We look at the new style of informal Fintech Conference in London this October, and ask; is this what a Tech conference should be in the future?
New style – because – despite the name- we are talking business concepts rather than technology per se. And something that we can all understand – because we are talking about things that matter to us as individuals, – and that the financial companies that serve us, need to understand.
And there were a lot of truisms and contradictions. That, (according to Gareth Wilson of Cap Gemini) – despite a dramatic positive transformation in the amount of money that corporates are spending on, well,… transformation…only 17% of banks are actually “transforming”. And that, whilst the growing emergence seems to be (according to Santosh Kumar, Senior Vice President and Head of Banking and FinTech Business at HCL Technologies, ) one of “re-imagining the customer experience” – our financial services companies seem to have a problem attracting new customers. In other words, is the hesitancy of many of our finance service providers, missing the consumer demand that others seem to have taken advantage?
I am walking as usual from the Elizabeth Line, earlier than usual, up through Liverpool Street London station and into Bishopsgate. It is blowy and a little grey, but not raining, and the Convene area is on the second floor and the girl at the Reception tells me to take the escalator;
“It is just on the left, and then you turn right”. She smiles.
I am indeed early, but the organisers are already there, and so are a small flow of people. This Conference is already sectioned into two simultaneous and concurrent halves, so to say – you pick which topic, whether it is Payments, or Generative AI, and so on.
I pick Stage 1, which is predominantly focussed on Payments. It is immediately clear that this is the topic du jour, so to say – the fact that how you and I spend our money, even at the smallest level, – and above all, which provider will make that process the simplest – will determine which financial services provider you and I will gravitate to in the future. We hear about trends, challenges, experiences.
And we move on into discussions about Embedded Finance, which is the golden growth area of our behaviour.
Marcin Glogowski, SVP Managing Director for Europe and UK CEO at Marqeta, stays still as he gets up and talks, and explains how trends like Buy Now Pay Later, co-branded credit cards, (such as Amazon’s new card in the UK) and accelerated access to wages are reshaping the financial landscape, and growing at double digit rates.
He meets me later in the day for a coffee:
“I find it so difficult” he says, “ to try to communicate what I want to say, when this is my second language”.
I make an attempt to add humour;
“I think most people here would struggle to be as eloquent as you, even in English as their native language”
But he is right in what he says, that the future is the smaller vendor, and that the success of their brand, will depend on their ability to get consumer traction. Ease and originality of the payment process, will be the driver of this commercial success.
We are clearly not talking about the large volume corporate payment process, – and you could argue that we are not even talking tech at all.
As we move into the afternoon, our discussions are already becoming more socially aware. Nicola Marins, CCO of The Pay Firm, and speaker at European Women Payments Network, – meets me at lunchtime. She is passionate about the issues facing women in their corporate journey.
Jane Moore, from IBM, raises her hand to ask about our concerns of the current BRICS financial alliance and its global conference in Russia.
And even Santos Kumar, goes further right from the start, when he talks about “how to drive innovation’, mentions the issues of cyber crime prevention, and his views are taken up later in the day by Steve Bowers in his Insurance presentation, and the need for managing risk.
I can understand all of these things. The venue is becoming crowded now as we are already late into the afternoon sessions. There are some tables of glasses being set up for presumably the de rigeur evening networking session. I have a four hour train ride ahead of me; I slip away, thank the girl who is still smiling at reception, and merge into the crowd back into the tube station.
