2024 opened its doors at ExCeL Centre in East London, welcoming fintech giants and startups to network and showcase their expertise across two stages.
Kicking proceedings off, Kristy Duncan, CEO and founder of Women in Payments, the global community promoting gender parity in the payments space, welcomed attendees to the ‘Innovation’ stage. In her opening, Duncan highlighted eight key market trends and developments she has experienced across fintech conferences globally:
Real-time instant payments – “BIS has launched Project Nexus, which connects domestic instant payment schemes across borders.”
Open banking – “APIs are giving customers a collective view of their accounts across providers.”
AI and generative AI – “When adopting AI tools in our business, we must ensure data privacy, explainability for results, accountability for decisions and acceptability of outcomes.”
Cybersecurity – “Fraud and scams are reaching an epidemic scale worldwide.”
Quantum – “Quantum computing continues to loom larger on the horizon, bringing exciting opportunities. However, the risks of quantum computing in the wrong hands cannot be ignored.”
CBDCs – “The majority of the world’s central banks are now considering or experimenting with CBDCs.”
Asset tokenisation – “The ability to tokenise real-world assets to enhance liquidity and efficiency of financial markets is gaining traction.”
Financial health – “Queen Máxima of the Netherlands spoke at the Singapore Fintech Festival, encouraging us to think beyond the concept of financial inclusion, pointing out that financial health can lead to financial stability.”
Addressing digital transformation
Next, FinTech Connect hosted the first panel of this year’s event, which focused on how banks have been advancing their digital transformations in the last year, and in the near future.
Jeremy Takle, co-founder and CEO of PennyWorth, explained: “Incumbent banks are definitely digitising user experiences. They’re using new models and new user experiences to improve their services. But I think particularly with AI, we have a whole new way of thinking about what our business model might look like.”
Mariya Brown, head of EMEA innovation at BNY Mellon, revealed how the bank is looking to improve its agility: “BNY is going through a massive reorg exercise, where we’re trying to be more like a fintech. We’re trying to build a dev team with the usual combination of business analysts, developers, and designers, that operates almost independently.
“In the US, we had another example that worked well. We set up a separate legal entity that operated truly like a fintech to build a new product – a platform providing access directly to advisors.”
Andrew James Murray, head of institutional strategic investments at Citi, also added: “In any large organisation, there needs to be a degree of delegation – each business line will need some control over its own technology. But equally, it is important to recognise where there are some capabilities that do need to be picked up and coordinated.
“The new generative AI wave was a good example of that. Our CEO and CTO recognised early on that it is important, so we need a common framework across the bank to help empower the individual business lines. So the business lines will own the use cases, but they’re not trying to do them all front to back.”
Preparing for net zero
Next, George Sandilands, VP of carbon accounting at Sage, joined Romy van Es, technical strategist for sustainable partnerships at Amazon Web Services, on stage, where the pair discussed the role of fintechs in achieving a net-zero future.
Sandilands revealed the potential benefits of committing resources to become more environmentally friendly for firms: “There’s a lot of reasons why small businesses might want to engage with and recognise the climate crisis. Firstly, because it’s an opportunity. There’s an opportunity to sort of differentiate your brand, to associate yourself with positive messaging, which actually connects with consumers. In fact 60 to 70 per cent of consumers today want to buy from sustainable brands.”
He also painted his view of what the future of finance could look like, as regulators push for more climate-friendly operations: “What I expect to happen in the years to come, is there will be more access to credit, and lower costs, for companies that demonstrate that they are utilising that credit for low carbon activity.
“In a world where high carbon activity comes with higher interest rates and additional barriers in terms of arrangement, fees, etc, we’re going to see large volumes of the business community adopting better business practices.”
Fintech pride
The important role that the LGBTQ+ community plays in the UK fintech ecosystem, and different strategies that firms are employing to improve inclusivity, both within their organisations and beyond, were spotlighted in another panel session, moderated by Roberto Napolitano, CMO at Innovate Finance.
Kim Nguyen, VP of people at Alloy, shared her own experiences and revealed how an inclusive culture can benefit organisations themselves: “Something that really strikes me in my day-to-day is that I’ve been fortunate enough to find a safe space within Alloy where I can show up as my whole self – and that’s great internally. But, for external meetings, I do find myself naturally looking at the company’s website, team page, value system to check how I should show up. Should I be code switching? Should I be masking? When should I come out? Should I be coming out?
“I realise that I have the option to do that – but some people don’t. And that’s why it’s important for organisations to make an effort to reduce these types of experiences. Because those are real consequences that hinder career trajectories for those folks and that could show up in ways like not taking on as many risks at work, not seeking promotional opportunities, and not advocating for yourself.
“For the individual, this can slow career advantage – while for the organisation, that’s a lot of untapped talent that could have a tonne of contributions.”
The post Fintech Connect 2024: Day One Highlights appeared first on The Fintech Times.
